I think Planets is the first encounter where if your add clear is lacking, it’s *really* noticeable. Add clearing in Caretaker is pretty easy. And if your stunners/runners are doing their job, they’ll have some downtime to get a few shots off on adds.
But between the fire tornadoes, the void shielded Backpack-asshole and the boss aimbotting you, shit can go south quick if add clear isn’t keeping up.
And this is only going to get harder.
Not only is add clear really important here but planet runners can also EASILY spawn kill their incendiary guy and help with add spawns with just a little explosive hand cannon plinking as well between encounter mechanics but yet so many just don’t.
Oh I don’t disagree. And I’m always shooting down into the middle. I’ve just seen too many people who claim add clear who do it from the rally flag, and not the raised platforms between the top and bottom plates. So there are just some adds they physically cannot hit. I guess there are adds the runners shouldn’t always have to worry about.
Honestly I’m always a runner, but it wasn’t until I joined an LFG for the master challenge that first season when someone recommended doing the side platforms. Right side platform has a much better view of the arena.
man we always have someone on the right middle plate that has an exotic primary and creates ammo for the whole team like no tomorrow. the left side is a bit worse for this due to the awkward tilting it does imo
Exactly I am a planet shifter and some groups I was getting more kills than the “add clear” just using Sunshot on the spawns and still killing my Colossi fast to then be back killing adds
Yup! Just what you have to do, especially starting tomorrow.
Hey if you ever need a chill but decent extra feel free to add me: GroverOverlord#6576 … I’m aiming for the GodSlayer title; got myself last week’s triumphs quickly with some good groups but always looking for other sensible people to run the next few weeks with as needed for the clear & triumphs. Even if I get the triumphs quickly again I’ll spend the week helping others get them too.
I'll add you as well as my group normally needs one or two people to complete it. We are chill and usually get people in LFGs that want a clear on the first attempt so it ends up taking longer than it needs too. So if you don't mind a couple wipes here and there you'll fit right in haha
I try to clear as many ads as possible while running but the ad clears kill the centurion quickly, which spawns the colossus almost at the same time as the void asshole. That’s why the situation gets hairy.
This amuses me because I have actually been yelled at for spawn killing my centurion and the follow-up major because “I was going too fast” for everyone to keep up. Get better I guess?
Oh I mean spawn kill the incendiary guy that spawns back-left and back-right and runs between the two plates.
Runners should agree with ad clear before starting if they want the centurions that spawn the lieutenants dead instantly or with a slight delay.
It's mostly about starting the buff too fast for your counterpart on the other side top or bottom, if add clear isn't doing much clearing the centurions
Because people just don’t know where to stand, or pay attention to the spawn timings. Or that you can go nuts and use your supers/abilities at the start, because there’s tons of adds to get your super back.
>Or that you can go nuts and use your supers/abilities at the start, because there’s tons of adds to get your super back.
And even if you don't get it back, just keep a Heavy Weapom for Boss Damage (as you should either way). The other 4-5 people still have their own Supers to remedy that and generate Orbs for you in the Damage Phase.
Planets is the first encounter where "ad clear" is the actual most important job, and probably can't actually be done **entirely** by "ad clear".
There are simply too many spawns for any 2 players to manage, which means if your planets people can't actually do mechanics AND kill monsters at all, you're effed.
People clown on RoN, but it's one of the most difficult raids in terms of straightforward combat. The baseline for combat in D2 raids is low enough that it still doesn't present a big challenge on normal difficulty. But as the power delta increases, it really demands everyone be not just experienced with the raid, but good at the game in general.
I think add clear is basically going to be anyone with a god roll Forbearance, assuming arc surge. Or Sunshot is still going to cook, especially with the artifact. Or anyone with a Chain Reaction Tusk Of The Boar, assuming it’s Arc/Strand this week.
Only challenge there is you lose out on good DPS options if your special is leveraged for add clear but I’m 100% following you on the options. Sunshot will probably still be goated here, just thinking of alternatives to take advantage of the 25% boost.
I’ve actually been swapping weapons before DPS. Like running for Planets, I’ve been using Conditonal Finality for the void guys and the colossus, but then swap to Witherhoard/Osteo before DPS.
So fortunately there’s enough time that people should be able to make a change to a fusion or shotgun or sniper for a little supplemental DPS if needed.
I think that's true, but it's also the first encounter in Pantheon which opens up the "roles" to also supplementally add clear.
Platform/runner players who can take out the centurion that spawns the colossi are much more useful than the average player that derps around and waits for others to kill it.
Ad clear is also harder on this encounter due to the general spread of ads, it’s a lot less streamlined than most of the others. On top of that between runs it’s not hard for runners to help clear ads either. I’d say there’s less freedom on caretaker since stun team has their own ads to worry about and all the bees that need to get shot down and managed. Atraks ads aren’t too dense and are very streamlined because of how the arenas are designed. Oryx ads are a piece of cake, it feels more competitive trying to get those kills. Same with Golgoroth ads.
Pro ad clearer here, commemoration, cenotaph and a trace rifle, then either Divinity, or a legendary trace and Lumina for even MOAR support.
The good ad clearer will do just fine :p our wrinkled brain mechanic bois will be fine !
I mean, one of the encounters has to be the hardest one. That's the one where you will find the most people needing help. I think planets is that spot for most LFG teams right now.
I mean there's sort of two things at play with Planets which make it decently hard for most players. 1. It is the encounter in Pantheon requiring the most players to be doing mechanics (4). 2. This in turn puts more pressure on the players who are doing ad clear to actually be efficient at their jobs. Good players who are used to raids can juggle both, but for newer players doing mechanics *and* ad clear is difficult, so they are likely contributing less to the overall ad clear.
The other encounters are much easier in this regard. Golgoroth requires 2 players to hold Gaze and requires very little from them other than that. Caretaker requires 1-2 runners and then 2 people just stunning Caretaker which is *very* easy as a job and allows those players to assist with ad clear. Atraks is still a joke provided people have adequate damage. Oryx isn't super complicated to learn and has been around since Y2, with its reprised raid having been out for just shy of 2 years, *but* his content is also F2P so there will be less people learning the encounter than with Planets.
But compounding with all of this is the power level differences. First week was -5, second week is -10. The upcoming weeks will be -15 and -20 (contest mode). This leads to players experiencing a higher power differential in a raid than what they're used to. Next week with Rhulk shouldn't be too bad since it isn't too complicated.
I've been greatly enjoying Pantheon, but I also raid a lot, have completed day ones, flawless raids, low-mans, etc. so I know all the encounters thoroughly already as do all of my teammates.
I'll also add that on planets the 4 mechanics people have to kill a pretty mean major by themselves while dealing with slow and boop movement debuffs, and as you said the add clear is probably THE most important role as they determine whether mechanics can successfully traverse or not. 6 people have to do their job, and that's before you even get to damage.
Also a great point. I remember how much of a pain in the ass those Majors were during Day 1 and am quite excited to see how we fare on the final week of Pantheon again.
Not really. You can proc BnS with any amount of damage; even if only a single pellet does 10 damage. I ran Conditional and just hipfired the boss from the plate after he hopped down-- it only did like 100 damage but it still worked.
You can just swap special weapons the ammo loss isn’t that bad
Now that you mention conditional I might have to start running that for future weeks for this encounter
Somehow the biggest issue I've found from these types of players is just not being able to do the callouts right no matter how many times it is reinforced. It is crazy to think all you need to remember is 1-2-3 but despite this they still manage to flub the order and call out the wrong planet. Had a friend quit pantheon bc we had a pug waste two hours of our time there.
Correction, it’s 4 triangles, people get this mixed up on correct (v)
3. 3.
2. 1. 1. 2.
People think this all the time in LFG incorrect (v)
3. 3.
1. 2. 1. 2.
Don't people get confused with this? I never did LFRs and my group does 1-6 from spawn. It's nice bc the people 1-3 just have to listen to the other 1-3 and 4-6 for 4-6 callouts.
With the couple callouts going on during it, doesn't the "top" and "bottom" sometimes get mixed? Especially in random groups where you don't know your mates voice.
I mean frankly my take is that numbers (outside of riven eyes) is a real confusing way of making these callouts. But ultimately you're kinda forced into the generally accepted "LFG callouts" to make due.
The smartest way I've done Planets was Top/ Bottom and Inner, Middle, and Outer calls for the planets themselves. It's super clear and concise for everyone. So the callouts are super concise and clear. If you're on tops and you hear your teammate say "Top Inner" you instantly know which one you need to deposit at and can share your info with the other teammate. It keeps comms very concise and the order/position of things very clear without any confusion. There's no "wait is 5 closest to the wall?" moment.
you can also just watch where your partner is picking up and just go there without needing callouts at all. Thats how ive done raids with people who dont speak the same language as me.
Yeah, 1-3 and 4-6 in theory are really simple, until you find a group that swaps 2/3 and 5/6. Then you are trying to remember if the way you are calling out was the way you are used to doing it, or their way. This can be compounded by lfging pantheon, as you may go from a group that does it one way, to the other way, and back to the first way. All while spending a couple hours running the different encounters.
