So is this thing any good?

I only play PvE and the revamped artifacts sound really cool, but how's everything else? The strikes, the raid, the "new" area, the new missions and questlines, new loot, and anything else this thing adds that I'm not clear on.

Worth 40 Canada bucks if I really like Destiny, or a flimsy proposition either way?

@theht: Personally, I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Outside of a pretty poor choice on Bungie's part to artificially dampen the progression rate from last week, the actual content is pretty fantastic for what is there. My only complaints would be that the story seemed to be building to some big long awesome thing and then turned a corner abruptly and was over and Archon's Forge. The last mission was fun, I just wish there were 2-3 missions in between to setup that mission, it felt like someone told them they could only put 5 story missions in there and so they simply cut out missions 5, 6 & 7. I was also hoping for a bit longer after story Quest structure like we got in The Taken King, but what is there is very well made. Some of the moments in Rise of Iron are, in my opinion, some of the best in Destiny's history so far. The patrol is a ton of fun, but Archon's Forge needs a lot of reworking to have the same sort of satisfaction as Court of Oryx had. You can only hold 1 offering (what is used to start the event), it cancels far to easily, you lose your offering if it fails, and the loot doesn't quite justify that high of a cost yet. Though the Archon's Forge activity itself is a lot of fun, it just needs those things reworked a bit, which they could easily do in a patch update. Two of the 3 new Strikes are probably my favorite Strikes to date. And without spoiling anything Wrath of the Machine looks to easily be the best Destiny Raid to date. I feel like it's going to take that crown from Vault of Glass in everyone's mind, but that's just my opinion based on a few glances at it today. Overall it's a fantastic DLC so far. Not sure about it's price in Canada and how that relates to games in general vs previous Destiny prices, but in terms of it's American $30 price tag, I think it's easily worth the asking price.

It's good. Everyone seems to really like everything it has. I'll address each of your questions.

Strikes
They are cool. They feel slightly different (though not much). One of them has you track down SIVA nodes in this rather large complex. It requires some searching and I thought it was cool. The boss of that strike is also really good. There are only 3 new strikes though (if you're on PS4). Sepkis Perfected is super awesome because it has this sick metal cover of the original song playing over it and it fits the tone really well.

Raid
It's shorter than King's Fall, more along the lines of Crota's End in terms of length. But every encounter is great. It has some really neat objectives in there. The mechanics appear somewhat simplistic, though still challenging. We found the final boss, though mechanically easy in theory, is actually pretty complex to pull off correctly. There is a lot more free combat in this Raid compared to King's Fall which I really enjoy. I liked the mechanically heavy King's Fall, but repeating that Raid was not as much fun. You were way too constrained. This feels like a healthy medium between Crota's End's incredibly open combat and Vault of Glass' semi-open combat. I really like this Raid so far. Not sure where I would rank it among all the others since I've only done it once and haven't seen Heroic.

Patrol
I'm not the biggest sucker for a patrol area, but I like how it's a new Cosmodrome location. Some people I've talked to that actually spend a lot of time in Patrol area's told me they really like this new area. I think it's better than the Dreadnaught for sure, mostly because you can use your sparrow as you'd want and it looks more familiar than this grey waste. There are also some fun new Patrol missions to do that give you Axes to swing, which are fun. Archon's Forge, which is the new Court of Oryx, is incredibly fun and chaotic. It's better than Court of Oryx I would say, and it seems to drop rewards for everyone consistently, not just the dude using the offering. On the flip side though, offerings don't seem to drop like candy and you're limited to holding one at a time. But the combat in there is a lot of fun.

Missions
They are rather good as far as Destiny missions go. The quest and story is actually told very clearly this time around, somewhat similar to Taken King. It definitely does not have Taken King's production value though. There are barely any cutscenes and voice work (but there are some). The new enemy type are Splicers, which are cybernetically enhanced Fallen. They look cool, but my number one complaint is how they don't seem to have any unique abilities. The Taken were great because they all had revamped abilities from the original source. For example, Vex Hobgoblins go into stasis when they take damage for a short time. Taken Hobgoblins don't do that, but they launch a death blast when killed. No such abilities seem to exist here. Captains still teleport, Dregs still throw grenades. It's unfortunate I would say. All Splicers do have a chance to spawn a seeking orb upon death after they've been killed with a precision hit though. That's new.

Loot
There are two new Exotic armor pieces for each class and I believe something like four of five new Exotic weapons. Not nearly as much as Taken King, but more along the lines of early DLC. All Exotic armor seems useful though, so there's that. Titans get to double-dip in their melee tree or run faster than usual and change direction better. Warlocks get to gain recovery on their Blink or auto-reload their weapons whenever they pick up ammo. Hunters gain an improved version of the Skip Grenade or recharge their cooldowns while sprinting. Leveling still works as before, gear drops at or higher than your current overall light level. Blues are capped at 340 for decryption or 365 for drops, Legendaries are capped at 365 for decryption and Exotics have no cap other than the level cap (385 currently). Raid gear, Trials gear, Iron Banner gear, Faction Packages, Strike Chests and Archon's Forge rewards are also uncapped. Raid gear now follows the general rules of loot and no longer drops within a certain range. This is both good and bad, but mostly definitely good.

