Reviews their recent experience with the new Destiny 2 raid "Desert Perpetual," discussing its high difficulty, the impact of recent stat changes, shifting community sentiment, Bungie's response to feedback, and the challenges and expectations around contest mode raids.

Community Reactions and Raid Difficulty

• The Destiny 2 community is highly engaged and divided after the release of the new raid, "Desert Perpetual."

• Most players agree that Desert Perpetual is harder than Salvation's Edge, with a 92% poll majority supporting this view.

• Factors for increased difficulty include recent stat changes and persistent bugs affecting stat scaling and abilities.

• The raid emphasizes strict damage checks in nearly every encounter, requiring constant build and loadout adjustments.

Mechanics, Strategies, and Loadout Challenges

• Teams can choose their boss encounter order, which increases the importance and effectiveness of "scouting" external streams for mechanics.

• Non-linear raid progression allowed raid teams to leverage scouts more efficiently, likely shortening the contest duration.

• Loadout and build flexibility, especially maximizing super stats, was critical to success—console players struggled more due to slower loadout swapping.

• Many old loadouts became obsolete; players had to experiment and adapt throughout the raid.

Bungie's Response and Community Feedback

• Bungie acknowledged the raid was harder than intended and is investigating issues like unexpected enemy power deltas, PC crashes, and inconsistent rally pack behavior.

• Some players feel contest mode difficulty is too high and restricts raid accessibility to only a tiny subset of the community.

• Bungie is monitoring reward quality, particularly relating to the drop quality in contest mode versus normal mode.

Community Discussions and Differing Perspectives

• Some long-time and high-level players feel the contest mode's difficulty and required adaptations made the experience less rewarding and more exhausting than fulfilling.

• Feedback highlighted issues with current power leveling relevance, diminished loot incentives, and the perception that contest mode isn’t worthwhile unless the rewards improve.

• Teaching and managing the raid is seen as especially difficult for casual or clan groups, and the new stat system has disrupted many established builds.

Loadout Swapping and Accessibility

• Loadout swapping was deemed essential for completion; players are advocating for improved in-game systems, especially for console/controller users.

• The speaker suggests mapping loadouts to controller buttons to streamline mid-raid adjustments.

Reflections and Closing Thoughts

• The speaker appreciates the challenge and maintains that contest mode should be hard, but acknowledges the need for clarity from Bungie on design intent and improved accessibility features.

• The difficulty and mechanics led to a sense of accomplishment but also significant exhaustion and frustration among players.

• Reward systems and ongoing gameplay incentives remain major discussion points for the community.

Destiny 2 Raid

i have periodically been looking on places i've been looking on like twitter and other places and the community is currently on fire more so than normal because we just finished the new raid and can i just say he was hard like i mean there ain't no way around it guys he was a hard raid i have been humbled you know i've asked for harder now balls for years. And we got it with Salvation's Edge. And I thought that I thought after Salvation's Edge that Bungie was going to pull back.

This raid did not pull back. No, no. This raid, Desert Perpetual here, dare I say, to me, it was harder than Salvation's Edge. And let me give you a few reasons why.

A huge reason why I think this raid was so difficult is because we recently just had all these different stat changes. So I, like many of you, are still in the learning process. We're still trying to figure things out.

When you have such a big change in your sandbox, and then on top of that, I think there's a bunch of bugs going on with like stat scaling and stuff like that. There were things that my squad and I were using early on that really f***ed us. The Warlocks, nothing against Benny and Les.

Benny and Les popped off. but we didn't realize just how important 100 stat in your super was the moment we made that change and went to 100 super dude we were getting back-to-back supers like that that was probably the most pivotal change we made in our loadouts because when we started getting damage checked which is essentially what this raid is this raid is literally damage check the raid i haven't even tried normal i don't know how bad normal is probably not bad but but In terms of contests, it's Damage Check the Raid. Can I get a poll on this, though? Which raid was harder? Salvation's Edge or Desert Perpetual?