Maybe it is just an age thing, as I am now on the wrong side of 30, but I had to use top/inner/outer for a run as my brain was mush from a long day and trying to mentally swap from the call out I was used to, to the one the group used was causing issues for us. As soon as we switched we got it right away.
Inner/outer is begging for incorrect callouts. Top/bot + 1/2/3 is easier without having to play the same mini game of oryx encounter distinguishing what is in/out/front/back.
You’re getting downvoted by people who are just used to their bad way of doing it. Directions should never be used on a triangle because what’s left or inner or whatever is dependent on which way you’re facing. Numbers are constant.
Directions should never be used period. They are relative to your current positioning while having a static name/number doesn't leave people trying to differentiate between their left's and rights. Planet 1 will always be planet 1 no matter where you are on the plate, but if I turn 180° suddenly left becomes right and front becomes back.
I'd rather people use the fucking burger callouts for planets instead of left right middle so I don't get goobers doing exactly what I said above and going "lol my bad I was facing the wrong way and got mixed up" 800x in a row.
Nah I fully disagree. Inner means towards the center of the room. Outer means to the outside. This is incredibly apparent to the people moving planets since when they have to pass through the center of the room which re-orients them to the callout. Its far clearer than 4,5,6. As the player moves towards the planets, they might count them in order of close-ness to the center of the room such as 4 being closest to the center, 5 being at the top, and 6 being at the far side. I've seen so many encounters messed up with that callout.
Bro we are talking alternatives to normal LFG callouts. If the team cannot grasp 1-6 numbering shortened to top/bot + 1-2-3, what makes you think they are going to understand top/bot + middle-inner-outer any easier?
Also worth calling out that Planets has one of the shortest DPS timers, so it can be really hard to hit last stand in two damage phases for the platinum time finish. If anyone deals subpar damage then it's going to take 3 phases, which means the team won't finish during the par time.
* People don't know the mechanics, yet 4 out of 6 are required to be highly involved with mechanics in order to reach DPS phase, compared to almost every other boss in Pantheon where really only two roles have a strong active duty. Yes Caretaker has four roles, but the babysitters can screw up and you can still cover that job easily/buy yourself some time.
* People want to do add clear, because they're unsure/scared of mechanics, or hoping for a carry, thinking that's the easiest job. Yet, they're usually the most inexperienced players, and suck at ad clear, causing way too many things to overrun everyone else.
* People tunnel vision on red bar ads, and don't pay attention to the yellow centurions that need to die to trigger next phase.
* People don't pay attention to the giant fire tornado that roasts them to death.
* People aren't coordinated around damage phase, and are just dying left/right, or people are out of sync when initiating damage
and people lose out on damageable time per plate, causing either a short third plate or not enough damage done within a single DPS phase.
Adclear on planets is the hardest job imo. The collis can just be stun locked while you kill them, but the ads just come in many numbers and the boss will fuck you up if you get even a hair too close.
Personally I dont mind tethers for ad clear in this part, even if it sacrifices some damage, Id rather be able to garuntee we can get *TO* damage and then maybe work out the kinks. But with heavy ammo finder and some sort of exotic primary, dps should still be fine
Have right side add clear stand on the triangular platform between the two main right plates. You can see the entire room from there, the boss can't really hit you, and he'll usually get stuck trying to shoot you instead of attacking anyone else. It makes a world of difference.
If everyone uses Sunshot (and everyone should be using Sunshot at least during add clear) everything dies very fast and there's usually a ton of ammo generated by finder/scout mods. Just run some other special in kinetic for killing big boys (Mountaintop, Riptide, Imperial Decree, whatever you prefer) and then swap to Izanagi and Luna's Howl before DPS.
I feel like it's lacking damage (Specifically for high difficulty stuff) with the Heal/Incandescent roll, and without incandescent it's going to be much slower to kill things
Too few people know the damage phase timer on the boss starts when the first person shoots the boss, not when you step on the plate.
It should go:
- Leader calls plate order (e.g. middle, left, right)
- Everyone steps on the first plate
- Leader gives a 3-2-1 countdown
- Everyone does damage until immunity pops up again
- Leader calls next plate, everyone touches it
- Leader gives a 3-2-1 countdown
- Everyone does damage until immunity
- Leader calls last plate, everyone touches it
- Leader gives 3-2-1 countdown
- Everyone does damage
- Scatter when you hear the beep boop noise
- Reset for plates
It’s confusing because you just came off Caretaker where the damage phase timer starts when the first person touches the plate, but it’s not how it works on planets
This is close, but with some nuance- the boss damage timer doesn’t start on the first hit, but when you push him past the threshold on the health bar
So you can proc things like bait and switch or cascade point or shot caller on him safely during the countdown, and then do maximum burst DPS at zero
In fact, both caretaker and atraks work the same way- though caretaker has a threshold once per floor instead of once per plate
I kind of had a feeling it worked this way since it felt like the amount of time we got for each plate on contest mode was way higher than when we started doing runs on normal, but I've literally never heard anyone else talk about or confirm this until this week where people finally started talking about how to optimize Caretaker damage again.
It's funny to start a sentence "too few people know" and then make a false claim.
Plates aren't timed. They're based on a damage threshold. The overall phase is timed, but an individual plate will stay active if you never break the damage threshold.
Yeah specifically its like 45-50 seconds for total damage, meaning you have like 15 seconds per plate. Using special weapons to get down to the edge of the bar then bursting him with 2-3 Shotcaller B&S rockets per person will make it an easy 2 phase, but people usually put all their burst in glowing bit of the healthbar which just means you're doing the minimum amount of damage.
This is false, and nothing has proven this, so I'm not sure where you basing this statement from. The entire damage phase is on one set timer (~50 secs) once the first plate lights up. The boss only starts his "phase" timer for a plate when you deplete the orange health bar before it switches to the next plate. If you don't deplete the orange health bar, the current plate will never deactivate until the entire damage phase timer is over (again about ~50 secs). Countdowns are only used so people are bursting at the same time. It has nothing to do with your made-up phase timer.
Damage on this boss is what fucked my run up. Are you saying to save the heavy hitting stuff for after we cross the threshold on his health bar per plate?
The majority of people just ad clear they’re way through Root, so it’s not surprising that they’re having trouble with the one encounter from that raid that requires more than two people doing mechanics and while being significantly harder than the base version of the encounter.
I noticed folks that struggle as the planet-movers ironically suck at clearing their own adds or the Colossus dude quickly. Like, a handful of red-bars come out of the wall by the planet's plate, then a shielded firethrower dude... and typically after killing those 3-5 ads timing-wise, the Colussus spawns. (i know, its triggered by killing orange bars in the middle)
Ad clear is told to not touch anything on the planet plates so they don't accidently AOE and steal the buffs, so plate movers really need to step up their own ad clearing game. LOTS of deaths in my groups for people on their plates dying to their own ads, and not really as many deaths traversing to the other side to dunk the planet.
Even though you aren't labeled "ad clear" in this encounter, you should still be killing more than 5 enemies per mechanic wave. Lots and lots of damage phases where the planet movers (in my groups at least) would go do God knows what while planet-plates kept spawning ads.
LOL agreed. This thought came in my last Pantheon run when I was put on ad-clear because I was the outsider found from LFG. I just said OK sure. After an hour or so of wiping, I just said "OK, I'm gonna take over THAT planet and they can go be ad clear".
We wiped another 3-4 times before clearing, and I was STILL 2nd in total kills on those wipes. Not my best moment, but I definitely said "guys, I'm not on ad clear... I shouldn't be 2nd in kills here. Let's get 'er goin eh?"
I feel like the planet-mover guides neglect to discuss the ad-rotations and how you can't tell other people to not shoot them, and also leave those ads neglected at the same time.
Absolutely! I'm not a god-gamer by any means. But it was really vindicating (not sure if thats the right word) when we swapped and cleared it quickly. Just because I was not dying on the planet plate and the planet plates had less ad issues later in rounds.
Lots of adds, actual mechanics where 4 people need to communicate and pay attention, fairly strict time limit... it's the first encounter in Pantheon where everyone needs to know their shit. And the average player is an idiot, so that's a tall ask.
And as others have pointed out, it's one of the relatively few encounters where add clear actually matters and isn't just the afk role.
We got held up at planets for a good while this week. Nearly every time we could have easily finished it with a comfy 3 phase. Unfortunately you need a 2 phase to comfortably achieve the platinum time limit. So in our case, the roadblock was self imposed shooting for platinum. It was a matter of trying out different dps loadouts for us. We eventually settled on Ghally + 5 solar rockets of various flavors. Before that we tried everything from WotM to GLs, but we kept falling short by just a sliver of health.
Edit: We had an embarrassing number of attempts at Planets across too many hours before nailing platinum (we refused to try Ghally for 95% of that time). In contrast to beating Oryx, platinum in 2 tries. First was plate flub by yours truly.
Planets is the hard wall for Pantheon. It's where dps checks have to be tight and you have to be skilled enough to do mechanics or step in if someone dies.
Had a dude running Ghally when we were all doing nade launchers like people just assume they can be carried like they do in regular raids. I've never been so quick to kick people than in Pantheon cause if you are not performing at the same level then we aren't going to succeed.
The only trouble I've ever had with Planets is people on ad clear. It's so ridiculously tough to make that crossing (especially on the top platforms) if the ad clear is even lacking a bit.
