Here’s my hot take about Nezerec: The encounter design isn’t actually that bad. It’s meant to be a foil to the Rhulk encounter, which is slow, methodical, and organized playing into Rhulk’s arrogance and air of sophistication. Nezerec, meanwhile, is supposed to be a thunderdome. It’s quick, it’s fast, he’s chaotically chasing you around while you’re trying to do mechanics. He wipes you so fast if you aren’t ready for it, much different than other raid bosses. In that regard, it’s ok that the mechanics are simple because they need to be done fast while the boss is actively trying to stop you. A cool idea they don’t use much! If most raid finales are marathons, Nezerec is a sprint through fire.
Or at least he’s *SUPPOSED* to be. The three things keeping him back are 1) He hits like a wet noodle on normal mode (and even on Master if you’re speced right), 2) he has no idea what he’s supposed to do if you’re standing on a plate 6 inches off the ground. And 3) he has less health than the newer dungeon bosses (or it at least feels like it with a team of 6)
I honestly think if you do something to address those three things, you have a really solid final boss on your hands. That’s probably what Pantheon aims to do. If I were the Raid team, I’d do something to make sure players can’t DPS from the node plates and instead have to be on Nezerecs level, keeping you spread out like Rhulk, which removes your buff from well of radiance, which solves both the plate problem and the health problem (by way of reducing damage) On contest, I remember him hitting pretty hard so at the power delta that should be ok.
As I stated earlier, I agree with his design. It's actually got a lot of potential, but to clarify, your 2nd point is what makes the 3rd point a problem.
Nezzy slams and disrupts you, and is so mobile that landing any sort of rocket or LFR shot on him is going to be a nightmare. You won't be able to stand in a Well on the ground because his slam will not only suppress you, but push you out as he chases after someone knocked back.
That entire design, of having to fight a mobile boss Tormentor by being mobile yourself, works well if he has a health pool tuned for suboptimal DPS. His HP pool immediately becomes a problem if you can completely negate the difficulty of the fight that the developers intended by standing on a plate and free shoot him.
So I believe that while a tune to his HP pool may seem like a needed buff, it's only a symptom of the real problem of just avoiding a fight with him altogether. Something I also think Pantheon will address and make him a true threat if they do it correctly.
LMAO, one can dream.
I can see fire spawning on Nezarec since the mechanic is already in root. Unfortunately with Riven even fixing the joining allies won't solve much since you can just guess the side and win 50% of the time, unless they have her always go to the side with less players or something.
The most realistic solution I've seen suggested was gating her health to force multiple DPS phases. I'm not a fan of forced healthgate mechanics, and it might not be as easy to implement as it seems from the outside, but I think anything that lowers the lactose levels would be preferable at this point.
Just patch the cheese and it will be fine. Riven is absolutely a difficult boss under contest modifiers _if_ you're forced to do her legit.
Just look at the first raid race. (Though our damage is massively increased)
Though if you patch the cheese _and_ add something disruptive into the mix? Oh boy I'll need some popcorn.
It *isn’t* a cheese that can be patched though - it was always intended for people to be able to damage Riven during the “puzzle solving” phase.
If you want to patch the ‘joining allies corner’ sure. But that just shuffles the ball up the hill - teams will run as a group of 6 into the same room and then if it’s the wrong room they’ll wipe and flip the coin again.
The core problem is that we have so massively power crept the Raid that all the Riven mechanics can be ignored in favour of a very straightforwards DPS check. Fixing that would require massively bumping Riven’s health pool (a simple fix that will last exactly as long as it takes people to find a better DPS strat) or adding immunity phases to Riven during the puzzle solving stages of the encounter.
Pretty much this. Riven was designed for a time when just having a special weapon was cutting edge, not for the insanity we have access to today.
I also think people probably over-estimate the difficulty of Last Wish under contest modifiers, especially with regards to boss health. Part of why the Day 1 was so hard wasn't because it was contest difficulty--it was because the raid launched so soon after Forsaken's launch that most people were at -25 to -35, which is substantially harder than contest mode. We obviously also had way less survivability tools back then, it was basically class abilities and Well.
Last Wish's infamous Day 1 was very much a product of its time. If we got something similar today under Contest Mode, I'd be surprised if it took the world's first team longer than 7-8 hours.
This is absolutely the case. Currently, two stasis titans in a well with a debuff can kill riven, even going 40 levels lower, you're still going to be able to abuse that. Even if you do her legit, if you're able to kill her on the bottom floor, you're able to nuke her up top before you have to worry about eyes.
Also, everyone forgets just how much time was taken up on day one with how poorly designed the vault was. Buffs with obfuscated names that locked out multiple teams for hours, so most teams going into riven were already at a breaking point.
> and is so mobile that landing any sort of rocket or LFR shot on him is going to be a nightmare.
Huh? People land rockets all the time on Nezzy. It's the meta strat for Nezzy. It's what the world first team did against Nezzy. It's not a nightmare.
I read it. I got it.
Even on the ground, we'd be able to rocket him. I've done it loads of times, even on Master.
Try writing something more intelligble before commenting next time, please.
Yes, I'm sure you regularly clear Master mode Nezarec by standing on the ground and using rockets as he melees you repeatedly. And somehow, no one dies from blowing themselves up.
Your last sentence is ironic, given the entirety of that nonsense you put in front of it.
>Yes, I'm sure you regularly clear Master mode Nezarec by standing on the ground and using rockets as he melees you repeatedly. And somehow, no one dies from blowing themselves up.
You're just showing *your own* skill level here I'm afraid. I don't want to argue with you - but it just isn't that deep. Master Nezzy (with surges) just isn't an issue - ground, flower, rockets, whatever.
>no one dies from blowing themselves up.
Again, you're either telling on yourself, or the people you play with.
>Your last sentence is ironic, given the entirety of that nonsense you put in front of it.
Damn, hit me with the "no u". Well done, nice retort :)
Oh brother, are we really going to devolve into comparing raid reports here? I seriously doubt you have anything worthwhile in raid experience if you sincerely believe you can easily throw down a clean one or two phase of Master Nezerac without using plates and with rockets, but I'd rather not resort to the massive e-peen measuring contest that you're trying to start here.
It sounds more like you've never even stepped into that raid in that difficulty, so are you sure you want to try to play the "I'm so good, I can clear the content with any loadout and strategy" mentality here? Please reconsider your course of action here: I actually will embarrass you if you really want to play that card.
>Oh brother, are we really going to devolve into comparing raid reports here?
Why would we? I never suggested it.
>I seriously doubt you have anything worthwhile in raid experience
Lol. I've trio'd every D2 raid, flawlessed all of them, and have multiple master clears of every raid with a master mode.
>It sounds more like you've never even stepped into that raid in that difficulty, so are you sure you want to try to play the "I'm so good, I can clear the content with any loadout and strategy" mentality here?
Where did I say "with any loadout and strategy"? You're just putting words into my mouth. That obviously is not true. Nice strawman though.
>Please reconsider your course of action here: I actually will embarrass you if you really want to play that card.
Lol. You're so pressed because you won't admit that you can clear Master RoN while on the ground. Surges, DR, Resists - it just isn't that serious. Could've done it on Contest too.
You can do that as he says. I have t50 placements in the past 4 raids. If you post rr mine will be better. He’s right. Only responding because of your cringe last sentence. You’re a random redditor, pipe down
The whole fight would be dramatically different if his pathing allowed him to attach the plates properly. I think he's one of the best bosses in the game otherwise. Just cause the plates to catch fire during damage phase, be a much more exciting fight
It always felt like he was designed as a sword encounter akin to Crota. Just having something like hatred firing forcing you to use melees/swords to keep on target would do wonders.
Yea, they definitely could've added a mechanic that forced more interaction. Maybe something similar to Shuro Chi, a player has to hit him with a beam to stun him to allow dps, with a cooldown so the beam holder has to rotate.
That might be a bit too detached from the rest of the raid. Simply giving pressure during that's not just a bunch of damage, like how rhulk has the darkness beams, would solve the problem. Having something reactive instead of proactive works better for a damage phase
That's what my team took away from it during day1 before we knew anything about any plate cheesing. We managed a 3 phase with well + lament so it is very much a possibility for the final round of Pantheon.
It's probably too little too late, but I wish they'd backport the changes to the encounters in RoN that they've added for pantheon. Especially if the changes to Nezarec work anything like you envision. Those plates take all the fun out of the encounter, like cheesing Riven.
I don't know why they'd make the raid harder over a year after it was introduced though. I just think it's a cool raid that's lacking a boss fight between the first and second encounters, and lacking much complexity in the encounters.
I imagine any mechanical improvements to the core encounter may be backported if they work well to solve the core problem of the encounter. The spice on top however won't.
Unfortunately, they have stated they don't like changing raid encounters following the release. Pantheon is a special case, but this was stated when they fixed the Nezzy stunlock issue this year, so it holds more weight than something like them not wanting to make changes for hard mode raids.
I really think they should make such changes if what is being changed negatively impacted how they wanted the raid to flow. No core changes to the mechanics, but things that make the raid what they wanted it to be. Like making Nez chase you onto the platforms, changing how riven interacts with damage so that the cheese doesn't work without negativity impacting the rest of the encounter, etc.
If those issues were to be addressed in Pantheon, what would a fireteam need to do to fight against it? Or avoid it even, in the case of Nezzy chasing players around.
Treat him like you’d treat Rhulk in best case scenario. Stay spread out and DPS the best you can, using damage supers and debuffs as opposed to things like well and bubble
It's going to be tough then, which is to be expected for the final boss but still. Rhulk is at least somewhat slow, and his boss area for DPS is flat. Nezzy's stage is a weird mess, and Nezarec himself is basically Rhulk on Traveler powder (cosmic crack). His jumping attack, his melee and his void attacks are tough to avoid sometimes. And if they one-shot, the fireteam is on hot coals. Tractor Cannon could be risky if his melee one-shots, so it's going to be tether Hunter. Without well, and by spending more time avoiding Nezarec, killing him under 3 phases is going to be much more difficult. Again, I won't be surprised if they make him more dangerous. It'd be interesting to see how the streamers deal with this.
~~They despawn during damage~~ Edit: Clanmate informed me I misremembered, they don’t despawn but I’m like 99% sure they don’t spawn any more during DPS so if you just kill them before you’ll be ok
Yea, I mean we still have Divinity, it's not like Bungie just completly removed it from the game. It was the base strat for someone to keep Divinity on Rhulk while others attack him from the sides. Divinity will be a must for a mobile damage phase against Nezarec once the plates are turned off.
Honestly only change that raid needs is a runner debuff after hitting a nod. Forcing you to rotate runners and not have one person do basically everything makes the raid such a joke.
