[io]

I've gotten up to the deathsingers with Chubby's group and that's about it. I will probably have time to commit more time this week to do a run and I think if I can level up my no time to explain that should help with the boss fights as well. The raid doesn't seem that tough as long as you are able to do damage.

If most of the people in the group are mid-300's and have Touch of Malice, the deathsingers and Oryx go quick.

[Renegade Moose]

We got pretty close with deathsingers but it was just getting too late. Unfortunately for me since I haven't run the raid a ton I am sitting at about 297 max light. Which isn't horrible. My ghost really brings me down since that is 280. I should probably run nightfall first and hope for a good ghost drop.

[io]

We got pretty close with deathsingers but it was just getting too late. Unfortunately for me since I haven't run the raid a ton I am sitting at about 297 max light. Which isn't horrible. My ghost really brings me down since that is 280. I should probably run nightfall first and hope for a good ghost drop.

Damn that sucks.  My very first Raid item I think was a 304 ghost from the chest after the portal!  And I've gotten several more (up to 309) since then.  But yeah, 297 isn't bad.  Even if just 3-4 people are mid-300's with Touch of Malice, it goes quick.

 

One thing we didn't see from the Hard raid at all was a 310+ ghost.  So I really wonder if running it on hard without doing normal can give you better ghosts from those chests that didn't drop anything for us this time.

 

I'm also wondering where a 320 artifact is going to come from - maybe a quest that has not unlocked yet?

[BrolyB593]

I should add that I got no moldering shards the entire time.  I have 12 right now and would really like 20 for beating Oryx on hard.  8 is just a few too many to buy from Eris though (considering each one is 15 hadium flakes plus 2500 glimmer).  But it looks like you don't get any more than you do from Normal.

 

I think the way the drops work in this raid is a little different than the others.  It appears the chests are just normal mode drops and none have anything extra (unlike the one chest in VoG).  We'll have to see what someone who hasn't done the raid on Normal also gets, but I read somewhere that you get Normal + Hard drops if that is the case.  But is it like VoG where you got two drops from the hard pool, which included both normal and hard stuff (where, for example, you could get 2 Fatebringers from the same checkpoint), or is it truly a normal item + hard item?

Bungie said if you haven't beaten a checkpoint on normal and you beat it on hard first you will get a chance at one drop from the normal's pool of rewards and a drop with a chance at hard's pool of rewards. You can only get a chance at each difficulty's pool once per character so if you beat it on hard there is no need to beat it on normal as you would have already exhausted that character's potential drops for the week. 

[io]

Bungie said if you haven't beaten a checkpoint on normal and you beat it on hard first you will get a chance at one drop from the normal's pool of rewards and a drop with a chance at hard's pool of rewards. You can only get a chance at each difficulty's pool once per character so if you beat it on hard there is no need to beat it on normal as you would have already exhausted that character's potential drops for the week. 

Right but the issue is if it is like VoG where the "hard' pool included both normal and hard so you could get double-hard mode drops or like Crota where it was only hard mode drops.

 

Some idiot on the Bungie forums posted this in his "FAQ":

 

 

Q: Do I get loot from Hard Mode if I ran Normal Mode already?
A: Yes. It's just like Crotas End and Vault of Glass. Either run the raid 6 times a week, 3 normal mode then 3 hard mode, or run it 3 times a week, 3 hard mode and get double loot. As far as chests go (immediately after portal into raid, Golgoroths maze, Bumper maze) it's just like VOG and CROTA. Only once a week.

 

Given that VoG and Crota are different nothing can be "just like" both of them .  Also the exotic chest in VoG had more stuff in hard mode.

 

But someone else who ran three characters through confirmed that it is indeed a Normal + Hard drop if you only do hard mode.  So running Normal first does not penalize you in this case is it did with VoG.  Nor does running only in hard preclude you from the normal drops like Crota (for those like me who were still looking for Hunger of Crota many months later .).  Now in this case it would have been better if it was hard-mode only drops since those seem to be just better versions of the normal stuff (with the possible exception of ghost shells).

 

So, then, I'm wondering where 310+ ghost shells come from since they only seem to be Normal drops.

[Fearia]

 

One thing we didn't see from the Hard raid at all was a 310+ ghost.  So I really wonder if running it on hard without doing normal can give you better ghosts from those chests that didn't drop anything for us this time.

 

On the run I was in, I managed to pull a 314 ghost (At least I think it was 314. I know it was over 310), and this was after completing normal already.

 

Death Singers, on the other hand, fucked me and gave me literally nothing.  But I also got a 317 sniper rifle and 314 boots.  All in all, not a bad run.  We didn't get Oryx either though.

