Hope you guys enjoy this one! It took a ton of work to put together 😂 Let me know - what are your favorite and least favorite raid encounters in Destiny 2?
While watching I was hoping that you also took into account how easy/difficult was it to learn the mechanics of each raid/encounter, how fast the encounter can be completed with respects to the loot drop and also the different skill ceilings there are. I will list some examples. For the dogs encounter there are specific paths where the dogs take therefore the runners can just dash from 1 flower to another provided they know dog routes. Another one is Calus where in the void room, without the 3 people calling out Bungie has in place sound queues to which symbol on the outside needs to be punched. Also on EOW, there is a specific sound queue when a void, arc, solar gem is shown pre boss phase. Just listed a few, there are many more throughout the other raids as well. But I did enjoy this video nonetheless!!!
everything in garden sucks for me (especaly the 2nd and 3rd encounters) but i like the encounters in scourge and honestly havesnt gotten much experiance or much of opion on the other raids
but they still make some shit encounters that make people want to break controlers (especaly me in garden or having to be a runner in leviathan for dogs encounter)
Agreed. The worst thing is that Riven is still cheesable. That fight is so good and fixing the cheese would force players to actually learn the encounter (which is actually not as difficult as you think at the end of the day).
@@DavidFerneau TRUE that was one of the best parts of the encounter. When you finally reach the third round and that music plays and you know that the pressure's on to complete it, ahhhh gives me goosebumps every time
The music in the LW Vault is so good during the third round and easily elevates it to S-tier for me. It's super cool what Bungie can do with music that's basically on a fixed timer, rather than the usual reactive music that they have.
I love how "on the fly" the Crown boss is. A lot of the time, once you have a fight down, you all sort of go on autopilot. With Gahlran, there is a lot of "someone buff void" and "lets swap now while we have a minute" and I think that's so cool.
Crown would’ve been even harder, the whole giving people buff thing is a glitch and was never intended, it was intended for you to go to another teams group and swap with them to get your buff back
I'll never discredit anyone for finding a quicker way to finish a boss, destiny is for all intents and purposes a shoot and loot game, however for Riven, I do agree you have to experience it properly at least once. One of my favourite raids of all time l. Just under TTK and WoTM.
SOTP boss is a truly S tier boss fight because boss actually moves and has a set of counterable special attacks and even though stationary in damage phase, there are phase synergies to consider, which gives nice flow when done right while damaging boss. Shuro deserves to be S tier because of the pace of the encounter even though Shuro doesn't technically move and attack that much.
My clan is forcing riven legit runs on our Sherpa weeks. About half our clan knows legit and we have at least a team and a half that always does legit over cheese unless on time constraint
You gotta do riven legit. It’s the best encounter in d2. Everyone must be coordinated and I hate doing the cheese cause it’s just so epic doing it legit
The worst thing about this video is when you were de-shielding Shuro Chi you were aiming your lasers to the left?! WHO DOES THAT YOU ALWAYS SHOOT TO THE RIGHT!
More PvE content sounds pretty good to me. Also, as someone who was often demoted to ad-clear in raids when I was still relatively new to the game, any encounter with minor mechanics that were small enough for me to be trusted with but big enough to feel like I was participating were a God-send to me. I loved running prisms in shiro chi or gauntlet as a whole in levi. Both are S tier in my heart due to the sentimentality lol. P.S. I actually know how raids work now so I can be trusted with more complicated roles poggers. Still don't understand SoS though
@@masterjim666 I find the leviathan raid as a whole is the best raid to teach new lights how raid mechanics work and what is typically needed from someone when doing them with a group. Not too hard, but hard enough to understand that you are important in the raid and need to communicate.
Oh good lord do I hate that people just put new people on the boring easy add clear jobs. One of my favourite things about my current clan for raiding is that in our teaching raids we force the newbie into the harder roles, and other people into roles they haven't done before, because then we teach them every encounter. It's astounding how many people come in with a decent amount of clears and then get put in a role they were never taught and suddenly we have issues with what should be an experienced player. I know new people to raids get a bad rep but honestly, if you actually give them the chance to properly learn the encounters then funnily enough 9/10 they can perform on the same level as experienced players.