Wow, 92% say Desert Perpetual. dp doesn't mess around man it doesn't mess around the reason why i think this raid was also harder than previous raids imagine this because you can choose which boss you want to do first and i just let you know every raid team out there has scouts what a scout is just your seventh member of your raid squad and they do what they're supposed to do they go into other people's streams and they scout mechanics and they scout uh different encounters so that if your team does fall behind it will offer this information to you so that you can catch up also if you guys are bogged down like in verity uh they can pass on vital information that can help you uh reach a breakthrough and that's why last year during salvation's edge you had so many people blocking out their screens and muting themselves and all that stuff because it was a it was a war of of scouting where essentially everybody was scouting information the thing about this raid is you had so many people on different accounts because you could start whatever encounter you want you don't nothing nothing is linear here you could start with wyvern or you could start with the hydra hobgoblin and so it actually gave scouts an opportunity to provide the information to the raid squads that were in the race for contests Had it been linear. For instance, had everyone started with Wyvern.

And then went to Hydra. And then went to Hobgoblin. With no information being fed to them.

And then the final boss. Dare I say, I think this raid may have gone longer than Salvation's Edge. Maybe my logic behind this is flawed.

But I think that maybe the rules for its completion would have taken longer. Another reason why this raid is being perceived as much harder. In comparison to literally every other raid. And we're going to get into the obvious things.

Another reason is... Um, oh, what was I about to say, man? I'm tired.

I was about to make a very good points. God damn it. I freaking lost it. Really? Bungie tweeted out that the rate was harder than it was supposed to be.

Mons, can you give me this tweet? All right. So from the Destiny 2 team right here. Hey, y'all, we enjoyed watching Desert Perpetual World's first race and contest attempts completions throughout the weekend.

But also want to let everyone know we are tracking feedback items and issue reports that have been coming in from the community. A few higher priority raid conversations we are looking into this week. Number one, power deltas for the contest raid difficulty. We're seeing the reports of enemies being at a higher delta than what the activity advertises. Example, enemies have a skull icon next to them instead of a sword.

We will investigate. Two, PC crashes after five plus hours, certain hardware configurations. Dude, that's been going on for years, Bungie. Uh, three rally packs that fully refresh an ammo abilities consistently yes feedback items we're seeing number one some players are concerned that clearing this content required loadout swapping lengthy ad clearing phases stop by ammo near perfect execution related some players feel contest difficulty may have been tuned too high for this rate so that only an incredibly small portion of the community could have shot have a shot at completing it additional while we absolutely wish for contest mode to challenge your loadouts your teamwork and your puzzle solving abilities the highest end of damage has been reported to feel that it is requires far more than expected.

Each raid's reshift has been unique, especially at contest difficulty. This will continue, and for our players who desire challenge, do not worry, we will continue to offer it. That said, we will use feedback from this weekend to inform our future as we continue to develop these experiences.

Number two, we are looking into reward quality. What tiers rewards within the raid are dropping within contest difficulty? their power in relation to yours there are ways to increase your reward quality and normal difficulty via raid feats that's right we're gonna be doing that tomorrow and we'll be watching feedback around these systems as players get deeper into them this is not an exhaustive list of all the feedback or issues we have seen come through but we wanted to let you know we are monitoring the conversation please share with what other thoughts you have below and we'll keep an eye on this thread as we start digging into these items so this was this morning okay so So, let me just say, yes, the raid was very hard.

Dude, I'm gonna bring up something. These loadouts didn't exist. All of my loadouts that I originally brought into, the only loadout that stayed was probably my yeet loadout. I changed so many different loadouts throughout this entire raid out of pure necessity, and the builds were constantly changing because you just had to try things differently.

I have never seen so many damage checks in my life. Normally in other raids, say for instance, even Salvation's Edge, it's like you have your first encounter that you get through. You do it and that may take you a while, but you're able to progress though because it's not a damage check boss. Then you have the damage check maybe in the second encounter, right?

But it is in the most severe. Then you'll have some sort of super mechanic heavy encounter in the middle and then you'll get into the final raid boss, which is going to be your ultimate damage check. This raid was like the equivalent of four witnesses.

It was like the equivalent of every hardest damage check you can imagine being back to back to back. And so many of you were coming in here and saying things like Wyvern's the hardest. Hydra's the hardest.

Hobgoblin's the hardest. Which I didn't think Hobgoblin was the hardest. But let me just say, they were all f***ing hard.