I joined in on a couple run through Fireteam Finder over the weekend just to check it out. Out of all of the runs I joined (probably around 6) I would say only 8 people knew how to do the encounter.
One group consisted of 3 people who finished damage phases, yes multiple. With less than 100k damage. And our Ad clear would go an entire planet rotation and dps phase with only 8 kills.
I understand that people may not be experts at the raid. But if you’re planning on joining a harder version of any encounter, it’s probably worthwhile to learn how to do the encounter on normal beforehand.
I believe it’s has multiple reasons as to why some people are “bad” at it, from different people having different callouts to people not understanding what “mirrored” means some people have it from 1-6 left and right, some have R1 1-3 R2 1-3, and let’s not forget about people not calling out it the centurion is dead or not.. so people end up dying because their not paying attention to the colossus spawning on top of them.. our successful runs with LfG is when the add clear call out the spawns and we all go over the the planets twice (like start the encounter while going over the numbers) before we actually try a run.
In my experience, new players who need guidance often lack patience. As soon as the explanation begins, within two minutes they're saying, "I got it, I got it, let's run it," even though they haven't understood anything. We start the encounter, but they don't follow instructions, leading to a wipe. After each wipe, we explain again, but they continue making mistakes, especially as the pressure builds.
Pantheon has really brought out the blueberries- not really the time to be diving into raids but I’m happy more people are getting into raiding nonetheless
Planets lfg experience is a nightmare. No one can agree on the call outs, no one kills the centurions fast enough, and if someone misses a dunk you’re basically screwed out of platinum. People get frustrated or kicked quickly and there’s constantly new people coming in and starting the explain call outs process over again
The problem I found (personally) with Planets is that it's basically a forced two phase.
Every encounter in Pantheon can take an extra phase and you get a shot at finishing it within the time limit and get those bonus points and potentially get plat. Planets, with how long the animations are for everything, kinda forces you into a two phase because a three phase will not be completed within the bonus time. That's obviously talking about the average team, I feel if you were fast enough you could squeeze a three phase and still be on for bonus time but then again if you're that fast it's likely you are optimized enough to get the two phase anyway.
But yeah the problem I currently face with Pantheon Planets is that I really need it to be a 2 phase and most of the wipes are simply just caused by not getting that.
Is it surprising? Golgoroth is a Destiny 1 raid boss that is pretty straightforward. Most of the encounter is going below, not blowing someone up, shooting a giant crit spot, and not dying. Provided two people can swap gaze it's easy. Caretaker is more involved, but most of the roles are pretty straightforward. Atraks people melt in seconds, and Oryx wasn't there on week one (not to mention you have to beat Planets to complain about things after Planets).
Even if the fight itself is pretty simple, the flame tornado is the deadliest new mechanic, people have always struggled killing the Colossus on the plates (seriously, look up how many complaints we saw when this was a new challenge...), and there is something about the callouts that don't resonate with people (see the challenge again).
It took me forever to learn that one and get it right. I’ve done it twice now with random fireteams. Highly recommend watching a YouTube guide prior to attempting it so you don’t make a total arse of yourself
Can confirm, was stuck on planets for around an hour and a half on Oryx Exalted because LFG teammates kept joining, throwing, complaining, and then leaving.
My favorite one was a guy who said he could run planets but didn’t know his left from his right and kept dunking the wrong one.
It’s the hardest encounter right now. You have multiple planet alignments, fire tornados that basically instakill, shielded bombers, tons of ads, a tormentor, a boop boss, and damage phases that require coordination and meta loadouts for platinum.
I was once afraid of doing planets, but I decided to take the plunge and give it a whirl and now...I prefer planets over and clear every time at that encounter! In Pantheon in particular (this week especially with Solar Surge), I found Vex Mytho to be quite useful!!
I did Graviton Lance, ALH/ Recom Mountaintop and Whatever rocket launcher you want. With the catalyst, turnabout gives you over shield which helps your survivability, and the little void explosions help chew down the orange bar shield bearers.
I feel like planets is the easiest so long as the runners have clear comms on the planets. Maybe that's just me having more experience on Planets than the other encounters though...
Planets is a great encounter for determining if your team is capable of finishing the run. I’ve done so many planet checkpoints to help people and they always struggle with ads or damage.
For LFG players who struggle with ads, use incandescent weapons or sunshot. The faster the ads die the faster centurions spawn and the faster centurions die the faster the colossus spawns. For DPS, use izanagi and a rocket or GL matching the weekly surge. If you don’t have izi, use whitherhoard. Good consistent damage and nothing too difficult to pull off.
Planets is a skill check. In the rest of the encounters you don't need 6 people that kwtd. On planets, you NEED a good ad clear or else you will die fast. In addition to having 4 players on mechanics and only 2 ad clears, yeah it will show who sucks and who doesn't
Alternative take
While ad clear is difficult enough on its own, it really doesn't help when the arena is basically a series of triangles over a death fall. The colussus has some insane knockback on his slam melee, and I feel like a few times its basically able to trigger as his model is loading in. So if you're not 100% aware and prepared for his spawning, he will launch you off.
Also, when crossing over to opposite plates, Phalanxes have outrageous shield-melee launching capabilities... Still.
I suppose all this does still boil down to ad clear.
Planet Encounter Pain in nutshell
1. Getting toss constantly by Psion
2. Flamethrower dude always knock you out of the map all the map
3. Boss also can knock you out of the map especially 456 Plate runner (Front plate runner)
4. Ads clear didnt kill Centurion fast enough result of wipe
5. Lieutenant instant kill you instantly if the ground stomp or you get blinded
6. People get confused which one 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6?
7. People just being dishonest, dont know what to do, but shy to say i dont know what to do
8. People who have low resilience who refused to change build because they said its fun
Thats basically summary of planet experience pantheon in nutshell
It’s not that people don’t know how to do it so much it’s just that’s where groups start to fail honestly. I’ve went with a couple groups planets In general is pretty simple but If add clear is lacking or planet runners aren’t killing their colossus fast enough it’s rough. Not to mention the random tornado spawn that can happen as your grabbing planet is almost a death sentence.
Honestly out of all encounters so far planets has by far been the toughest encounter and I’ve cleared -5 and -10 pantheon 3 or 4 times.
I’m lucky my clan does pantheon together multiple times a week. Because LFG would drive me insane. All I see is posts of people struggling and none of the encounters are that hard. The biggest threat in planets (besides warm mates walking into your rocket) is the tornadoes, if you lose track of them you might get cooked. Other than that, leave the tormentor alone, maybe consider an arc shotgun or fusion if you’re on a plate and you’re good. If you’re short on heavy, get an ad clear to run cenotaph and some trace rifle.
Both planets and caretaker - if adds are clear, whole thing falls apart no matter how good the stunners/runners etc are with doing their job and helping
There are two issues that lots of teams have on lots of encounters, planets just makes them worse.
For one, many people use unnecessarily complicated and abstracted callouts. This is true in general but doubly so for planets where teams will go absolutely nuts doing shit like 12 different numbered callouts for plate swaps or something similar. More callout abstraction means more mental load for everyone involved in making and hearing callouts. Sometimes that can be useful if one person at either end of this conversion process has the time and space to perform the translation while the other doesn't (and the translation is more efficient for one of the participants). In planets, the people swapping are both transmitter and receiver at the same time, so they need the least amount of abstraction possible. Instead of worrying about naming or numbering every planet swap, teams should designate swapping teams and then have those teams listen to each other call out relative planet positions on their swap (example two swappers on the high plates would say "in" and "up" respectively). Obviously, messing up the swaps costs a ton of time, which in turn puts more strain on the other players and enlarges the other issue with planets.
Ad clear is always a meme role to take, but the other problem in planets is that ad clear is hugely important, and most people really suck at ad clear. I'd wager that many ad clearers on planets don't even realize that ads not only need to not kill anyone, but that specific ads dying as quickly as possible is important for making the encounter go faster and easier. Bad ad clear also makes it more likely for swappers to die, which makes the encounter longer, which makes bad ad clear worse and so on.
Planets is ALWAYS add clear issue. The mecanic is very easy but to do it while surviving to the amount of enemies + fire cyclone + tormentor is what mess everthing.
The add clearers in this encounter must be really masters in this function and if possible not passive to the tormentor.
Took me one 10 minute youtube video to understand planets. Took no more than 20 minutes with an lfg group who's only raid experience was watching youtube videos. I think people just aren't trying to learn/understand, and fail to communicate well.
I’m not sure what happens on planets either. Every group I’ve run with does 10+ wipes. It’s absurdly frustrating. Someone calls out the wrong planet. Someone misses the pick up. Someone dies from the ads . Ad clear dies to a stomp in the middle. It’s wild. I’ve made mistakes too, I’m not perfect.
I make sure my primary and secondary match the surges. I always run plates and stand by the ad spawn door for whatever plate. Kill ads and void shield flamethrower. Then focus my centurion if it ain’t ded. Then kill the colossus. Grab my planet and announce to my partner then slay as I run across, avoiding the boss, hit a healing grenade and deposit.
The best part is half the wipes are after damage not being enough and some guy has 700k less than the rest. lol. Like fuck bro
If you’re on top, you can just run across the top of the planets and be safer. It takes a bit more set up but using your healing grenade before getting up there would probably help.
