slowly chasing that orb of power at 8:59 sums this entire thing up pretty well

The last wish part did not age well

Watching Elitist Datto turn into Defeatist Datto has been really rough

Nezarac has found how to hurt Elitist Datto. Elitist Datto's nightmares are becoming reality. He truly is the final god of pain.

Glad elitist Datto was able to sneak onto the channel one last time while Datto's on break. We will miss you elitist Datto

The biggest issue with contest mode was that Legendary lost sectors were harder than Root on contest mode.

You know something is wrong when a lost sector is giving me more trouble than the contest mode raid

It’s insane to me that bungie thought we wanted normal content to get harder and the hardest content like a raid to get easier

Honestly the hardest part of raiding in destiny is finding 5 people to raid with consistently

Honestly felt like contest was 5 under instead of 20 under

The dad's with 17 kids line had me on the floor. As a dad who stopped playing for a while with 1 kid I felt that

Watching this a year later knowing how hard bungo went for the nuts with the new raid.

Finally, my opinion has arrived

Thanks for all the content and insight over the years Datto. We’re lucky to have you here, and I’m glad you continue to stick around despite the bad eggs/takes. Your level head has always kept me from overreacting, or not fully understanding what others can think. Appreciate you, and give Brim a snoot boop for me.

Heard someone say that Root of Nightmares was actually a Raid Lair: it takes half the time to complete, small mechanics that lead you to the boss. If it is a raid lair I’m unsure why Bungie said nothing about it, but it helps consolidate that weird feeling

Bungie really took this video personally when making Salvation's Edge lmao

Love it when Datto actually speaks his mind and isn’t just moderating

It should be quite telling when the majority of the population agrees that the patrol enemies on Neomuna are more difficult to kill then anything in the contest raid.

“Your not gonna get another last wish” oh datto if only you knew at the time.

last wish was cool not because it was hard, its because it was so amazingly designed. It felt high quality

It’s very odd that their whole bringing challenge back to Destiny applied to everything outside the raids. Who asked for lost sectors and patrols to feel frustrating.

Sad that Elitist datto is no longer needed for now. Gonna miss him

fun to watch this after Salvation's Edge

As a slightly over mid raider... even though Root was my team's first Day 1 completion. I do agree on how practically easy this seemed. I budgeted around 16-17 hours for completion (roughly 4hrs per encounter to learn and perfect it) and we made it well before that budget. My team was stunned when we found out WF was 2.5 hours. (Shout out to HITP) I agree so much that contest mode felt easy. I wanted to believe that maybe the community had three benefits to making contest easier. 1. 30% resilience 2. Easier mod set ups to have less buff but more time Font of might by adding 2-3 surges and time dilation. 3. So many things were capped where we are lower level by default. (Legendary Campaign, Neomuna Patrol, Lost Sectors) However, things just felt more smooth then it should for a contest raid. The bosses were practically free compared to KF or Vow (the 2 contests I participated in). Each boss was either a 2 phase or at the very least a comfortable 3 phase. It was so free that there were low mans done during contest. The main mechanics felt like a damn dungeon. I remember being stuck on Exhibition for hours due to ad density, heavy call outs, and skill issues (myself included). Where was the difficulty on non damage check encounters? Why weren't Anti barriers one shotting us? Why isn't tormentors suppressing and killing more? That's my expectations for a contest raid and yet everything fell over it seems. At this rate Root of Nightmares should have a solo flawless emblem (I'm exaggerating but ya get the point) Regardless, I'm proud of the achievements my team did and we will be ready for the reprisal hopefully expecting more of a challenge than what Root of Nightmares offered. Cheers to everyone that did it! Be proud no matter what but please make it more of a challenge next time.

I do agree that it is ridiculous that a weekly mission and nightfalls are more stressful than a raid 😂.

If it makes you feel any better Elitist Datto, your commentary has inspired me to start doing solo dungeons. I can see your perspective, but I hope you know that your efforts weren't entirely in vain.

this video aged like milk. jokes aside it seems like bungie felt that video from datto and delivered the hardest raid ever in salvations edge

Anyone else coming back to this video after Salvation's Edge?

I loved the final "YOU GAVE THEM HOW MUCH POWER AMMO??!??" But yeah honestly we cleared in 12 hours but the bosses really fell over. We spent more time trying not to die from bumpers than doing third and final encounter.