It's bad at first because I'm 368 currently and the final encounter in the Raid is 380 (which means I'm underleveled). This means that over the course of the Raid I got 369-371 drops which means I didn't get a giant level boost and thus I remained underleveled. In the old days, Raid gear would've dropped at 375-385 and I could have gotten much higher in one run. However, it is good in the sense that 4 weeks from now, I'll be 382 let's say. In the old days I could have done a Raid and gotten 375 drops: completely useless. I know from extensive experience with King's Fall that RNG hates my guts and this will happen over and over and I'll be unable to reach the level cap. Now though, if I'm 382, gear will drop at least at 382 and has a very high chance to be 383-385. So leveling is more slowly now than before, but far more consistent. Each Raid you do should gain you something, which as someone who has gotten unlucky with drops during Raids, is super awesome.

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As usual, Destiny is best played with other people though. If you don't have a clan yet, Cerberus Wolves is happy to have you. We all just get into chat parties even when doing solo shit and join up randomly whenever it makes sense. It's the best way to play, I feel like.

@hestilllives19 Raid spoilers for everyone else: I thought the Siege Engine was a super awesome set up that led to nothing. They missed an opportunity there. You repair that thing only to bash a wall in? No. They should've had you repair it and then use it to destroy another Siege Engine. That would've been awesome. The metal song playing over that part makes it such an easy thing to go for.

The forge is great fun I agree. There's a way to exploit a networking issue to force-join a forge instance without an offering... Simply go down the narrow tunnel at the back of the forge until you reach the area where enemies spawn (if you are in a party, everyone has to go there together). Then turn around and walk slowly back up the slope. Just before you get to the top it will join you to an instance of the game world where the forge is active (works about 7-8 times out of 10 at the moment). Hey presto. Free forge.

@zevvion: As far as the Raid goes I think we will have to wait and see until everyone hits that 380 mark and all of the secrets are figured out, but I don't see it being as short as Crota's End at all. I think it resembles Vault of Glass in length almost exactly which I feel is the perfect time commitment to a Raid. Crota's has been solo'd in around 7 minutes I think, that time is literally impossible for Wrath of the Machine, as I think even future speedruns will come in closer to the 20-25 minute mark that Vault had. Some even got King's Fall to around 35 minutes I think, though I'd have to look up those times to be sure. I know that we got King's Fall down to around 40 minutes on Hard if everyone was on point, and Vault took around 35 minutes, and Crota's End only took us about 15 minutes.

Also, I loved the part you talked about of Wrath, I thought it was fantastic and wouldn't change a thing honestly, maybe it's just a personal preference thing though. But I enjoyed every part of the Raid, and I don't think this is a spoiler, especially the scenery surrounding the Raid. Everything looked fantastic.

Edit: 28:48 for King's Fall, Crota's End 6:57 (solo is 8:00), and Vault of Glass 23:08.

@hestilllives19: Well yeah, but Crota's End at level intended and without glitches was obviously not a 7-minute Raid. When you were on point you could get it done in 30. It was also the best Raid, possibly until Wrath of the Machine came out, though I can't speak for that yet since it just launched. I do really like it so far. Nothing quite replicates the awesomeness of the fight with Crota though, I feel. Atheon came close, but not quite. Oryx is kind of a joke compared to both. I do know that I don't like the final encounter in Wrath of the Machine as much as either of those two probably. It's good, just not as awesome. Lightyears better than Oryx though, which as time went on became more frustrating than anything else for me.

@zevvion: Personally I still feel like Vault far outshadows any Raid as far as the ending encounter goes, but this is close. While Crota was fun I hated that it basically put all of the pressure on one player to perform and it was that player's fault if you failed, even if they didn't do anything wrong (player was usually me). Nobody else really did much but shoot rockets at Crota when you yelled at them to do so. When we were underleveled, there were some actual strategies with Blessing's of Light bubbles and such, but that aside it was still basically on one person to do the deed. Another thing I hated, and we don't know that they won't do this for Hard here, but in Crota's End Hard Bungie were kind of some dicks. They literally waited to see how the community was doing Normal and put an unkillable enemy in that spot, basically forcing the Window strategy that became common place during The Dark Below. The biggest problem I had though with Crota's End, why it was my least favorite Raid, is that it launched absolutely broken. The encounters would literally cheat and not follow it's own rules. Things such as no sword from Sword Bear (not sorry, it's what we called him), Crota's insta-stand, Crota seeing invisibility (the reason we rarely used that strategy), and Crota literally chasing people off of his platform, see this. It is kind of hilarious in retrospect, but when it ruined runs it was beyond frustrating. People cheesed Vault of Glass, but Crota's End cheesed us. But I personally think that every step of the Raid leading up to the finale of Wrath of the Machine tops every other comparable encounter in it's slot for the Raid, and by a lot. I distinctly remember Alfredo from IGN at the time doing a Crota's End run in under 10 minutes during The Dark Below even, so those kind of runs were very possible even then. We routinely finished all 3 Normal runs for the week on Crota in about an hour during The Dark Below, and that's with doing character swaps. We did this when Hard was out mainly because some of us (myself) still didn't have a Black Hammer and it only dropped on Normal. I also absolutely hated Delta Scaling and hope it never returns to a Destiny Raid. It's the absolute worst and laziest mechanic Bungie ever used in a Raid. Being underleveled at launch is fine, as long as I can achieve that level at some point with better gear. 32 Max vs 34 enemies is just complete garbage. I think House of Wolves showed exactly how poor Crota's End was designed when we were able to be at the exact same Light Level as the encounter. But those are just my complaints and reasons why I think Crota's End is the worst in a series of great End Game activites, that is to say I love all the Raids, but Crota's End least among them.

