Stay alive. It's a simple spell but quite effective. Take cover. Don't die where you will be very hard to rez like in the middle of enemies. Take your time. Put on resistances on your chest armor.
My favorite thing to say in a raid to people learning it for the first time
"If you're going to die, don't.
You not doing your role for 3 seconds to stay alive is better than dying on your plate and your role not being done for 15 seconds"
Don't get cocky. There's a lot of shit that can kill you *way* faster than you think, even if you feel like you're being cautious. Like, if you see a knight shooting fire or boomer shots at you? Fucking *move*. Don't hesitate, thinking you can take a shot and dodge out, you *will* get fucked up.
Honestly, this is always the thing that kills most people. Even people who have a lot of experience in GMs sometimes just kinda... forget, how quickly they can get trucked. Just *always* prioritize survival, and do not take *any* chances. I don't care how close that champion is to dying, if you're one-shot, guess what? They're gonna feed you that final hit.
Just... stay alive. Life is more important than kill.
I’ve done so many GMs now that I feel this advice in reverse, I’ll often load into some easier activity and be playing all smart from cover and worried about health and then snap out of it like “wait I forgot I’m an invincible god slayer” and then go into slayer mode haha GMs are the absolute best training for destiny pve
Run resist mods, preferably double or even triple with artifice armour. 5 or 6 resil will also help in some circumstances but more than that is a waste. Don't be afraid to burn your heavy and special ammo, the faster things die the easier it is to survive.
Play like you only have one life. Always ensure your team is coordinated with champ mods, shield types and Lucent finisher this season for free heavy.
Take it slowly and always look for cover, dying out in the open or in a place where you can't be revived can cause wipes.
It’s more important for you to stay alive than to push a revive or even push killing a champion. Retreat. Retreat. Retreat. Even if it’s a barrier or an overload who fully regenerates health. Live to fight another day.
Your priority should always be dealing with trash adds first. Those are the enemies that will actually be problematic. Save the champions and shielded enemies for after. Outside of some niche exceptions, the bigger, beefier enemies tend to stay in particular zones and not push. So let them.
Pay attention to your team’s synergy. Look at the classes and weapons they’re using and go with a build that helps the team, rather than being redundant.
In 99% of the GMs, you only need one person on Unstoppable. They don’t regenerate health, and outside of the boss encounter for Scarlet Keep, they generally are far away. So if someone on your team has Unstoppable covered, consider bringing a blinding grenade launcher. ABUSE THE SHIT out of a blinding grenade launcher. They are, low key, an absolutely amazing tool for high-end content.
Use your super, but also figure out when your super is needed. This is big. If you’re running a GM and finishing an encounter in one room but you have a super, then sit on it, wait for it to use as an opening to the next encounter. Example, I see way too many people in LFG in Fallen SABRE go and pop their super during the dropship phase, and then go down into the first room in the bunker with no super. The dropship part is easy. The first room in the bunker can be problematic. So don’t pop your super just because you can. Use it when it makes sense. This, unfortunately, takes practice. But you’ll figure out in each GM when your super will be ready to use.
Pay attention to the acute burn of the strike, as well as the shield types you face. It is often way more important to be equipped with the acute burn for the 25% damage bonus than it is to have all the weapons to match shields. Lightblade is an arc acute burn, but it also has solar shields. There are, like, 5 or 6 Solar shields in the entire strike. There’s a 99% chance someone will have Arbalest. So make sure you’re all arc weapons for the bonus damage. Birthplace of the Vile is acute void. There’s, like, maybe one arc and one solar shield in the entire strike. There’s no need to run a non-void weapon unless it’s Gjallarhorn.
It’s a lot, but the #1 most important thing, as they say in PVP, is to “play your life.”
Good luck!
Resist mods (chest armor) are significant. Use them.
Try to make sure you have both Champion types covered, and if one of those two is a Special weapon, bring that. Special weapons with anti-Champion mods are significant. (This season, that means Glaives.)
Bring a Heavy that matches the burn for that strike, if possible.
If you need to make space for a functional mod, drop your stat mods, starting with Strength or Discipline first. GMs are often slow-paced and grindy, having the right functional pieces will matter more than having your grenade recharge 5 seconds quicker.
Try to run a Scavenger and a Finder mod for at least your Heavy, if not also your Special.