I wish the Nezarec fight was a bit more true to his theme. I would've never thought he was some immensely powerful telepath here. He only seemed like a super Tormentor. I wish there was some mechanic where half the raid team would be sucked into a dream world where they had to fight nightmares or phantoms while the other half had to defend the sleepers and wake them up. Or maybe Nezarec could control a horde of enemies in perfect synchronization. He suffers from the same implementation issues Calus did. Edit: Here's another thing I want to mention: Enemies without a voice have been boring for me. The Vex are the main culprit. I believe a big reason Savathun and Oryx were so good were because they spoke. Eramis isn't my favorite, but I like her much more than other villains. Hell, I remember her name at the very least. So when I saw Nezarec messing around in the Vex Network, I thought he might become their voice. Yet the raid came and went and no connection to the Vex at all. He was just another Cabal, the Super Psion.

the fact that last wish is closer to d1 launch than now is crazy man, feels like just yesterday

Joe Blackburn heard Datto say we will never get another last wish and he respond with "you wanna bet a fuckin raid belt on it"

Seeing Nezerac just standing there, 2 inches away from you and doing absolutely nothing while he's being melted was insanely painful. RIP

The way I saw it, it felt like a World’s First event for a 6-man Legendary Campaign Mission. It was still a very fun event, but I can’t help but think more challenge would have been welcome.

I was ecstatic to finally get a contest mode completion for the emblem. Once I saw that 45k people had beat contest mode it really took the wind from under my sail. I dont really feel accomplished from it now.

5:37 The timing of the Tormentor ascending on screen and the little chuckle as he speaks is so perfect. lol

I have a feeling this was supposed to be a dungeon that they stretched out into a "raid". Three encounters are the same aesthetically and the planet room feels way off. Not to mention the orb mechanic can be done with 1-2 people.

My team fell short on Vow but got this raid. I’m still proud and happy but acknowledge how much easier this one was. We didn’t start until hours later and still finished it quickly. I was hoping for another Vow experience because even if we didn’t get it that was some of the most fun I’ve had in this game. Really unfortunate with the direction it went in

my theory is that this raid was designed specifically with in-game lfg in mind, which was originally planned to be released alongside it. I think bungie thought that having this option in game would make it so that more random lfg players would be uncommunicative, so they made mechanics that were less communication focused. The problem with that is raids are entirely communication driven. Without having to organize everyone while also not getting killed is much harder than just focusing on enemies or on where a ball of light is pointing.

Another banger! 🔥🔥 We need that Elitist Datto video playlist!

Never change Datto, 3 days for this video was worth it No seriously this side of you will always be cherished

Big thanks to Datto for this well developed critique. Contest mode was so easy people were farming sherpa clears. I did it twice for fun. Low man community had a lot of fun running through the raid showing that even in contest mode you don’t need a full fireteam to clear ads

First video of yours I've watched. Thank you for articulating my rage in a concise manner.

I'm actually pissed about this too, I'm not a hardcore player but day one raids weren't for me and I understood and accepted that. It was always there for me to try eventually but now that it's easy there's no point 😭 I never wanted a guarantee day one clear, that's pathetic it's a contest for a reason

Datto hits the nail on the head. Contest being extended and more clears happening aren't the issue; the issue is the scale/intensity of the challenge not measuring up to how powerful guardians have become.

My team cleared the day1 within 3 hours and we placed sixth. 2 of our teammembers had no idea what almost any of the mechanics were for the entire run. That's just absurdly stupid imo. Great video, thanks for speaking up on this as a bigger figure.

Don’t worry things get better in the final shape

As a well above average Guardian. I agree with this take. I don’t want people to fail miserably at and not want to raid, but when I logged onto check who won, I couldn’t believe it was beat in 2.5 hours. Absolutely floored. The whole thing about contest mode is to he cracked hard. To see who the best are. It’s fun seeing these teams with Datto or Cross bang their head on the wall lol. I think the opening weekend numbers being high is great but the day 1 shouldn’t. It’s disappointing to see that there isn’t much to learn, just go in there and shoot 🤷‍♂️. Boosting enemy density in the game is nice but not at the expense of mechanics. Datto isn’t also wrong about how insane Nightfall and the Exotic mission are. Those things are on legendary ffs. Raising the difficulty is cool but why not raise it in places it should be. It’s weirdly high in normal situations. It all points to the fact that they don’t know how to deal with guardian power creep.