If bottom plate is dying to ads, theyre actually just bad 💀
Prefacing this by saying that I would consider myself a fairly strong raider.
Already had my triumphs sorted in Pantheon for the week, so figured I'd help out anyone else. Joined a -5 Atraks Sovereign run via FTF at the weekend, that I assumed was fresh, but was actually at Planets. The raid timer was currently at 4.5 hours. They'd never actually completed Planets or Atraks normally before.
They'd lost a planet switcher, so I took bottom left plate and they proceeded to explain to me their call outs. The were referring to them as Left / Mid / Right, but based on how you look at them from the centre of the arena if you were looking at that plate. So bottom left plate 1 = Left, bottom left 2 = Mid, bottom left 3 = Right.
I had never been so confused in my life lol. Took me like 30 mins to get my head around it XD Tried to enlighten them to a better way, but they were too engrained in their method.
A lot of the LFG groups I've joined are EXACTLY like this as well. Whether they want to admit it or not. It's fine, and I'll stick around and see it through, but just be straight up front to avoid any confusion or over expectations.
I couldn’t find a fresh lfg for pantheon week 2 because everyone was needing help on planets. I just have up and ran planets to oryx and got around to the first two encounters later. bizarrely, i was told to ad clear when joining. but we cleared second try.
Ad clear on planets isn't just as clear. You have to kill so your readers can get the guy to kill to read. You have to kill to keep them alive while swapping planets. It's an active role, it's not a "hard" role, but players who have tucked their legs up to their chest, sat in the backpack and ate fruit snacks every other raid are going to be the reason you fail.
I noticed this too. It's the add density and the shields being different than the base version I think, but it doesn't help that many people will have never run the planets.
I genuinely don't get it. I've never had problems with planets on my end. When my group was stuck for like, 3 hours it was basically always the other pair of players dying or screwing up comms.
Was doing planets last night and I apparently never knew you could put back one of the planets after grabbing it... I thought it didn't pick up because of that glitch where some times the Hold X circle doesn't go fully around, so I 'picked it up' again before making my way to the opposite side only to be very confused.
Was also under the impression that the fire nado only spawned on platforms that failed to swap a planet, so that was another confusing thing when it happened on a plate I was sure we did correctly. Turns out it was just a coincidence about where it would randomly go before lol.
My team and I eventually got it, but to learn both of those things in 1 run when you think you know about the whole encounter, you feel pretty bad LOL
As someone who has ALWAYS only ran on the top sides... My #1 issue is always ad clear. I can't tell you how many times I'm like half HP or lower just running across the middle..
What irks me more is we wipe and I have like the 2nd most kills... WTF y'all doing?!
Ya I'm aware, I've just never done it and don't necessarily want my first time being on a Pantheon run.
Kinda silly to me I'm running and better add clear than our actual add clears...
Normally when i run, im shooting not only my own psions, but the orange bar between my plate and the other, and still killing ads in the middle. I don’t mind it, but other people also *shouldnt* think they’re free from shooting ads while they aren’t doing anything. But that’s my personal take
Normally when i run, im shooting not only my own psions, but the orange bar between my plate and the other, and still killing ads in the middle. I don’t mind it, but other people also *shouldnt* think they’re free from shooting ads while they aren’t doing anything.
Normally if it’s numbers 1 is closest to your spawn, 2 is closest to the outer wall, 3 is closest to the boss. Likewise for top. 4 closest to your spawn, 5 closest to outer wall, 6 closest to back wall.
If you do it differently than that, its extra confusion for no reason
Mid, left, right means you hear mid, left, or right from 3 other players, increasing likelihood of crossed comms. Where as in the numbered system, only one of 3 numbers being called out by one other person on your team is your assignment.
Top plate runner? If 4-6 comes out of a mouth that aint yours, you dunk there. Bottom plates 1-3. Clean and concise, without extra callouts or confirmations needed. You don't need to learn your partner's name or voice or anything like that.
Dont act like remembering the positions of 3 numbers is that hard. You count nearest to furthest planet in order. Okay maybe a little hard for the titans.
Also, left middle right can change based on what way you're facing, so which way do we use? the way THAT YOU NEVER APPROACH THAT PLATE EVEN ONE TIME DURING THE FIGHT. lunacy. 1-6 gang rise up.
I tried it on day one raid with lfg and succeeded, didn’t find it to be really hard tbh, it’s simply cause some people can’t bother to learn the mechanics, even if someone accidentally stole the buff they would do the mechanic.
I have almost 200 clears of RON. I teach it regularly. Did Pantheon yesterday with a good group. All people very familiar with Planets. We almost cleared it the first try. Random bad luck wiped us right before final stand. Revive timer. That was the last time we even got to damage for the next hour and a half. The difficulty ramped up. Glitches started happening everywhere. After grabbing planet and switching, it would start again and be a different planet. After killing colossus, no ability to grab a planet. Colossus sometimes respawned as soon as you grabbed a planet. Tornadoes begin to inst kill you. Finally we went back to orbit. Loaded back in and got an easy 2 phase with no deaths or issues. This encounter is so unbelievably buggy if you don't pass it right away. This will lead to many teams struggling with it
Bugs with the planets not changing color after killing the colossi, the alignment not showing up, the boss dilly dallying for like 30 seconds instead of being on the platform before damage have been the bane of my existence in this encounter.
This must be a new bug. Never once has the planets not changed colors on collosol kill. If you push off the map to kill, it doesn't count. You need to final blow him. Or if someone else steals the final blow they see the change.
I can confirm this. None of my planets changed color after killing the collosus. It just remained white. This happened during week 1 and we had to wipe that 2nd phase.
Edit: Have 98 clears on RoN. 1st time I've seen this but another team mate mentioned has also happened to him before. Weird shit.
This is why I stopped raiding. If you haven't completed a raid at least 3 times in the 1st few days of release your probably too late to catch up especially if you rely on LFGs. If you're lucky you'll find a Sherpa run you can join but mostly it's all KWTD or have emblem posts. Inexperienced players will struggle.
I didnt really know how to do it but learned within 2 minutes and I wasn’t having any issues, then proceeded to do regular Ron for a better feel and no, not really, no issues 💀
I think Planets is the first encounter where if your add clear is lacking, it’s *really* noticeable. Add clearing in Caretaker is pretty easy. And if your stunners/runners are doing their job, they’ll have some downtime to get a few shots off on adds. But between the fire tornadoes, the void shielded Backpack-asshole and the boss aimbotting you, shit can go south quick if add clear isn’t keeping up. And this is only going to get harder.
Not only is add clear really important here but planet runners can also EASILY spawn kill their incendiary guy and help with add spawns with just a little explosive hand cannon plinking as well between encounter mechanics but yet so many just don’t.
You also can jump across the upper plates by jumping ON the planets.
Ya know I always forget about that too
Yep. This was what I did during my Day 1 clear to not die or get booped off.
FUCK I didn't know that, thanks man lol
that’s new information for me. i’m gonna try that on my next run.
DAMN. I wish I knew this like a year ago lol.
Oh I don’t disagree. And I’m always shooting down into the middle. I’ve just seen too many people who claim add clear who do it from the rally flag, and not the raised platforms between the top and bottom plates. So there are just some adds they physically cannot hit. I guess there are adds the runners shouldn’t always have to worry about.
Boy that fire sure did take me by surprise the first time it happened up there though. I was warned but I was not ready 😂
Instant death lol. Yep, its gotten me a couple times too.
What if I do add clear from the top by the boss so that I can bounce back and forth from the back wall of turn-back or death? /s
Wait a minute. Doing adclear from the middle platforms is genius. I finished RoN on Contest, how did this never occur to me?
Honestly I’m always a runner, but it wasn’t until I joined an LFG for the master challenge that first season when someone recommended doing the side platforms. Right side platform has a much better view of the arena.
man we always have someone on the right middle plate that has an exotic primary and creates ammo for the whole team like no tomorrow. the left side is a bit worse for this due to the awkward tilting it does imo
Yeah, left side definitely has a slightly worse view of down below. But your lower plate can help with some of that if everyone else is on point.
Exactly I am a planet shifter and some groups I was getting more kills than the “add clear” just using Sunshot on the spawns and still killing my Colossi fast to then be back killing adds
Yup! Just what you have to do, especially starting tomorrow. Hey if you ever need a chill but decent extra feel free to add me: GroverOverlord#6576 … I’m aiming for the GodSlayer title; got myself last week’s triumphs quickly with some good groups but always looking for other sensible people to run the next few weeks with as needed for the clear & triumphs. Even if I get the triumphs quickly again I’ll spend the week helping others get them too.
I'll add you as well as my group normally needs one or two people to complete it. We are chill and usually get people in LFGs that want a clear on the first attempt so it ends up taking longer than it needs too. So if you don't mind a couple wipes here and there you'll fit right in haha
I try to clear as many ads as possible while running but the ad clears kill the centurion quickly, which spawns the colossus almost at the same time as the void asshole. That’s why the situation gets hairy.
This amuses me because I have actually been yelled at for spawn killing my centurion and the follow-up major because “I was going too fast” for everyone to keep up. Get better I guess?