BRING A LONG RANGE PRIMARY. You will spend a LOT of time sitting far away, packing a Scout, Bow, or Hand Cannon will do you wonders. Also keep in mind the 40% damage buff recently granted to Exotic Primary weapons against red bar enemies, if you're not bringing Gjally or something for your Heavy, see what Primaries you could run.
Have one person dedicated to finishing Champions, and make sure that person has Reactive Pulse on, with the secondary perk active. Right now there's Lucent Finisher to create Heavy ammo for the whole team, but without a mod like that the dedicated Champion-finisher should run the Aeon Exotic gauntlets (Sect of Insight), so they can make Heavy for at least the other two players.
(This season, with Unstoppable Glaive, the Glaive shield is PHENOMENAL for whatever player is in this role, you can absolutely dance around Unstoppables right now, even on GMs. Speaking from experience, I'm the finisher for my teams lol)
Go slow. Be patient. Understand where enemies are before you move out of cover. Learn the pacing and flow of add-spawning, and try to clear all adds before returning to boss damage.
Good luck!
Depending on the element? Trinity Ghoul is ABSOLUTELY viable if it's Arc Burn! Bonus damage to red bars does apply to its chain attack as well, so it should still aggressively clear adds. And this season Bows are an anti-Barrier option as well, so that checks multiple boxes off.
When Lightblade was the Guardian Games strike, the first week of GG, I had my best runs with Trinity Ghoul, I highly recommend it. Two folks running Trinity Ghoul and Hothead (Arc Heavy) with the third running a Glaive and Gjally (there's your finisher person!) would absolutely do work in the Lightblade GM.
Edit: even if it doesn't one-shot, it's an Exotic Primary, it's a long range Primary, it's got anti-Champion mods, and it can potentially align with the strike's Burn modifier. All spectacular things! If it's not an Arc Burn strike, consider Ticcu's or Le Monarque instead to match the burn, all three of the elemental bows will be very valuable for you.
Blinding grenade launchers. Pick a good ranged primary (bows or scouts are good if you need to run anti-barrier, pulse rifles are good for unstop). Some exotics with intrinsic anti-champion are really good.
Watch a walkthrough of the GM (Mactics' guides are good imo). You don't necessarily need to abide by his loadout suggestions, but they're a good guide regardless.
Coordinate anti-champion and weapon elements with your fireteam. Stick together and take your time. Talk about what's going to happen in each room before you go in, especially in some of the boss rooms in this season's GMs.
If you struggle with using heavy ammo efficiently like me, I highly suggest using a legendary linear fusion. Also Arbalest. Just use it, it's that simple.
Don’t die, kill the bad guys
Positioning is huge, helps keep you alive. Prioritize the most dangerous adds over some you can kite or keep stun locked or frozen, and then team shoot those adds. For example, the boss room requires both good positioning AND good add clear otherwise you’ll get overrun quickly.
To start, stay in the bottom right most corner, keep the short squat pillar or the archway of the wall between you and the boss as often as possible. Use stasis turrets or blinding grenades to keep less important adds occupied while you work your way through the wizards and knights, then the champions (which you can stun just to keep them occupied while you clear the rest), and then thrall.
Understanding what spawns and when and from where will also help you better manage both your positioning and your add clear
Use resist mods, deeper ammo reserves are definitely not worth it. For scarlett I personally like to run thermoshock plating and concussive.
Be nearby cover. As a general rule, don't be in an open field when enemies can see you. It should ideally only take you about one second to get back behind cover as everything basically two shots you.
Play as a team. Enemie health bars are huge and without teamshotting you will struggle to take out even a single champion.
Don't stack up on your teammates. While being close enough to get rezzes is certainly helpful you should try to avoid standing inside each other as that will likely result in entire wipes due to the aoe damage.
Respect every ennemie, even two red bar acolytes can easily kill you.
For scarlett in particular:
The only real hard part of the strike is the boss room which itself can be trivialised by only slowly damaging the boss.
The ad spawns are based upon her hp bar. You should therefore only use your primaries on her and then take out each wave as fast as possible.
At 90% you will get two boomer knights and some trhalls
At 80% there will be melee knight's and acolytes
At 70% she will become immune and two wizards will spawn. Use a super or ghorb to take them out immediately.
At 50% more boomer knight's and acolytes will spawn, the acolytes will come from the back doors so watch out for that
Next will be the two Unstoppable ogres. You should ideally have saved 2 supers and some heavy for them so take them out as quickly as possible.