I agree with every argument you made Datto, but more than that I agree with the emotions underneath it. It's crushing to see the best day in the destiny year end so insanely fast. Thanks for making this video man! I hope this feedback reaches Bungie.

Something that should have absolutely been mentioned in the last wish segment is that, the BEST part of the raid mechanically, 99% of people who have ever done the raid have Never engaged with the mechanics of the most engaging encounter in the game from a mechanic perspective. People look back on Last wish like it's amazing, but an encounter with a lot of mechanics, which really just revolves around remembering 2 bits of information at any time, people just SKIP it.

I didn't initially plan to attempt contest mode but on saturday night I found a team willing to try a fresh run, in about half the time it took my VoW team to get to caretaker and give up we got to the planets encounter. We never did complete contest mode since we started so late and no one was really prepared for it but the raid is definitely easier than others. This raid is gonna pretty easy to sherpa which is fine but it also sets a bad example for raids having most of the team just be ad clear.

As someone who stopped playing when life got busy right when d2 launched, it’s been quite a rollercoaster to watch Datto’s videos through the years. It seemed like after some hiccups end-game content was steadily moving in the right direction, but ah well…

My favourite kind of encounter is the encounter where you have a short timer and you have to get from A->B but need to do mechanics and clear ads. Shuro Chi from Last Wish and Exhibition from Vow of the Disciple are my top two. I really enjoy Root of Nightmares because of that but the encounters felt like they were missing something critical to make them more challenging: a lockout. That buff lockout really sells the encounter in Exhibition. It forces the rest of the team to learn the relics so it isn't just one person doing one task. And the relics aren't mechanically hard either. It's just relic + timer + combat + communication = a nicely tuned encounter. And that's what Root of Nightmares is missing currently. Other wise, I really enjoy it (I used to agree that hard raids are fun raids, but as I've gotten older and have gotten less will8ng to put up with the shenanigans of lfg, fun raids aren't necessarily hard raids for me).

I LOVE watching Day 1 raids. I literally go over to my buddies house and we treat it like the super bowl. When the party was over after 2:30 we kinda just sat there like "okay now what do we do?" We had the whole night prepared to be on the couch cheering everyone on. It doesn't just suck for the elites, it sucks for all the people treating this like an actual sports event!

After my clear I was giving an advice to my clanmate on what to bring to a raid. My first question was: "Why don't you have an exotic armor equipped?" and his response was: "i'm not into that". I rolled my eyes, give him some weapon advice and left for the day. Next day he got a clear. Clear sign on the raid challange. Edit: on contest ofc

I keep coming back to this video because of how much it represents Datto’s passion for the game and how the general community doesn’t understand that certain things they say to people can vastly effect them in a negative way (legit, it felt depressing to hear Datto on what sounded like the verge of tears because of how much backlash the general community can cause). I hope you get World’s First one day man. You deserve it. We also deserve raid experiences that earns their reputation for being challenging endgame activities that are always at their hardest on Day 1, regardless of who wins the race or not. The race is temporary, the challenge is forever.

Thank you for putting all of this in a much nicer way than I could. Day 1 was ridiculous.

Honestly, the hardest ‘mechanic’ to overcome was the frame rate issue. We didn’t prep and made it through the first two encounters in 3 hours, learning the mechanic ourselves. We weren’t planning on running contest mode at all so we called it quits after that. Too bad too. This would have been an easy emblem. I agree 100% contest mode didn’t feel dangerous. Normal mode feels easier than the seasonal content.

thank you datto i really needed to hear this after the disappointment of the contest mode

That Last Wish part at the end 💀 Also that quip at 17:30 i guess the answer to that was for them to blank their screens entirely

Remember when the tracer shanks in DSC shot non-sniper shots? Or when every other enemy would just walk around and not shoot at you, especially in encounter 3/4? It got tuned, and though it's still not the highest of combat challenge, it's definitely better. Hopefully something similar is coming here. In a perfect world, Nezarec has a grab attack similar to the tormentors that'll mess us up if we're on those platforms. I know it's probably not possible, but who knows what'll change? Side note, I wish after running light & dark at the boss, you had to have one Guardian get grabbed in the above way by Nezarec to expose his chest again, so the rest of the team could shoot it and stun him to start damage. More mechanics like that would spice things up.

