So Last week I completed the raid for the first time on Normal. I met a few really nice people on here who were showing newbies the ropes from a fresh start. At this time I was a 29, with IB boots and gauntlets, an exotic chest and a Vangard Helm. I was lucky enough to run the raid on a Sat night/Sun morning so I completed it again with both my characters the following Tuesday. During my second run I received a raid chest piece and swapped out my exotic Helm for my Vangard and switched over to the raid Chest and quickly maxed it out, getting me to lvl 30. So a couple nights ago I was in a team to do the raid agin on Normal, since I'm still new to it and one of the guys in the fireteam suggested we run it on hard as we were all 29's and 30's. I told them that I had never run the raid on Hard yet, never used the relic and never did the portals when you have to take out the gate keepers. "No problem" they said, "don't worry" they said. Well long story short, we didn't get very far at all because of my lack of knowledge and little experience in the raid. I don't agree on the term "Fake 30" but I definitely see what they mean by it since before IB you can only be a 30 from the raid. Anyway, I felt like shit and now I know I'm not ready just yet. Edit: One thing too, I don't condone the term fake 30, nor do I consider myself a fake 30 either, because regardless of how I got there I still put work in. And my situation, what happened to me, was the definition of the term "fake 30" that people were using, referring to the fact that I was a 30 with little to zero raid experience. The term should be something like "not ready for hard raid, but still put time in 30." Kinda long, I know. Or "really good at other aspects of the game just not the raid 30." Also a little long. Edit 2: thank you to all the people with encouraging words and people who offered to run it with me. I'm on XB1, same GT. I am off for the winter so I'll be playing more often, if you are on XB1 also send me a friend request. Thanks again.