@hestilllives19: I can't say anything to the broken-ness of that Raid, that was indeed poor and unfortunate. Otherwise, I thought the Raid was pretty fantastic. Not that it should be a selling point for a Raid at all, but I loved how I could solo it too. I still go in Crota's End from time to time to solo it for old times sake (and to collect Exotic Shards). I think that Raid is really fun, still now. I personally do not like design that artificially makes a requirement of more players. I think the ending encounter in Wrath of the Machine is good. You need an empowered guy on each front to anticipate the move. That's cool. Needing to activate 4 plates that are spaced apart is definitely not cool though.

The awesome thing I really liked about Crota's End was that the ending encounter doesn't seem to be designed to force you to need more people. You just needed them because you needed more damage and/or lacked skills. If you're in there alone, you quickly realize: shit, I should invite some other people to help me with this. Which is a good thing. It's not: shit, this design doesn't allow me to do this by myself.

Definitely not saying that is the way Raids are 'supposed' to be designed. Wrath of the Machine is not designed like that and I might like it even better. But it's definitely a cool approach, I feel, and a fresh change of pace.

Also, for the record, I agree that delta scaling sucks, but I hated it way more for Skolas than Crota. But maybe that's just because Crota is my bitch. I soloed his ass every night of the week at one point and I'm sure he was starting to feel helpless.

@zevvion: And both of those encounters, Skolas and Crota's End, now show how poorly designed they were after the fact because they are now absolute pushover's, whereas other content, while a bit easier, is still challenging, even now. Look at Vault of Glass and likely King's Fall, for all it's shortcomings. Those will still maintain the integrity of their difficulty, even after we far outlevel the content, because they didn't use garbage Delta Scaling, rather actual mechanics to create difficulty. I think Wrath of The Machine will be the same way, which is a very good thing.

It's very good. I'm a Destiny veteran at this point, having put something like 700 hours into the game over the course of it's life. It's basically the only game I play.

The good parts are really good. The mission design is much better than ever, with rides on cable carts and other set pieces adding some nice diversity. The game looks better than ever thanks to the new effects in the fantastic new Plaguelands area, which is by far the best patrol space in the game. Bungie have also taken steps to make public events more important, as they give you 15 legendary marks for the first completion. That means you are now guaranteed 45 marks a day, and that's a important change.

The new armor and weapons look and feel great as well. Especially the raid gear feels on point. I got the Chaos Dogma scout rifle from the last boss drop in the Wrath of the Machine raid, and it is even better than the old classic Hung Jury. Speaking of the raid, it's very good. Me and my friends used 15 hours going through it blind, and I loved every second of it. Both the new strikes are also very good (though one is kinda just half new). The new multiplayer maps also seem fine, but I'm more of a PVE player in Destiny, although I do have over 30 ranks in the crucible. With Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner on the way, there's certainly not a lack of content. And the addition of the record book means there's always something to do that will net you meaningful rewards.

Of course, there are issues. The campaign is too short, and as always in Destiny, it seems your up against impossible odds, only to beat those odds pretty easily. There is one part in the raid where the frame rate drops, and that's not something I expect from Destiny. Also I got waaay too many green drops, leaving me to just sit and dismantle a lot of gear. I'm at light 368 now, and it seems borderline impossible for me to get any more decent light upgrades, so that feels kinda like a crawl.

All in all, it's a fantastic expansion that you should buy if you have the slightest interest in Destiny.

Short version: yes if you think you want to do the raid multiple times with a group of regulars. No if you just do the casual Destiny experience.

@zevvion: @hestilllives19:

Crota's End is by far the worst raid. It's basically a strike with better rewards, and that's not even hyperbole. Ranking of raids so far:

1. King's fall

2. Wrath of the Machine

3. Vault of Glass

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. Crota's End

This is obviously subject to change considering that I've only played Wrath of the Machine once, but so far I'm comfortable with the list. Crota will never change position though.

@bojackhorseman: I'm far too embarrassed to list my Destiny play hours, but I get made fun of by friends with over 1,500 hours into Destiny about how much more I've played than them, who are also pretty much Destiny addicts, or recovering addicts until this expansion. (hint: My Warlock has 1,057 hours alone, and I play all 3 Classes almost evenly, except my Hunter as he has the Hunter Handicap - Work Revolt reference)

1. Wrath of the Machine

2. Vault of Glass

3. King's Fall

4 Crota's End

I don't really want to say much about WotM but all of the encounters were fantastic, at least I thought so on my first playthrough (we still haven't beat the final boss, but we only had about 3-4 hours this week to try it so far, half of that was spent on the very last encounter that we had to give up on, being kind of underleveled as most were below 365 still). Vault had better pacing and was just a lot more fun to progress through than King's Fall. Though King's Fall does have, albeit badly designed, cool features like Challenge Mode. I personally didn't like that every fight seemed to be a massive DPS check (except Oryx, it just has really complicated mechanics that people now try to mostly avoid, bomb phase cough cough) with complicated to explain mechanics. It would take 30+ minutes just to explain all of the encounters if you ran it with a new group. It also is just too long, they should have made some cuts and made it a tighter experience, it would have helped the pacing a lot. Crota's End by far isn't my favorite Raid, but it does have that rush, a quick push to the finale. It's both one of it's biggest weakness and strength. It's also the only real viable way to obtain the Flawless Raider trophy, so there is that...