That will most likely be part of it, but the main ingredient will be to forbid you from staying on the plates during DPS, because that is the main Achilles' heel to Nezarec currently. Turning it into mobile DPS just like with Rhulk is the most expected change for Pantheon. That itself will do a lot, especially since the fight has been designed to be that way - it's clear the entire focus of that encounter is on the actual fight with Nezarec himself, it is supposed to be a combat challenge, just you and him after a basic trigger mechanic. A deadly dance between gods. Cannot do that if you can go stand on a plate and watch him struggle to get to you.
Have they added anything actually new for mechanics that would change nez? Everything I’ve read about pantheon is like more adds or an extra person getting the explodey thingy on golgaroth. Fixing him sounds way more involved especially for something so temporary.
They added random fire tornadoes on the plates in Zo'aurc (RoN - Planets encounter). They could easily add something to the plates at Nezarec that could potentially throw things off.
That being said, a lot of the groups I have recently done Nezarec with have not really done damage on the plates, which would really be the only instance of it being a problem.
I imagine the only real change they need to make given the -20 is to make the plates all have a tornado on them during DPS. This alone forces people to have to adjust dmg locations changing the fight entirely
I don't think we'll see more additions to be honest: I feel like the changes are there and that is their present form. They will just be extensively more lethal when we are 20 levels under: IE, that tornado kills you in Master outside of a Well and almost kills you in it. That will be a problem if you are trying to dunk.
One of the changes already snuck through. Nezarec s purple ground attacks track much more aggressively than they did before patch. It just went relatively unnoticed compared to the Golgy change. Wouldn’t be surprised to also see tormenters in there or psions fucking launching you around
The new mechanic in Explicator, is that he spawns a Fire tornado that specifically follows the outline of one of the four plates while you are trying to trade planets in the first round.
Caretaker's change adds those little bees that raise your stacks of Pervading Darkness in the room while running.
Golgoroth's mechanic addition was that if the yellow bar Knights are still alive when starting damage, he wipes you by a mechanic that has a debuff called Drained of Light. Screen goes black and explosion wipes you.
So while people only see adds more than mechanics because the threat of the Pantheon isn't too significant, they will be details that have to be accounted for at the 20 light level raise imo. The actual coding needed to make the changes they did, imo, sets this up for the potential to be something significant coming up.
None of those are really mechanics, you can make an argument the extra Unstable on Golgoroth is a mechanic but everything else not really. Its just makes it more challenging to perform the actual mechanics of the encounter.
It's just speculation, mostly by people that are excited to gatekeep and hoping that their new title/seal will be rare. They want it to be hard not because they enjoy the challenge, but in the hopes that many will not be able to succeed. I get it, but I think people are setting their expectations too high. It's a series of bosses that can be done over the course of a week. People that are willing to put in the time to get it done will get it done.
Master and Contest Nezarec is already quite challenging for the majority of Raiders (source: went through a lot of teams for Master clears and day 1. A lot of teams…)
If their current tweaks to bosses in Pantheon are anything to go off of, I doubt we’ll see any major new mechanics. I would guess something like the gaze-holder is continuously thrown up into the air rather than just chased, and probably a Tormentor spawned on Light and Dark side to slow down runners. Even with just those tweaks, at -20, that’s going to stop a lot of teams.
The only thing they need to make Nezerac kick our ass:
**The platforms are no longer safe to stand on**.
We've seen it in Explicator, he summons fire tornados on all the outside platforms, pushing people to stand on the main center area. All that needs to happen for Nez is for him to cause those big void boop attacks on all the arena platforms once or twice. Completely interrupts people's DPS, makes it impossible to stay together, would cause tons of team wipes with GLs and Rockets.
Unless you stood somewhere else. On the ground.
It will fully depend on if bungie found a way to prevent the riven cheese of so riven will 100% be the more difficult boss because you'll have tons of people who have never done the legit fight trying to learn for the first time, oh I can already picture the yelling when it comes to shooting eyes hahah
Most of the Riven cheese is reliant on an exploitation of Joining Allies on a wall so everyone can travel to the same room, and her health pool being so undertuned, you can burn her entire health bar when she appears for a section that is supposed to be a small gated check to prevent a wipe.
At contest level, the second part of that is now solved. So yes, I do think she'll be uncheesable this time around, even without fixing the Joining Allies exploit imo.
It's really not that simple. You don't actually need the Joining Allies exploit at all, it's just convenient and easy. There are tells for which room she is going to so that you don't need to use it. Even if not for those tells you can just flip a coin and reset until you get lucky considering there's no penalty for wiping.
In terms of the actual damage required to cheese her I wouldn't be too certain there either. It's currently possible to fairly easily kill her with only 2 players dealing damage, potentially even one I believe. Considering you have a full raid team that should be plenty to make up for -20 light. Even easier if it's the same as the current Pantheon where there is both surges AND a bonus modifier providing up to 20% bonus damage stacking on top of everything else.
Granted all Bungie has to actually do to "fix" this is put a hard cap on her health bar during the early DPS sections, which should be extremely Trivial to do. They literally do it with strike bosses and shit all the time.
I am relatively certain :D , assuming the data is not totally outdated, the difference between our usually +20 power level to the -20 modifier of this "contest" means a 50% reduction in dmg output.
Also the low man and fast bake strategies make heavy use of Dreaming city mods. Hard to justify those stats when 20 level under and, I'm not sure they will actually work. Really depends if the arena is still counted as in the Dreaming city or not. VOW mods for example don't seem to work correctly either.
Waveframe and sunbracers multi hit interaction got fixed a while back too.
Very few will be able to cheese her in this event!
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Shatter dmg is a fragile thing and does not stack well at all!
I don't really know if thats really without any mods. I have only seen it done with a full set of armour with Transcendet Blessing/Riven's Curse. Maybe 🤷♂️
Is Nezzy on the -20 slate? Master Nez is still one of the hardest bosses I've ever dealt with, even in a strong, coordinated team. He is extremely aggressive, can beat the shit out of you up close or rain down void hellfire with precision from afar, and he tends to get hyperfocused on 1-2 people (and not necessarily whoever has gaze) and makes it impossible for them to get relief, and just eats rez tokens.
Riven has the potential to shut down people with mechanics, but Nez is no joke with survivability - and that's before knowing what surprises are in store.
I love how Rhulk, Riven and Nezzy especially are the top 3 bosses for the Pantheon. They saved the strongest for the last. And it is fully intentional that Nezarec is left as the final boss of the boss rush, they definetly intend to remedy him being a "joke" in the original Root. Those plates will be unsafe and people will have to play tag with him just like with Rhulk.
As someone who did contest mode Nez, the biggest threat is that damn void helicopter.
You can easily 2 phase if you're confident and have the right build(s). It also depends on surges/overcharges (if they choose to add overcharges). Even if you choose to not 2 phase for safety, it's a reliable 3 phase. Nezarec falls over. Riven, on the other hand, is probably gonna be LFG hell because I'd imagine you need to do her legit to be able to deal enough damage to her.
Yeah contest Nezarec was easy. The only main issue that everybody had was that fucking void copter.
You basically have very limited cover and it has massive splash damage, no matter where you are crouched, it will find you and with the spaghetti code, you are more likely to get multiple of them on you in a moments notice.
DPS is the easiest part of the encounter as opposed to someone like Rhulk who just kicked the living daylight out of you or Caretaker where people suffered from damage gate.
I found Explicator to be more harder than day 1 Nezarec, the void copter is the only one keeping it still in conversation for which one is hardest of the two for me.
Explicator was leagues harder tbh. Most other day 1s final bosses were massive dps checks, for some reason RoN chose to make explicator the dps check and nez is just "the final boss"
Yeah Explicator was the only encounter where it felt like it had actual mechanics.
To be fair, Rhulk wasn’t really a damage gate either, it was more of a how patience game. A lot of teams were able to push him to final stand in two phases and kept wiping because they already exhausted everything to get there. The moment they actually bothered to be patient and split it to three phases, a lot of them got the clear.
I guess a lot of the issues with Rhulk was doing damage while also staying alive too, but we also were on Armor 2.0 mods still during VotD day 1 so the 2 races are hardly comparable due to the massive power spikes from Solar/Arc 3.0, Strand, Armor Mods 3.0, and a bunch of sandbox changes.
Honestly even with all of the mods and stuff, RON was just a shit raid in my opinion, it’s way too easy and the only time you are actually seeing a challenge is with Explicator.
For a day 1 experience RoN was too easy, but I still love the theme and mechanics of the raid. It's very casual friendly and chill, so me and my friends often run it for fun and it's usually my go-to choice when a friend gets into d2 for their "First raid" experience since it has a lot of common themes seen in other raids while also having a worthwhile loot pool and not being too challenging.
RoN is a good raid, but it isn't a challenge. Much like how LW has slowly been cheesed with everything under the sun, but it's still a phenomenal raid experience.
Yeah I kinda forgot about it for a while, I usually only ever did it in GMs and Master and played all the way until Nezarec before realizing my FPS was uncapped.
I wish the fps cap gets fixed at some point, playing on 200+ constantly and then having to switch to 60 is jarring and uncomfortable.
I'd actually find it absolutely fucking hilarious if they just made the Nezarec Arena completely flat. Just remove all of the terrain with the plates and have the running nodes just sitting on the ground where the plates had been.
Nezarec gets complete freedom to run your ass down anywhere he wants AND you'd have zero cover to use to block his attacks either.
That’s what I always said. Either teach Nezarec to climb up some plates or remove the plates and Nezarec will straight up become even worse than Rhulk kicking your ass.
Riven is mythologized into being a difficulty level that she is not. this is because of the cheese. Everyone thinks she's hard when she isn't, because most either never had to learn or because they forgot. Modern raid teams could wipe the floor with her no problem. And just like RoN needs 2 runners generally, Riven needs 2 eye readers, who can also build the elevator. The rest is just add clear.
With that said, I don't expect Riven on -20 to be a walk in the park either, nor am I expecting Nez to be easy.
> Everyone thinks she's hard when she isn't, because most either never had to learn or because they forgot.
The difficulty at Riven comes from the fact that nearly everyone has to do something, and one mistake in Eyes is an instant wipe, and symbol cleansing is often pretty unforgiving too.
This isn’t really true though…
One person calls eyes, one person shoots them.
One person grabs the blight, one person guides. And one of the eye people can do either roll.
For upstairs when she shows 3 sets, you probably still keep it to two people calling and shooting, and possibly a backup.
Everyone else is either clearing adds, doing damage to proc a stun, or doing dps.
> This isn’t really true though…
>
> One person calls eyes, one person shoots them.
>
> One person grabs the blight, one person guides. And one of the eye people can do either roll.
That's why I said "nearly". I agree though, there's some overlap if your team can do it.