I would've put vault in the s tier and raised dogs, breaking argos shields, queenswalk and lowered the first last wish encounter but otherwise a perfect list
Real quick I need to mention this one encounter from a console player point of few, because I believe it won’t happen on PC. The final boss of Garden is the glitchest, worse performing, encounter in Destiny history. You can have glitches like motes falling through the map, the tether not activating, every spot of the arena count as vex milk, plain lag, portals not teleporting, crashes and a lot more. On console it honestly deserves a below F Tier, but when it works and doesn’t crash C Tier
I’d personally place the first encounter in Garden in the A tier, but that’s just because it reminds of several well designed World of Warcraft raid bosses.
I haven’t done too many raids but I really like insurrection prime. If you do it legit nearly everyone has a role, and even when you’re not gathering batteries you’re still killing ads and shooting shields. And having mechanics during a damage phase is a nice touch
Really great job! I agree with the vast majority of where you ranked everything. The only changes I would make is that I would drop P1 and P2 for SoS boss down a rank. Potential bugs aside (they seem less frequent now compared to y1) they feel more like running down a random checklist to completion rather than working toward a particular goal. I felt like the plate and ball mechanics get really repetitive.
Something I don't see brought up a whole lot is the raid challenges. I haven't done most of them, but the challenge for phase 1 in scourge is one of the most fun encounters I've done. Figuring out the best way to do it was just a blast. Great list overall!
Great video! I would personally rank Gahlran A+. I think it’s very close to being as good as Riven. It requires a lot of team work and communication from your individual group and as an entire team. It’s definitely not an encounter where if you mess up once you wipe but it definitely feels like an encounter that requires great team synergy and there’s never a dull moment. After the fight your team is just like, “Hell yeah! We just did that” followed by an immediate, “Damn. No one got Terrible”.
I'd bump Gauntlet and Sparrows up 1 tier each, felt like the tier list didn't weigh pure unadulterated fun heavily enough. Making fools of yourselves and actually in a way pitting the raid party against each other while still working together is part of the experience imo. Great list otherwise.
My tier list would be essentially the same, all of the final bosses I'd say are A+ with some possibly joining Riven in S. I really like how you can salvage mistakes in the Gahlran and Sanctified Mind fights if you are quick on your toes. And as for signature raid mechanics the Witch's Blessing and Tether/Enlightened mechanics are two of the best imo (provided you don't have people switching the boxes on and off in bad situations). Worst encounter is hands down the opening one for Crown... just why are there 4 rounds. EoW opening is also pretty egregious but booping friends off the edge can still provide some entertainment (the ad clear part is seriously embarrassing). Best encounter I think just automatically has to go to Riven. Last Wish as a whole is the gold standard of Destiny raids imo, Bungie really hit it out of the park.
I'd say calus is an S, but only on prestige. I love how creative that extra mechanic is. I've also heard so much about how terrible SoS is, but I'm planning on finally giving it a try after this. Thanks so much love your content!
Don't let his silly tier rankings fool you, Spire and Crown bosses are both overcomplicated messy piles of mechanics for no damn reason beyond "we felt like it" with little to no room for error or chance for recovery against wipe mechanics. Both fights could've had half the mechanics or steps they had, and been perfectly good fights... But ungo bungo doesn't know how to make a more well-paced out fight without cramming it full of mechanics to the point of being a frantic speedrun that STILL takes forever too
Crown is my least favorite raid out of all of them. The last encounter of spire is very interesting but it gets annoying because people can make one small mistake and then you have to start over. It’s really hard to teach too! My favorite encounter is either leviathan dogs or shuro chi. Great vid! 👍🏻
I got my first spire done in 1:30 hours with 4 people that had no idea what to do one of them being a absolute potato is that good I guess the person who taught us was really good
It’s a fairly straight forward raid. The only challenge per say is how hectic the final encounter can be if you aren’t all fully aware of what’s going on. It may take a couple wipes or so, but you’ll get it :)
Adding to what IAmSeed said but yeh, while it can be covered for the final encounter really requires people to know what they're doing. I've always seen that encounter as pretty much the only one where everybody has to do everything. And the everything isn't just easy either. It's one of my favourite encounters but requires clear communication for those tricky moments. I don't know if you've done the raid yet or not but I hope you get your first clear.