I really hope they redesign and relaunch the older content next year, adding stuff like Challenge Modes. I would much prefer that over a crappy Strike and a few throwaway story missions like we got in April. Maybe they will bring back everyone's favorite (sarcasm implied) Skolas and original Prison of Elders as well.

Crota's end was my favorite raid... (I've only completed the first three so far). It was the only one that I felt respected the players time. The other raids just had to much padding and took to long to complete unless you were over geared for them. Which if you have to out gear for a raid than what's the point...

The general consensus seems to be that "the expansion is good, but, as always, there needs to be more of it."

@bojackhorseman: King's Fall is a pile of shit. It's fine when you're trying to figure it out because it's probably the most mechanically complex. Although, even then, the mechanics are so convoluted and opaque you basically have to look some stuff up to make progress.

But after 4-5 runs you realize the serious flaws in its design. In King's Fall you're never engaging with Destiny's combat sandbox. You're just going down a very rigid checklist.

All the encounters play out exactly like that:

1. Stand in one place firing at adds as they spawn with a medium-long range primary. You are never in actual danger in this part of the encounter as long as you stay rooted in one specific safe spot.
2. Go stand in another very specific spot and fire at a boss's weak spot with a high impact sniper or a touch of malice depending on the encounter
3. Go back to step 1

There's also some running around but all of it is very directed. You basically hear the raid designers saying ''you, stand there, shoot that guy, that guy and that guy, now go there, etc.''

And that's not even mentioning the way to play that raid is to use a scout rifle and a sniper the entire time. Yes, with its 5 big encounters and its multi-hour running time, King's Fall doesn't even make you use more than 2/11 weapon types. There's also the fact that supers are used in the most boring way possible as they're only useful to assist in the many, many DPS checks

Man is that raid bad

The only one to retain its difficulty now that we're over leveled is King's Fall. Retaining the difficulty is not a good thing. It just means the challenge didn't come from fighting enemies, it came from fighting mechanics.

DISCLAIMER: When it comes to Destiny, I'm somewhere between classifications as a casual player and a deeply invested fan. By that, I mean to say Destiny is my go-to game when I crave a solid shooting experience, which has led me to running most, if not all, of the non-raid content multiple times over. My guardians always float near -- but not at -- the level cap, and I have access to a wide library of the game's exotic weapons and items.

I am also primarily a solo player. And I almost never play Crucible. So, again, I'm rarely able to see significant portions of the game (Nightfall, Raids, Trials of Osiris). The perspective below will be somewhat skewed as a result of that.

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Rise of Iron feels to me like the great and underwhelming elements of Destiny represented in microcosm.

On one hand, it offers new content -- which, for Destiny, is never a bad thing. Whenever Destiny provides new story content to experience, new missions to undertake, and new locations to enjoy, I'm always going to feel pretty positively about it. The new Plaguelands hold plenty of secrets within its wintry surface. Generally, it has been a pleasure exploring the space and discovering what lies beneath.

For what it's worth, the new story missions are fairly compelling. Many of them seem designed with the intent to acquaint you with the layout and pathways through the new areas, but that doesn't stop the game's combat encounters from feeling the largest and most epic they've ever been. Perhaps it's because I'm playing without a fireteam, or perhaps Bungie rebalanced damage values on top of increasing the level cap, but Rise of Iron's enemies strike me as some of the most difficult and relentless Destiny has ever had, making successful firefights more gratifying and dynamic.

There's a converse to this praise, however. A caveat. An asterisk I believe Rise of Iron requires when you're describing it to someone who only has a cursory interest in Destiny, or limited resources with which to purchase the expansion. And it's an asterisk The Taken King -- in my opinion -- didn't need in order to justify or qualify its existence.

Rise of Iron's story content is extremely short. My underleveled Hunter plowed through the entirety of the new campaign and new strikes within the first two hours of play. And I want to reiterate this again: I'm playing solo.

Like The Taken King, Rise of Iron has a core story campaign, as well as missions unrelated to the "main narrative" that crop up upon the completion of certain side objectives, or upon the discovery of exotic weapons. (These, for the record, are some of my favorite missions in the expansion. They're lengthy, involved, and they have fantastic rewards and combat encounters -- but after completing them I haven't discovered a way to return to them a second time.)

Unlike The Taken King, much of the campaign's momentum seems disorganized and confusingly paced. By the time the fifth and final campaign mission opens in Rise of Iron, I was still struggling to grasp who or what the chief antagonist truly was, and had even less understanding of why they represented a danger to the world of Destiny at large. Comparing this to The Taken King -- Oryx is a presence with lore and mythology preceding him, even within the vacuum of The Taken King's campaign separate from the broader fiction of Destiny. Oryx was driven by a clear motive and operated via concrete means toward a menacing and corporeal endgoal. And the campaign featured a narrative rising action that helped fuel a looming and inevitable confrontation against the Taken King himself. Rise of Iron's villainous presence doesn't always hit those marks in the storytelling, instead relying on Grimoire Cards to carry that narrative burden, and never does the story itself feel like it is amounting to a conclusion of any sort.