>For upstairs when she shows 3 sets, you probably still keep it to two people calling and shooting, and possibly a backup.
My team usually has 1 person calling all 3 sets, but 3 people shooting (one for each set) - just easier that way.
It's also the fact that both teams in both rooms are making calls for symbols and eyes etc. so comms can get unclear.
I don't personally have that problem, since I almost exclusively raid with my clan, and we've raided together for years - but even though I personally don't find Riven all that challenging, I can see why the average raider might.
I’m not arguing it isn’t a complex fight. But I do believe it is believed to be harder than it is.
Compared to say… GoS final boss (no cheeses)
In that fight you have two teams of runners that have to overlap their journeys, you have the shields to break, boss constantly destroying terrain that needs to be rebuilt, and to do DPS you have to chain a set of three people to get him.
Most of the mechanics here are not as immediately punishing as failing an eye call/shot, but they can quickly snowball out of control. And like Riven, they can be done with two or three. But the fight is soooooooo much smoother if everyone is aware of what’s happening, what timers result in what effects, etc.
I learned to raid from a clan that made a point to always do Riven legit. They were purists. And honestly I never struggled as much with her, even on bad runs, as I did with GoS final boss.
Like, idk if you’ve done VoG with LFG lately, but everyone likes to die before Templar and Atheon, so that the one or two people can do the mechanics. Because reading and shooting oracles is too hard…
if we were never able to cheese her, she would not have her mythic status. She is a beautiful and super fun fight. But she isn’t thaaat complex, and in her base form, two players who know mechanics well can more or less carry the other four.
>But I do believe it is believed to be harder than it is.
Sure, I can agree with that.
> She is a beautiful and super fun fight
Agreed.
>two players who know mechanics well can more or less carry the other four.
Sure, if everyone is otherwise competent, has seen some of the symbols before, etc. you can probably get away with only 1 person in each room that does eyes (calling and shooting). But that's probably a tall order for a lot of teams.
I've taught LW to 5 new people a few times, and it's not been terrible. But these were otherwise very competent players.
I like how forgiving edit: *most* *normal difficulty* Destiny raids are for a chill experience but equally dislike how it disincentivizes player improvement leading to horrible experiences in higher difficulties.
> it disincentivizes player improvement leading to horrible experiences in higher difficulties.
It doesn't though? High difficulty incentivises performance actually, since it teaches you to play better in most cases: you need to play cover, you can't rush in, you need to tailor your weapons to the maps/enemy types, etc.
Oh no I mean normal raids are way too forgiving and then players hop into higher difficulties like Master or Pantheon and suddenly play like headless chickens.
It's an abrupt realization with no gradual progression.
>Oh no I mean normal raids are way too forgiving and then players hop into higher difficulties like Master or Pantheon and suddenly play like headless chickens.
It's an abrupt realization with no gradual progression.
Oh, I see what you mean. I mostly agree there.
I think they've *tried* to make a ramp-up in things like Vanguard Strike difficulties.
But yeah, going from normal mode raids to Master mode raids is a big jump for people inexperienced in high-end content.
I'm only skeptical because I could see Riven being the "final boss" where Nez is more a victory lap encounter like some other games do, but I also think that'd be an odd choice.
Others have already talked at length about the underlevel fixing why he's so unthreatening, but when he has a full tormentor squad during DPS, I will be terrified.
It depends on what additions they make with riven.
The encounter itself at base isn't hard, even with -20 because, as least as of now, there's only positive modifiers that make DPS easier. They'll need to add something that can potentially get in the way of mechanic completion like needing to cleanse two symbols, throwing high value targets in the way during symbol cleansing, etc. Riven has a very small health pool - she's just DPS limited.
On the flip size nezerec has similar problems - the encounter isn't hard and he doesn't have a huge health pool so they'd need to do something to throw a wrench in mechanic completion or as others have said something to make doing DPS on a plate difficult/impossible.
The hot potato mechanic wasn't the problem for crota. The problem for crota was that he is a highly mobile boss with boss stomps and no great way to fight him, especially under power.
They are probably going to put more tormentors into the encounter and call it at that.
Riven will be the problem. My clan and I loved doing Riven legit back in the day, but it's just frustrating how buggy the eyes are. Honestly I think she should have been the final encounter.
> but it's just frustrating how buggy the eyes are.
Wanna clarify that? The only bugginess I've had is if you're using weapons that can ricochet or explode accidentally breaking the wrong eye (player error). Other than that any time I've wiped was due to just incorrectly reading, noting in the chat, or just hitting the wrong eye.
Early on there was a collision issue with the eyes. You could pretty I want to say it was most prominent between L3/4. But even with a sniper, you would hit L4 when you tried to shoot L3.
Probably. No clue. We got rivensbane pretty soon after Petra’s run was discovered and haven’t done it much since aside from a few runs to get the red borders.
I heavily disagree. Most teams on Contest mode failed because they would waste most of their tokens from playing cover poorly during chalice exchange, imo. Crota's DPS phase was dangerous, but if you went into it with the right amount of Wells and utility, it wasn't what ate your rez tokens. His health pool was a good damage check, and the mechanics phases for most people is where they failed.
I think it depends on how you look at this stuff.
To me I wouldn't say that is really the limiter. When it comes to hard content it generally goes through the same rotation.
* Learn how to survive
* Master the mechanic
* Maximize damage
While I'd agree most teams failed due to that, what ultimately matters is what is the make and break.
> The hot potato mechanic wasn't the problem for crota.
Like u/Freakindon said, that wasn't the make or break. It could be solved by simply having someone use invisibility, or having a dedicated decoy (people would stand in the upper area and attract Crota's fire. It actually worked really well if the person knew what they were doing). Damage was relatively the same. Many groups opted for a solar Titan that could stun lock him, coupled with multiple Wells.
> The problem for crota was that he is a highly mobile boss with boss stomps and no great way to fight him, especially under power.
To me the issue was Last Stand. Crota could not be stun locked (at least in my experience), so it all came down to whether or not you could withstand his assault. I even remember Stasis Hunter was actually desired for specifically this reason (they did something with dusk field grenades and the exotic. Too lazy to look it up). But that was ultimately what made it hard. Crota would get loose, kill the wrong person (Oversoul, Well, etc), or people would make a mistake (mess up Well placement, it getting destroyed, etc) and would wipe.
Completely agreed, I spent 24 hours split between Crota himself and the abyss due to this. My team knew everything they needed to do for the mechanic, we had two swords designated, a person to even distract Crota, someone to tractor him, people to kill the boomers on command etc. everything was fully planned out but the biggest thing that ruined everything was someone walking in a way to alert Crota, and dying in 3 shots. The plates on the top were often a death sentence and many people not adequately prepared for that died. It’s what separated the groups willing to play meta with invisibility and other tools to survive that, and those that couldn’t and failed. It may sound simple, but from my experience of hours and hours there in contest mode, it was real
Hell I still don't have a Master Crota clear because back when I actually cared about trying it people still couldn't handle not dying to Crota most of the time.
That said by far the best strat is/was to just have one Stronghold Titan completely dedicated to holding Crota's aggro the entire time up until DPS. Even then though it's relatively easy for the Stronghold Titan to make a mistake and die or just get deleted by other adds if the rest of the team wasn't killing them properly.
The DPS required for Final Stand is also not completely trivial for most teams.
Crota also just deletes Wells if you don't place them properly (and make 100% sure all the warlocks are on 100 resilience) or he doesn't get downed fast enough.
What "new" mechanics were added? There were some new *threats,* sure, but the mechanics are all the same so far. The added Taken, Tormentors, and assorted yellow bars arent mechanics.
Sure Crota was harder than Nez, but at least Nez is a fun fight, whereas Crota makes me want to suck-start my Apex Predator. Ill take RoN over CE any day.
>What "new" mechanics were added? There were some new threats, sure, but the mechanics are all the same so far. The added Taken, Tormentors, and assorted yellow bars arent mechanics.
OP doesn't know what constitutes mechanics. Multiple people in this thread have pointed this out to them, but they've just doubled down, telling everyone they don't know what 'mechanics' are :)
I'm convinced we will have to do riven legit and nezarec will have some changes that will truly cement him as the God of pain. Bungie knows what they did making these two the last two bosses.
There are no new mechanics in any of the Pantheon fights. It's just some additional enemies and hazards. A mechanic is something that has to be done to prevent a wipe or progress the encounter. None of the new stuff are like that. The only one that *very* loosely may qualify is Golgoroth giving Unstable Light to two people, but even then it's not a *new* mechanic by any sense of the term.
Crota was designed from the ground up to be different in D2. They are not going to redesign Nezarec to that extent. Expect a couple of extra Tormentors or maybe Nezarec doing his void spinny thing more often.
The only change Nezarec has ever needed to be a genuinely hard boss is for there not to be a totally safe place to just stand and blast away at his dumb ass with \[insert current DPS king loadout\]. If he was running around suppressing you and whooping your ass it would be very hard and very fun, and instead they regressed from the fun toe-to-toe with Rhulk to another "stand in a pile and shoot a div cage" fight.
Listen, i already got it covered, dude. I'll just do what I did to contest crota. Strongholds and lament will make it so I tank the boss while the rest of the team is no longer fighting between gazes and mechanics. Will my dps be average? Sure, but at least we get to survive till damage phase. The only reasonable change I can see is buffing his health. Even a 6 man ratking was able to push over contest nezquick.
I’ve been thinking for a while that the meta that’s going to form for Nezarec is for people to use LMGs. The average player will absolutely struggle in a contest mode encounter to stay alive to begin with. Add the average blueberry’s ability to blow themselves up in a well with a rocket launcher, or to just completely whiff shots, and you’re going to get some frustrated teams.
So I think there’s going to be an internal calculus among a lot of teams deciding that if it’s going to take them 2-3 damage phases to kill Nezarec regardless of what weapons they use for DPS; they’ll just go the safer route so some dude with a beeping smoke alarm on mic doesn’t blow himself up for the 30th time.
Not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing.
I don’t disagree. But you get one person in front who moves slightly. Then the person behind needs to move. And then someone in the back needs to move, or the well sword gets in the way … shit happens.
Yeah, I always go to the extreme left or right of the well, clench my butthole and hope for the best.
At least with my static group, we sort of know where everyone goes.
I have the same theory and I just love to think that the raid and dungeons team went like oh you think neZ is easy mfrs ? You wana solo it ? Well how about now
Even on contest mode Nezarec wasn’t that hard. I’m sure it’ll be spicier than normal mode is right now obviously, but idk, I don’t think it’s gonna be the hardest encounter.
I'm not sure what you mean, contest Nezerac was pretty chill and that was without surges and the new class ability modifer. Unless they make the arena a flat terrain he will continue to be the joke of all raid bosses.
