Now that the Day 1 attempt at the Vow of the Disciple raid is in my rear-view mirror, I wanted to think over what it’s like preparing for this major Destiny 2 activity. Beyond that, this should also give myself an opportunity to think about how I might better prepare for the raid and even what to do as I approach each encounter.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: the Vow of the Disciple raid is fantastic. The Day 1 experience was incredible, and I’m so proud of my team for being able to get it done. If you haven’t already, you can watch our entire attempt over on Twitch. I’ve even cut out the highlights of our successes so you can see all the good parts.
As for actually preparing for the raid, there are obviously a lot of real-world things that are worth taking care of. Getting food and snacks sorted (healthy ones, of course), taking the day before the raid off from Destiny 2 to spend with loved ones, going outside and touching grass to remember what really matters, and otherwise getting a good night’s sleep the night before.
For the in-game preparation, there’s a whole lot more. Acquiring all of the mods available to you is of utmost importance. These things are a godsend when it comes to handling tough, end-game content. We utilized several Elemental Well mods along with Charged With Light. There was no mention of Warmind Cells, but that could change with the next raid.
Another mission critical task is hitting the raid level max and then just saving infusion material. Thankfully, the raid Power lock-out was 1530, which was incredible easy to hit this time around. What it meant was that I had a ton of infusion material in the vault for any outlier weapons that may have cropped up. But I already had the usual suspects ready to go: Tractor Cannon for the extra help, Gjallarhorn for obvious reasons, as well as Deathbringer and Sleeper Simulant. Throw on top of that a myriad of other Legendary weapons and I was ready to go. It’s often tough to predict which weapons you’ll need, but we basically looked at what excelled well in previous raids and end-game content and kept those around.
On the armor side of thing, I mainline a Warlock, which means that with Void 3.0 I wanted to use Nezarec’s Sin as much as possible. The other contender was Necrotic Grip, which obviously synergize well with Osteo Striga, but I couldn’t really equip those over Boots of the Assembler.
In terms of being better prepared, I think for the next raid I’m going to default to using Divinity and Well of Radiance for each boss encounter. The additional 30% damage from Divinity is just too much to pass up, as is the protection afford by Well of Radiance. Alternatively, I’ll rock the Slova Bomb and Div for that extra punch.
It may also be prudent to test out mechanics for the sole purpose of trying to nail down exactly how a mechanic works. For the Caretaker fight, my team lingered on the symbol system, thinking we needed to find a matching set from a single side of the obelisk when in reality you can run in and get any three. Working this out sooner would have saved us perhaps a couple of hours of progress. To do this, it's probably worth using one run to really see whether or not a mechanic works how we assume it does.
Overall, I’m exceptionally proud of my team’s performance in Vow of the Disciple. I couldn’t ask for a better team, and I reckon this has put us in a good place to attempt whatever the reprised raid is that’s coming later on.