It doesn't help that the well-beaten drum of "Destiny recycles content!" rears its obnoxious head again in the form of the expansion's main cannon fodder: Remixed Fallen. The Fallen in this expansion have a marginally different arsenal and come with a revised set of weaknesses -- Captains, for instance, exchange their Arc shields for Void protection -- but they mostly just fight and look like Fallen. The story makes its attempt to justify this, but if you're oblivious to the story and simply want to kill enemies, you aren't getting a wildly different experience. Two of the expansion's "new" strikes, even, are simply strikes from vanilla Destiny with a new coat of paint.

Finally, some of the quests and activities are motivated by RNG a little more than I'd like. The expansion's new combat arena -- the "Archon's Forge" -- requires a consumable item to access. This is an item that drops randomly (and not especially commonly). And players can only carry one at any time. Its corollary, the Taken King's Court of Oryx, was often an intuitive and natural way for strangers to cooperate against powerful enemies. All you had to do was show up. But the Archon's Forge's price of entry sometimes limits how easily a group can band together for long stretches of time. Instead of getting on a roll against multiple waves, you'll run into situations where a group of guardians power through a wave and, when no key item drops, can't re-up for another go. It's a real dead end and a disappointing way to structure a public combat scenario.

I'm doggy-piling. I actually really like Rise of Iron, and I'm projecting a little bit when I talk about the negatives above, because those are the things that A) a prospective purchaser ought to know, and B) someone who wouldn't otherwise like the expansion might say about it on the whole. For me, personally, those aren't deal-breakers. I'm the kind of crazy person who'll run the content multiple times, the strikes ad nauseum, and the raid eventually.

For the time being, I'm getting a lot out of leveling my character(s). That, itself, is not a fast process, and it gives me a compelling goal to work toward. The exotic weapon quests are some of my favorite missions in the game by a long shot. Some of the new weaponry is a blast to use.

I think it's probably time to reckon with what Destiny is, rather than what I (or Bungie, for that matter) might want it to be. It isn't a totally living and breathing thing but instead this ride to take once a year for a couple months at a time. Maybe, eventually, players will see that blessed future where regular content becomes the norm and not the goal, but until then these annual packages of provisional updates will have to suffice. Or, perhaps, they won't.

--

TL;DR -- If you really like Destiny, Rise of Iron will help remind you why. If you're hoping for Destiny's great moment of clarity, the point at which it pulls you off the fence and into the clutches of Destiny fandom -- then you'll probably have to keep hope alive for Destiny 2.

@bojackhorseman: That most certainly is hyperbole, as the Normal version (without delta scaling I might add) still had low completion rates even when compared to Vault of Glass. Not to mention Strikes fit nowhere in that comparison as they are not on the same level of challenge or complexity.

@hestilllives19 you don't have to convince me delta scaling sucks, we all know this to be true. But I don't agree at all that it was flawed design. The Normal version of that Raid was still plenty challenging when it launched and in the weeks after. Also, you're not making a fair comparison there. Crota's End, for better or worse, was the most free form out of all the Raids released so far. It had very clear mechanics and very clear goals. I would argue that something like King's Fall is almost convoluted when you compare the two, to the point where the absolute only challenge King's Fall asks you is to follow the mechanical intent by the book. 'Stand here, then stand here, then go here, then go there, then go stand there and make sure you do all that within this time'. I will admit it was fun the first few times, but ultimately, that's not the type of challenge I want from a Raid. Take that away and King's Fall is nothing. It has no challenge within it whatsoever. Of course that's unfair too because it was designed specifically for the player to adhere to it's mechanics, but Crota was not. He has one clear mechanic and that's it. You can choose how to deal with it yourself. If Oryx could be damaged by the player itself, or had some other viability to be damaged other than the exact rotation to the letter as intended, I have no doubt he would be far easier than Crota was. Think about it. What in King's Fall really is challenging from a combat perspective? Nothing. The hardest thing would probably be the totems to open the door to the Warpriest and you only wipe there if you royally fuck up.

I'm not saying mechanics are a bad thing, but King's Fall really overdid it almost everywhere and I think Vault of Glass most certainly overdid it with the Oracles. I could actually say if you want to do mechanics right, look at Wrath of the Machine. Which also means I'm saying I think Wrath of the Machine is undoubtedly better than King's Fall and probably Vault of Glass. Only probably because Atheon is a very good encounter bar a few glitches here and there.

@zevvion: There is literally nothing complex about Crota. I find it weird that the only thing you want out of a raid is fighting tough enemies. That get's old fast. I love that King's Fall and Wrath of the Machine are both mechanics heavy, and actually depend on team coordination.

Man, I love you for this. Got two But Not Forgotten today, and hit 369 light.

@bojackhorseman: @extintor: Yeah, I'm going to try and do this some as well. Sounds awesome. I can't believe I didn't know this as often as I check the Destiny Subreddit.

@pyrodactyl: Obviously King's Fall is still going to be the most difficult of the 3 since it's still the closest to current light levels in that sense, but Vault of Glass, while not as challenging as back in Y1, still maintains a lot of it's feel that it had back then, albeit with us now owning more extremely powerful tools like Sleeper Simulant, Nothing Manacles, and Celestial Nighthawk. Crota's End became easier than a Strike the actual day House of Wolves launched, the next content patch, and all that allowed players was the ability to be on the exact same level as the enemies of Crota's End.