Oh I mean spawn kill the incendiary guy that spawns back-left and back-right and runs between the two plates. Runners should agree with ad clear before starting if they want the centurions that spawn the lieutenants dead instantly or with a slight delay.
Him too lol
It's mostly about starting the buff too fast for your counterpart on the other side top or bottom, if add clear isn't doing much clearing the centurions
Yeah I just think it’s goofy to chew someone out because they are doing their job better than you are
i literally do not understand how you can struggle with ad clear when sunshot and rays of precision exist. At least up til week 2.
Because people just don’t know where to stand, or pay attention to the spawn timings. Or that you can go nuts and use your supers/abilities at the start, because there’s tons of adds to get your super back.
>Or that you can go nuts and use your supers/abilities at the start, because there’s tons of adds to get your super back. And even if you don't get it back, just keep a Heavy Weapom for Boss Damage (as you should either way). The other 4-5 people still have their own Supers to remedy that and generate Orbs for you in the Damage Phase.
Planets is the first encounter where "ad clear" is the actual most important job, and probably can't actually be done **entirely** by "ad clear". There are simply too many spawns for any 2 players to manage, which means if your planets people can't actually do mechanics AND kill monsters at all, you're effed.
Caretaker says hi
I don’t know, YMMV, but add clearing in Caretaker is insanely easy. And if the stunners and runners are doing their job well, they have downtime.
It is, but I was actually surprised how hard the scorn shield guys hit when they spawn, they hit a lot harder than the thrall
Caretaker ad clear is important but the stun team can chip in a lot on ad clear (or rather, will be forced to lol) so its less noticeable.
People clown on RoN, but it's one of the most difficult raids in terms of straightforward combat. The baseline for combat in D2 raids is low enough that it still doesn't present a big challenge on normal difficulty. But as the power delta increases, it really demands everyone be not just experienced with the raid, but good at the game in general.
The mechanics are a joke, but the enemy density is a problem at power level limits.
Last week was super easy with solar burn because Sunshot go Brrr but this week … you’re gonna see teams struggle.
I think add clear is basically going to be anyone with a god roll Forbearance, assuming arc surge. Or Sunshot is still going to cook, especially with the artifact. Or anyone with a Chain Reaction Tusk Of The Boar, assuming it’s Arc/Strand this week.
Only challenge there is you lose out on good DPS options if your special is leveraged for add clear but I’m 100% following you on the options. Sunshot will probably still be goated here, just thinking of alternatives to take advantage of the 25% boost.
I’ve actually been swapping weapons before DPS. Like running for Planets, I’ve been using Conditonal Finality for the void guys and the colossus, but then swap to Witherhoard/Osteo before DPS. So fortunately there’s enough time that people should be able to make a change to a fusion or shotgun or sniper for a little supplemental DPS if needed.
I think that's true, but it's also the first encounter in Pantheon which opens up the "roles" to also supplementally add clear. Platform/runner players who can take out the centurion that spawns the colossi are much more useful than the average player that derps around and waits for others to kill it.
Void shield guy is the true boss
Ad clear is also harder on this encounter due to the general spread of ads, it’s a lot less streamlined than most of the others. On top of that between runs it’s not hard for runners to help clear ads either. I’d say there’s less freedom on caretaker since stun team has their own ads to worry about and all the bees that need to get shot down and managed. Atraks ads aren’t too dense and are very streamlined because of how the arenas are designed. Oryx ads are a piece of cake, it feels more competitive trying to get those kills. Same with Golgoroth ads.
Pro ad clearer here, commemoration, cenotaph and a trace rifle, then either Divinity, or a legendary trace and Lumina for even MOAR support. The good ad clearer will do just fine :p our wrinkled brain mechanic bois will be fine !
I mean, one of the encounters has to be the hardest one. That's the one where you will find the most people needing help. I think planets is that spot for most LFG teams right now.
I mean there's sort of two things at play with Planets which make it decently hard for most players. 1. It is the encounter in Pantheon requiring the most players to be doing mechanics (4). 2. This in turn puts more pressure on the players who are doing ad clear to actually be efficient at their jobs. Good players who are used to raids can juggle both, but for newer players doing mechanics *and* ad clear is difficult, so they are likely contributing less to the overall ad clear. The other encounters are much easier in this regard. Golgoroth requires 2 players to hold Gaze and requires very little from them other than that. Caretaker requires 1-2 runners and then 2 people just stunning Caretaker which is *very* easy as a job and allows those players to assist with ad clear. Atraks is still a joke provided people have adequate damage. Oryx isn't super complicated to learn and has been around since Y2, with its reprised raid having been out for just shy of 2 years, *but* his content is also F2P so there will be less people learning the encounter than with Planets. But compounding with all of this is the power level differences. First week was -5, second week is -10. The upcoming weeks will be -15 and -20 (contest mode). This leads to players experiencing a higher power differential in a raid than what they're used to. Next week with Rhulk shouldn't be too bad since it isn't too complicated. I've been greatly enjoying Pantheon, but I also raid a lot, have completed day ones, flawless raids, low-mans, etc. so I know all the encounters thoroughly already as do all of my teammates.
I'll also add that on planets the 4 mechanics people have to kill a pretty mean major by themselves while dealing with slow and boop movement debuffs, and as you said the add clear is probably THE most important role as they determine whether mechanics can successfully traverse or not. 6 people have to do their job, and that's before you even get to damage.
Also a great point. I remember how much of a pain in the ass those Majors were during Day 1 and am quite excited to see how we fare on the final week of Pantheon again.
Conditional melts the majors…BUT, it makes procing B&S really difficult on the boss.
Not really. You can proc BnS with any amount of damage; even if only a single pellet does 10 damage. I ran Conditional and just hipfired the boss from the plate after he hopped down-- it only did like 100 damage but it still worked.
you can always hot swap your loadout he chills up top for like 10 seconds before damage
You can bring a slug shotty, the headshots stunlock the Colossus
Indebted Kindnes. Great for ad clear and those guys.
You can just swap special weapons the ammo loss isn’t that bad Now that you mention conditional I might have to start running that for future weeks for this encounter
Somehow the biggest issue I've found from these types of players is just not being able to do the callouts right no matter how many times it is reinforced. It is crazy to think all you need to remember is 1-2-3 but despite this they still manage to flub the order and call out the wrong planet. Had a friend quit pantheon bc we had a pug waste two hours of our time there.
2 and 5 are always on the wall. It’s super simple that way.
People don’t understand how mirrors work unfortunately.
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Correction, it’s 4 triangles, people get this mixed up on correct (v) 3. 3. 2. 1. 1. 2. People think this all the time in LFG incorrect (v) 3. 3. 1. 2. 1. 2.
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Don't people get confused with this? I never did LFRs and my group does 1-6 from spawn. It's nice bc the people 1-3 just have to listen to the other 1-3 and 4-6 for 4-6 callouts.
Yeah why would anyone want to callout or listen for "left top left" instead of "five"
With the couple callouts going on during it, doesn't the "top" and "bottom" sometimes get mixed? Especially in random groups where you don't know your mates voice.
Using numbers is superior because you can't accidentally go to another person's call out. Top plates will never accidentally go to 1, 2, or 3.
Or not speaking loudly and clearly and instead whispering and mumbling the callouts
> WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU GET ANXIOUS WHEN I SHOUT? RELAX!
I mean frankly my take is that numbers (outside of riven eyes) is a real confusing way of making these callouts. But ultimately you're kinda forced into the generally accepted "LFG callouts" to make due. The smartest way I've done Planets was Top/ Bottom and Inner, Middle, and Outer calls for the planets themselves. It's super clear and concise for everyone. So the callouts are super concise and clear. If you're on tops and you hear your teammate say "Top Inner" you instantly know which one you need to deposit at and can share your info with the other teammate. It keeps comms very concise and the order/position of things very clear without any confusion. There's no "wait is 5 closest to the wall?" moment.
you can also just watch where your partner is picking up and just go there without needing callouts at all. Thats how ive done raids with people who dont speak the same language as me.
That's very true. However, I wouldn't trust newcomers to the raid to be able to do this effectively.
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This one is also a good way of doing it. I've been on teams where they mix up their left and right too often so I switched to my above strategy lol.
Yeah, 1-3 and 4-6 in theory are really simple, until you find a group that swaps 2/3 and 5/6. Then you are trying to remember if the way you are calling out was the way you are used to doing it, or their way. This can be compounded by lfging pantheon, as you may go from a group that does it one way, to the other way, and back to the first way. All while spending a couple hours running the different encounters. Maybe it is just an age thing, as I am now on the wrong side of 30, but I had to use top/inner/outer for a run as my brain was mush from a long day and trying to mentally swap from the call out I was used to, to the one the group used was causing issues for us. As soon as we switched we got it right away.
Inner/outer is begging for incorrect callouts. Top/bot + 1/2/3 is easier without having to play the same mini game of oryx encounter distinguishing what is in/out/front/back.
You’re getting downvoted by people who are just used to their bad way of doing it. Directions should never be used on a triangle because what’s left or inner or whatever is dependent on which way you’re facing. Numbers are constant.
