The raid is gloriously stunning, from the castle to the underbelly its all amazingly made...the encounter mechanics however? Are driving me from not wanting to play this game anymore... The mechanics are well made, but the problem lies in how many there are in each encounter...let me explain what i mean. Bath house: First real encounter, each guy has to stand on a platform while 2 others run around the map relieving them to refresh a buff until chains stop moving over the course of minutes at a time, to then have to run to the middle to shoot lamps on one platform for a time and run away before a psion bombs the platform. Rinse repeat until done. The problem with this is, why isn't the buff just an infinite timer on each platform, we already have a myriad of adds to deal with, including a yellow bar enemy that takes over half a merciless to kill... if you removed the timer on the "buff" and extended the timer for the middle part? This encounter wouldn't be anywhere near stressful, time consuming and ammo consuming... Second encounter, Pleasure gardens: Go in, clear the room, grab 2 crystals and position the holders to shoot flowers while 4 spore holders stealth around 6 dogs to said flowers 2-3 times per, trigger the damage phase, run as -blam!-ing fast as possible to damage the dogs and run as -blam!-ing fast as possible to get to the safe room. Rinse repeat until done. But the problem is, how -blam!-ing slow the dogs move, to how easy they can find you, how ridiculous the coordination has to be as well as the mere fact those crystals and the holders have to be on time to pop the flower so you can run in and out. How about a few tweaks so this isn't the most time consuming, annoying, punctual thing i've ever had to witness... For instance, reduce the sense of the beasts so they would have to actually see you so they can trigger the phase ready or not.. In reality, the dogs would be able to hear you running, walking and breathing... Along with that, how about a prompt to activate the flowers for the runners giving them 8 stacks each while the crystals can be used to blind the dogs or lead them away from the team... Third Encounter, The Gauntlet: Oh boy... so here's the deal, 4 platforms, stand on them to activate, clear the adds, 2 orbs spawn, 2 people pick up the orbs to run through a circular path around the room, 2 people rotate and follow 1 runner and shoot 2 arrows in accordance to which one is red for the runner, after the runner passes each gate, a psion spawns, kill the psion and it's according shadow afterwards to avoid a wipe. Rinse and repeat 3 times, run to the middle, grab the orbs and get spawned into the gauntlet where each person has to grab a charge or skip a charge to keep atleast 3 people alive to finish the encounter... Holy, shit... So tell me something, how irritating does this sound? It's actually easier said than done... This encounter stumps groups to the point i was left for 3 days trying to get it done... Granted i only attempted after work for 3-4 hours interval at a time...3-4 hours at a -blam!-ing time... So what tweaks should be made? Remove the psion you have to punch, or make it the shootable kind, as well as enable 6 orbs in each gate for the final encounter and increase the time it takes for the orbs to detonate as well as making it so the orbs don't start the detonation timer until they are picked up to take away some of the stress...thank you... Final encounter, callus on my soul: Oh god...here i have to explain this shit... you know what? I won't... because i just spent 10 hours of my only day off for the next 6 days wasting away going through 6 different groups to try and get this encounter done.... If you really wanna know how it goes? Just look up a guide, i'm not explaining it. These tweaks absolutely HAVE to be made... i'm sorry... remove the non-ethereal psions from the shadow realm, remove the laser beam from callus, remove 20% of his health bar, remove the yellow bar adds until after the first damage phase, make it so afterburner only happens near the platform for whatever psion you killed, cap the skull modifier to 70, but increase the damage it gives your team, reduce the skull health by 50%, give more time for the people to get the modifier up because for these 10 hours i spent? Each and every time the game glitches and causes someone to phase through the bar keeping callus suction at bay for you. These mechanics aren't necessarily hard to complete but there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many of them and overloads a team even if they are 10-15 light levels higher than the max requirement. The raid is criminally insane to even attempt in anyones case, this isn't hard for the sake of being challenging, it's hard for the sake of being hard. Bosses like crota, atheon, and the death zamboni were all hard for the sake of being challenging because there was a challenge in how the fight goes to kill them, but atheon, crota and zamboni only had 2-4 mechanics, not 8-12 per encounter of their raids. Ontop of all the BS as well, even if you want to go to orbit to reset the lobby you are thrown back the beginning and FORCED to do the middle encounter to unlock the door to get to what encounter you were at before due to the fact the -blam!-ing game bugs so often. Or you are forced to go to the underbelly which shouldn't lock if you've already unlocked it for your instance, why should i have to grab a friend to go and collect my chests if they're the easy ones to get to? Bungie this raid has a laundry list of issues i never thought i would bring up, i'm not even sure i can even do callus at this point, the last 3 hours i spent for the encounter consisted of me and friends who all knew how the encounter goes and after the first damage phase the shadow realm -blam!-s up and kills someone due to a glitch or people on the outside start to die frequently because of how ridiculous the adds get and how few ammo we got to drop them.... I'm done with this rant, come bring the "Git gud skrub" comments and make this raid as least accessible to even try hard die hard groups forever until the mercury DLC makes this raid obsolete. Ciao Comment comeback: I'll level with you sweaty basement dwellers, if these tweaks were only in the normal mode and not prestige and challenge mode would that make this post more "acceptable"? The answer is no, so deal with it. If the way this raid plays out was the way prestige mode went and not normal mode? You would hear no complaints because the prestige mode would essentially be hardmode or heroic, not the basic run down. Imagine if Oryx hard mode was the normal mode when it launched... How many posts would you have seen like mine? Second Comment Comeback: Stop typing out 7 paragraphs that boil down to the 3 words you really mean I.E. "Git gud skrub" and in case none of you were wondering, i finished the raid a few hours ago, acquired the emblem after 2 days of calus tries, great reward system. Even the engram rewards from benedict only yielded the scout rifle since i don't count the armor to be a reward since they don't offer anything. My post still stands, and if these changes won't happen to prestige mode? It should happen to normal at the very least. This isn't about how well YOU are, only how well the community as a whole experiences it. Stop being selfish pricks and actually realize issues when they exist... Third Comment Comeback: Over the last couple days some of you have taken it upon yourselves to find me on my platform and send me messages in accordance to what you would comment on the thread. This is quite childish in my opinion, I have reported those of you who have done this, maybe a time out will help you learn. But as far as it goes, I will reiterate that I finished the raid already but even after finishing it the tweaks still need to be made. If you are going to go out of your way to come to my console of choice and harass me instead of commenting on the forum, you only give the side you take a worse light than the usual "Git Gud Skrub" comments would have. I welcome all comments good and bad... But going to me in game? There must be issues with you.