@zevvion: You are not saying anything I don't agree with about King's Fall. That said I think all of Destiny's Raids are among the best coop content in all of gaming right now, Crota's End included. So saying it's the worst of the 4 isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've also run Crota's End at least twice as many times as any other of Destiny's Raids, so I played it a lot. The best example I can give is that when asked to run the old Raids my Clan was excited to do Vault of Glass again, but endless grumbles ensued as soon as doing Crota's End was mentioned, and not from me. Which is especially telling considering it takes less than half the time to run through now.

As a pretty casual Destiny player I'm really enjoying it!

@hestilllives19: it is pretty cool.

I don't know about the destiny subreddit or what's on there but my friend Travis discovered it while we were in a party together this weekend. He's a coder for a Toronto-based video game company and he had an 'I wonder if...' hunch about it that amazingly proved to be correct!

It's pretty sweet. We've used the forge 'for free' at least 50 times now!

@extintor: Yeah, I'm not sure I want to post that on the Subreddit, cause Bungie reads that and it would get patched immediately.

I didn't say I want to fight just tough enemies. And come on man, you can't honestly insist that Crota's End is just a Strike with harder enemies. You're telling me they could've added it to the Strike Playlist and people would finish it? Hell no. The completion rate would be less than 1%. You also can't say it doesn't require team coordination. Perhaps not anymore so much, but at the time it most certainly did. Try doing it mic-less. It didn't work.

I understand that you didn't like the Raid and there are valid arguments to not like it, but the ones you're making are hard to take seriously. As for King's Fall and Wrath of the Machine, they are not the same at all. Not even a little bit close. We saw a three-man team take down the final boss in Wrath of the Machine on launch day because it wasn't tied down and constrained by mechanics (and we will see it 2-manned soon enough, they already made it to the final boss). It took ages and glitches to see three people take down Oryx because that fight is inherently designed to fuck you over if you break rotation. Today if you boot up King's Fall you will not benefit from your higher light, Oryx will still take the exact damage as designed per rotation. I'm not saying you're wrong for liking that, but I'm trying to convey why I don't like it myself.

Having a designer stand over your shoulder and pat you on the back if you do exactly as he tells you is not fun to me, at least not in the long run. If Crota's End if driving a car around, then King's Fall is taking the train. Yes, you need to know where to buy the ticket and which train to get on, but when you do the route is set in stone.

@hestilllives19@extintor You're kidding me Hesti... get serious about Destiny you scrub. That trick was known literally on day one and it was floating up Reddit for at least two days. It appears to have a 60 second delay, so running back in won't work. Go in, start walking instead of sprinting when you get into the hallway, then when you can see the staircase, start crouch walking forward. You should be matched before you reach the top of the stairs. It has a very high succes rate. 9-10 for me.

@zevvion: Crota is more comparable to a strike than to a actual raid. I don't get why you argue that it's a positive thing that people can solo Crota, or two-man Wrath. That's not what raids are supposed to be about, and I think it's dumb that Bungie allows that to happen. King's Fall is still amazing to this day because it actually needs communication and coordination. Hopefully, that will be the case with Wrath in the future as well.

@zevvion: @bojackhorseman: I mean both Vault of Glass Atheon and Oryx King's Fall encounters have been solo'd a lot as well, so using that as any kind of barometer of success or failure of a Raid is silly. That just simply means some people are stupid good, far beyond my skill level, at Destiny. And good for them.

Um, hope you guys don't mind me crashing this thread, but I just happened to check out this thread because I was curious about the new expansion and must say, "Wrath of the Machine" is a really good name for an epic thing. Say what you will about Destiny, but they name their epic things well.

The tone of the Raid also fits that name really well. It's super fucking cool.

No, it isn't. I'm not the type of dude to claim someone's opinion is wrong, but yours is ill-informed. Go play Strikes with your friends who don't play Destiny, then go play Crota's End and tell them nothing, see what happens.

Also, King's Fall does not require communication at all. It is the most stale out of any of the Raids because you need to do the exact thing they are telling you to do. Which means everyone knows what to do at all times. Where do you still communicate with experienced people? Last time I cleared Oryx was with randoms and we were talking about MMA the entire time. Not once did we talk about what we were doing. Yes, of course they were going to jump on the plates in order. When they saw me pick up the relic they moved, we did what we had to and the rotation reset.

I'm sure I'm doing a shit job of explaining to you why I think that Raid isn't the greatest, because you keep saying things that don't resonate with the essence of my message. King's Fall, yes, the first time is mechanic heavy to the point where it seems really hard, but ultimately it's own challenge is bogged down by being chained up in very strict mechanics. There is no improvisation, there is no player interpretation or experimentation, there is only the rotation. And because that rotation at some point becomes routine, the challenge is nowhere to be found. At least in Vault of Glass and especially Crota's End you can still have fun even though you've mastered the routine. King's Fall doesn't allow that.

Additionally, Oryx has been soloed as well. It won't be that long until someone solo's Wrath of the Machine either. On top of that, Raids aren't 'supposed' to be anything really, but the raiding of a series of bosses. If you can do that alone because you are the 1%, that's totally fine. Remember that Crota's End had lower completion rates than Vault of Glass when it launched. It doesn't matter how good one person is, most people still failed at it in a full team.

