Sounds like Mountain Top is becoming the new Gjallarhorn. Gjallarhorn was nerfed because it became the most requested weapon(disregarding its insane damage potential). You either had it or you weren't joining the group and were out of luck.

Any raid group requiring Mountaintop is not worth joining. Even Swarm of the Raven isn’t necessary to one phase. I think the reputation of the Mountaintop/Recluse combo has become out of hand. I totally agree that they are the most optimal PvE loadout for a lot of scenarios and they shouldn’t be as they are PvP pinnacle weapons - I want them at the top, just not no.1. However, they aren’t so powerful that no other loadouts come close - Loaded Question/Wendigo is plenty strong enough for the raid and with so many good kinetic exotics now, it’s ridiculous to think teams are requiring this one specific loadout.

I'm not even going to read your post because the headline is a joke. The Mountaintop is not required. It's a crutch for bad players and an optimization for good ones. The boss can be one phased with any number of strategies: swarm of the raven, DARCI, anarchy, I'm sure rat king works, anyone can get outbreak, orewings maul, hell I'm sure 6 hunters with 1-2 Punch liars handshake and combo blows can pummel him to death (haven't tried, just theorizing here). This is all assuming you want to one phase him. I'm sure you can 3 phase him with just about anything. If your team can't survive past a single phase, that's not a weapons problem, that's a you need to throw yourself in the garbage because you're trash problem. Go practice the encounter and you'll beat it eventually. Raids aren't meant to be a cake walk. I sure wish they were more difficult, because as of rn, you can beat it at 30 power under max, which is ridiculous to call it end game material, imo. Oh and P.S. the TL;DR should never be longer than what you're trying to summarize. What. Happened.

Your tl dr is longer than the actual post, plus I got an energy grenade launcher from IB that I think comes close to the mt. So grind for that.

It’s nice. Not necessary. Outbreak works. Swarm of the Raven works. Militia’s Birthright with spikes= Mountaintop except it doesn’t shoot on a line. The reason people harp on one phasing is because people are so dreadful at even getting to DPS phase in Phase 2 of Crown that if you manage to get to DPS, you want to make it count. If you get Mountaintop nerfed with your complaining I will hate you for all eternity. Instead of complaining find something else agreeable or get it yourself.

I like how the tldr section is longer than the actual post by a good margin.

1. The Mountaintop is not required to do any raids. Anyone demanding that you "have" to have it before they let you raid withh them have already identified themselves as an IDIOT. They are doing you a favor by not raiding with you. 2. The Iron Banner single-shot grenade launcher comes with spike grenades, and will do the same thing when you pair it with Lunafaction boots or a rally barricade. 3. You can't design a pinnacle PVP that ISN"T going to also be very good at PVE. Because PVP is a DPS race. So a pinnacle weapon is only going to be pinnacle because it delivers a LOT of damage very quickly and efficiently. Which is----naturally---very useful in PVE. 4. LFG is a toxic situation. It is a purely "transactional" situation where people show up and are only concerned about "what's in it for me". So if someone wants to raid regularly....LFG is the WORST way to go about it. You need to join a CLAN. A GOOD clan will invest in you. They'll take the time to teach you a raid....and even take the time to learn how to do it with you. Plus it gives you a pool of readily available and knowledgable players to choose from for subsequent raids. I'm currently in one clan...and sort of an honorary member of a second one (They've sort of adopted me, and I'm one of the first people they message when they want to do something and have a spot open). This second clan just came back to the game, and I used to raid with them quite a bit in the last months of Destiny 1. I'd forgotten how much better this game gets when you are part of a good clan. If you want to raid reguarly, I'd invest my efforts there. You'll get a much better pay off than trying to fix LFG....or build the game to try to reduce the impact of the toxic nature of LFG.

What i was going to do was list all of the guns that are obtained by PvE only methods compared to guns that are obtained by PvP only methods. This was going to show the vast majority of PvE weapons and was going to show your hypocrisy. But i decided this was going to be too much work just to show that you are a product of the current participation trophy culture.

As a player who only recently earned his Mountaintop the hard way I can confirm that this quest is the biggest boatload of crap I have ever seen.

I would do the mountaintop quest twice more if it meant a curated twilight oath which I still don’t have after hundreds of hours doing gruelling milestones in the dreaming city. RNG is good but the actual meta weapons should have a step by step process of acquiring. I should not be at a disadvantage just because I am absurdly unlucky, facing people in crucible that are total bots but still have it out of pure RNG pity is extremely frustrating.