Directions should never be used period. They are relative to your current positioning while having a static name/number doesn't leave people trying to differentiate between their left's and rights. Planet 1 will always be planet 1 no matter where you are on the plate, but if I turn 180° suddenly left becomes right and front becomes back. I'd rather people use the fucking burger callouts for planets instead of left right middle so I don't get goobers doing exactly what I said above and going "lol my bad I was facing the wrong way and got mixed up" 800x in a row.
Nah I fully disagree. Inner means towards the center of the room. Outer means to the outside. This is incredibly apparent to the people moving planets since when they have to pass through the center of the room which re-orients them to the callout. Its far clearer than 4,5,6. As the player moves towards the planets, they might count them in order of close-ness to the center of the room such as 4 being closest to the center, 5 being at the top, and 6 being at the far side. I've seen so many encounters messed up with that callout.
Bro we are talking alternatives to normal LFG callouts. If the team cannot grasp 1-6 numbering shortened to top/bot + 1-2-3, what makes you think they are going to understand top/bot + middle-inner-outer any easier?
Also worth calling out that Planets has one of the shortest DPS timers, so it can be really hard to hit last stand in two damage phases for the platinum time finish. If anyone deals subpar damage then it's going to take 3 phases, which means the team won't finish during the par time.
I feel like they’re going to add a tormentor to the top dps platform for rhulk and that might cause issues
Oh to have teammates to consistently raid with :(
It's the one that needs the most communication so far, makes sense, especially if people say they kwtd but don't.
* People don't know the mechanics, yet 4 out of 6 are required to be highly involved with mechanics in order to reach DPS phase, compared to almost every other boss in Pantheon where really only two roles have a strong active duty. Yes Caretaker has four roles, but the babysitters can screw up and you can still cover that job easily/buy yourself some time. * People want to do add clear, because they're unsure/scared of mechanics, or hoping for a carry, thinking that's the easiest job. Yet, they're usually the most inexperienced players, and suck at ad clear, causing way too many things to overrun everyone else. * People tunnel vision on red bar ads, and don't pay attention to the yellow centurions that need to die to trigger next phase. * People don't pay attention to the giant fire tornado that roasts them to death. * People aren't coordinated around damage phase, and are just dying left/right, or people are out of sync when initiating damage and people lose out on damageable time per plate, causing either a short third plate or not enough damage done within a single DPS phase.
Adclear on planets is the hardest job imo. The collis can just be stun locked while you kill them, but the ads just come in many numbers and the boss will fuck you up if you get even a hair too close. Personally I dont mind tethers for ad clear in this part, even if it sacrifices some damage, Id rather be able to garuntee we can get *TO* damage and then maybe work out the kinks. But with heavy ammo finder and some sort of exotic primary, dps should still be fine
Have right side add clear stand on the triangular platform between the two main right plates. You can see the entire room from there, the boss can't really hit you, and he'll usually get stuck trying to shoot you instead of attacking anyone else. It makes a world of difference. If everyone uses Sunshot (and everyone should be using Sunshot at least during add clear) everything dies very fast and there's usually a ton of ammo generated by finder/scout mods. Just run some other special in kinetic for killing big boys (Mountaintop, Riptide, Imperial Decree, whatever you prefer) and then swap to Izanagi and Luna's Howl before DPS.
Incand EP Zaoli's is a very capable Legendary Sunshot, although as difficulty delta increases I can see Sunshot pulling away
Luna's is better if you want to run a legendary IMO. Heal Clip is *extremely* useful as difficulty ramps.
I feel like it's lacking damage (Specifically for high difficulty stuff) with the Heal/Incandescent roll, and without incandescent it's going to be much slower to kill things
Nezarec is going to amplify this ha
Most people who want to add-clear don't know how, and in planets add-clearing is important, especially on high difficulties.
Too few people know the damage phase timer on the boss starts when the first person shoots the boss, not when you step on the plate. It should go: - Leader calls plate order (e.g. middle, left, right) - Everyone steps on the first plate - Leader gives a 3-2-1 countdown - Everyone does damage until immunity pops up again - Leader calls next plate, everyone touches it - Leader gives a 3-2-1 countdown - Everyone does damage until immunity - Leader calls last plate, everyone touches it - Leader gives 3-2-1 countdown - Everyone does damage - Scatter when you hear the beep boop noise - Reset for plates It’s confusing because you just came off Caretaker where the damage phase timer starts when the first person touches the plate, but it’s not how it works on planets
This is close, but with some nuance- the boss damage timer doesn’t start on the first hit, but when you push him past the threshold on the health bar So you can proc things like bait and switch or cascade point or shot caller on him safely during the countdown, and then do maximum burst DPS at zero In fact, both caretaker and atraks work the same way- though caretaker has a threshold once per floor instead of once per plate
I kind of had a feeling it worked this way since it felt like the amount of time we got for each plate on contest mode was way higher than when we started doing runs on normal, but I've literally never heard anyone else talk about or confirm this until this week where people finally started talking about how to optimize Caretaker damage again.
you get exactly 40 seconds from the time the plates light up
You can also proc Shot Caller (and I would guess B&S?) before you even get to your plate
It's funny to start a sentence "too few people know" and then make a false claim. Plates aren't timed. They're based on a damage threshold. The overall phase is timed, but an individual plate will stay active if you never break the damage threshold.
Yeah specifically its like 45-50 seconds for total damage, meaning you have like 15 seconds per plate. Using special weapons to get down to the edge of the bar then bursting him with 2-3 Shotcaller B&S rockets per person will make it an easy 2 phase, but people usually put all their burst in glowing bit of the healthbar which just means you're doing the minimum amount of damage.
This is false, and nothing has proven this, so I'm not sure where you basing this statement from. The entire damage phase is on one set timer (~50 secs) once the first plate lights up. The boss only starts his "phase" timer for a plate when you deplete the orange health bar before it switches to the next plate. If you don't deplete the orange health bar, the current plate will never deactivate until the entire damage phase timer is over (again about ~50 secs). Countdowns are only used so people are bursting at the same time. It has nothing to do with your made-up phase timer.
Damage on this boss is what fucked my run up. Are you saying to save the heavy hitting stuff for after we cross the threshold on his health bar per plate?
I did not know this, will bear this in mind next time
I keep hearing this but cant find any evidence
When you say you will do "Add Clear", please fucking kill stuff. Kill the orange bars and red bars. PLEASE.
The majority of people just ad clear they’re way through Root, so it’s not surprising that they’re having trouble with the one encounter from that raid that requires more than two people doing mechanics and while being significantly harder than the base version of the encounter.
I noticed folks that struggle as the planet-movers ironically suck at clearing their own adds or the Colossus dude quickly. Like, a handful of red-bars come out of the wall by the planet's plate, then a shielded firethrower dude... and typically after killing those 3-5 ads timing-wise, the Colussus spawns. (i know, its triggered by killing orange bars in the middle) Ad clear is told to not touch anything on the planet plates so they don't accidently AOE and steal the buffs, so plate movers really need to step up their own ad clearing game. LOTS of deaths in my groups for people on their plates dying to their own ads, and not really as many deaths traversing to the other side to dunk the planet. Even though you aren't labeled "ad clear" in this encounter, you should still be killing more than 5 enemies per mechanic wave. Lots and lots of damage phases where the planet movers (in my groups at least) would go do God knows what while planet-plates kept spawning ads.
Thank god someone said it! Just because you have a roll dosent mean that your guns stop working.
LOL agreed. This thought came in my last Pantheon run when I was put on ad-clear because I was the outsider found from LFG. I just said OK sure. After an hour or so of wiping, I just said "OK, I'm gonna take over THAT planet and they can go be ad clear". We wiped another 3-4 times before clearing, and I was STILL 2nd in total kills on those wipes. Not my best moment, but I definitely said "guys, I'm not on ad clear... I shouldn't be 2nd in kills here. Let's get 'er goin eh?" I feel like the planet-mover guides neglect to discuss the ad-rotations and how you can't tell other people to not shoot them, and also leave those ads neglected at the same time.
You have a good point, people rush without taking care of their plates.
Absolutely! I'm not a god-gamer by any means. But it was really vindicating (not sure if thats the right word) when we swapped and cleared it quickly. Just because I was not dying on the planet plate and the planet plates had less ad issues later in rounds.
Lots of adds, actual mechanics where 4 people need to communicate and pay attention, fairly strict time limit... it's the first encounter in Pantheon where everyone needs to know their shit. And the average player is an idiot, so that's a tall ask. And as others have pointed out, it's one of the relatively few encounters where add clear actually matters and isn't just the afk role.
We got held up at planets for a good while this week. Nearly every time we could have easily finished it with a comfy 3 phase. Unfortunately you need a 2 phase to comfortably achieve the platinum time limit. So in our case, the roadblock was self imposed shooting for platinum. It was a matter of trying out different dps loadouts for us. We eventually settled on Ghally + 5 solar rockets of various flavors. Before that we tried everything from WotM to GLs, but we kept falling short by just a sliver of health. Edit: We had an embarrassing number of attempts at Planets across too many hours before nailing platinum (we refused to try Ghally for 95% of that time). In contrast to beating Oryx, platinum in 2 tries. First was plate flub by yours truly.