I will say this. I completely understand why Bungie unlocks normal now after World's First is completed in Contest. And if this is the level of difficulty they're going to be striving for, 1000% normal needs to unlock. Because there's just going to be your vast majority of players that are just going to play normal.

Now, Now, what are your thoughts as the difficulty of this raid? Do you think contest modes should be this level of difficulty? Let's get a poll on it.

And I've seen different comments on this. Some comments I've seen is like, I enjoyed watching contests more than I did playing it. But I enjoyed just jumping into normal as soon as contest was lifted.

All right. Poll results are coming in right now. 65% says yes.

Around 64%. 35, 34% roughly say no. You had to loadout swap to beat the boss. That's within the same vein too.

Because yes, there was a lot of loadout swapping here that occurred. And no one got f***ed harder than probably controller players, especially console players. Because loadout swapping on console, it's just slower.

There are many times like mid encounter, like I'm jumping over there and I'm like, I'm I'm loadout swapping poop damage. You see what I mean? But if you're a console player, I'm pretty sure when you open up your inventory, your cursor's here, and then it takes you a long time to get over here, and then click this and drag. You see what I mean? Can you imagine swapping on PlayStation 4?

Dude, I can't even imagine playing this game on PlayStation 4. all right i it's it's time to move on you know i mean i'm just saying guys i'm not trying to be rude to my my oh i know i've got somebody probably watching right now who's on playstation 4 probably like across but it's time to just time to leave them behind you know i don't think anyone probably cleared on last gen consoles i wouldn't think now you you remember i've been telling you guys that bungee had some play testers that are really really good and you you all were sitting there saying things like cap cross no the devs suck and y'all bring up things like you remember when joe couldn't win his 1v1 against that overload which by the way let me just say that overload there was something wrong with him all right that was no normal overload that was like a super overload champion the point is bungee absolutely Absolutely has some amazing play testers. And the reason why I think this raid was pretty damn hard, a tweet here from Ascended Nomad contest mode was QA'd by members of the community that competed for World's First Salvation's Edge. Not going to lie, big props for that. However, the resulting environment may have alienated a lot of long-time veteran competitors. Would be great to hear the vision for contests.

There it is. All right, so this tweet right here. So Aiden right here says, yep, everything was cleared by QA test with myself included. I told you guys, Bungie's got some absolute gamers for the QAs. I don't know if they keep them here around, but granted, what all were they using?

How fast? familiar were they with mechanics going into it? And then what was the number? Like, what was the number of completions that Bungie was hoping to achieve? Did they do it on console with 30 FPS though?

Why the f*** would they do that? Brother, that's just nobody's. You know where I'm coming from? Nobody's doing that shit. No one's gonna, we're not gonna, we're not gonna balance the game around 30 FPS lasting consoles.

It's time to move on. Look, all I'm saying is it is a pretty ballsy move to bring in some members from the world's first race from before. And what do you think they would like if I was if I was on the world's first team from before and I was asked to come in QA test, I wouldn't be participating in the next raid race.

Do you think I'm going to make it easy on you? Oh, I'm going to make it a bitch. You hear me?

I'm going to make it a bitch. i'm gonna i'm gonna spend the whole weekend watching everyone's streams and laughing my ass off after i just made every one of those encounters an absolute and that they did that they did they turned that up i will say on the topic of of the tweet though from what bungee said here i do think contest mode if for those that are actually going to be doing it it needs better drops i mean i i got is this even is this tier one I mean, like, brother, 40 hours straight. We got tier one gear for this.

You know what I mean? I mean, like, I don't know if it's going to be if contest mode is going to be this difficult. Make that shit guaranteed tier fives, man.

But tier one, tier one ain't it, dude? It ain't it. Most of us, though, we're not doing it for any gear, though. Day one. We're not even doing it for the guaranteed exotics.

Like, I don't. That's nice, but that's not it. We're doing it for the emblem.

The emblem is the big flex. It's the flex because you like to pull up your friends list and go, who's all got this? And then you feel a little special.

Actually, look. Eric's got his. Look at that. Look at that. It's a semi-flex, but it's just an emblem, which is why I said yesterday.