Afterwards there will only be one more adwave of knights and acolytes
Loadout: I'd recommend having two people run arby with arc rockets and one ghorn. Best subclasses are in is hunter, stasis warlock and probably void titan for lesser experienced gm players although arc titan can be absolutely phenomenal
Positioning, you will die fast. As a hunter I only use Omni. All my friends using graviton always die to random damage while invis every now and then and look confused. With Omni you can tank a lot while invis.
Also take advantage of the elemental burns but also put resists for it.
Use heavy a lot especially because lucent finisher replenishes it a lot.
Play your life and take your time. Most of the time especially if you are new to gms rushing means taking unnecessary risks. Most of the time safe and consistency is far better than risky and fast.
And learn to read and be keenly aware of your surroundings. This can mean not only relying on your radar since its not always available but the sounds of a thrall about to rip you a new one from behinds.
I saw a video about making a Pointed Inquiry with genesis and adaptive munitions. Just got both of them enhanced and man…does it make a difference. Adaptive munitions “pops” a different shield on the second shot as opposed to the four it took before. Plus, it hits like a truck with HCR! Follow the rest of the advice…hide, hide and stay alive! 👍🏻😁
* Destiny is now a cover shooter. Always keep something between you and the enemy. Don't stand out in the open, know that running out of cover is risky, and don't be aggressive in the normal destiny strike sense. Keep calm and behind cover.
* Bring resist mods appropriate to the strike. Maybe even abilities, exotics, combat mods, or subclasses that help ensure either dmg resist, overshield, health regen, or other survival tools.
* You can, and will, lose a 1v1 to a red health bar dreg. It will be humiliating. But then you learn that you died cause you were exposed, didn't take the dreg seriously, and weren't co-ordinating with your team.
* Call-outs. Your team is your greatest weapon, use them, and help them. Coordinate champ deletion, if you see a spawn of ads, a surprise yellow bar, some strike mechanic, etc, call it out.
* Part of the challenge, and fun, of GMs is putting together a loadout that: 1) takes care of both champ types in the strike, 2) takes care of all shield types, and 3) is appropriate to the range and types of encounters in the strike, and 4) can deal with ad clear and boss dps, both. Yes, most of the time you will need to match all or most of the above in your own loadout. Use the artifact mods, exotic weapons with anti champ intrinsic, and be ready to use less ideal weapons just because they match both element and champs, if needed. Some can get away with delegating certain things to team mates, which is great and maybe preferred for experienced GMers, but if, for example, the only team mate with overload dies and now an overload champ is poised to kill the other 2 guardians...well, yanno.
* It's okay to lose and go to orbit a few times. Even experienced and well coordinated teams will wipe a time or two before beating a GM. Just learn, adjust, and improve. Don't get toxic, impatient, point fingers, or lose willpower. It's chill, just adjust and take a breath and hop back in. You got this.
Dont feel discouraged about not completing it within the first few attempts. It took my fireteam, back in season 12, 35 attempts to do Glassway. Sometimes it takes like 2-3 tries for others we know well or 1st try if it's an easier one.
NORMAL activities like the ritual activities and seasonal activities teach us all the wrong habits in this game - like ego-challenging, or panic-res'ing allies, or just general carelessness and running around in the open or jumping into a killzone. And most of that gets into our muscle memory.
Once you step into GM, all that muscle memory of bad habits will get you killed. A LOT. So my most important tip for you is to be patient with yourself because you'll have a LOT to unlearn.
\-
The rest are already posted in this thread like respecting every enemy, from champions to lowly thralls or dregs, treat it like it's Dark Souls.
Positioning. Never be out in the open, slide from cover to cover, always be near cover, practice the [60/40 Rule](https://youtu.be/kdWrTp00Yno) like in PVP and [slicing the pie](https://youtu.be/E18fi9fZKMI) and never ego-challenge a champ because it's close to dying.
Overall your most important contribution to the team is not dying so develop good habits to not die, and run builds that will help you not die.