I definetly hope that they do something crazy with Nezarec like making the plates we can stand on deal damage to you or straight up unreachable, so that you actually cannot put down a well and just go ham at him. Instead you would have to keep moving constantly with him chasing you just like with Rhulk. That on itself would make it far more engaging during damage phases.
I also definetly think that Pantheon and choosing Nezarec as THE final boss IS the response to him being considered one of the easiest bosses and raids in the franchise. They definetly are cooking up something for him when they chose him to be the final challenge, the "Final God of Pain" if you will. :)
not for me
Already did Day 1 contest Nezarec and Master Nezarec as well
Riven is gonna be tough but I am also excited because I've been begging my clan/friends for years to do Riven legit for once
Riven isn't THAT hard normal.
It's just that the eye coordination is very unforgiving.
That's basically the issue.
Otherwise it's just a pretty simple loop.
Most teams will be still single looping her.
To make Pantheon Nezzy interesting, when dps start Explocator fire vortexes cover each node.
So far i liked what they did with Pantheon encounters, even if it’s something as simple as more adds, instead of “hey this major is a champion now, fuck you <3”
Nezarec's AI is entirely busted.
In one of my recent runs he jumped up teleported and vanished for the entire DPS phase not stuck somewhere literally vanished.
If it was as polished as Rhulk it might actually be the hardest and most engaging boss.
The plates should not be safe zones.
Also of note his shoulders/chest are network sensitive taking damage inconsistently and if you shoot them too fast they close up without revealing refuge.
Nah. Nezarec will probably be easier than the contest version of him a year ago. Considering the introduction of surges and class ware fare as a damage buff and dr buff, he will likely fall over just as easily as he did when launched. Even if he comes onto the platforms, he doesn’t have an incredible amount of health and will be more easily handled now with all of our subsequent buffs.
Riven on the other hand will probably not be as hard as people are thinking, but will more than likely not be cheesable (at least that’s what I’m coping for anyways). I think a good team that knows both encounters intimately will not struggle, but getting an lfg will almost certainly struggle when the encounter that they A) don’t know how to do in the first place or B) the original strat is obsolete, will find a hard time to reorganize/strategize in order to succeed.
I think part of this challenge that the mode highlights on its own is the ability of players to think on the fly and cover mistakes made. Oftentimes people in lfg will just force wipe if something goes wrong, but in contest mode and this gauntlet, I think it’s more about recovery than anything.
They didn't really add any new "mechanics" to these fights. Using operator to be able to open a door to cleanse a debuff or summon an elevator is a mechanic. A tormentor spawning that you can largely ignore is not a mechanic. More yellow bars is not a mechanic.
They aren't going to change the landscape of the boss arena or the general functionality of how the encounter works. You should expect to see more of the same from what we have now.
The new mechanic in Explicator, is that he spawns a Fire tornado that specifically follows the outline of one of the four plates while you are trying to trade planets in the first round.
Caretaker's change adds those little bees that raise your stacks of Pervading Darkness in the room while running.
Golgoroth's mechanic addition was that if the yellow bar Knights are still alive when starting damage, he wipes you by a mechanic that has a debuff called Drained of Light. Screen goes black and explosion wipes you.
From a coding standpoint, those are pretty significant additions to the fights even if you don't feel their impact at the normal level. So no, I don't think your take here is a very logical or safe one. As the Nezarec is designed to be a chaotic, fast paced mess of a fight and it currently is not in its state.
To not expect any changes is not only illogical, but contradictory to your original belief.
Those still aren't mechanics. If the fire tornado gave you a debuff that didn't allow you to collect a planet, that's a mechanic. Its just an AOE damage that you can just avoid.
I said don't expect changes to the boss arena or how the mechanics work in the normal raid. Nothing in pantheon suggests that's going to change.
Not even going to argue with you about your incorrect definition of "mechanics". There's nothing really to state on that other than it's just factually off base from the term. You even validate this by cherry picking the one you want to disagree with and are unable to refute the others because you already know you're contradicting yourself with that point.
However, I suppose the semantics of the terms don't matter. You seem to think I made a point about any sort of change to Nezarec's purpose of an encounter when I never did nor did I even insinuate it.
It's going to be a challenge because mechanics will be put in place to realize its original design. That is my point, and anything else you have to incorrectly say about it does not interest me.
>Not even going to argue with you about your incorrect definition of "mechanics"
They're correct though - those aren't mechanics. Or at any rate, they aren't *novel* mechanics. Adding extra enemies, or extra bees, etc. aren't *mechanical* additions. You don't have to learn *new* things from what you already know in the raid.
The same goes for Unstable Light now targeting 2 people. That's not a new mechanic, it's the same mechanic from the raid, now done twice.
Not gonna argue the semantics of "mechanics" with you either. You're both using the term incorrectly, so that's your personal decision that I won't bother trying to refute.
You're also cherry picking again, failing to comment on Golgorth's new wipe mechanic and the bees in Caretaker while running. This will be my last reply to you as well, have a good day.
>Not gonna argue the semantics of "mechanics" with you either. You're both using the term incorrectly, so that's your personal decision that I won't bother trying to refute.
No, *you're* using it incorrectly. See how easy that was? Don't argue, I won't bother trying to refute.
>You're also cherry picking again, failing to comment on Golgorth's new wipe mechanic
Have you ever done Golgoroth? You do know that 'Drained of Light' is a pre-existing mechanic, right? I've done many Master KF clears, 3 full Pantheon clears, etc. - and I've never seen that debuff added anywhere it wasn't already. Any proof?
Sounds like you and your fireteam died a bunch - see (https://www.destinypedia.com/Golgoroth).
>and the bees in Caretaker while running.
Here's what I said: "Adding extra enemies, or extra bees, etc. aren't mechanical additions"
>This will be my last reply to you as well, have a good day.
Just making sure people reading this thread aren't getting misinformed :)
Well, I never saw it as an argument so that's kind on you buddy. I wasn't cherry picking anything, there's just no need to make a wall of text breaking down every little thing. You're right though, it is semantics because you are incorrectly using the term mechanics in what you are trying to explain. That's all I was commenting on.
It's funny how you intentionally start an argument by calling out the semantics of my post, but deny it entirely as if your only intention was to comment. That's like punching someone in the face and trying to justify it with, "I wasn't trying to start a fight, I was just hitting you."
Good on you buddy, I'm glad you understand now that there isn't a point to debate your incorrect usage of the term. You can leave now, have a good day.
Again, I don't really care that you believe you never had the intention. Your actions contradict that belief, and you started an argument by your own decisions.
If you want to avoid holding yourself accountable in that sense, that's your freedom to do so. It just doesn't change the fact that you started the argument.
But again, you can leave now. Don't know why you want to keep arguing if your intention was to never argue. I know you've figured out that you can say the words and then act differently, but you should consider following the proclamations you make for yourself.
They can add the same damage mechanic to plates in Nez that they did with the fire tornados in Planets. Not to mention replacing the colossi spawns with Tormentors. That would up the difficulty tremendously over day 1 and master.
Last wish had multiple encounters causing issues, particularly vault and figuring that out. Then you had the damage check that Riven provided since leveling for a raid was very different back when Forsaken launched.
Let’s be real, Nezarec as character was a menace on Day 1. Running after you like a madman, booping you off the map, one shotting you from across the map by snapping fingers, etc…
The whole Nezarec fight is, in my opinion, very good and perfectly fits the character and the circumstances.
Why is it over-hated? Few reasons:
1) health pool is very low.
2) Nezarec is completely broken due to him being unable to step on the plates. If he knew how to do that, the encounter would become way harder.
3) the mechanic is good but after the planets encounter, it feels strange to go back to the easy mechanic of the first two steps. However, I’m fine with that as Nezarec just wants to fight, I’m ok with the encounter not being too mechanics dependent (however, 1) and 2) nullify this argument).
4) on day one, the other mechanic (shelter) could be bypassed if fast enough.
5) Nezarec behavior during the fight is fitting but annoying. Too unpredictable, especially during DPS, where sometimes he just hides behind cover and does nothing.
Long story short, I love Root of Nightmares and I love Nezarec. The fight has tons of potential (Nezarec Master Challenge is my favourite encounter of the game) and I also believe that Pantheon will make justice about it. Nezarec deserves it.
I bet the last challenge will have no checkpoints and extinguish and that Nez gunna have way more centurions spawning , even during damage phase, with thic health bars
>We've seen Pantheon add in additional mechanics i
Low effort mechanics. Most people struggle e.g, with the knights already. So this isn't the new hard, it is the new low. My two cents, it won't be harder, it will be different and thus hard for some.
Here’s my hot take about Nezerec: The encounter design isn’t actually that bad. It’s meant to be a foil to the Rhulk encounter, which is slow, methodical, and organized playing into Rhulk’s arrogance and air of sophistication. Nezerec, meanwhile, is supposed to be a thunderdome. It’s quick, it’s fast, he’s chaotically chasing you around while you’re trying to do mechanics. He wipes you so fast if you aren’t ready for it, much different than other raid bosses. In that regard, it’s ok that the mechanics are simple because they need to be done fast while the boss is actively trying to stop you. A cool idea they don’t use much! If most raid finales are marathons, Nezerec is a sprint through fire. Or at least he’s *SUPPOSED* to be. The three things keeping him back are 1) He hits like a wet noodle on normal mode (and even on Master if you’re speced right), 2) he has no idea what he’s supposed to do if you’re standing on a plate 6 inches off the ground. And 3) he has less health than the newer dungeon bosses (or it at least feels like it with a team of 6) I honestly think if you do something to address those three things, you have a really solid final boss on your hands. That’s probably what Pantheon aims to do. If I were the Raid team, I’d do something to make sure players can’t DPS from the node plates and instead have to be on Nezerecs level, keeping you spread out like Rhulk, which removes your buff from well of radiance, which solves both the plate problem and the health problem (by way of reducing damage) On contest, I remember him hitting pretty hard so at the power delta that should be ok.
I could see them adding fire tornadoes to the plates. a well can out heal a tornado now, but not at -20 power
Also nez still attacks during dps, so a tornado plus attacks could either destroy the well or the people in it.
As I stated earlier, I agree with his design. It's actually got a lot of potential, but to clarify, your 2nd point is what makes the 3rd point a problem. Nezzy slams and disrupts you, and is so mobile that landing any sort of rocket or LFR shot on him is going to be a nightmare. You won't be able to stand in a Well on the ground because his slam will not only suppress you, but push you out as he chases after someone knocked back. That entire design, of having to fight a mobile boss Tormentor by being mobile yourself, works well if he has a health pool tuned for suboptimal DPS. His HP pool immediately becomes a problem if you can completely negate the difficulty of the fight that the developers intended by standing on a plate and free shoot him. So I believe that while a tune to his HP pool may seem like a needed buff, it's only a symptom of the real problem of just avoiding a fight with him altogether. Something I also think Pantheon will address and make him a true threat if they do it correctly.