Was it yesterday or this morning? No, which is why I said this morning. If I was just a normal... sane gamer i would play normal mode all day long i would play normal mode i would laugh at these crazy fkers that are sitting there breaking their dks trying to do contest mode while i'm sitting there raking in my rewards dude at one time i used look i had a lot of i just was expecting root of nightmares and the reason why i was expecting an easier raid is because i had a conversation with bungie earlier this year and we jokingly i was like So about that upcoming raid, what y'all doing there, huh? Y'all gonna cook?

Gonna be hard? And this is essentially what I was told. Because, of course, Bungie's never gonna reveal information. But they go, you know, it's not gonna be that bad. It's gonna pose a challenge, but not that bad.

And I've seen you not. I went into this week going, it's about to be Rooted Nightmares again. You know, I really went into this thinking like, We're going to clear this so fast because that comet and brother, dude, they threw me off so bad.

That shit threw me off so bad. By the first encounter, I was like, I was lied to. I was, I was f***ing baited.

This also, this also brings this up. Hold on. All right.

So I'm going to, I'm going to read this tweet right here. Not tweet. What is this?

Reddit. I'm going to read this over Reddit. So be prepared for a little bit of rage bait here. All right.

Hi. So from DJ here, the edge of fate in the contest rate raised feedback from me and my clan. You managed to kill the interest in this game for my entire clan. We're a 95 member clan with a core group of six to 10 highly active players.

We focus mainly on high level content and we love it. We've earned almost every raid title, completed all Salvation's Edge Master Challenges, and collected all raid exotics and catalysts. We prepared for the contest raid race like our lives depended on it. We pushed our lightning levels as high as possible.

But when we actually entered the contest raid, it wasn't a lack of skill that held us back. The DPS checks weren't tight. It was unbearable.

Some of us refused to chase broken builds just to pass arbitrary DPS thresholds. We wanted to clear it with our own skills, using builds we crafted ourselves. And even at our absolute best execution, the most we could ever do to aggro us in a full damage phase was around 25%. Let me just stop you right there. Let me just pump the brakes on this real quick.

Some of us refuse to chase broken builds just to pass arbitrary DPS thresholds. Now listen, I know of people that do raids and even dungeons who will make life harder on themselves because they get in their mind. It's like Les.

Y'all remember yesterday morning, Les refused to put on a healing rift. And I was like, Les, we need to survive coming out of DPS. And what did Les do? He never changed. He kept using Phoenix Dive.

Why? Because Les is a selfish motherfucker sometimes. But primarily when he's sleepy. When he's not sleepy, he's all right.

He's actually, you know, he's willing to make some changes. The point I'm trying to make is this. There are some people that...

They go into a raid or a dungeon, and especially in like a contest mode, they go, no, I'm going to rock my favorite build. And then they get humbled because what they come to find is that their build is kind of shit, you know? Or at least in that specific scenario. Because the build may be good in a GM Nightfall at ag clearance.

at that moment and what you have to do in that situation is you got to change things up dude you got it i mean you just got to change it up we can we can we call these things broken builds but we knew we didn't have enough dps and so that really put the cogs into well we got to find damage we got to find damage from somewhere now we refuse to be disrespected by a system that demands such extreme workarounds so we abandoned the contest raid and switched to normal mode after a few attempts we cleared every encounter once we learned the mechanics But when we finished the raid, the feeling wasn't excitement or satisfaction. It was relief. That was a first.

I was over 2055 light level before the edge of fate. I used to play daily, almost religiously. But this was the first time I felt relief instead of fulfillment after completing a raid.

Because it's normal. It's... I don't know. Are you I mean you're supposed to probably feel fulfillment after but if you've been up for like 24 hours Doing contests and then you jump at the normal hell. I feel relieved too.

You know what I mean? I tell you after my completion of contest mode. It wasn't fulfillment.

It was immense pain Probably from the from our i'm pretty sure we were up for 40 hours Because I didn't sleep wherever we took everyone took a break and everyone got like a nap in and I slept Maybe two two to three hours but From hour 28 and plus, I just had different variations of pain. I was so tired. I swear I forgot to blink.

I didn't blink for like, for the final damage, for the final boss. I didn't blink for like three whole runs. I just stared.

I didn't realize you can even get that tired. I remember even thinking of it in that moment. I was like, I was like, cross-blink. You got a blink, man. And, like, you've seen different tweets come out.