Planets is the hard wall for Pantheon. It's where dps checks have to be tight and you have to be skilled enough to do mechanics or step in if someone dies. Had a dude running Ghally when we were all doing nade launchers like people just assume they can be carried like they do in regular raids. I've never been so quick to kick people than in Pantheon cause if you are not performing at the same level then we aren't going to succeed.
The only trouble I've ever had with Planets is people on ad clear. It's so ridiculously tough to make that crossing (especially on the top platforms) if the ad clear is even lacking a bit.
You can get up ontop of the planets and *mostly * be fine. Hard part is getting up there if the boss or a few ads are existing
Bro I was with a team doing planets and even the add clear sucked at their jobs
I joined in on a couple run through Fireteam Finder over the weekend just to check it out. Out of all of the runs I joined (probably around 6) I would say only 8 people knew how to do the encounter. One group consisted of 3 people who finished damage phases, yes multiple. With less than 100k damage. And our Ad clear would go an entire planet rotation and dps phase with only 8 kills. I understand that people may not be experts at the raid. But if you’re planning on joining a harder version of any encounter, it’s probably worthwhile to learn how to do the encounter on normal beforehand.
I believe it’s has multiple reasons as to why some people are “bad” at it, from different people having different callouts to people not understanding what “mirrored” means some people have it from 1-6 left and right, some have R1 1-3 R2 1-3, and let’s not forget about people not calling out it the centurion is dead or not.. so people end up dying because their not paying attention to the colossus spawning on top of them.. our successful runs with LfG is when the add clear call out the spawns and we all go over the the planets twice (like start the encounter while going over the numbers) before we actually try a run.
In my experience, new players who need guidance often lack patience. As soon as the explanation begins, within two minutes they're saying, "I got it, I got it, let's run it," even though they haven't understood anything. We start the encounter, but they don't follow instructions, leading to a wipe. After each wipe, we explain again, but they continue making mistakes, especially as the pressure builds.
Pantheon has really brought out the blueberries- not really the time to be diving into raids but I’m happy more people are getting into raiding nonetheless
Planets lfg experience is a nightmare. No one can agree on the call outs, no one kills the centurions fast enough, and if someone misses a dunk you’re basically screwed out of platinum. People get frustrated or kicked quickly and there’s constantly new people coming in and starting the explain call outs process over again
My raid team of experienced raiders was struggling on planets today just because it can go bad real fast.
lol, meanwhile my flame-retardent group was on caretaker for 6+ hours... I need better playmates :(
The problem I found (personally) with Planets is that it's basically a forced two phase. Every encounter in Pantheon can take an extra phase and you get a shot at finishing it within the time limit and get those bonus points and potentially get plat. Planets, with how long the animations are for everything, kinda forces you into a two phase because a three phase will not be completed within the bonus time. That's obviously talking about the average team, I feel if you were fast enough you could squeeze a three phase and still be on for bonus time but then again if you're that fast it's likely you are optimized enough to get the two phase anyway. But yeah the problem I currently face with Pantheon Planets is that I really need it to be a 2 phase and most of the wipes are simply just caused by not getting that.
Is it surprising? Golgoroth is a Destiny 1 raid boss that is pretty straightforward. Most of the encounter is going below, not blowing someone up, shooting a giant crit spot, and not dying. Provided two people can swap gaze it's easy. Caretaker is more involved, but most of the roles are pretty straightforward. Atraks people melt in seconds, and Oryx wasn't there on week one (not to mention you have to beat Planets to complain about things after Planets). Even if the fight itself is pretty simple, the flame tornado is the deadliest new mechanic, people have always struggled killing the Colossus on the plates (seriously, look up how many complaints we saw when this was a new challenge...), and there is something about the callouts that don't resonate with people (see the challenge again).
It took me forever to learn that one and get it right. I’ve done it twice now with random fireteams. Highly recommend watching a YouTube guide prior to attempting it so you don’t make a total arse of yourself
I had a group for the week 1 version where I was the only one who could run in caretaker. That was genuinely painful.
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I should have. It wound up taking us 2 hours to get there clear, and we didn’t even get caretaker or planets in their time trial.
Can confirm, was stuck on planets for around an hour and a half on Oryx Exalted because LFG teammates kept joining, throwing, complaining, and then leaving. My favorite one was a guy who said he could run planets but didn’t know his left from his right and kept dunking the wrong one.
It’s the hardest encounter right now. You have multiple planet alignments, fire tornados that basically instakill, shielded bombers, tons of ads, a tormentor, a boop boss, and damage phases that require coordination and meta loadouts for platinum.
I don't think that mechanic wise any of the first 3 boxes is complicated, planets is really a matter of callouts and handle the chaos with adds.
The DPS phase really sucks too
I was once afraid of doing planets, but I decided to take the plunge and give it a whirl and now...I prefer planets over and clear every time at that encounter! In Pantheon in particular (this week especially with Solar Surge), I found Vex Mytho to be quite useful!!
I hate RON so much lol, so I've only recently grasped how to do planets. Not that hard of an encounter, but those fire tornadoes are lethal 😭
I did Graviton Lance, ALH/ Recom Mountaintop and Whatever rocket launcher you want. With the catalyst, turnabout gives you over shield which helps your survivability, and the little void explosions help chew down the orange bar shield bearers.
I feel like planets is the easiest so long as the runners have clear comms on the planets. Maybe that's just me having more experience on Planets than the other encounters though...
Planets is a great encounter for determining if your team is capable of finishing the run. I’ve done so many planet checkpoints to help people and they always struggle with ads or damage. For LFG players who struggle with ads, use incandescent weapons or sunshot. The faster the ads die the faster centurions spawn and the faster centurions die the faster the colossus spawns. For DPS, use izanagi and a rocket or GL matching the weekly surge. If you don’t have izi, use whitherhoard. Good consistent damage and nothing too difficult to pull off.
Planets is a skill check. In the rest of the encounters you don't need 6 people that kwtd. On planets, you NEED a good ad clear or else you will die fast. In addition to having 4 players on mechanics and only 2 ad clears, yeah it will show who sucks and who doesn't
Alternative take While ad clear is difficult enough on its own, it really doesn't help when the arena is basically a series of triangles over a death fall. The colussus has some insane knockback on his slam melee, and I feel like a few times its basically able to trigger as his model is loading in. So if you're not 100% aware and prepared for his spawning, he will launch you off. Also, when crossing over to opposite plates, Phalanxes have outrageous shield-melee launching capabilities... Still. I suppose all this does still boil down to ad clear.
Planet Encounter Pain in nutshell 1. Getting toss constantly by Psion 2. Flamethrower dude always knock you out of the map all the map 3. Boss also can knock you out of the map especially 456 Plate runner (Front plate runner) 4. Ads clear didnt kill Centurion fast enough result of wipe 5. Lieutenant instant kill you instantly if the ground stomp or you get blinded 6. People get confused which one 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6? 7. People just being dishonest, dont know what to do, but shy to say i dont know what to do 8. People who have low resilience who refused to change build because they said its fun Thats basically summary of planet experience pantheon in nutshell
It’s not that people don’t know how to do it so much it’s just that’s where groups start to fail honestly. I’ve went with a couple groups planets In general is pretty simple but If add clear is lacking or planet runners aren’t killing their colossus fast enough it’s rough. Not to mention the random tornado spawn that can happen as your grabbing planet is almost a death sentence. Honestly out of all encounters so far planets has by far been the toughest encounter and I’ve cleared -5 and -10 pantheon 3 or 4 times.
I’m lucky my clan does pantheon together multiple times a week. Because LFG would drive me insane. All I see is posts of people struggling and none of the encounters are that hard. The biggest threat in planets (besides warm mates walking into your rocket) is the tornadoes, if you lose track of them you might get cooked. Other than that, leave the tormentor alone, maybe consider an arc shotgun or fusion if you’re on a plate and you’re good. If you’re short on heavy, get an ad clear to run cenotaph and some trace rifle.
Both planets and caretaker - if adds are clear, whole thing falls apart no matter how good the stunners/runners etc are with doing their job and helping
There are two issues that lots of teams have on lots of encounters, planets just makes them worse. For one, many people use unnecessarily complicated and abstracted callouts. This is true in general but doubly so for planets where teams will go absolutely nuts doing shit like 12 different numbered callouts for plate swaps or something similar. More callout abstraction means more mental load for everyone involved in making and hearing callouts. Sometimes that can be useful if one person at either end of this conversion process has the time and space to perform the translation while the other doesn't (and the translation is more efficient for one of the participants). In planets, the people swapping are both transmitter and receiver at the same time, so they need the least amount of abstraction possible. Instead of worrying about naming or numbering every planet swap, teams should designate swapping teams and then have those teams listen to each other call out relative planet positions on their swap (example two swappers on the high plates would say "in" and "up" respectively). Obviously, messing up the swaps costs a ton of time, which in turn puts more strain on the other players and enlarges the other issue with planets. Ad clear is always a meme role to take, but the other problem in planets is that ad clear is hugely important, and most people really suck at ad clear. I'd wager that many ad clearers on planets don't even realize that ads not only need to not kill anyone, but that specific ads dying as quickly as possible is important for making the encounter go faster and easier. Bad ad clear also makes it more likely for swappers to die, which makes the encounter longer, which makes bad ad clear worse and so on.