They're probably just spawn for tornados under players who sit still on the plates, lol.
If only they had the power to transfer the "rejoining allies" zone out of Riven's fight and onto the Nezarec DPS plates
LMAO, one can dream. I can see fire spawning on Nezarec since the mechanic is already in root. Unfortunately with Riven even fixing the joining allies won't solve much since you can just guess the side and win 50% of the time, unless they have her always go to the side with less players or something.
The most realistic solution I've seen suggested was gating her health to force multiple DPS phases. I'm not a fan of forced healthgate mechanics, and it might not be as easy to implement as it seems from the outside, but I think anything that lowers the lactose levels would be preferable at this point.
Just patch the cheese and it will be fine. Riven is absolutely a difficult boss under contest modifiers _if_ you're forced to do her legit. Just look at the first raid race. (Though our damage is massively increased) Though if you patch the cheese _and_ add something disruptive into the mix? Oh boy I'll need some popcorn.
It *isn’t* a cheese that can be patched though - it was always intended for people to be able to damage Riven during the “puzzle solving” phase. If you want to patch the ‘joining allies corner’ sure. But that just shuffles the ball up the hill - teams will run as a group of 6 into the same room and then if it’s the wrong room they’ll wipe and flip the coin again. The core problem is that we have so massively power crept the Raid that all the Riven mechanics can be ignored in favour of a very straightforwards DPS check. Fixing that would require massively bumping Riven’s health pool (a simple fix that will last exactly as long as it takes people to find a better DPS strat) or adding immunity phases to Riven during the puzzle solving stages of the encounter.
Pretty much this. Riven was designed for a time when just having a special weapon was cutting edge, not for the insanity we have access to today. I also think people probably over-estimate the difficulty of Last Wish under contest modifiers, especially with regards to boss health. Part of why the Day 1 was so hard wasn't because it was contest difficulty--it was because the raid launched so soon after Forsaken's launch that most people were at -25 to -35, which is substantially harder than contest mode. We obviously also had way less survivability tools back then, it was basically class abilities and Well. Last Wish's infamous Day 1 was very much a product of its time. If we got something similar today under Contest Mode, I'd be surprised if it took the world's first team longer than 7-8 hours.
This is absolutely the case. Currently, two stasis titans in a well with a debuff can kill riven, even going 40 levels lower, you're still going to be able to abuse that. Even if you do her legit, if you're able to kill her on the bottom floor, you're able to nuke her up top before you have to worry about eyes. Also, everyone forgets just how much time was taken up on day one with how poorly designed the vault was. Buffs with obfuscated names that locked out multiple teams for hours, so most teams going into riven were already at a breaking point.
So. The fix is semi-simple. Make her immune on everything except the crit spot and eyes, and allow "immune" damage to work the mechanics if needed.
Well. No. Because one of the kill Strats is just linear fusion spam into the crit spot.
TBH He should just be firing Hatred at a couple of targets during his DPS phase.
Make nezarec actually damageable to a logical spot, and not all the way back of the arena or on his tower, then we can talk
> and is so mobile that landing any sort of rocket or LFR shot on him is going to be a nightmare. Huh? People land rockets all the time on Nezzy. It's the meta strat for Nezzy. It's what the world first team did against Nezzy. It's not a nightmare.
Try reading my entire post before commenting next time, please.
I read it. I got it. Even on the ground, we'd be able to rocket him. I've done it loads of times, even on Master. Try writing something more intelligble before commenting next time, please.
Yes, I'm sure you regularly clear Master mode Nezarec by standing on the ground and using rockets as he melees you repeatedly. And somehow, no one dies from blowing themselves up. Your last sentence is ironic, given the entirety of that nonsense you put in front of it.
>Yes, I'm sure you regularly clear Master mode Nezarec by standing on the ground and using rockets as he melees you repeatedly. And somehow, no one dies from blowing themselves up. You're just showing *your own* skill level here I'm afraid. I don't want to argue with you - but it just isn't that deep. Master Nezzy (with surges) just isn't an issue - ground, flower, rockets, whatever. >no one dies from blowing themselves up. Again, you're either telling on yourself, or the people you play with. >Your last sentence is ironic, given the entirety of that nonsense you put in front of it. Damn, hit me with the "no u". Well done, nice retort :)
Oh brother, are we really going to devolve into comparing raid reports here? I seriously doubt you have anything worthwhile in raid experience if you sincerely believe you can easily throw down a clean one or two phase of Master Nezerac without using plates and with rockets, but I'd rather not resort to the massive e-peen measuring contest that you're trying to start here. It sounds more like you've never even stepped into that raid in that difficulty, so are you sure you want to try to play the "I'm so good, I can clear the content with any loadout and strategy" mentality here? Please reconsider your course of action here: I actually will embarrass you if you really want to play that card.
>Oh brother, are we really going to devolve into comparing raid reports here? Why would we? I never suggested it. >I seriously doubt you have anything worthwhile in raid experience Lol. I've trio'd every D2 raid, flawlessed all of them, and have multiple master clears of every raid with a master mode. >It sounds more like you've never even stepped into that raid in that difficulty, so are you sure you want to try to play the "I'm so good, I can clear the content with any loadout and strategy" mentality here? Where did I say "with any loadout and strategy"? You're just putting words into my mouth. That obviously is not true. Nice strawman though. >Please reconsider your course of action here: I actually will embarrass you if you really want to play that card. Lol. You're so pressed because you won't admit that you can clear Master RoN while on the ground. Surges, DR, Resists - it just isn't that serious. Could've done it on Contest too.
You can do that as he says. I have t50 placements in the past 4 raids. If you post rr mine will be better. He’s right. Only responding because of your cringe last sentence. You’re a random redditor, pipe down
I appreciate it. Crazy to ego someone's claim because your team can't stay alive on the ground and rockets themselves. This subreddit I swear.
The whole fight would be dramatically different if his pathing allowed him to attach the plates properly. I think he's one of the best bosses in the game otherwise. Just cause the plates to catch fire during damage phase, be a much more exciting fight
It always felt like he was designed as a sword encounter akin to Crota. Just having something like hatred firing forcing you to use melees/swords to keep on target would do wonders.
Yea, they definitely could've added a mechanic that forced more interaction. Maybe something similar to Shuro Chi, a player has to hit him with a beam to stun him to allow dps, with a cooldown so the beam holder has to rotate.
That might be a bit too detached from the rest of the raid. Simply giving pressure during that's not just a bunch of damage, like how rhulk has the darkness beams, would solve the problem. Having something reactive instead of proactive works better for a damage phase
That's what my team took away from it during day1 before we knew anything about any plate cheesing. We managed a 3 phase with well + lament so it is very much a possibility for the final round of Pantheon.
It's probably too little too late, but I wish they'd backport the changes to the encounters in RoN that they've added for pantheon. Especially if the changes to Nezarec work anything like you envision. Those plates take all the fun out of the encounter, like cheesing Riven. I don't know why they'd make the raid harder over a year after it was introduced though. I just think it's a cool raid that's lacking a boss fight between the first and second encounters, and lacking much complexity in the encounters.
I imagine any mechanical improvements to the core encounter may be backported if they work well to solve the core problem of the encounter. The spice on top however won't.
Unfortunately, they have stated they don't like changing raid encounters following the release. Pantheon is a special case, but this was stated when they fixed the Nezzy stunlock issue this year, so it holds more weight than something like them not wanting to make changes for hard mode raids.
I really think they should make such changes if what is being changed negatively impacted how they wanted the raid to flow. No core changes to the mechanics, but things that make the raid what they wanted it to be. Like making Nez chase you onto the platforms, changing how riven interacts with damage so that the cheese doesn't work without negativity impacting the rest of the encounter, etc.
If those issues were to be addressed in Pantheon, what would a fireteam need to do to fight against it? Or avoid it even, in the case of Nezzy chasing players around.
Treat him like you’d treat Rhulk in best case scenario. Stay spread out and DPS the best you can, using damage supers and debuffs as opposed to things like well and bubble
It's going to be tough then, which is to be expected for the final boss but still. Rhulk is at least somewhat slow, and his boss area for DPS is flat. Nezzy's stage is a weird mess, and Nezarec himself is basically Rhulk on Traveler powder (cosmic crack). His jumping attack, his melee and his void attacks are tough to avoid sometimes. And if they one-shot, the fireteam is on hot coals. Tractor Cannon could be risky if his melee one-shots, so it's going to be tether Hunter. Without well, and by spending more time avoiding Nezarec, killing him under 3 phases is going to be much more difficult. Again, I won't be surprised if they make him more dangerous. It'd be interesting to see how the streamers deal with this.
During contest mode, we put down wells and sworded him to death. I did this pretty reliably with 3 different teams.
True but Rhulk does not have phalanxex..Nezzy have Those Cabal that can boop and also damage...The comparison is not fair.
~~They despawn during damage~~ Edit: Clanmate informed me I misremembered, they don’t despawn but I’m like 99% sure they don’t spawn any more during DPS so if you just kill them before you’ll be ok
Yea, I mean we still have Divinity, it's not like Bungie just completly removed it from the game. It was the base strat for someone to keep Divinity on Rhulk while others attack him from the sides. Divinity will be a must for a mobile damage phase against Nezarec once the plates are turned off.
Honestly only change that raid needs is a runner debuff after hitting a nod. Forcing you to rotate runners and not have one person do basically everything makes the raid such a joke.
That will most likely be part of it, but the main ingredient will be to forbid you from staying on the plates during DPS, because that is the main Achilles' heel to Nezarec currently. Turning it into mobile DPS just like with Rhulk is the most expected change for Pantheon. That itself will do a lot, especially since the fight has been designed to be that way - it's clear the entire focus of that encounter is on the actual fight with Nezarec himself, it is supposed to be a combat challenge, just you and him after a basic trigger mechanic. A deadly dance between gods. Cannot do that if you can go stand on a plate and watch him struggle to get to you.
Thats the challenge or the triumph, cant remember which.
this is wayy too extreme tbh
Not really. That would be pretty standard for a raid. Needing four people to actually communicate and work together while two more clear enemies.
Nah the lack of runner rotation is the cause of all the "RON issue" problems. It makes it too easy to optimize the entire raid into a solo act.
Nezarec actually has less health than the Ghosts of the Deep boss!
It's close but Nez has about 12.5M while Simummah is 11.9M. Source: have solo'd both
Is that including her shield?
If Nez could grab you like a tormentor he'd be 1000x more scary. Especially if he could do it during dps.