Like, people have been, like, you know, I think ADP City or someone said they had to go vomit mid-run. You know what I mean? Like, dude, this Ray put the... When people are vomiting, you know what I mean? When people are making call-outs and throwing up, you know what I'm saying?

Sh**. You know this raid's doing something to us. Now, none of us feels motivated to keep playing, and here's why. None of us wants to farm light level anymore.

This is the key to enter a harder content. Whether you're 100 or 450 levels above the soft cap, you're still stuck at a fixed power delta. It doesn't matter anymore. Yeah, the only thing that matters there is you get higher tier gear, but yeah, you know, it is a strange thing where you're stuck at power deltas. Discussion for another time.

None of us wants to run the raid five more times just to get a low quality loot and maybe eventually a good roll. Yeah, I I haven't done the triumphs associated with it. I'm not really sure how the tier loot is going to work for it. None of us wants to teach the raid to others in the clans.

Albeit, it's already difficult to explain and this new raid is even worse. Nearly every encounter has a mechanic's heavy sword that demands equal effort from all players. Desert Perpetua is possibly the most anti-LFG raid you've ever made.

Really? I thought the mechanics were actually... And look, I know some of you are going to say it. Don't say it. Cross, you run that clear.

All right. I did mechanics. Okay.

But yes, I was on that clear for the most part. Look, look, look, look. I'm sure it is going to be a little difficult to teach this raid, right?

But it can't be more difficult than Verity. You know what I'm saying? Now, none of us want to rebuild our loadouts after so many builds were broken.

The new stats is to ruin a lot of setups, even with full reverberation edge of fate. Many players still struggle to hit desire skills stat tiers because this new archetype bottom like almost every build. Let me just say this.

You see the gear I'm rocking right now? This is old gear. Old gear, guys.

Everybody that came by the stream a couple weeks ago, you were all saying it. You were like, what are you doing? Why are you farming old gear? We're getting new gear.

This is why. I felt like at some point we were going to run into a damage check. And I was like, dude...

We better have this not even a high weapon stats, but it's high enough is the super stat that I really needed to build out with font of wisdom tops it off to 200. You actually were rewarded for prepping pre expansion. None of us with the grind sign mentioned high difficulty tier campaigns for two tokens in a blue even if they occasionally drop tier three to four loot with good purse. It's not worth spending 20 30 minutes for one roll from a slot machine.

None of us want to engage with Vanguard Crucible or game anymore since Pathfinders were removed. That was the only consistent way to earn Bright Dust. Sure, something might eventually replace it, but Pathfinder also gave XP, which meant Bright, Engrams, and Lion Levels.

Now we're stuck with only three daily objectives and nothing else once the weeklies are done. Yeah, Bungie said they're adding an infinite source for Bright Dust, but I don't know, guys. I didn't engage with Pathfinder. Outside of the first week, I just didn't engage with it.

XP grind is not the thing anymore. The grind right now is for gear. That's the grind.

That's the thing that really represents your... your commitment season to season. And I do like the portal. I got to say, I do enjoy the portal. I mainly like the fact that I can grind stuff.

If I want to just do one activity over and over, I can, and I won't be capped on my gear. None of us with the farm ritual vendors since Vanir, Cristobal, Gamma Web is no longer dropped. Multiple birds reset features gone.

It's also loot now. None of us knows where to get ascended shards or allies consistently. Yeah. When we say consistent, I guess you could run Wellspring, but... None of us went to raid or solo dungeons anymore.

The power of Delta and negative penalties completely broke the balance. We barely defeated the Witness in normal mode, not because of the mechanics, but because our damage output was terrible. We constantly ran out of heavy ammo, even with 150 plus in weapon stats.

I've solo flawless every dungeon except Vesper's Hoes, but I don't plan to try another unless something major changes. All right. So if you barely defeated the Witness, in normal difficulty mode.

How did you expect to do contest mode for this raid? I don't... I'm not trying to be... I'm really not trying to be toxic here.

I'm going to leave this. Am I misunderstanding this? Oh, he says in Edge of Fate he barely... Oh, okay.

He says in Edge of... I haven't done the Witness in Edge of Fate. Yeah, I haven't even gone and done any of the other stuff.