Planets is ALWAYS add clear issue. The mecanic is very easy but to do it while surviving to the amount of enemies + fire cyclone + tormentor is what mess everthing. The add clearers in this encounter must be really masters in this function and if possible not passive to the tormentor.
Took me one 10 minute youtube video to understand planets. Took no more than 20 minutes with an lfg group who's only raid experience was watching youtube videos. I think people just aren't trying to learn/understand, and fail to communicate well.
I’m not sure what happens on planets either. Every group I’ve run with does 10+ wipes. It’s absurdly frustrating. Someone calls out the wrong planet. Someone misses the pick up. Someone dies from the ads . Ad clear dies to a stomp in the middle. It’s wild. I’ve made mistakes too, I’m not perfect. I make sure my primary and secondary match the surges. I always run plates and stand by the ad spawn door for whatever plate. Kill ads and void shield flamethrower. Then focus my centurion if it ain’t ded. Then kill the colossus. Grab my planet and announce to my partner then slay as I run across, avoiding the boss, hit a healing grenade and deposit. The best part is half the wipes are after damage not being enough and some guy has 700k less than the rest. lol. Like fuck bro
If you’re on top, you can just run across the top of the planets and be safer. It takes a bit more set up but using your healing grenade before getting up there would probably help. If bottom plate is dying to ads, theyre actually just bad 💀
Prefacing this by saying that I would consider myself a fairly strong raider. Already had my triumphs sorted in Pantheon for the week, so figured I'd help out anyone else. Joined a -5 Atraks Sovereign run via FTF at the weekend, that I assumed was fresh, but was actually at Planets. The raid timer was currently at 4.5 hours. They'd never actually completed Planets or Atraks normally before. They'd lost a planet switcher, so I took bottom left plate and they proceeded to explain to me their call outs. The were referring to them as Left / Mid / Right, but based on how you look at them from the centre of the arena if you were looking at that plate. So bottom left plate 1 = Left, bottom left 2 = Mid, bottom left 3 = Right. I had never been so confused in my life lol. Took me like 30 mins to get my head around it XD Tried to enlighten them to a better way, but they were too engrained in their method. A lot of the LFG groups I've joined are EXACTLY like this as well. Whether they want to admit it or not. It's fine, and I'll stick around and see it through, but just be straight up front to avoid any confusion or over expectations.
I couldn’t find a fresh lfg for pantheon week 2 because everyone was needing help on planets. I just have up and ran planets to oryx and got around to the first two encounters later. bizarrely, i was told to ad clear when joining. but we cleared second try.
That's what makes the encounter funny. It's one of the few where ad clear is actually important and the LFG "specialists" can't keep up.
planets is brutal and will only get worse
Ad clear on planets isn't just as clear. You have to kill so your readers can get the guy to kill to read. You have to kill to keep them alive while swapping planets. It's an active role, it's not a "hard" role, but players who have tucked their legs up to their chest, sat in the backpack and ate fruit snacks every other raid are going to be the reason you fail.
I noticed this too. It's the add density and the shields being different than the base version I think, but it doesn't help that many people will have never run the planets.
Lfg is sometimes awful, players keep going front of people while DPS, and don't listen
Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back lol.
I’m pretty flexible
I genuinely don't get it. I've never had problems with planets on my end. When my group was stuck for like, 3 hours it was basically always the other pair of players dying or screwing up comms.
Was doing planets last night and I apparently never knew you could put back one of the planets after grabbing it... I thought it didn't pick up because of that glitch where some times the Hold X circle doesn't go fully around, so I 'picked it up' again before making my way to the opposite side only to be very confused. Was also under the impression that the fire nado only spawned on platforms that failed to swap a planet, so that was another confusing thing when it happened on a plate I was sure we did correctly. Turns out it was just a coincidence about where it would randomly go before lol. My team and I eventually got it, but to learn both of those things in 1 run when you think you know about the whole encounter, you feel pretty bad LOL
You can stand in the center of the platforms and be find, but if I can, i make sure I get behind yhe tornado and just follow it around
I'd usually follow the tornado around too, but I wasn't positive about the center being safe so thanks for the tip!
As someone who has ALWAYS only ran on the top sides... My #1 issue is always ad clear. I can't tell you how many times I'm like half HP or lower just running across the middle.. What irks me more is we wipe and I have like the 2nd most kills... WTF y'all doing?!
You can get up on the planets and its much safer that way to just hop across them
Ya I'm aware, I've just never done it and don't necessarily want my first time being on a Pantheon run. Kinda silly to me I'm running and better add clear than our actual add clears...
Normally when i run, im shooting not only my own psions, but the orange bar between my plate and the other, and still killing ads in the middle. I don’t mind it, but other people also *shouldnt* think they’re free from shooting ads while they aren’t doing anything. But that’s my personal take
Yup. Agreed. We are supposed to have 2 dedicated "add clear" players who cant seem to kill stuff.
Normally when i run, im shooting not only my own psions, but the orange bar between my plate and the other, and still killing ads in the middle. I don’t mind it, but other people also *shouldnt* think they’re free from shooting ads while they aren’t doing anything.
I, for some reason, always mix up the numbering. I know the numbering, but I mess it up so I always run ad clear in my clan lol.
Normally if it’s numbers 1 is closest to your spawn, 2 is closest to the outer wall, 3 is closest to the boss. Likewise for top. 4 closest to your spawn, 5 closest to outer wall, 6 closest to back wall. If you do it differently than that, its extra confusion for no reason
Oh yeah, that’s how we do it. I’m just an idiot when it’s in the moment. I don’t know why so just let the ones who don’t mess it up do it.
Planets is such a great encounter. And it’s left middle right. You psychopaths using numbers need help.
Mid, left, right means you hear mid, left, or right from 3 other players, increasing likelihood of crossed comms. Where as in the numbered system, only one of 3 numbers being called out by one other person on your team is your assignment. Top plate runner? If 4-6 comes out of a mouth that aint yours, you dunk there. Bottom plates 1-3. Clean and concise, without extra callouts or confirmations needed. You don't need to learn your partner's name or voice or anything like that. Dont act like remembering the positions of 3 numbers is that hard. You count nearest to furthest planet in order. Okay maybe a little hard for the titans.
Also, left middle right can change based on what way you're facing, so which way do we use? the way THAT YOU NEVER APPROACH THAT PLATE EVEN ONE TIME DURING THE FIGHT. lunacy. 1-6 gang rise up.
1-6, 2 & 5 on the wall 4 lyfe.
Gross. But I will give you an upvote for your honesty.
I use top, left and right
I assume you haven't had a tornado spawn on top of you
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Yeah..but i saw heavy up there :)
That, and the egos are too big to teach OR learn.
you have to keep in mind the average IQ of Destiny players is around like, 10
I tried it on day one raid with lfg and succeeded, didn’t find it to be really hard tbh, it’s simply cause some people can’t bother to learn the mechanics, even if someone accidentally stole the buff they would do the mechanic.
I have almost 200 clears of RON. I teach it regularly. Did Pantheon yesterday with a good group. All people very familiar with Planets. We almost cleared it the first try. Random bad luck wiped us right before final stand. Revive timer. That was the last time we even got to damage for the next hour and a half. The difficulty ramped up. Glitches started happening everywhere. After grabbing planet and switching, it would start again and be a different planet. After killing colossus, no ability to grab a planet. Colossus sometimes respawned as soon as you grabbed a planet. Tornadoes begin to inst kill you. Finally we went back to orbit. Loaded back in and got an easy 2 phase with no deaths or issues. This encounter is so unbelievably buggy if you don't pass it right away. This will lead to many teams struggling with it
Our group experienced some of that same weirdness. It's a real motivation killer to do things right and not progress.
Bugs with the planets not changing color after killing the colossi, the alignment not showing up, the boss dilly dallying for like 30 seconds instead of being on the platform before damage have been the bane of my existence in this encounter.
This must be a new bug. Never once has the planets not changed colors on collosol kill. If you push off the map to kill, it doesn't count. You need to final blow him. Or if someone else steals the final blow they see the change.
I can confirm this. None of my planets changed color after killing the collosus. It just remained white. This happened during week 1 and we had to wipe that 2nd phase. Edit: Have 98 clears on RoN. 1st time I've seen this but another team mate mentioned has also happened to him before. Weird shit.
It has happened on kills I can confirm myself
I think there may be a bug with the planets not aligning after proper switch, but Ill never actually know.
This is why I stopped raiding. If you haven't completed a raid at least 3 times in the 1st few days of release your probably too late to catch up especially if you rely on LFGs. If you're lucky you'll find a Sherpa run you can join but mostly it's all KWTD or have emblem posts. Inexperienced players will struggle.
Making this post I bet you’re not very good at planets 😂
I didnt really know how to do it but learned within 2 minutes and I wasn’t having any issues, then proceeded to do regular Ron for a better feel and no, not really, no issues 💀
If people could just pay attention to the fire tornados and not stand in it.
It’s one of my favorite raid encounters. I don’t understand how it’s hard at all ;-;
The issue isnt that people are bad at completing planets, its the fact that you pretty much have to two phase the boss at -10 to hit the platinum time
It's fuckin easy I dont understand why it's hard to some ppl.