That does suck. A suggestion to ease the possible pain is to find a POST Master Templar Checkpoint for yourself. From there, you can get all the way back to the beginning and outside the original door. Once there, have your fireteam join on you - swap out that character to preserve that post Templar checkpoint. Now you can do all the catalyst Oracles without having to deal with the raid encounters. You just have to get the team thru the Gorgon maze when you get back down there. Won't solve the timer issue itself, but if you have to repeat it, it's definitely better than having to actually run the raid encounters.

When you complete the final set of oracles, the portal lights up. It stays on for[b] five minutes exactly[/b], and then it goes dark. If someone falls off the map, they will respawn at top, they can still make it down in time. If they die twice, they're not going to make it. If you know someone is going to struggle with the jump puzzle, have them go to the end FIRST and hang out. Anyone with a vex in hand can stand in the ring and turn on the oracles, someone else can shoot. I've helped people with the catalyst many times, but only once we had two guys in the same run NOT make it in time, they had to run the whole thing over again and I learned this lesson. I also timed the portal after that, so I could keep track of how long they have. I feel for the guy who didn't get it, that's tough to hear you gotta do it again, from the start.

It's been on timer since vex came back.. if you don't reach the final portal you have to do it all again.. this was a hot topic two years ago..

Had this happen to a group before in the past, despite my advice of doing the last set of oracles when Everyone is there, I highly agree with you on the subject of it despawning.