[gotdott]

yea 310+ ghosts are dropping like flies. except for me i got a 306

[GLOCKGLOCK]

Yea I ran all 3 normal raids last night and then did a hard mode today with io and his group.  Got pretty good drops overall - 314 Fusion, 314 shotty, 313 Rockets w/tracking and 314 Chest.  Can't really complain about that

 

 

I am 1 point away from 309 on my warlock now.  If I could get a higher class item that would get me close to 310 but those are all based on RNG drops.  

[io]

On the run I was in, I managed to pull a 314 ghost (At least I think it was 314. I know it was over 310), and this was after completing normal already.

 

Death Singers, on the other hand, fucked me and gave me literally nothing.  But I also got a 317 sniper rifle and 314 boots.  All in all, not a bad run.  We didn't get Oryx either though.

I got nothing from Deathsingers either.

 

yea 310+ ghosts are dropping like flies. except for me i got a 306

What chest did you guys get those from though?  All the chests that would normally drop those gave nothing to anyone on our team except the Harrowed fusion rifle for 1 or 2 people.

[Fearia]

Mine came from the pillar fight.

[io]

Did another hard mode run up to Oryx and once again no one in the entire fireteam got a 310+ ghost shell. 

 

I did pick up a 317 machine gun from Warpriest but that doesn't help me too much when I already have the 318 rocket launcher.  I got some better gloves for my Titan (like 313).

 

So a rando in our raid was saying that once you hit 311 you have a chance of decoding exotic engrams at 320.  My Warlock was just a shade under 311 but then I realized I had a ghost shell that was 1 light level higher than the one I was using on my Warlock.  Since I had 307, 308, and 309 shells I never bothered switching them around since that usually doesn't make much difference.  Well, it turned out my Warlock was so close to 311 that giving her the 309 one instead of the 308 boosted her to 311.  Sweet! 

 

However, I wish I looked at reddit first.   Being 311 does give you one big perk: all exotic engrams decrypt at 310.  But it does not seem like any 320's are dropping yet.  Lots of people posted about doing 10+ engrams and getting all 310's.  I only bought 2 so that wasn't too bad - but I am really low on coins.  I may grind some PoE Saturday night for coins/engrams if anyone is interested.

 

I still have my Hunter to run through hard mode Raid too.  Tonight we got the sisters in 2 turns - was pretty easy actually except for a few wipes from all the adds and needing to hurry a bit more in between the two rounds.  We then tried Oryx and that was a cluster .   But at least I have some idea of what it is like now.  A titan (which I was) with a blessing of light bubble up on the deathsinger platforms can spam Touch of Malice to help take down the ogres and light-eater knights.  But the people on the platforms kept dying so we never made it past one cycle (we actually staggered him a few times but that was it).  It was also being really laggy and people were getting tired.  The Ogres would go from 0 to full health and teleport around.   That does not make things fun.

 

Oh yeah, the two chest engrams that I decoded on my Warlock: Crest of Alpha Lupi for the Hunter, Crest of Alpha Lupi for the Titan.  Destiny RNG strikes again!  At least I didn't have a 310 for one of those.  And the other I suppose I can use to infuse my Hunter Raid chest piece up from 306 to 310 which might help a bit.

[simosaurus]

All you hard mode people and your fancy 310+ gear and ghost shells.  I ran normal up to deathsingers last night and all I got was a pair of 310 boots and a ton of shards.      Going to finish tonight or tomorrow, so hopefully the sisters and Oryx are a bit kinder to me, given that I got squat from the first 3/4 of the raid this week.

[LinkinPrime]

Got a 310 RL, 318 gauntlets, and 312 bond. I'm up to 309 now, we stopped at Oryx.

[BrolyB593]

Got a 310 RL, 318 gauntlets, and 312 bond. I'm up to 309 now, we stopped at Oryx.

(and he complained about getting this stuff) Spoiled I tell you : P

 

Yeah we ended up grabbing an LFG group of 3 last night since everyone was already doing the Raid pretty much. I only got a 315 Sniper and a 313 pair of boots but it was at least enough to push me to 310 (just a small amount away from 311 actually). I hope to do another Hard run tonight hopefully on my Warlock. Maybe then I can use that gear to boost my Hunter and have her high enough of a light level that I could join another 310+ group and at least finish off Oryx as that was like half of the LFG posts I saw the other night.

[LinkinPrime]

LOL only complained about the RL, you guys scored 315 and 318 weapons when I got my measly 310. But the game did redeem itself when I got my gauntlets at 318.

[paintballers]

Common theme is everyone is stopping on Oryx! It's way to difficult until people start getting at least 310+ light. I'm currently 310 light and felt like I was struggling with DPS

[io]

I hope to do another Hard run tonight hopefully on my Warlock. Maybe then I can use that gear to boost my Hunter and have her high enough of a light level that I could join another 310+ group and at least finish off Oryx as that was like half of the LFG posts I saw the other night.