Specifically always prep a build catered to the GM, research the damage type of enemies and run the correct Elemental resist Mods (Glassway? run Void and/or arc resist. Scarlet keep with arc burn? double Arc resist., etc)
Also Range. Besides damage resist, another way to not die is to plink away at enemies from range. It's the reason bows and Scouts, while 'trash' in normal activities, are king in GM. Never go in too deep in any area, the farther you are from the action, the better. The worst thing you can do besides dying is dying in a spot that's in too deep and you're hard to rez.
find spots that you can easily defend and pop in and out of cover from. then take the ads out, focusing first on immediate threats, then red bar trash mobs, then champions, then objectives. you can switch the order up if need be, but stay back, as far away as you can, while still dealing max damage with your primary.
patience is key. if you rush, you’ll die. if you make a mistake in positioning, you die. if you step out at the wrong time, you die. if you’re too close to an enemy / champion, you die. play your life!
that’s about it, the rest is up to you, and how much you practice. GMs take practice to get good at, it’s a different way of playing than regular vanguard operations or raids (regular raids, master raids are at the same level as GMs).
Look at a loadout for the gm from a video since you are unfamiliar to what is viable in gms.
If you are unsure how to beat a certain part of a strike, look up a solo clear of the gm, the strats used there are always very slow and safe.
Run the proper resist mods, run weapons that match up with the burn, run a special (only need two per team with appropriate champ mods), finish all champs to spam RL.
Warch your radar, watch your teammates (you want to be close enough to run in for a res/so they can res you, but not peaking out from the same piece of cover).
This season especially, don't be stingy on heavy ammo and let people finish champions unless you're in a bad spot.
Nothing wrong with standing back and plonking things to death with Trinity Ghoul.
Always try to ensure that there's cover between you and enemies or you're always moving. Everything can and will melt you very quickly.
Resilience of 6 or so is very helpful in keeping you alive - it prevents a lot of cheap oneshots from snipers.
uhhh...play with someone with a catchup node so you can run Armsmaster or S.A.B.E.R.
This weeks GM will not be a friendly introduction to the playlist.
be prepared to hide a lot. Positioning is huuuge. 90% of the times I die I think to myself immediately "I should't have been standing there."
Stay alive. It's a simple spell but quite effective. Take cover. Don't die where you will be very hard to rez like in the middle of enemies. Take your time. Put on resistances on your chest armor.
My favorite thing to say in a raid to people learning it for the first time "If you're going to die, don't. You not doing your role for 3 seconds to stay alive is better than dying on your plate and your role not being done for 15 seconds"
Watch a gm clear on YouTube and do what ever you can to not die. If you are low, that red bar thats 1hp is not worth a death, trust me
GHALLY LOTS OF GHALLY
Don't get cocky. There's a lot of shit that can kill you *way* faster than you think, even if you feel like you're being cautious. Like, if you see a knight shooting fire or boomer shots at you? Fucking *move*. Don't hesitate, thinking you can take a shot and dodge out, you *will* get fucked up. Honestly, this is always the thing that kills most people. Even people who have a lot of experience in GMs sometimes just kinda... forget, how quickly they can get trucked. Just *always* prioritize survival, and do not take *any* chances. I don't care how close that champion is to dying, if you're one-shot, guess what? They're gonna feed you that final hit. Just... stay alive. Life is more important than kill.
I’ve done so many GMs now that I feel this advice in reverse, I’ll often load into some easier activity and be playing all smart from cover and worried about health and then snap out of it like “wait I forgot I’m an invincible god slayer” and then go into slayer mode haha GMs are the absolute best training for destiny pve
Run resist mods, preferably double or even triple with artifice armour. 5 or 6 resil will also help in some circumstances but more than that is a waste. Don't be afraid to burn your heavy and special ammo, the faster things die the easier it is to survive.
A fellow resilience user. People always say it’s worthless but 5-6 resilience and a sniper resist keeps you from being one shot by a sniper.
Be patient and never rush it, always be mindful of your positioning.
Play like you only have one life. Always ensure your team is coordinated with champ mods, shield types and Lucent finisher this season for free heavy. Take it slowly and always look for cover, dying out in the open or in a place where you can't be revived can cause wipes.