@@EvilWizarddd666 we did every encounter second try lmao (my friend and I bet on how easy it was in relation to SoS and I won, saying it was a lot easier) we did it faster than EoW
Gardens was my first raid ever, I loved it even though it was frustrating at times. But like every raid has the potential to lock a team out if the mechanics aren't clicking with people now that I've played most of them. I like the variety and average length of the Gardens encounters. Plus getting Divinity is an experience unto itself and is much nicer than the RNG exotics for the others.
Some of my favorite games as a kid were those weird flash games like Hotdog Bush, where you have to juggle various food orders from different customers. Stuff like making sure your buns are out, while the dogs are grilling and the fries and fried and your chopping the onions, and pouring the drinks and it gets a bit hectic and yeah that’s basically Argos.
Great list, thanks for taking the time to do this mate. You should do this for the subclasses imo. Only changes I'd make for this list is dropping vault to C, I hated the encounter for some reason. And if the sanctified mind wasn't a buggy mess for me, I'd make it S tier.
The most I can realistically do as a viewer is watch this video and give it a like, but I just wanted to say that this is a really high quality video and I really enjoyed it.
Crown boss fight is actually my favorite raid encounter, so long as you have a decent/good team. Maybe it’s because it was the last raid I got around to completing for the first time
The queenswalk taking "at least some participation from all members of the group" and that being rough for a lot from LFG groups speaks volumes about the abilities of the avarage D2 player. And yes, I've been stuck on that part, for hours, multiple times, with players who couldn't jump through a glowing orb at the right time or bother to vocalize a countdown if you held a gun to their head.
I mostly agree with your list, although Vault would definitely be S tier for me. when I just started out with raiding I was always on ad clean, so it was really boring, but then when I learned to read symbols the fight got so much more interesting! Honestly, it's probably one of my favourite raid encounters in Destiny. Also, the music in the 3rd phase is just so masterfully good, so much that it makes you feel way more badass than you actually are, especially when you have 5 seconds left on your last dunk in a petra's run :)
100% agree. Such an amazing soundtrack that just completely fits the aesthetic and visuals of the raid so perfectly. Also, I think it’s the best looking raid by far.
One thing i would change about Queenswalk is the music i would love if they used Gunslinger OST, changing the tone of the fight instead of a FINAL FIGHT but a final HooRA moment ending it on a more happier note even though were unleashing a curse lol
Overall this is a really good list, thanks for putting this together! HOWEVER, as with any tier list, I have a few gripes: 1. Sanctified Mind should be C tier, possibly lower. It's very glitchy and frustrating to the point where it isn't even worth it to use the intended platform-building mechanic half the time vs. just playing the floor is lava (seriously, half the time when LFGing I just tell my teammates to stop building halfway through). Meanwhile, the sacrifices stealing motes rather than just wiping you after X have sacrificed makes failed runs take FOREVER and feel increasingly desperate because you have to continuously activate portals and rush to gather motes while your garbage teammates fail to defend a stationary tether point from red bar Vex. Additionally, it includes a short DPS phase that feels unrewarding (plus double tether is even more glitchy and inconsistent than a single tether when it should be the better damage option for high-skill teams). 2. You don't give the unique encounters nearly enough credit - Dogs, Vault, the Sparrow race, and especially QUEENSWALK (which is the best encounter in the game imo) are all unique experiences that test things no other encounter in the game does. I don't care if there's no boss to take out in the Vault because every encounter doesn't need to involve killing something to feel rewarding. Every one of these encounters should be at least A, and Vault and Queenswalk are both S in my book. 2a. One more point on Queenswalk because it definitely should not be B tier - it has the best OST of any destiny encounter, and the race against the clock makes it feel so much more hectic and adrenaline-pumping than any other encounter outside of Riven legit. The reason I prefer Queenswalk to Riven legit is that the finisher glitch in Queenswalk actually enhances the encounter for highly skilled raiders whereas the sword-the-claw glitch on Riven ruins the fight - the finisher glitch allows one or two highly-skilled players to carry the