Are Destiny 2: The Final Shape’s Raid Changes a Problem?

Back when Destiny released I remember seeing an average game with a ton of potential. The alpha, and later beta, gave me hope, but it wasn’t until Vault of Glass that I thought this could actually be a thing. Since then the community has spent the past decade trying to determine what the ideal difficulty actually is. Some feel like it was achieved with Root of Nightmares, whereas other people think the latest raid, Salvation’s Edge, is the pinnacle Destiny experience.

While this is part of the larger conversation, with Destiny 2: The Final Shape Bungie changed how players interact with raids. Instead of being traditional content, meaning players could over-level them to a certain extent, and each boss was a product of its time, the system was brought up to modern standards.

Bosses received massive health increases, in some cases even tripling their previous totals, along with content now capping players five below the raid’s suggest level. Since all of these choices make the raid harder, Bungie compensated by giving them surges, which increase the damage of a specific element. Given so much has changed many players are outraged, to the point where Bungie confirmed they’ve heard the community and won’t change things at the moment, is this the right call, or something Bungie should reconsider?

Initially my thoughts on this issue were rather simple and straightforward. As much as I liked older content finding a way to be engaging, I felt bad for newcomers negatively impacted by this change. Instead of needing a good version of a specific gun, players would now be expected to obtain good versions across a wide variety of elements.

What ultimately changed my opinion were later arguments, and engaging in a sizable amount of revised content. One problem that commonly occurs with balance changes is an insistence to blame it for any perceived fault.

I’ve seen sherpas say it’s now impossible to bring people through the raid, frustration at Taipan no longer being good enough, and even some people insisting these changes made them go from easy 5-man clear to needing a sixth to even have a chance. I don’t doubt any of these claims either. Taking newcomers can be an inconsistent experience, Taipan stopped being a top damage choice around the time Root of Nightmares released, and I think other forces are at play like the changes to Well.

Even if I can only speculate on what might’ve happened, having done multiple raids/dungeons following the patch leaves me underwhelmed. Normally I try to look at things from different perspectives. Maybe I need to use a different gun, a more elaborate strategy, or approach things a different way, yet I can’t say any of these things were true.

None of the content felt any different from how I previously approached it. I used Malfeasance, which is something of a divisive choice given there is no surge for kinetic weapons, with Tether for Warlord’s Ruin and matched a Golden Gun Hunter on solar burn. I think the difference was 200,000 damage in their favor, which is very small in the grand scheme of things. Later I did Duality using Combination Blow on solar surge, and was out in 32 minutes. Even the dreaded Garden of Salvation had two extremely comfortable two phases kills.

To me, what has yet to be seen is how this impacts things long term. It’s easy to feel the impact when people are still trying to get the hang of things, possibly opted out of certain weapons, or didn’t put much stock in holding onto different options. I also theorized in my review this change is part of a larger system where grinds slowly shift to per element instead of best overall.

If this were to occur I am guessing things will naturally balance out. As more options exist, and are easy to obtain, the negative impacts are lessened. It will have to be something I examine more long term, but I genuinely believe this is less an issue, and more finger pointing because people dislike surges, and having their build dictated in general.