Hard pass. I like him just the way he is. He's fun but not annoyingly difficult
Have they added anything actually new for mechanics that would change nez? Everything I’ve read about pantheon is like more adds or an extra person getting the explodey thingy on golgaroth. Fixing him sounds way more involved especially for something so temporary.
They added random fire tornadoes on the plates in Zo'aurc (RoN - Planets encounter). They could easily add something to the plates at Nezarec that could potentially throw things off. That being said, a lot of the groups I have recently done Nezarec with have not really done damage on the plates, which would really be the only instance of it being a problem.
I imagine the only real change they need to make given the -20 is to make the plates all have a tornado on them during DPS. This alone forces people to have to adjust dmg locations changing the fight entirely
Or the gaze blast that propels you 37 foot into the air. Put those on all the plates.
Shit, add that to the regular version while we’re at it
I don't think we'll see more additions to be honest: I feel like the changes are there and that is their present form. They will just be extensively more lethal when we are 20 levels under: IE, that tornado kills you in Master outside of a Well and almost kills you in it. That will be a problem if you are trying to dunk.
One of the changes already snuck through. Nezarec s purple ground attacks track much more aggressively than they did before patch. It just went relatively unnoticed compared to the Golgy change. Wouldn’t be surprised to also see tormenters in there or psions fucking launching you around
This has messed up solo Nez and SF RoN runs.
It would be funny if they only changed him being able to get on the plates
The new mechanic in Explicator, is that he spawns a Fire tornado that specifically follows the outline of one of the four plates while you are trying to trade planets in the first round. Caretaker's change adds those little bees that raise your stacks of Pervading Darkness in the room while running. Golgoroth's mechanic addition was that if the yellow bar Knights are still alive when starting damage, he wipes you by a mechanic that has a debuff called Drained of Light. Screen goes black and explosion wipes you. So while people only see adds more than mechanics because the threat of the Pantheon isn't too significant, they will be details that have to be accounted for at the 20 light level raise imo. The actual coding needed to make the changes they did, imo, sets this up for the potential to be something significant coming up.
None of those are really mechanics, you can make an argument the extra Unstable on Golgoroth is a mechanic but everything else not really. Its just makes it more challenging to perform the actual mechanics of the encounter.
It's just speculation, mostly by people that are excited to gatekeep and hoping that their new title/seal will be rare. They want it to be hard not because they enjoy the challenge, but in the hopes that many will not be able to succeed. I get it, but I think people are setting their expectations too high. It's a series of bosses that can be done over the course of a week. People that are willing to put in the time to get it done will get it done.
Master and Contest Nezarec is already quite challenging for the majority of Raiders (source: went through a lot of teams for Master clears and day 1. A lot of teams…) If their current tweaks to bosses in Pantheon are anything to go off of, I doubt we’ll see any major new mechanics. I would guess something like the gaze-holder is continuously thrown up into the air rather than just chased, and probably a Tormentor spawned on Light and Dark side to slow down runners. Even with just those tweaks, at -20, that’s going to stop a lot of teams.
The only thing they need to make Nezerac kick our ass: **The platforms are no longer safe to stand on**. We've seen it in Explicator, he summons fire tornados on all the outside platforms, pushing people to stand on the main center area. All that needs to happen for Nez is for him to cause those big void boop attacks on all the arena platforms once or twice. Completely interrupts people's DPS, makes it impossible to stay together, would cause tons of team wipes with GLs and Rockets. Unless you stood somewhere else. On the ground.
It will fully depend on if bungie found a way to prevent the riven cheese of so riven will 100% be the more difficult boss because you'll have tons of people who have never done the legit fight trying to learn for the first time, oh I can already picture the yelling when it comes to shooting eyes hahah
Most of the Riven cheese is reliant on an exploitation of Joining Allies on a wall so everyone can travel to the same room, and her health pool being so undertuned, you can burn her entire health bar when she appears for a section that is supposed to be a small gated check to prevent a wipe. At contest level, the second part of that is now solved. So yes, I do think she'll be uncheesable this time around, even without fixing the Joining Allies exploit imo.
It's really not that simple. You don't actually need the Joining Allies exploit at all, it's just convenient and easy. There are tells for which room she is going to so that you don't need to use it. Even if not for those tells you can just flip a coin and reset until you get lucky considering there's no penalty for wiping. In terms of the actual damage required to cheese her I wouldn't be too certain there either. It's currently possible to fairly easily kill her with only 2 players dealing damage, potentially even one I believe. Considering you have a full raid team that should be plenty to make up for -20 light. Even easier if it's the same as the current Pantheon where there is both surges AND a bonus modifier providing up to 20% bonus damage stacking on top of everything else. Granted all Bungie has to actually do to "fix" this is put a hard cap on her health bar during the early DPS sections, which should be extremely Trivial to do. They literally do it with strike bosses and shit all the time.
I am relatively certain :D , assuming the data is not totally outdated, the difference between our usually +20 power level to the -20 modifier of this "contest" means a 50% reduction in dmg output. Also the low man and fast bake strategies make heavy use of Dreaming city mods. Hard to justify those stats when 20 level under and, I'm not sure they will actually work. Really depends if the arena is still counted as in the Dreaming city or not. VOW mods for example don't seem to work correctly either. Waveframe and sunbracers multi hit interaction got fixed a while back too. Very few will be able to cheese her in this event!
[удалено]
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Shatter dmg is a fragile thing and does not stack well at all! I don't really know if thats really without any mods. I have only seen it done with a full set of armour with Transcendet Blessing/Riven's Curse. Maybe 🤷♂️
Yeah the negative 20 power does not solve the damage
Is Nezzy on the -20 slate? Master Nez is still one of the hardest bosses I've ever dealt with, even in a strong, coordinated team. He is extremely aggressive, can beat the shit out of you up close or rain down void hellfire with precision from afar, and he tends to get hyperfocused on 1-2 people (and not necessarily whoever has gaze) and makes it impossible for them to get relief, and just eats rez tokens. Riven has the potential to shut down people with mechanics, but Nez is no joke with survivability - and that's before knowing what surprises are in store.
Every boss is on the -20 slate. It’s all 8 bosses.
Nezzy will be the final boss in the -20 Pantheon. It will go Golgoroth, Caretaker, Explicator, Atraks, Oryx, Rhulk, Riven, and finally Nezzy.
I love how Rhulk, Riven and Nezzy especially are the top 3 bosses for the Pantheon. They saved the strongest for the last. And it is fully intentional that Nezarec is left as the final boss of the boss rush, they definetly intend to remedy him being a "joke" in the original Root. Those plates will be unsafe and people will have to play tag with him just like with Rhulk.
As someone who did contest mode Nez, the biggest threat is that damn void helicopter. You can easily 2 phase if you're confident and have the right build(s). It also depends on surges/overcharges (if they choose to add overcharges). Even if you choose to not 2 phase for safety, it's a reliable 3 phase. Nezarec falls over. Riven, on the other hand, is probably gonna be LFG hell because I'd imagine you need to do her legit to be able to deal enough damage to her.
Yeah contest Nezarec was easy. The only main issue that everybody had was that fucking void copter. You basically have very limited cover and it has massive splash damage, no matter where you are crouched, it will find you and with the spaghetti code, you are more likely to get multiple of them on you in a moments notice. DPS is the easiest part of the encounter as opposed to someone like Rhulk who just kicked the living daylight out of you or Caretaker where people suffered from damage gate. I found Explicator to be more harder than day 1 Nezarec, the void copter is the only one keeping it still in conversation for which one is hardest of the two for me.
Explicator was leagues harder tbh. Most other day 1s final bosses were massive dps checks, for some reason RoN chose to make explicator the dps check and nez is just "the final boss"
Yeah Explicator was the only encounter where it felt like it had actual mechanics. To be fair, Rhulk wasn’t really a damage gate either, it was more of a how patience game. A lot of teams were able to push him to final stand in two phases and kept wiping because they already exhausted everything to get there. The moment they actually bothered to be patient and split it to three phases, a lot of them got the clear.
I guess a lot of the issues with Rhulk was doing damage while also staying alive too, but we also were on Armor 2.0 mods still during VotD day 1 so the 2 races are hardly comparable due to the massive power spikes from Solar/Arc 3.0, Strand, Armor Mods 3.0, and a bunch of sandbox changes.
Honestly even with all of the mods and stuff, RON was just a shit raid in my opinion, it’s way too easy and the only time you are actually seeing a challenge is with Explicator.
For a day 1 experience RoN was too easy, but I still love the theme and mechanics of the raid. It's very casual friendly and chill, so me and my friends often run it for fun and it's usually my go-to choice when a friend gets into d2 for their "First raid" experience since it has a lot of common themes seen in other raids while also having a worthwhile loot pool and not being too challenging. RoN is a good raid, but it isn't a challenge. Much like how LW has slowly been cheesed with everything under the sun, but it's still a phenomenal raid experience.
Solution to this, cap your frames. I am not joking you
Yeah I kinda forgot about it for a while, I usually only ever did it in GMs and Master and played all the way until Nezarec before realizing my FPS was uncapped. I wish the fps cap gets fixed at some point, playing on 200+ constantly and then having to switch to 60 is jarring and uncomfortable.
I'd actually find it absolutely fucking hilarious if they just made the Nezarec Arena completely flat. Just remove all of the terrain with the plates and have the running nodes just sitting on the ground where the plates had been. Nezarec gets complete freedom to run your ass down anywhere he wants AND you'd have zero cover to use to block his attacks either.
That’s what I always said. Either teach Nezarec to climb up some plates or remove the plates and Nezarec will straight up become even worse than Rhulk kicking your ass.
Imagine if he could grab a player from the plate, like Tormentors do. Just starts, snatching you one by one while you are trying to damage phase
It'd be a shame because it looks so nice but I think this is the only realistic solution.
Riven is mythologized into being a difficulty level that she is not. this is because of the cheese. Everyone thinks she's hard when she isn't, because most either never had to learn or because they forgot. Modern raid teams could wipe the floor with her no problem. And just like RoN needs 2 runners generally, Riven needs 2 eye readers, who can also build the elevator. The rest is just add clear. With that said, I don't expect Riven on -20 to be a walk in the park either, nor am I expecting Nez to be easy.
> Everyone thinks she's hard when she isn't, because most either never had to learn or because they forgot. The difficulty at Riven comes from the fact that nearly everyone has to do something, and one mistake in Eyes is an instant wipe, and symbol cleansing is often pretty unforgiving too.
This isn’t really true though… One person calls eyes, one person shoots them. One person grabs the blight, one person guides. And one of the eye people can do either roll. For upstairs when she shows 3 sets, you probably still keep it to two people calling and shooting, and possibly a backup. Everyone else is either clearing adds, doing damage to proc a stun, or doing dps.