encounter when others mess up, while someone on the other team shooting the wrong eye in Riven legit just feels frustrating because there's nothing you can do about it. 3. The Calus and Val Ca'uor fights are at least two tiers too high. Both are extremely glitchy and can wipe you for no reason. On Calus the barricades will randomly not spawn in time on occasion, while the throne-world psions' targeting feels extremely inconsistent and will wipe you if they randomly boop literally anyone. Meanwhile, on Val Ca'uor the orbs at the end of the fight can spawn in the rafters making it literally impossible to kill him, and the balls will not be armed properly roughly a quarter of the time even if you throw them in the right inner door. Add to this that both are extremely long and cumbersome, while a single mistake instantly wipes you (and a single death often does the same because the dead lose their revives). Both should be C and Val Ca'uor might deserve a spot in D. Talking about Prestige for both of these btw, I've only run the normal versions two or three times so don't really know those well. 4. Not a huge gripe but I'd rather do the EOW jumping puzzle over the COS opening encounter any day of the week and twice on Sundays. The COS encounter single-handedly ruins the raid and makes me not want to run it despite the last two encounters being pretty awesome. I agree that the jumping puzzle design is embarrassingly awful (as are the graphics in the purple goop reactor room...) but at least it isn't overly long or boring. COS opening for F and may it rot in hell. Great job and thanks for putting this together!
I respect your points but I think that the Val Ca’uor and concentrated mind encounters are both very high A tier and that the scourge final boss should be bumped down at least a tier
@@evanrfec3652 Do you mean the Consecrated Mind? I'd definitely agree that that one is A tier and think this video was right on the money. I'm talking about the Sanctified Mind (fourth encounter / final boss). Val Ca'uor guess we will need to agree to disagree on. Insurrection Prime I think is fine at the bottom of A or bumped down to high B tier, it's a pretty good fight but isn't as involved or interesting as some other fights for sure.
I could bet that 95% of "bugs" at val Caour aren't bugs... just someone messing up. Also you can kill Caour in final stand without any balls so it is not "literally impossible to kill him" even if all balls would despawn
@@evanrfec3652 never heard of that glitch. and so far most supposed "bugs" I saw had a normal and intended cause. I never had the feeling that the raid was rushed either
At first our rankings were at least close, but as the video went on I disagreed more and more, particularly with the final boss of garden. I feel you graded these encounters on complexity more so than playability. For example, both the riven encounter and the garden encounter are known for being quite complex with their mechanics, but I haven’t met a single person who enjoys the final garden encounter more than riven. Overall there were many encounters I would have ranked lower (particularly in the leviathan raids) and encounters in the non Levi raids I would have ranked higher, such as the scourge sparrow race, which is a favorite of many I know(myself not included) music is also a big factor that I feel was overlooked but not as important. Cough vaults majesty
Love Riven, definitely deserves S tier. But I feel like Val caour should have been S aswell. It’s so unique and demands team coordination with one of the most intense soundtracks playing. Genuinely going to miss playing the raid next season.
Insurrection Prime is my favorite encounter in D2. The size of the map, the freedom and different roles. Use of snipers and close range. It's a lot of fun and requires communication without having too many frustrating mechanics. It also helps that is seems to have significantly less bugs than other raids. I do think you should have considered how glitchy or buggy encounters can be as part of your rating system. A lot of people despise SoS purely because of it's bugs.
If I’m gonna keep it real with you guys, I thought riven and last wish was boring, but I can see why people like it. Great music and decent mechanics pleasure some people. But I gotta say vex raids are my favorite. The captivating visuals in both raids (not counting EoW) always amaze me, and for some reason, I find the behavior of the vex to be weird, and kinda goofy. For no apparent reason I always get excited and have fun doing the third encounter of the garden of salvation. I’m not saying riven is bad, but I just didn’t like it. But overall I feel like the vex need more attention. I know they always get raids and strikes, but they’ve never had any major expansions, just curse of Osiris. I wish they would introduce a warrior vex, from Calus’s line or something.