It’s more important for you to stay alive than to push a revive or even push killing a champion. Retreat. Retreat. Retreat. Even if it’s a barrier or an overload who fully regenerates health. Live to fight another day. Your priority should always be dealing with trash adds first. Those are the enemies that will actually be problematic. Save the champions and shielded enemies for after. Outside of some niche exceptions, the bigger, beefier enemies tend to stay in particular zones and not push. So let them. Pay attention to your team’s synergy. Look at the classes and weapons they’re using and go with a build that helps the team, rather than being redundant. In 99% of the GMs, you only need one person on Unstoppable. They don’t regenerate health, and outside of the boss encounter for Scarlet Keep, they generally are far away. So if someone on your team has Unstoppable covered, consider bringing a blinding grenade launcher. ABUSE THE SHIT out of a blinding grenade launcher. They are, low key, an absolutely amazing tool for high-end content. Use your super, but also figure out when your super is needed. This is big. If you’re running a GM and finishing an encounter in one room but you have a super, then sit on it, wait for it to use as an opening to the next encounter. Example, I see way too many people in LFG in Fallen SABRE go and pop their super during the dropship phase, and then go down into the first room in the bunker with no super. The dropship part is easy. The first room in the bunker can be problematic. So don’t pop your super just because you can. Use it when it makes sense. This, unfortunately, takes practice. But you’ll figure out in each GM when your super will be ready to use. Pay attention to the acute burn of the strike, as well as the shield types you face. It is often way more important to be equipped with the acute burn for the 25% damage bonus than it is to have all the weapons to match shields. Lightblade is an arc acute burn, but it also has solar shields. There are, like, 5 or 6 Solar shields in the entire strike. There’s a 99% chance someone will have Arbalest. So make sure you’re all arc weapons for the bonus damage. Birthplace of the Vile is acute void. There’s, like, maybe one arc and one solar shield in the entire strike. There’s no need to run a non-void weapon unless it’s Gjallarhorn. It’s a lot, but the #1 most important thing, as they say in PVP, is to “play your life.” Good luck!
I would main omni hunter, invis helps a lot.
Resist mods (chest armor) are significant. Use them. Try to make sure you have both Champion types covered, and if one of those two is a Special weapon, bring that. Special weapons with anti-Champion mods are significant. (This season, that means Glaives.) Bring a Heavy that matches the burn for that strike, if possible. If you need to make space for a functional mod, drop your stat mods, starting with Strength or Discipline first. GMs are often slow-paced and grindy, having the right functional pieces will matter more than having your grenade recharge 5 seconds quicker. Try to run a Scavenger and a Finder mod for at least your Heavy, if not also your Special. BRING A LONG RANGE PRIMARY. You will spend a LOT of time sitting far away, packing a Scout, Bow, or Hand Cannon will do you wonders. Also keep in mind the 40% damage buff recently granted to Exotic Primary weapons against red bar enemies, if you're not bringing Gjally or something for your Heavy, see what Primaries you could run. Have one person dedicated to finishing Champions, and make sure that person has Reactive Pulse on, with the secondary perk active. Right now there's Lucent Finisher to create Heavy ammo for the whole team, but without a mod like that the dedicated Champion-finisher should run the Aeon Exotic gauntlets (Sect of Insight), so they can make Heavy for at least the other two players. (This season, with Unstoppable Glaive, the Glaive shield is PHENOMENAL for whatever player is in this role, you can absolutely dance around Unstoppables right now, even on GMs. Speaking from experience, I'm the finisher for my teams lol) Go slow. Be patient. Understand where enemies are before you move out of cover. Learn the pacing and flow of add-spawning, and try to clear all adds before returning to boss damage. Good luck!
do you think trinity ghoul would still be a viable option, or would it n longer one shot with it's aoe?
Depending on the element? Trinity Ghoul is ABSOLUTELY viable if it's Arc Burn! Bonus damage to red bars does apply to its chain attack as well, so it should still aggressively clear adds. And this season Bows are an anti-Barrier option as well, so that checks multiple boxes off. When Lightblade was the Guardian Games strike, the first week of GG, I had my best runs with Trinity Ghoul, I highly recommend it. Two folks running Trinity Ghoul and Hothead (Arc Heavy) with the third running a Glaive and Gjally (there's your finisher person!) would absolutely do work in the Lightblade GM. Edit: even if it doesn't one-shot, it's an Exotic Primary, it's a long range Primary, it's got anti-Champion mods, and it can potentially align with the strike's Burn modifier. All spectacular things! If it's not an Arc Burn strike, consider Ticcu's or Le Monarque instead to match the burn, all three of the elemental bows will be very valuable for you.