Elitist Datto will be missed

The vocal tone change at 27:17 is everything I live for in these videos. My man literally couldn't hold it in any longer 🤣

My team had to do two days worth of this raid because the mechanics just felt so inconsistent. Second encounter, our nodes just wouldn't give us the buff sometimes or the final node qouldn't light up so we couldn't progress to the next floor, Nezarec sometimes just wouldn't do his pulse so we'd have to guess or wipe, that's the only reason the raid was challenging to my group. Idk what we were doing wrong for these things to happen, since I haven't seen anyone mention them elsewhere.

I don’t raid. I did a few in D1 but have never done any in D2. But one thing I love is new raid day. Getting on to Twitch and flicking between the best players the game has competing to see who really is the best. And I’ve enjoyed quite a few of these day 1 experiences. Last Wish will forever be my favourite watching experience. I’m not sure some of the people taking part would agree, but watching everyone struggle made this game look difficult and the raid was the pinnacle of PvE. Fast forward to Root of Nightmares and seeing it completed with not much effort really disappointed me. I’m with the elite here. I wanted a challenge to sit and watch. I wanted a long session watching these guys try and figure out mechanics and then doing them. These guys are amazing and an absolute credit to the Destiny community with their ability to figure out things. I could never, that’s why I don’t raid. I hope Bungie realise how bad this made the top tier of content look and sort it out for the next one. I would hate to see Final Shape end on a whimper.

I hope we hear from the raid team soon, i highly doubt bungie wanted this to be as easy as it was

Can someone explain the picture bottom right, love Datto ever since he did Last Wish

i love watching this vid from time to time, the sass is so good

glad you posted this, I’ve never done a day 1 raid besides king’s fall (no challenge) and its sooo frustrating watching people online, especially in the subreddit, praising the contest mode zero brain activity in there

I’ve watched along multiple day 1 races, and participated in a few. In each race, I can distinctively remember a feeling of awe, like “how tf are they gonna do this?” Or “how would they have enough damage for this check?” And even been in that situation myself with Caretaker day 1. Beating Caretaker day one, because we made the call to swap to Ourbreak for total dmg, and killing him on final stand, was one of my most treasured memories in the game. Was watching the race the other day since I decided to not buy LF, I felt things were off. Things like Datto killing stuff a bit too fast with his mg, or how they didn’t hurt nearly as much. Ppl using speed running strats with eager edge instead of playing their lives, and the absolute lack of tension when damaging Nezarec. It really lacked any of the key ingredients of a typical day 1 raid. I hope Bungie learns and maintains the magic of their raids, cuz the inherent difficulty is a key ingredient imo.

Man I was hoping this raid to be longer to beat for the elites, seeing people falling sleep and sitting down for more than 6-7 hours on one encounter that was memorable. I couldn’t jump on contest or normal yet since my internet kept dropping me.

so, is there a reason why we can't have bi-monthly events where for a weekend theres like, -30/-40 power cap on older raids like last wish for people to (somewhat) experience day 1s we were'nt able to experience.

You really put it into perspective when you said about how the legend exotic mission and legend nightfall are harder than the raid. You're right, that shouldn't be the case, the more I think about it, the more funny (and sad) it is... if Crota's End ends up being the reprised raid, then oh boy, this year of raiding is gonna be a joke.

I think it's time Elitist Datto gets his own channel, he definitely deserves it

Having gotten to Nezarec with my team (and being bummed my own disregard for myself kept me from the emblem), it feels terrible now that this raid didn't feel as individually challenging, on contest, for me as clearing a Master VoG did. To have to build around the Sacrificial Wyverns, around the fresh Divinity nerf, and around Atheon, this just came in and just took the surges as the utmost important mod in the raid and nothing else. I can't say I'm looking forward to a Master Root because I'm really not. It's just going to end up feeling more or less the same with unnecessary modifiers that no one has still asked for.

I really hope datto quotes that last wish section

I hope that The Final Shape's raid is a Last Wish 2.0. I just feel like that would be such an epic way to end out the saga.

I almost cheered when he mentioned the difficulty spike of patrol. When the community said that aspects of the game weren't challenging enough, I don't know why Bungie thought they were referring to patrol. Blows my mind that they thought putting us 15 under in patrol was a way to solve that.