I appreciate you respecting the opinions of others! I for one am on a kinda different side of the table in regards to what you feel about Last Wish, but I do understand you loving Vex raids as I do as well. Last Wish is hands down the best raid experience I have ever had the pleasure of participating in, and even though doing Riven in a legit fashion would only enhance that experience, I’ve never been allowed to do it legitimately before. I just thought I’d share that for some reason. But all in all, I respect your opinion as well! Raids are great.
I just finished GoS with the divinity puzzles and it took us 6.5h. It was harder and longer as expected due to some ego related issues but it was gratifying when we beat it. Personally I like the GoS the most but mostly because I never did LW Riven fight properly. Most friends will not join to even try it. Unfortunately this is a common sentiment in Destiny community where most players want loot quick and easy but then they complain about lack of content. Great list, love it.
in my opinion, i really like all of the raid encounters except morgeth and riven, though riven has such creative mechanics, i really can't be bothered to learn them at all, but i have to agree that the score is truly amazing, and my true favorite raid encounters are all of the GoS encounters, shuro chi, queenswalk, flaming hemorhoid from SoTP and SoTP's final boss. Though if you like any I don't, cool, nice, go have fun.
Insurrection Prime is one of my favorites. It was the first boss raid I completed while farming for Anarchy. I now have 22 Sotp completions (really only 2 and 20 boss kills) and I even have a Last Wish completion.
Big thing to keep in mind is that difficulty and mechanical engagement does NOT equal enjoyability. While these things can be fun, they get very annoying in some cases, such as Sanctified Mind, which I personally think belongs in low B or high C tier. On the flip side, the escape sparrow encounter in Scourge isn't at all hard or mechanical, but it is one of my favorite encounters in any D2 raid.
My favorite encounter is sanctified mind because it was the first time I ever took part in the week one experience for a raid and it is a pretty solid encounter. With sick vex synth music
I kind of like the follow the leader encounter in eater of worlds, but I think how much fun you have depends much more heavily on if you're raiding with friends or lfging
One thing for sure tho. All the calus weapons looked good. Played good (even now). And the calus selected is prob still the most top tier looking shader universally.
Gotta love how the f2p raids got bonked out of the game... bungie really said “let’s remove 80% of the game and make the best and challenging content behind a pay wall...”
I really think y'all are sleeping on Scourge of the Past. Honestly one of my personal favorite raids (tbf though it was one of the first I did with my raid team) I just love it's aesthetic and mechanics. And think the boss fight and sparrow race are definitely A tier.
I genuinely like CoS first encounter just because you are able to master the swapping by the time you hit the boss fight and also Its just a fun encounter to me I'd honestly say CoS is one of my favorite raids
I think the addition of the crystals in the final encounter of crown of sorrow puts it up to s tier for me, it adds that little bit of communitation and difficulty without it overcomplicating it or turning it into a pub killer like the final garden boss.
I definitely agree with you on the crown intro. Its way too long. But a handy way to make it easier is to use The Colony to kill immune enemies at point blank range. Careful though it will kill teammates that are too close as-well its a weird bug
For Deep Stone i’d put Security:B tier cool first encounter that teaches you the fundamentals of the raid. Atraks-1:A tier fun fight and going up and down from space is really cool. Taniks 1-A tier it’s nothing too special i just love the music and atmosphere Taniks 2-A- ish i wish this fight was harder it’s probably one the easiest final bosses but i like the mechanics of it.
I love the tier list videos, and this one made me realize something, after the vaulting there will be no free raids, that could mean that we can have forsaken for free, pretty unlikely but I have hope
Yeah, Spire Boss is definitely the buggiest encounter in the game. Charged orbs not activating the weapons, charged orbs flying straight through the ships instead of hitting them, orbs not picking up Greed when charged even though they eat the mist... there are so many bugs in that encounter that I feel like you have to babysit it every step of the way to make sure it’s not misbehaving. It’s a shame because it is a cool encounter when everything works right.