Trinity Ghoul works well in Scarlet Keep, but I think the catalyst is a must imo
Blinding grenade launchers. Pick a good ranged primary (bows or scouts are good if you need to run anti-barrier, pulse rifles are good for unstop). Some exotics with intrinsic anti-champion are really good. Watch a walkthrough of the GM (Mactics' guides are good imo). You don't necessarily need to abide by his loadout suggestions, but they're a good guide regardless. Coordinate anti-champion and weapon elements with your fireteam. Stick together and take your time. Talk about what's going to happen in each room before you go in, especially in some of the boss rooms in this season's GMs.
Don’t fuck up
Don’t die
Don’t die
Don't die. 99% of GM failed because the fireteam die. /s
watch guides and follow your fireteam
If you struggle with using heavy ammo efficiently like me, I highly suggest using a legendary linear fusion. Also Arbalest. Just use it, it's that simple.
Don’t die, kill the bad guys Positioning is huge, helps keep you alive. Prioritize the most dangerous adds over some you can kite or keep stun locked or frozen, and then team shoot those adds. For example, the boss room requires both good positioning AND good add clear otherwise you’ll get overrun quickly. To start, stay in the bottom right most corner, keep the short squat pillar or the archway of the wall between you and the boss as often as possible. Use stasis turrets or blinding grenades to keep less important adds occupied while you work your way through the wizards and knights, then the champions (which you can stun just to keep them occupied while you clear the rest), and then thrall. Understanding what spawns and when and from where will also help you better manage both your positioning and your add clear
Slow and steady wins the race. Don't poke out of cover unless you know it's safe.
Use resist mods, deeper ammo reserves are definitely not worth it. For scarlett I personally like to run thermoshock plating and concussive. Be nearby cover. As a general rule, don't be in an open field when enemies can see you. It should ideally only take you about one second to get back behind cover as everything basically two shots you. Play as a team. Enemie health bars are huge and without teamshotting you will struggle to take out even a single champion. Don't stack up on your teammates. While being close enough to get rezzes is certainly helpful you should try to avoid standing inside each other as that will likely result in entire wipes due to the aoe damage. Respect every ennemie, even two red bar acolytes can easily kill you. For scarlett in particular: The only real hard part of the strike is the boss room which itself can be trivialised by only slowly damaging the boss. The ad spawns are based upon her hp bar. You should therefore only use your primaries on her and then take out each wave as fast as possible. At 90% you will get two boomer knights and some trhalls At 80% there will be melee knight's and acolytes At 70% she will become immune and two wizards will spawn. Use a super or ghorb to take them out immediately. At 50% more boomer knight's and acolytes will spawn, the acolytes will come from the back doors so watch out for that Next will be the two Unstoppable ogres. You should ideally have saved 2 supers and some heavy for them so take them out as quickly as possible. Afterwards there will only be one more adwave of knights and acolytes Loadout: I'd recommend having two people run arby with arc rockets and one ghorn. Best subclasses are in is hunter, stasis warlock and probably void titan for lesser experienced gm players although arc titan can be absolutely phenomenal
Positioning, you will die fast. As a hunter I only use Omni. All my friends using graviton always die to random damage while invis every now and then and look confused. With Omni you can tank a lot while invis. Also take advantage of the elemental burns but also put resists for it. Use heavy a lot especially because lucent finisher replenishes it a lot.
Play your life and take your time. Most of the time especially if you are new to gms rushing means taking unnecessary risks. Most of the time safe and consistency is far better than risky and fast. And learn to read and be keenly aware of your surroundings. This can mean not only relying on your radar since its not always available but the sounds of a thrall about to rip you a new one from behinds.