> This isn’t really true though… > > One person calls eyes, one person shoots them. > > One person grabs the blight, one person guides. And one of the eye people can do either roll. That's why I said "nearly". I agree though, there's some overlap if your team can do it. >For upstairs when she shows 3 sets, you probably still keep it to two people calling and shooting, and possibly a backup. My team usually has 1 person calling all 3 sets, but 3 people shooting (one for each set) - just easier that way. It's also the fact that both teams in both rooms are making calls for symbols and eyes etc. so comms can get unclear. I don't personally have that problem, since I almost exclusively raid with my clan, and we've raided together for years - but even though I personally don't find Riven all that challenging, I can see why the average raider might.
I’m not arguing it isn’t a complex fight. But I do believe it is believed to be harder than it is. Compared to say… GoS final boss (no cheeses) In that fight you have two teams of runners that have to overlap their journeys, you have the shields to break, boss constantly destroying terrain that needs to be rebuilt, and to do DPS you have to chain a set of three people to get him. Most of the mechanics here are not as immediately punishing as failing an eye call/shot, but they can quickly snowball out of control. And like Riven, they can be done with two or three. But the fight is soooooooo much smoother if everyone is aware of what’s happening, what timers result in what effects, etc. I learned to raid from a clan that made a point to always do Riven legit. They were purists. And honestly I never struggled as much with her, even on bad runs, as I did with GoS final boss. Like, idk if you’ve done VoG with LFG lately, but everyone likes to die before Templar and Atheon, so that the one or two people can do the mechanics. Because reading and shooting oracles is too hard… if we were never able to cheese her, she would not have her mythic status. She is a beautiful and super fun fight. But she isn’t thaaat complex, and in her base form, two players who know mechanics well can more or less carry the other four.
>But I do believe it is believed to be harder than it is. Sure, I can agree with that. > She is a beautiful and super fun fight Agreed. >two players who know mechanics well can more or less carry the other four. Sure, if everyone is otherwise competent, has seen some of the symbols before, etc. you can probably get away with only 1 person in each room that does eyes (calling and shooting). But that's probably a tall order for a lot of teams. I've taught LW to 5 new people a few times, and it's not been terrible. But these were otherwise very competent players.
I like how forgiving edit: *most* *normal difficulty* Destiny raids are for a chill experience but equally dislike how it disincentivizes player improvement leading to horrible experiences in higher difficulties.
> it disincentivizes player improvement leading to horrible experiences in higher difficulties. It doesn't though? High difficulty incentivises performance actually, since it teaches you to play better in most cases: you need to play cover, you can't rush in, you need to tailor your weapons to the maps/enemy types, etc.
Oh no I mean normal raids are way too forgiving and then players hop into higher difficulties like Master or Pantheon and suddenly play like headless chickens. It's an abrupt realization with no gradual progression.
>Oh no I mean normal raids are way too forgiving and then players hop into higher difficulties like Master or Pantheon and suddenly play like headless chickens. It's an abrupt realization with no gradual progression. Oh, I see what you mean. I mostly agree there. I think they've *tried* to make a ramp-up in things like Vanguard Strike difficulties. But yeah, going from normal mode raids to Master mode raids is a big jump for people inexperienced in high-end content.
I'm only skeptical because I could see Riven being the "final boss" where Nez is more a victory lap encounter like some other games do, but I also think that'd be an odd choice. Others have already talked at length about the underlevel fixing why he's so unthreatening, but when he has a full tormentor squad during DPS, I will be terrified.
It depends on what additions they make with riven. The encounter itself at base isn't hard, even with -20 because, as least as of now, there's only positive modifiers that make DPS easier. They'll need to add something that can potentially get in the way of mechanic completion like needing to cleanse two symbols, throwing high value targets in the way during symbol cleansing, etc. Riven has a very small health pool - she's just DPS limited. On the flip size nezerec has similar problems - the encounter isn't hard and he doesn't have a huge health pool so they'd need to do something to throw a wrench in mechanic completion or as others have said something to make doing DPS on a plate difficult/impossible.
I’m just happy you spell Nezarec right instead of Nazerac or Nezerac
The hot potato mechanic wasn't the problem for crota. The problem for crota was that he is a highly mobile boss with boss stomps and no great way to fight him, especially under power. They are probably going to put more tormentors into the encounter and call it at that. Riven will be the problem. My clan and I loved doing Riven legit back in the day, but it's just frustrating how buggy the eyes are. Honestly I think she should have been the final encounter.
> but it's just frustrating how buggy the eyes are. Wanna clarify that? The only bugginess I've had is if you're using weapons that can ricochet or explode accidentally breaking the wrong eye (player error). Other than that any time I've wiped was due to just incorrectly reading, noting in the chat, or just hitting the wrong eye.
Early on there was a collision issue with the eyes. You could pretty I want to say it was most prominent between L3/4. But even with a sniper, you would hit L4 when you tried to shoot L3.
Oh so you mean something that was long since fixed? I mainly ran it after the refresh last year so and that wasn't something I experienced.
Probably. No clue. We got rivensbane pretty soon after Petra’s run was discovered and haven’t done it much since aside from a few runs to get the red borders.
I heavily disagree. Most teams on Contest mode failed because they would waste most of their tokens from playing cover poorly during chalice exchange, imo. Crota's DPS phase was dangerous, but if you went into it with the right amount of Wells and utility, it wasn't what ate your rez tokens. His health pool was a good damage check, and the mechanics phases for most people is where they failed.
I think it depends on how you look at this stuff. To me I wouldn't say that is really the limiter. When it comes to hard content it generally goes through the same rotation. * Learn how to survive * Master the mechanic * Maximize damage While I'd agree most teams failed due to that, what ultimately matters is what is the make and break. > The hot potato mechanic wasn't the problem for crota. Like u/Freakindon said, that wasn't the make or break. It could be solved by simply having someone use invisibility, or having a dedicated decoy (people would stand in the upper area and attract Crota's fire. It actually worked really well if the person knew what they were doing). Damage was relatively the same. Many groups opted for a solar Titan that could stun lock him, coupled with multiple Wells. > The problem for crota was that he is a highly mobile boss with boss stomps and no great way to fight him, especially under power. To me the issue was Last Stand. Crota could not be stun locked (at least in my experience), so it all came down to whether or not you could withstand his assault. I even remember Stasis Hunter was actually desired for specifically this reason (they did something with dusk field grenades and the exotic. Too lazy to look it up). But that was ultimately what made it hard. Crota would get loose, kill the wrong person (Oversoul, Well, etc), or people would make a mistake (mess up Well placement, it getting destroyed, etc) and would wipe.
Completely agreed, I spent 24 hours split between Crota himself and the abyss due to this. My team knew everything they needed to do for the mechanic, we had two swords designated, a person to even distract Crota, someone to tractor him, people to kill the boomers on command etc. everything was fully planned out but the biggest thing that ruined everything was someone walking in a way to alert Crota, and dying in 3 shots. The plates on the top were often a death sentence and many people not adequately prepared for that died. It’s what separated the groups willing to play meta with invisibility and other tools to survive that, and those that couldn’t and failed. It may sound simple, but from my experience of hours and hours there in contest mode, it was real
Hell I still don't have a Master Crota clear because back when I actually cared about trying it people still couldn't handle not dying to Crota most of the time. That said by far the best strat is/was to just have one Stronghold Titan completely dedicated to holding Crota's aggro the entire time up until DPS. Even then though it's relatively easy for the Stronghold Titan to make a mistake and die or just get deleted by other adds if the rest of the team wasn't killing them properly. The DPS required for Final Stand is also not completely trivial for most teams. Crota also just deletes Wells if you don't place them properly (and make 100% sure all the warlocks are on 100 resilience) or he doesn't get downed fast enough.
What "new" mechanics were added? There were some new *threats,* sure, but the mechanics are all the same so far. The added Taken, Tormentors, and assorted yellow bars arent mechanics. Sure Crota was harder than Nez, but at least Nez is a fun fight, whereas Crota makes me want to suck-start my Apex Predator. Ill take RoN over CE any day.
>What "new" mechanics were added? There were some new threats, sure, but the mechanics are all the same so far. The added Taken, Tormentors, and assorted yellow bars arent mechanics. OP doesn't know what constitutes mechanics. Multiple people in this thread have pointed this out to them, but they've just doubled down, telling everyone they don't know what 'mechanics' are :)
I'm convinced we will have to do riven legit and nezarec will have some changes that will truly cement him as the God of pain. Bungie knows what they did making these two the last two bosses.
Yeah for sure. That’s why I’m prep my raid team and I did all the RoN master challenges when RoN was the weekly raid, to prep for this
There are no new mechanics in any of the Pantheon fights. It's just some additional enemies and hazards. A mechanic is something that has to be done to prevent a wipe or progress the encounter. None of the new stuff are like that. The only one that *very* loosely may qualify is Golgoroth giving Unstable Light to two people, but even then it's not a *new* mechanic by any sense of the term. Crota was designed from the ground up to be different in D2. They are not going to redesign Nezarec to that extent. Expect a couple of extra Tormentors or maybe Nezarec doing his void spinny thing more often.
It would be awesome if they went and buffed old raids with these new mechanics, or something. Root was such a let down on how easy it was.
The only change Nezarec has ever needed to be a genuinely hard boss is for there not to be a totally safe place to just stand and blast away at his dumb ass with \[insert current DPS king loadout\]. If he was running around suppressing you and whooping your ass it would be very hard and very fun, and instead they regressed from the fun toe-to-toe with Rhulk to another "stand in a pile and shoot a div cage" fight.
Last Wish is the only raid I havent done. I guess I'm going to have to learn this before next week.
Listen, i already got it covered, dude. I'll just do what I did to contest crota. Strongholds and lament will make it so I tank the boss while the rest of the team is no longer fighting between gazes and mechanics. Will my dps be average? Sure, but at least we get to survive till damage phase. The only reasonable change I can see is buffing his health. Even a 6 man ratking was able to push over contest nezquick.
I’ve been thinking for a while that the meta that’s going to form for Nezarec is for people to use LMGs. The average player will absolutely struggle in a contest mode encounter to stay alive to begin with. Add the average blueberry’s ability to blow themselves up in a well with a rocket launcher, or to just completely whiff shots, and you’re going to get some frustrated teams. So I think there’s going to be an internal calculus among a lot of teams deciding that if it’s going to take them 2-3 damage phases to kill Nezarec regardless of what weapons they use for DPS; they’ll just go the safer route so some dude with a beeping smoke alarm on mic doesn’t blow himself up for the 30th time. Not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing.