We killed the boss on prestige, threw the balls to finish him off. Then we all got engulfed and wiped next to val cavour's dead body! We were so pissed we swore we will never do that shit again!
Haha I feel like it’s one that a lot of people don’t really understand otherwise they would like it more. Honestly I was intimidated by it for a long time
Scourge is just so fun man. Last Wish is definitely more of a challenge but when you want a quicker and goofier but still very awesome experience, scourge has got you. Every encounter is fun and engaging plus the aesthetics call back to wrath, my fav d1 raid. Riven is an incredibly designed boss but i personally find her to suffer from the same issue i had with oryx in that its so mechanics heavy that my stress gets in the way of the fun. Insurrection Prime really strikes the balance for me of interesting mechanics that keeps everyone busy and breathing room to have fun. And the set piece of everyone running around a battlefield with lots of verticality options while disabling the defenses of a massive metal gear will never not be spectacular to me. even the dps phases are neat with the changing positions. in short, fallen raids have an astounding track record and im hyped for deep stone crypt but my soul is absolutely crushed that scourge is being booted out (for very little reason imo)
Also I feel like while Sanctified Mind’s mechanics are very solid, it’s like you mentioned in that a lot of people don’t find it very fun. Never excited to do it as it feels like a chore. Tho the platform rebuilding aspect is neat. Even disregarding my personal bias against vex content in general, i’d struggle to give it anything other than a B or B- which is kind of a shame because you can tell some pretty interesting ideas were mixed into the fight.
What I learned today: pattycake doesn’t care about glitches and bugs. Crown as a whole would’ve gotten an F teir from me because I’ve never had a run where something doesn’t bug out. Same with garden. And I raid at least once a week, I enjoy garden but refuse to do the boss because it’s that busted. Raiding with your friends should be fun, work well, and be a challenge. Fun doesn’t always mean it has to be an extreme difficulty. Obviously it’s my opinion but playability is a huge factor for me.
@@PattycakesGaming I play xbox and the final boss on garden is unbearable for instance the portal will sometimes go inside the boss so you have to wait for it to respawn and when building platform sometimes the platform will build but not be there visually and better yet you cant see when he destroys it so if you are on the invisa platform on the wrong time it will kill without warning also when going to blue or red portal enemies have a chance of falling and if that happens you better hope the boss choses the other side
25 garden clears and 8 (I think) cos clears and neither have ever bugged out for me, or any of my raiders. While yes it's not a lot of clears, 25 with no bugs or glitches is a fine amount of evidence. The only "bugs" we've had are when the known lier's failed and blame a bug I am speaking from the view point of a PS4 raider so it might be different on other platforms
Pattycakes Gaming I actually have several hundred clears on garden and I’m kind of confused about these bugs players keep on talking about, when it comes to tethering you have to connect for just a second longer after you hear the visual sfx, about motes, extremely rarely the Minotaur won’t drop motes on the left side, but as far as performance issues go, I have a Xbox 1s and I haven’t had a framerate drop in months :/
I absolutely love the Sanctified Mind fight mainly because of its music. I also hate the opening for Crown because of my runs for flawless and constantly having to repeat it
I would made SoS boss S tier cause personally me and my friends spent like 10 hours alone on it, and it sucked, but once we beat it it felt great and now I love it
Pattycakes: I love this encounter and everything about it! Also Pattycakes: I don’t see anything wrong with this encounter and deserves a spot in the D tier Like bro what😂
Disagree with some placements since normally I can only get 4 or less ppl for raids which makes mechanics far more intense than running a full fireteam. However, the amount of effort put in this video is incredible!
As fun as Garden of Salvation may seem encounter wise, I think it received the King's Fall treatment. Amazing honeymoon phase during Shadowkeep release, but got stale due to bad loot, frustrating tether mechanics, and being the ONLY raid to drop pinnacle gear.
Yeah I don't love the fight but I think from a mechanics standpoint it's pretty decent. It got boring quick from being the only relevant raid for so long for end game progression