If you haven't done that run yet let me know - would like to get one in on my Hunter before reset.  It seems like everyone at least gets a weapon from Warpriest (and one of these days he has to give me a sniper, right?) and an armor piece from Golgoroth.  Even if I just did it up through there I'd be happy.  Hell, I'd take a Warpriest/Golgoroth only run since the earlier and later parts have given me jack squat so far.

 

All you hard mode people and your fancy 310+ gear and ghost shells.  I ran normal up to deathsingers last night and all I got was a pair of 310 boots and a ton of shards.      Going to finish tonight or tomorrow, so hopefully the sisters and Oryx are a bit kinder to me, given that I got squat from the first 3/4 of the raid this week.

Anything 310 is an awesome pull from the Normal raid even if that was all you got the entire time.  I've lost count of how many 300 items I've gotten...  Like I said before, my Warlock made a huge jump when the HM gave me 318 boots because the best I could do before that was 296.  Normal never gave me any sort of boots.

 

Deathsingers have been horrible on HM - no drops whatsoever the two times I've run it.  Meanwhile other people get 318 cloaks and such.  Ugh.

[gotdott]

Real bummer when you are into the third cycle of Oryx and lag hits.. 

 

Anyway my Warlock is now 311/312 and the amount of incremental damage you do for each level past 310 is extremely noticeable. My Titan wasn't so lucky and got a 311 chest piece so he's at like 310.9999999.

 

I still need to run it on my hunter so if you guys see me on and need one feel free to shoot me an invite. I have only gotten 1 raid drop on my hunter (a 302 chest) since launch so I'm looking forward to what these guaranteed HM drops will get me.

[simosaurus]

Okay, can anyone tell me if this is a known bug:  I had a deathsingers checkpoint from Friday night.  I know for a fact that is where we stopped.  But last night when I put a group together and we went in, it took us right to Oryx. A couple weeks ago, when I played with Gotdot, there was a guy with us who said he had a Deasthsingers CP and then we ended up at Oryx and he seemed really confused.  I thought he just screwed up, but now it happened to me, so I'm wondering if this is a regular glitch.

 

Anyway, Oryx was kinder to me in terms of loot than the rest of the raid:  Smite of Merain PR (302), Ghost Shell (300), the shader, and Zhalo Supercell (310).  I was real happy about the Zhalo since I didn't even have a 3oC active at the time.  Wish I would have gotten some higher defense on the shell, but that was my first one so I won't complain too much.

 

So...all is well.  Except I still haven't beat the sisters this week (actually, ever) so I really need to do that so i can get my ToM.  If anyone has a legitimate CP for them and needs a 6th, please let me know.  Actually had some practice running when Torn the other day and got pretty good at it, so at least I know what I'm doing there now.

[Ziv]

I know I'm late to the exoctic sword party, but I've been putting it off because of the crucible (I'm not a crucible fan). Well, I got those 25 kills in about an hour. It was nowhere near as bad as I imagined. Beat Ecthar without a problem.

So yeah. I'm on the Rare materials/ability kills part. The kills are coming along okay, but I'm barely finding any Helium Coils to open. I have a ghost for every other material. It doesn't help that I can't get into an instance by myself. It seems like there's always someone else around and they're messing up my search.

Ugh. I know it'll happen and it just takes time.

/Rant

[simosaurus]

I know I'm late to the exoctic sword party, but I've been putting it off because of the crucible (I'm not a crucible fan). Well, I got those 25 kills in about an hour. It was nowhere near as bad as I imagined. Beat Ecthar without a problem.

So yeah. I'm on the Rare materials/ability kills part. The kills are coming along okay, but I'm barely finding any Helium Coils to open. I have a ghost for every other material. It doesn't help that I can't get into an instance by myself. It seems like there's always someone else around and they're messing up my search.

Ugh. I know it'll happen and it just takes time.

/Rant

I know what you mean, it's pure tedium. At least the moon is one big loop you can run. By the end, I didn't even need my ghost to spot the deposits, I was just on autopilot running from place to place.

Speaking of swords, I need to do SC for my void one of these nights. Anyone else?

[BrolyB593]

Did another Hard run this time on my Warlock up until Oryx and damn I forgot how much easier Hard Mode Raids are when you can revive!

 

I didn't get anything stellar but I did at least get a 313 Machine Gun, 305 chest (hadnt run normal) and I believe a 315 or so Gauntlet. My Warlock now is 309, Hunter is 310 and then I don't even know what piddly level my Titan is haha I think like 304 or so. With my new weapons though I should be a bit higher on my Titan. I hope to run one last Hard run until Oryx at least tonight with my Titan then. 

[GLOCKGLOCK]

I still have to run HM on my Hunter this week if anyone is setting up a run tonight.  

