My fireteam and I ran Vesper's Host for the first time just a few days ago, and I wanted to share our experience as a fireteam with what I think is a pretty average skill level. To put that into context, for us a regular strike would be dead easy, a nightfall pretty comfortable, and a GM nightfall quite challenging. Two of us started playing during Lightfall and one just a few months ago, so we don't quite have all the best weapons / armour available for every situation but we have enough to make some decent builds.
Shout out to anyone at Bungie who worked on the mechanics in this dungeon because our run started out overwhelmingly positive. It was pretty unanimous that this dungeon had some of the most fun mechanics we'd seen and we had a blast in the first encounter. The challenge level was very comfortable while learning what does what.
We started running in to roadblocks at Raneiks though. We got better as we went (Some loadout changes were in order thank you Dragon's Breath), but this ended up taking us 8 phases after a few wipes. I'm sure it could have been a lot quicker, but again this is how things worked out at our skill level. It wasn't clear at first if splitting Raneiks up during this phase would grant more damage, but we eventually figured this out. Little bit of a skill issue there I'll admit, but even after figuring things out, splitting him up, and trying to maximize out splash damage, this boss still took a looong time and we were exhausted by the end of it. The mechanics themselves we thought were really good, but the length of time we had to execute them for was beyond tedious.
As I'm sure you've guessed we had a similar experience with the final encounter. We actually ended up completing this one in four phases on our successful run, but there were a lot of wipes and a lot loadout/strategy optimizations before that. It was a great moment finally making it to the end, but the sentiment quickly shifted from "Yes we did it!" to "Thank god we never have to do this again", as the last encounter also ended up being very tedious, especially having to redo the whole basement bunker shenanigans between every phase.
In some ways this is my favourite dungeon, but I don't think I could ever convince my fireteam to run it with me again due to the sheer tedium of those last two encounters.
[b]TLDR, our biggest takeaways were:[/b]
- We had to do a lot of research about meta DPS strategies, and meta weapons to use for each boss. We would love if the "normal" difficulty for a dungeon rewarded this kind of commitment, but didn't require it to be completed comfortably.
- Having to do each in-between-DPS mechanic twice for each boss ended up being very tedious. It would have gone a really long way for us if you could do an abridged version subsequent times.
- The complexity of the mechanics in this dungeon felt just right. They felt challenging but not impossible.
Bracing for the obligatory "git gud" comments. At the end of the day I love Destiny and want to continue engaging with it in as many ways as I can, but I don't know if I will be able to convince my fireteam to do the next one with me if it ends up being a similar experience.
Thank you for listening :)
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This is proper feedback. You’re giving praise and critique where it’s due which will more than likely get your post seen opposed to ranting and being overly negative. Congratulations on the clear to you and your fireteam mate 👏🏻
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To me the dps phases are some of the easiest out of every dungeon, 2nd boss is just golden gun dragons breath paired with syntho glacial quake and u can one phase. Last boss is just double special and GL with thunder crash titan which can get you 7mil dmg+ if performed right
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Edited by Magiscene: 1/24/2025 3:39:03 AMCongrats on the clear. Sadly relying on dragons breath for dmg on Raneks was a mistake. Bungie got the bright idea to nerf the hell out of ignitions on that boss. Stasis and wardcliff are so much better for dmg in that boss. Final boss is not fun because of the lightning. If the next dungeon boss has a similar experience I’m going to be done with dungeons for a while especially contest ones.
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ant
bring back 1 shot kelgorath's in pvp - old
my only problem with vespers host is probably the fact atrak's boss room is literally more chaotic than the witness' one in salvations edge, just doesn't make sense to me. still an amazing dungeon though. -
Unfortunately, bungie's dungeon encounter mechanic design has gone downhill over they years. That combined with the higher boss health pools can lead to the mechanics of setting up to DPS phase being tedious. Especially after several wipes. I have to applaud yours and your fireteams tenacity though. Being willing to stick it out while not fully understanding the PvE meta and making several changes along the way to get the job done is admirable. Those qualities will serve you well in this game, even if it's in the face of bungie's ever-degrading design. Good job getting it done in the end though. I know that feeling of accomplishment was a relief and a rush at the end lol.
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Edited by BackdoorBacon: 1/23/2025 8:43:44 PMYeah the mechanic to DPS phase on the final boss is too long, they could have definitely gotten away with the one room needed. The lightning strikes are annoying too and definitely a big reason why most teams take more phases than other dungeons.
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yeah the only bad part is the double mechanics outside that is a fantastic dungeon
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[quote]In some ways this is my favourite dungeon, but I don't think I could ever convince my fireteam to run it with me again due to the sheer tedium of those last two encounters.[/quote] Part of running it; in sucession though is refining your strategies. if everything was 'easy' dungeons would feel like a strike with mechanics. Once you find what works for you, both bosses don't take nearly as many phases and the mechanics to get to dps can go lightning quick as you get more exposure with subsequent attempts.
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Edited by BetweenMyself: 1/23/2025 8:02:52 PMGood on you for sticking with it and getting it done. One piece of advice in case your team does any future runs would be to use a heavy other than [b]Dragon’s Breath[/b] against the Servitor boss Raneiks as it has been intentionally coded to receive [b]greatly reduced damage[/b] from back to back Ignitions. Earlier in the Episode there was a bug that incorrectly applied this behavior to [u]all Bosses[/u] within the game, but this was fixed in [b]Update 8.1.5[/b] to ensure it only occurs with Raneiks: [quote]Fixed an issue where Ignitions were incorrectly scaling damage against all bosses instead of just Raneiks Unified, resulting in lower-than-expected damage.[/quote] (΄◉◞౪◟◉`)
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You're kind of late to the raneiks party unfortunately. Was faster until last weeks patch where they buffed his health. Less servitors than before, but more health to compensate which probably means not as many targets to chain ignitions. If you ever do want to run it again, add me. I'm no flawless expert, but i at least enjoy running most dungeons for the heck of it.
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Well written post. I agree that I find the double mechanics for each damage phase a little tedious. Hope you enjoyed the dungeon and congrats!
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Edited by Bore: 1/23/2025 9:18:26 PMWell written feedback. Hit the nail on the head with the needing to do the mechanic twice before dps. Makes the fight pretty tedious. You went in and came out with the perfect mindset though.
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What I found to be the best option for survivability against the puppeteer is surprisingly an exotic everyone forgets, and it's riskrunner. Now before anyone goes and lops my head off, bear with me alright. Riskrunner grants huge arc resistances, boss uses arc (queensbreaker with a switch tbh) and the lightning strikes themselves are arc. While you won't survive a direct impact strike, you can survive a good 2-3 extra ticks and it takes about 4-5 shots from the boss. While arc conductor is active your chaining lightning to multiple targets, builds up light energy like crazy. Again, not saying it's a God of choices but it is surprisingly good for most encounters.