Raiding, to blind or not to blind (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, June 27, 2019, 15:01 (1986 days ago) @ squidnh3

Example: Final fight, crystals. You've got what... 10 seconds? If you get there, don't destroy the crystal, and one of the pair dies, there isn't enough time to recover. Guaranteed wipe. No recovery possible. (I mentioned this to someone last night, and they said they hadn't had any trouble with that - even if someone died, "another pair could come over and sub in." Our experience directly contradicted that solution; with 3 or 4 seconds left on the clock, it didn't matter HOW fast you could run, you couldn't get to the crystal before time ran out.

We "recovered" a few times during our attempts last night, although we were not successful overall. In order to provide help, you have to be aware of the status of the other two groups, to the point where you are already headed over to help before the failure has occurred. In order to be aware of what the other teams are doing, you need to have your area completely under control, which is easier said than done. This encounter requires a lot of mental bandwidth, and at this point I don't think most people have fully internalized the normal sequences to be able to deviate and recover.

Agreed. That encounter is a bit like being a juggler with multiple balls in the air, but some balls fall faster than others.

You need to become familiar with the sequence of events in your section of the board. Then you need to understand the rotation well enough to keep track of where the other 2 segments are at in their rotations. It’s a lot to keep track of, and some things (like Crystals) need to be dealt with right away, while other things can be left to linger for a few moments.

One of the things that made the biggest difference for my group was ad control. If you are able to clear ads quickly enough (like, immediately as they spawn) you’ll actually find yourself with a surprising amount of down-time during the encounter. Me and my partner had a great rhythm down. We’d deal with our ads right away, swap the buff in the breaks between waves, take a few long-range shots at the ads in the other sections, then turn back and face our platform just as the next wave was appearing. We had plans to take out Ogres and Knights almost instantly, which also helped. Our whole group was great at calling out Crystal locations, so we all knew where they were due to go, and we’d call them out as they appeared. If someone died in the section that was about to get a crystal, someone else would rotate over to deal with the crystal, then get the res.

It’s definitely a lot going on, but I appreciated how much room there is to improvise and adapt most of the time.