[io]

3 Hard mode runs up to Oryx - not a single drop from runes/totems (supposedly where these make-believe 310+ ghost shells drop from - in 3 runs not a single person in my group got one).  And also not a single drop (for me) from Deathsingers.  Only 1 or 2 others in the groups got something.

 

It seems like a 310+ machine gun/rocket launcher/sniper is guaranteed from Warpriest and a 310+ armor item from Golgoroth though.  So those are definitely the checkpoints you want to hit.  Now we'll see if that keeps up for week 2 - that could have just been the guaranteed first time drop like when you kill Oryx for the first time and get multiple things.  I'm sure it will go back to giving me nothing at both parts like it did for most of my Normal runs.

 

My best item was the 318 rocket launcher I got on my first run.  Since then I've gotten two machine guns at 316 and 317 I think.  So I have that extra 316 to use on another heavy weapon.  I'm trying to decide if I want to use it on a sword or possibly on my 310 Truth.  Truth would just be for Iron Banner/Trials and wouldn't help me in the Raid.  But then neither would a sword since I need to use a legendary (my 318 rocket launcher) in that slot for most, if not all, of the Raid.

 

My armor items were: 1) 313 boots for the Warlock, which is kind of a meh roll except like I said before that bumped me up from 296 so that was a big increase.  2) 314 gauntlets for the Titan (also a big jump since my previous Raid gauntlets were 300). My Titan is still using 298 boots so hopefully I get something for that slot next week.  3) 316 gauntlets for my Hunter (had 305 before). 

 

So all in all, pretty good jumps of 10+ in one armor slot for all 3 characters.  My class items and ghost shells, which used to be a strength, are now all of a sudden holding me back now though.  Hopefully one of those things drops for me next week though it sure as hell seemed broken this week.   There's nothing more frustrating than making it through the Deathsingers fight, especially when you get torn and have to do the stressful jumping part, only to get nothing for it.  you Bungie.

 

I still want to run some level 32 PoE if anyone from CAG is up for that.  It is a good way to farm exotic engrams and strange coins this week as it has the 3 bosses.  I have 5 treasure keys on each character and might as well use them to get some strange coins if nothing else.

 

I'm wondering if the people who got 310+ ghost shells had not run Normal first yet?  I know there is supposed to be different loot tables but we all know how broken this game can be.  It just seems astounding to me that they are "dropping like flies" for gotdott but not a single one in the groups I was in (where everyone had done Normal already).

[io]

I'm also wondering how moldering shards will work in hard mode.  Do they give you a guaranteed hard mode item, or just normal?  I didn't even have enough this week as I used them in all 3 Normal runs as I was really trying to get a helmet.  Next week I can see still not getting Oryx done on hard, so what I'll probably do is 3 x runs on Hard first up through Deathsingers, then Oryx kills on Normal and probably save my shards for when I do kill Oryx on hard unless we hear something more about this.

[io]

Oh crap - maybe I can get an Oryx kill in this week.  There is an "easy" strategy where you go up on the platform with the relic and don't kill the ogres until after you stun Oryx (when they are near the middle).  Then jump down and detonate and you do it before the Light-Eater Knights get to them.  Apparently you also ignore the brand Knight as well?  I thought you had to kill him but I guess not.  Wow...

[Fearia]

I think you kill the brand knight because he's what allows you to attack Oryx. The rest gets ignores until after Oryx is staggered, but you have one person with ToM keep shooting to keep him staggered.

[Fearia]

Interesting . . . just watched a video highlighting the strategy and I don't even see the knights.  Hrm . . . 

 

https://www.reddit.c...pular_post_was/

 

I wonder if someone killed the brand knight (the roamer?) before they got up top, which is why you never see it?  I know the knights themselves don't spawn to kill the orbs until after each ogre drops.

 

Either way, if someone wants to try this with me tonight I'm down (assuming my wife falls asleep early again)!

[io]

I guess I never knew what the vessel was for.  But here's a post in that reddit thread that answers this:

 

Noooo you do have to go slam the vessel to get the shield, but don't worry about killing him yet is what I meant. Get the shield, run back to the daughter tower, stagger Oryx, THEN worry about vessel. You don't have to worry about killim him quickly because the Ogres don't die until after her does.

 

So the relic guy has to slam him, but not kill him.  You stagger Oryx, then kill the vessel, then kill the ogres, then everyone jump down mid and detonate.

[Sinfulfate]

I just beat Oryx on hard with my titan using KackisHD's strategy. We were all 311+ and we beat it on our first attempt, it was pretty easy.  I didn't have 20 moldering shards so all I got was a 311 shotgun but I got the last achievement I needed and that's all I really wanted. I'll be available tonight and tomorrow if anyone is going to attempt it and needs another 310+ to help.