@beyondstrange: Bungie's names for stuff might actually be the thing I like the most about their games. From weird vague poetic shit (UNSC ships like "Forward Unto Dawn" and "Pillar of Autumn," the "Vault of Glass") to their insistence on theme names (all Covenant vehicles were named after ghosts, all Vex enemies are mythical creatures), they manage to hit a tone that you don't really see in other AAA games. Like, you can tell that they know all of their proper nouns are goofy as hell, but they still sound really cool.

Since the discussion's turned to old Destiny raids, I've been wondering since I started playing a few months ago - how many casual end-game players (I guess right now that's around 350 light?) are needed to run those old raids on normal these days, sans cheese? I've never done any of them before, but could I run through VoG or Crota (or even Oryx, now that Rise of Iron is out) with a group of only two or three just to experience that content? Or are the mechanics such that you need to be pretty stellar at Destiny and/or do some real sequence-breaking shit if you want to run them with less than a full six-man fireteam, even with RoI-level characters?

@zevvion: I'm "ill informed"? Okay, I guess 20-30 runs of Crota and probably double that for King's Fall isn't solid enough information for my opinion. When I introduced some friends of mine to Destiny, Crota was the first raid I did with them. They're literal response was, "that's it?". They'd been hearing all the good things about raids in Destiny, and were so let down by Crota. When I showed them the other raids however, they loved them. With that group we were four people, and we completed Crota in 35 minutes and with one wipe.

And come on... King's Fall doesn't require communication? Now I can't take you seriously. And I'm just gonna leave it here, cause this debate isn't bearing any fruits. That kinda happens when you start your posts with telling people that they get to have an opinion, but if it's not the same as yours it's wrong.

@rickrockmann: I'd say three or four for Crota's End, maybe a full team for Vault of Glass, and most def a full team for King's Fall.

@bojackhorseman: A full team for Vault of Glass? Wow, is that just because you need six people doing six different things, or are those encounters actually still that hard?

LincolnForce.ru dunked on the raid this evening.

@rickrockmann: If I recall correctly, there are mechanics -- particularly during the final encounter -- that more or less require a full team.

Y'all sold me on it. Been playing it all night and it's probably the first bit of content that I've been excited about while playing since that first mission of Taken King. The expansions before Taken King were just okay, and Taken King was a lot more Destiny, but the only part of it that got me truly excited was the very first mission where things are actually happening around you. Some scripted shit that wasn't just monster closets or enemy dropships.

I dunno what it is about it here, but I really enjoyed the missions here (especially the finale to the first questline). The story's whatever, but I'm really diggin the new area and the weird recoloured Fallen. Reaaaaaaally didn't much care for the Dreadnaught, but then I didn't much care for Hive aesthetic in general. Rasputin's little bunker and the Plaguelands feel like interesting and distinct locales, whereas the Dreadnaught just felt like more, I dunno, bones and chitin. It's not very pleasant. I only just finished the Sepiks Perfected strike, and that was cool, but the new strike where you track down the mad scientist Fallen priest was fuckin rad.

Excited to play more!

This seems like more of oversight on Bungie's part and I won't be surprised if they patch it up. As it stands, Archon's Forge needs a serious revamp. As fun as it is, holding only one offering, the need to have a key to join in when dying, and the very easy way you can not only cancel the event and also lose the offering is really hampering my enjoyment of it.

Your amount of runs proves nothing to back up the statement you made. I did Oryx three times a week for 14 weeks. It's literally not even worth being mentioned a Raid.

So... because I did it so much that proves my statement is correct and it isn't a Raid? I don't think so. Same goes for you. Doesn't matter how many times you finished Crota, saying it's identical to a Strike at a higher light level is just nonsense.

That's great that you and your friends are the only people in the world that thought it was a Strike. Good for you guys. It's still the least completed Raid to this day, with the most wipes, but I guess facts don't matter in this argument. You're hesitant to look up Oryx' Raid I see... If you only did you'd see communication is not important there at all when you see the Raids done at later dates. It's also been two-manned and one-manned even more than Crota was at this point.

Again, if you think Crota's End is shit and King's Fall is the shit, that's all well and good. But your claim that Crota's End is nothing but a Strike is nonsense that I easily refuted with facts (even the PS exclusive Strike which has the lowest completion rate out of any Strike has been finished 100 times over Crota's End) and your claim that a proper Raid requires communication at all times even well after release, remains a challenge and shouldn't be possible to complete with 2 people or solo, is also easily refuted with facts.

What remains is you thinking Crota's End is shit argument-less. I'm sure you can come up with some, but I had an issue with the poor once you chose to provide.

From what I've heard from friends it sounds like I won't be missing out on much with not getting Rise of Iron. Shame it's pretty obvious Rise of Iron only exists because Bungie at to fill in the gap left by Destiny 2. I like Destiny despite flaws and all, but hearing the rumours concerning Destiny 2 leaves me satisfied on ignoring Rise of Iron especially with Forza Horizon 3, NBA 2K17 and FIFA 17 coming out recently. That all said, sort of frustrated to read that player characters might not be even coming over into Destiny 2.

Guess I shouldn't be shocked but still.