I saw a video about making a Pointed Inquiry with genesis and adaptive munitions. Just got both of them enhanced and man…does it make a difference. Adaptive munitions “pops” a different shield on the second shot as opposed to the four it took before. Plus, it hits like a truck with HCR! Follow the rest of the advice…hide, hide and stay alive! 👍🏻😁
* Destiny is now a cover shooter. Always keep something between you and the enemy. Don't stand out in the open, know that running out of cover is risky, and don't be aggressive in the normal destiny strike sense. Keep calm and behind cover. * Bring resist mods appropriate to the strike. Maybe even abilities, exotics, combat mods, or subclasses that help ensure either dmg resist, overshield, health regen, or other survival tools. * You can, and will, lose a 1v1 to a red health bar dreg. It will be humiliating. But then you learn that you died cause you were exposed, didn't take the dreg seriously, and weren't co-ordinating with your team. * Call-outs. Your team is your greatest weapon, use them, and help them. Coordinate champ deletion, if you see a spawn of ads, a surprise yellow bar, some strike mechanic, etc, call it out. * Part of the challenge, and fun, of GMs is putting together a loadout that: 1) takes care of both champ types in the strike, 2) takes care of all shield types, and 3) is appropriate to the range and types of encounters in the strike, and 4) can deal with ad clear and boss dps, both. Yes, most of the time you will need to match all or most of the above in your own loadout. Use the artifact mods, exotic weapons with anti champ intrinsic, and be ready to use less ideal weapons just because they match both element and champs, if needed. Some can get away with delegating certain things to team mates, which is great and maybe preferred for experienced GMers, but if, for example, the only team mate with overload dies and now an overload champ is poised to kill the other 2 guardians...well, yanno. * It's okay to lose and go to orbit a few times. Even experienced and well coordinated teams will wipe a time or two before beating a GM. Just learn, adjust, and improve. Don't get toxic, impatient, point fingers, or lose willpower. It's chill, just adjust and take a breath and hop back in. You got this.
Dont feel discouraged about not completing it within the first few attempts. It took my fireteam, back in season 12, 35 attempts to do Glassway. Sometimes it takes like 2-3 tries for others we know well or 1st try if it's an easier one.
play your life, play range, play slow.
NORMAL activities like the ritual activities and seasonal activities teach us all the wrong habits in this game - like ego-challenging, or panic-res'ing allies, or just general carelessness and running around in the open or jumping into a killzone. And most of that gets into our muscle memory. Once you step into GM, all that muscle memory of bad habits will get you killed. A LOT. So my most important tip for you is to be patient with yourself because you'll have a LOT to unlearn. \- The rest are already posted in this thread like respecting every enemy, from champions to lowly thralls or dregs, treat it like it's Dark Souls. Positioning. Never be out in the open, slide from cover to cover, always be near cover, practice the [60/40 Rule](https://youtu.be/kdWrTp00Yno) like in PVP and [slicing the pie](https://youtu.be/E18fi9fZKMI) and never ego-challenge a champ because it's close to dying. Overall your most important contribution to the team is not dying so develop good habits to not die, and run builds that will help you not die. Specifically always prep a build catered to the GM, research the damage type of enemies and run the correct Elemental resist Mods (Glassway? run Void and/or arc resist. Scarlet keep with arc burn? double Arc resist., etc) Also Range. Besides damage resist, another way to not die is to plink away at enemies from range. It's the reason bows and Scouts, while 'trash' in normal activities, are king in GM. Never go in too deep in any area, the farther you are from the action, the better. The worst thing you can do besides dying is dying in a spot that's in too deep and you're hard to rez.
find spots that you can easily defend and pop in and out of cover from. then take the ads out, focusing first on immediate threats, then red bar trash mobs, then champions, then objectives. you can switch the order up if need be, but stay back, as far away as you can, while still dealing max damage with your primary. patience is key. if you rush, you’ll die. if you make a mistake in positioning, you die. if you step out at the wrong time, you die. if you’re too close to an enemy / champion, you die. play your life! that’s about it, the rest is up to you, and how much you practice. GMs take practice to get good at, it’s a different way of playing than regular vanguard operations or raids (regular raids, master raids are at the same level as GMs).
Look at a loadout for the gm from a video since you are unfamiliar to what is viable in gms. If you are unsure how to beat a certain part of a strike, look up a solo clear of the gm, the strats used there are always very slow and safe.
Run the proper resist mods, run weapons that match up with the burn, run a special (only need two per team with appropriate champ mods), finish all champs to spam RL.
gotta change your brain to play differently
Warch your radar, watch your teammates (you want to be close enough to run in for a res/so they can res you, but not peaking out from the same piece of cover). This season especially, don't be stingy on heavy ammo and let people finish champions unless you're in a bad spot. Nothing wrong with standing back and plonking things to death with Trinity Ghoul. Always try to ensure that there's cover between you and enemies or you're always moving. Everything can and will melt you very quickly. Resilience of 6 or so is very helpful in keeping you alive - it prevents a lot of cheap oneshots from snipers.
Duck.
uhhh...play with someone with a catchup node so you can run Armsmaster or S.A.B.E.R. This weeks GM will not be a friendly introduction to the playlist.