I have no idea what the damage thresholds are or how difficult it is. Has anyone here done the Witness post-Edge of Fate? No. The wind is as hard as f*ck now? Really?

No sht? Ah sht. Alright, well, we'll have to go back and look at some of the old content. I have not played anything other than the portal and the campaign.

None of us want to run 5D mobs together since rewards and bonus drops are different for each player. It feels like we need to draw a complex Venn diagram just to find a single activity that benefits everyone equally. Yeah, I have not looked at the reward. The reward structure is a bit wonky as far as like who gets an A+ rating and who doesn't in gear level.

Changes that up a bit. And to be clear, this isn't a Red Echo Chamber talk. I'm the only one in the clan who even reads Reddit.

These are a real shared experience. With a single patch, I went from having many reasons to play Destiny 2 to having none. Even if I wanted to stick around, the only thing left to do would be grind light levels and chase a few Tier 5 weapons or armor pieces. Anything short of Tier 5 feels like a waste of time.

I'm not going to grind up to 450 light just to maybe get a shot at something good. This seriously feels like the first time I'm done with this game after 4,000 hours of gameplay. Don't get me wrong. Tier 5, I'm assuming it's going to be great. But...

me just say this dude some of these weapons man like this right here is a tier two it absolutely this weapon carried me this raid this is like literally my favorite weapon this expansion this this rocket assisted frame pulse rifle so good and i can only imagine what the tier five version of it's gonna feel you know what i mean there are people that i'm getting i'm getting varying replies or varying experiences from folks are people that are having a great time and there are people that are having an awful time there are also a number of people that look at contest mode as an experience for everyone to have and it's very apparent that bungie they had their participation trophy rate that was root of nightmares i know i'm gonna come off a little elitist right now and since then i have not done that now On the topic of lowdown swapping, some people are going to say that it is absolutely necessary. I'm a firm believer that my raid probably wouldn't have... Like, my completion wouldn't have been possible without lowdown swapping. Like, I just don't think I could have made it, guys. I needed neutral game builds.

I was rocking Insurmountable for the first three encounters. I needed the ability to go from Insurmountable to Yeet to do enough damage. There's no way in f***ing hell I could have just kept on Insurmountable and...

gone, you know, and did enough damage in damage phase with just my normal Thunder Crash. At the same time, it's almost like, all right, well, if you have not swapped and you limit what you could swap to, well, now you're just, you're not even putting any value on your neutral game exotics. Everyone's just going to go, all right, I'm going to use my best damage dealing exotic and and I'll just try to find some other, I'll use a heal clip weapon. I'll use a heal clip weapon and I'll just use my damage dealing exotic all the way through. And that's, that's what your run would be.

And then they would have to, um, balance the rate around that. All All I can say, guys, on that is whatever Bungie's stance is, like, they maybe need to clarify at some point. And if loadout swapping is going to become a thing, I think you could just allow a PlayStation and Xbox player or controller player the ability to loadout swap with their...

d-pad just map instead of having emotes map there I have the ability to map your loadouts there and you can just swap on the fly all I can say is this guys I think contest mode is supposed to be difficult and this is coming from someone with this I still maintain this perspective even in day one it took us 12 hours to clear wyvern that was our very first encounter I came out of that going I was looking at the time and I was like I don't know if we're going to be able to beat this raid. And then when Frostbolt at 8 a.m. Sunday morning... No, Sunday morning.

8 a.m. Sunday morning. When Frostbolt...

When he capitulated, that right there was like... damn we're down bad brother but the boys rallied after that and we we came back and we did it so like i was really really happy about that but even at that moment i wasn't like okay the raid needs to be easier for me and my squad you know it was just uh damn i gotta find a way to get good enough you know what i mean luckily um the mechanics were fully explored by hour 30 so we had a we had a bit of an easier time getting into like hobgoblin and stuff like that And also just Benny and Mac and them. You know, everybody was just balling out.

And then once we had like the stat changes for our wells, that was huge. Slap that like button like your mama told you, right?

After beating The Desert Perpetual raid on contest mode over the weekend, we're sitting down and giving our thoughts on the raid overall and how it was for us and our fireteam. #destiny2 #bungie #edgeoffate