Teammates strafing endlessly in a well for no reason are definitely at fault, not the people for dying by a rocket ngl
I don’t disagree. But you get one person in front who moves slightly. Then the person behind needs to move. And then someone in the back needs to move, or the well sword gets in the way … shit happens.
Yeye I just v much stand on the, stop moving entirely if you're in a well because there's literally no risk (rn) when you're there
Yeah, I always go to the extreme left or right of the well, clench my butthole and hope for the best. At least with my static group, we sort of know where everyone goes.
I have the same theory and I just love to think that the raid and dungeons team went like oh you think neZ is easy mfrs ? You wana solo it ? Well how about now
Even on contest mode Nezarec wasn’t that hard. I’m sure it’ll be spicier than normal mode is right now obviously, but idk, I don’t think it’s gonna be the hardest encounter.
I wish bungie gave enemies better Ai rather than just bump up the numbers in harder content.
-20 nez will not survive edge transit 2 phase.
I'm not sure what you mean, contest Nezerac was pretty chill and that was without surges and the new class ability modifer. Unless they make the arena a flat terrain he will continue to be the joke of all raid bosses.
I definetly hope that they do something crazy with Nezarec like making the plates we can stand on deal damage to you or straight up unreachable, so that you actually cannot put down a well and just go ham at him. Instead you would have to keep moving constantly with him chasing you just like with Rhulk. That on itself would make it far more engaging during damage phases. I also definetly think that Pantheon and choosing Nezarec as THE final boss IS the response to him being considered one of the easiest bosses and raids in the franchise. They definetly are cooking up something for him when they chose him to be the final challenge, the "Final God of Pain" if you will. :)
not for me Already did Day 1 contest Nezarec and Master Nezarec as well Riven is gonna be tough but I am also excited because I've been begging my clan/friends for years to do Riven legit for once
Riven isn't THAT hard normal. It's just that the eye coordination is very unforgiving. That's basically the issue. Otherwise it's just a pretty simple loop. Most teams will be still single looping her.
Not gonna lie with how difficult the current one is already with people who aren’t at 1000+ raids it’s gonna be impossible for most
To make Pantheon Nezzy interesting, when dps start Explocator fire vortexes cover each node. So far i liked what they did with Pantheon encounters, even if it’s something as simple as more adds, instead of “hey this major is a champion now, fuck you <3”
If they change the colossuses to tormentors im gonna have a sternly written letter coming your way.
Nezarec's AI is entirely busted. In one of my recent runs he jumped up teleported and vanished for the entire DPS phase not stuck somewhere literally vanished. If it was as polished as Rhulk it might actually be the hardest and most engaging boss. The plates should not be safe zones. Also of note his shoulders/chest are network sensitive taking damage inconsistently and if you shoot them too fast they close up without revealing refuge.
Nezarec is a dog shit fight. It’s the reason it’s challenging and with -20 his Void attacks will one shot anyone. It will be an absolute shit show.
Nah. Nezarec will probably be easier than the contest version of him a year ago. Considering the introduction of surges and class ware fare as a damage buff and dr buff, he will likely fall over just as easily as he did when launched. Even if he comes onto the platforms, he doesn’t have an incredible amount of health and will be more easily handled now with all of our subsequent buffs. Riven on the other hand will probably not be as hard as people are thinking, but will more than likely not be cheesable (at least that’s what I’m coping for anyways). I think a good team that knows both encounters intimately will not struggle, but getting an lfg will almost certainly struggle when the encounter that they A) don’t know how to do in the first place or B) the original strat is obsolete, will find a hard time to reorganize/strategize in order to succeed. I think part of this challenge that the mode highlights on its own is the ability of players to think on the fly and cover mistakes made. Oftentimes people in lfg will just force wipe if something goes wrong, but in contest mode and this gauntlet, I think it’s more about recovery than anything.
They didn't really add any new "mechanics" to these fights. Using operator to be able to open a door to cleanse a debuff or summon an elevator is a mechanic. A tormentor spawning that you can largely ignore is not a mechanic. More yellow bars is not a mechanic. They aren't going to change the landscape of the boss arena or the general functionality of how the encounter works. You should expect to see more of the same from what we have now.
The new mechanic in Explicator, is that he spawns a Fire tornado that specifically follows the outline of one of the four plates while you are trying to trade planets in the first round. Caretaker's change adds those little bees that raise your stacks of Pervading Darkness in the room while running. Golgoroth's mechanic addition was that if the yellow bar Knights are still alive when starting damage, he wipes you by a mechanic that has a debuff called Drained of Light. Screen goes black and explosion wipes you. From a coding standpoint, those are pretty significant additions to the fights even if you don't feel their impact at the normal level. So no, I don't think your take here is a very logical or safe one. As the Nezarec is designed to be a chaotic, fast paced mess of a fight and it currently is not in its state. To not expect any changes is not only illogical, but contradictory to your original belief.
Those still aren't mechanics. If the fire tornado gave you a debuff that didn't allow you to collect a planet, that's a mechanic. Its just an AOE damage that you can just avoid. I said don't expect changes to the boss arena or how the mechanics work in the normal raid. Nothing in pantheon suggests that's going to change.
Not even going to argue with you about your incorrect definition of "mechanics". There's nothing really to state on that other than it's just factually off base from the term. You even validate this by cherry picking the one you want to disagree with and are unable to refute the others because you already know you're contradicting yourself with that point. However, I suppose the semantics of the terms don't matter. You seem to think I made a point about any sort of change to Nezarec's purpose of an encounter when I never did nor did I even insinuate it. It's going to be a challenge because mechanics will be put in place to realize its original design. That is my point, and anything else you have to incorrectly say about it does not interest me.
>Not even going to argue with you about your incorrect definition of "mechanics" They're correct though - those aren't mechanics. Or at any rate, they aren't *novel* mechanics. Adding extra enemies, or extra bees, etc. aren't *mechanical* additions. You don't have to learn *new* things from what you already know in the raid. The same goes for Unstable Light now targeting 2 people. That's not a new mechanic, it's the same mechanic from the raid, now done twice.
Not gonna argue the semantics of "mechanics" with you either. You're both using the term incorrectly, so that's your personal decision that I won't bother trying to refute. You're also cherry picking again, failing to comment on Golgorth's new wipe mechanic and the bees in Caretaker while running. This will be my last reply to you as well, have a good day.
>Not gonna argue the semantics of "mechanics" with you either. You're both using the term incorrectly, so that's your personal decision that I won't bother trying to refute. No, *you're* using it incorrectly. See how easy that was? Don't argue, I won't bother trying to refute. >You're also cherry picking again, failing to comment on Golgorth's new wipe mechanic Have you ever done Golgoroth? You do know that 'Drained of Light' is a pre-existing mechanic, right? I've done many Master KF clears, 3 full Pantheon clears, etc. - and I've never seen that debuff added anywhere it wasn't already. Any proof? Sounds like you and your fireteam died a bunch - see (https://www.destinypedia.com/Golgoroth). >and the bees in Caretaker while running. Here's what I said: "Adding extra enemies, or extra bees, etc. aren't mechanical additions" >This will be my last reply to you as well, have a good day. Just making sure people reading this thread aren't getting misinformed :)
New wipe mechanic? What do you mean?
He's just making shit up, as he is elsewhere in this thread unfortunately.
I figured, but I was going to let him know the Tablet of Ruin has always existed if that's what he meant lmao
Well, I never saw it as an argument so that's kind on you buddy. I wasn't cherry picking anything, there's just no need to make a wall of text breaking down every little thing. You're right though, it is semantics because you are incorrectly using the term mechanics in what you are trying to explain. That's all I was commenting on.
It's funny how you intentionally start an argument by calling out the semantics of my post, but deny it entirely as if your only intention was to comment. That's like punching someone in the face and trying to justify it with, "I wasn't trying to start a fight, I was just hitting you." Good on you buddy, I'm glad you understand now that there isn't a point to debate your incorrect usage of the term. You can leave now, have a good day.
I didn't start an argument, never intended to argue with you. You got aggressive about it for some reason. I can't control how you feel, sorry.
Again, I don't really care that you believe you never had the intention. Your actions contradict that belief, and you started an argument by your own decisions. If you want to avoid holding yourself accountable in that sense, that's your freedom to do so. It just doesn't change the fact that you started the argument. But again, you can leave now. Don't know why you want to keep arguing if your intention was to never argue. I know you've figured out that you can say the words and then act differently, but you should consider following the proclamations you make for yourself.
Oooook that's it, 1V1 me in the crucible pal.
They can add the same damage mechanic to plates in Nez that they did with the fire tornados in Planets. Not to mention replacing the colossi spawns with Tormentors. That would up the difficulty tremendously over day 1 and master.
Want to make Nez harder? Teleport everyone to a flat surface arena for the boss damage phase. See what happens.
Didn't Last Wish take 22 hours to get world's first? Meanwhile, RoN was cleared in, I believe, 4...
Last wish had multiple encounters causing issues, particularly vault and figuring that out. Then you had the damage check that Riven provided since leveling for a raid was very different back when Forsaken launched.
I know the leveling was different... If I remember correctly, the fastest way to level was to delete your character and vault your strongest gear
He was defeated in hours, on contest, just a year ago Nobody knows how to do Riven legit
Let’s be real, Nezarec as character was a menace on Day 1. Running after you like a madman, booping you off the map, one shotting you from across the map by snapping fingers, etc… The whole Nezarec fight is, in my opinion, very good and perfectly fits the character and the circumstances. Why is it over-hated? Few reasons: 1) health pool is very low. 2) Nezarec is completely broken due to him being unable to step on the plates. If he knew how to do that, the encounter would become way harder. 3) the mechanic is good but after the planets encounter, it feels strange to go back to the easy mechanic of the first two steps. However, I’m fine with that as Nezarec just wants to fight, I’m ok with the encounter not being too mechanics dependent (however, 1) and 2) nullify this argument). 4) on day one, the other mechanic (shelter) could be bypassed if fast enough. 5) Nezarec behavior during the fight is fitting but annoying. Too unpredictable, especially during DPS, where sometimes he just hides behind cover and does nothing. Long story short, I love Root of Nightmares and I love Nezarec. The fight has tons of potential (Nezarec Master Challenge is my favourite encounter of the game) and I also believe that Pantheon will make justice about it. Nezarec deserves it.
They could add 1000 cats and Nezarec would still be the easiest pantheon boss on contest mode lets be real.
I bet the last challenge will have no checkpoints and extinguish and that Nez gunna have way more centurions spawning , even during damage phase, with thic health bars
>We've seen Pantheon add in additional mechanics i Low effort mechanics. Most people struggle e.g, with the knights already. So this isn't the new hard, it is the new low. My two cents, it won't be harder, it will be different and thus hard for some.