@bojackhorseman: As I've said, you can have your opinion. It's just strange you can't seem to understand the arguments you're making are flawed. Facts are ignored, treating it as a Strike is not being done, it's just baffeling how you can make such arguments. I'm even literally reversing it and it doesn't seem to register. I played King's Fall almost as much as any other Raid and it is even easier than the average Strike. Do my completions really seem to add any legitimacy to that statement to you? It just seems like you're bending things to dismiss one Raid and praise another. Yes, you can love King's Fall and hate Crota's End and there's nothing I can say to discredit that. But when you're saying Crota's End is bad because it doesn't require that much communication and then claim King's Fall is great because it requires constant communication, that's just straight up false argumentation. Replace 'communication' with 'challenge', 'being able to solo', 'being able to finish quick' and any other flawed argument you provided and that still works in that sentence.

There is no denying people are finishing King's Fall without mics, or while talking about something else entirely and very rarely comment on what they are doing. There is no denying the completion rate is much higher which is a good indicator that it's not hard and there is no denying that thing is being solo'd.

Just FYI, Crota's End has also been attempted more than Vault of Glass but hey, no one knows what the actual reason is people don't finish it as much of course. It could be that they thought they clicked 'Vault of Glass' on the directory and upon discovering they booted up Crota's End said: oh fuck this. Another possibility is that people actually couldn't work together and kept wiping, which is something I've seen over and over again when that Raid came out and led to me creating a clan specifically because random people were not able to finish that thing. Either way, it's clear we just like different things. You like the strict path that's constructed for you to follow and nothing else, and that's 100% valid and cool.

@bojackhorseman: @zevvion: Alright, I think the Raid discussion has been talked to death enough. As it appears everyone agree's that Wrath of the Machine is pretty great, and that is what relates to this thread directly, lets leave it at that. The rest can be just be left as an agreement to disagree and called a day.

@cwal37: Awesome, I'm glad you guys got it done finally. I need to get my guys through it. Me and King got into a group last night and were able to finish the final boss rather quickly, I think 15 mintues, and then run through the entire Raid again and it took about an hour and a half maybe. So I finished that Quest on two of my characters. Was kind of nice. The biggest thing that seemed to help was having everyone around the 370 mark, as we didn't have any DPS problems, we were doing about 35% on a good phase. My group, at around 355-360 was only putting out about 10% per phase. Which just wasn't enough. I noticed my DPS went up at around 367-372 from roughly 35k per cannon to 55k, and more with weapons/tether stacked. I think I saw people at 385 on stream doing around 68k damage per cannon too, so that should jump up even more when we all hit cap. Probably means it's important to have your highest LL guys pick up the cannon on each side. That is something I think we will make sure to do on our next run with the Clan.

@hestilllives19:

The difference between someone at 365 and 370 is a 10% damage increase.

365-375 is 30%

365-380 is 53%

Between 367-372 you gain ~16%

It's kind of a shame this last fight is so dependent on light level and the super grindy progression mechanics. At least before you could put a minimum of effort and hit raid ready. Now I can't see the GB guys, for example, ever completing the raid because it's so dependent on having the majority of the team having gone through a convoluted grinding process. I really do think this new loot system only favors crazy people who just have to hit the cap.

@pyrodactyl: Is the Taken King chart they release still accurate though. I've heard a lot of people say that you get Immune on 380 enemies at 349, not a 50% reduction like this chart would suggest. I haven't tested it personally. All I know is the rough damage numbers I was seeing. Based on this chart around 55k is actually correct for roughly 372-3, or 80%. It is entirely possible that I was only 364 instead of 367 on my Titan on the first run, but I know I was hitting for around 35k. Even so this chart would suggest I should have be hitting for roughly 43k. I think it's entirely possible that they kept the regression curve static instead of leveling out the damage penalty like they used to. If you get immune at 349, this would suggest that as well as during The Taken King you could be 40 levels under cap and still do 50% rather than 30. Not sure why they would have, but I'd have to do some testing next time to find out.

Either way it clear that having closer to that 380 mark is highly beneficial. Having 2 380+ guys in that Raid made things so incredibly smooth, especially when our lowest there was 369. The way the gear bottlenecks after 365 right now and crashes to a near halt kind of sucks. But hopefully that will get easier with Trials coming out this weekend and Iron Banner hopefully soon following. I figure everyone will be coming in at that 380 mark soon enough as those should all be 385 capable activities. It will be interesting what Bungie says tomorrow for sure.

@hestilllives19: Is there a way to hit the 387-395 range before hard mode comes out? If not it'll be interesting to see who's good instead of who's grinded the most when hard mode comes out since we'll all be in the same level range.

@pyrodactyl: Not sure, I know 387 gear is dropping for people at 385 randomly but it may only be certain slots, I haven't seen anyone above 385 yet. The new Pulse drops at 390, but that's only 5 Light. Likely the highest anyone will be is 386-387 before Hard Mode launches.

Edit: Before I posted this I wanted to check GernaderJake, as he is usually the highest/fastest leveling Guardian there is. He hit 387 today at the end of his stream after a drop. So 387 is possible, but I doubt any higher than that unless something else comes up.

https://www.twitch.tv/gernaderjake/v/91877547

We finished the Raid on our second attempt. It was hilariously sketchy, but we made it work. Very satisfying.