I do feel you're frustration. As a hardcore player, I also enjoyed having challenging content that pushed me to try harder. I've never been opposed to easier content so that I can play with my more casual friends but I feel that this watering down of the difficulty is very aggravating for myself and others who desire to have harder content

Great video which sums up everything disappointing about the contest days. A couple of my clanmates were doing legend nightfalls for pinnacle gear and when we were mowing down enemies in the raid it struck us that it was so so so so so much easier than the nightfall. Damage was only a problem on Nezarac because he moved around a lot and we would miss rockets. This whole raid was 1-3 people doing mechanics and everyone else on ad clear. I was part of 2 other day 1's before this and first was vow, insanely difficult to stay alive and the damage checks during it were brutal, we didnt get the clear even though we reached Rhulk. My second was kings fall which took us 15 hours with already having an idea what mechanics were like and that was without the challenge version but we got a clear. This was the raid we prepped for expecting an insane difficulty like those 2 and we did it in 10 hours which im proud of myself and team for getting day 1 done but still didn't feel the same joy as we did when we beat caretaker in vow. Hopefully the next reprised raid and the raids coming in the last expansion really pick up the difficulty because day 1 is supposed to be for the best of the best and not the dad that has 12 kids and 5 wives to take care of. To me, I couldn't care less about the 48 hour raids, I think its a good thing to get more people doing them, but with the raid being so easy it takes away some of the credibility of the emblem my team got.

The reason I compare new raids to Last Wish is the mechanics and setpeices. The creativity of going into the boss to destroy it's heart, then having to run and parkour with the heart as your teammates get sucked into an arena. Just feels like raids haven't been as flowy/creative, or complex as Last Wish

I think you nailed it with the metrics bit. It's not about a quality experience, it's about the boardroom PowerPoint presentation showing "Growth"

8:55 seeing you go after that orb without sprinting had me on the edge of my seat.

27:44 caught me off guard LMFAO. It never fails, every time there's always a little segment in the beginning somewhere in the middle sprinkled in the end that has datto breaking his script for a moment and it's always hilarious. 😂

IMO the biggest contributor to why this raid has been underwhelming was because it was another "connect the dots" mechanic like Spire of the Watcher. When your mechanic doesn't require you to engage with the enemies, that's bad raid mechanic design. It's why loads of people had more fun on the Planet encounter because it completely ditches that "connect the dots" mechanic and opted for something completely different. It just feels like the RAD team at Bungie has ran out of ideas for interesting and challenging encounter designs because with the 4 encounter design, on top of reusing previous encounters' mechanics is getting really stale IMO. D2 King's Fall and Last Wish was what every raid should be; every encounter should feel and play different from each other.

This right here is the most astute unpacking of the issue with difficulty. Not all content is for everyone, and it seems difficulty is warped too far in either direction in different parts of the game, some receiving too much and others not getting enough.

If you look at the whole picture of available raids Bunge created an entry level raid and expanded their offer to the players. You can choose between old style raids like VOG, more mechnic centred ones and entry level raids like RON.

I’m so sad about not being able to finish it even with the extra time. All my friends had work Friday and couldn’t get on early enough on Saturday to beat it. We got through the first two encounters though so I can be proud of that at least

I was so excited when Nezerac was teased for the final boss. Now seeing how he just stands still while you’re an inch off the ground makes me sad. Hopefully stuff gets better and we get hard raids but we’ll see.

I had a ton of homework for college I was working on Friday and was really excited to have them raid steam up while working through it. Was so disappointed when people were done with the raid within 3 hours.

The fact that the entierty of RoN can be done with 0 comms tells you how easy this dungeon is.

Another excruciating watch thank you datto for your baby rage

Personally I think the mechanics of the raid were dungeon level (with the exception of the planets encounter). You can even draw parallels to how a team would get to a damage phase. Normally raid bosses are on a mechanical timer to get to dps and/or you typically need to do some verbal communication within that timer to start doing damage and avoid a wipe. Needing Rhulk to shoot lasers/use his glaive attack and having the team call out symbols, needing Atheon to teleport the team and having the team call out oracles, needing Taniks to do the thing to drop his bombs and needing the team to call out which boxes, needing oryx to open his crit spot and needing the team to call out which platform, etc. Plus they almost always involve 4 people participating in the mechanic to do it as intended. With Nezerac, dps is triggered by the skill of 2 runners and it can be easily done without any communication at all. This is similar to why Cota feels more like a dungeon boss than a raid boss. Wipes and resets were also less frustrating because you can rush a dps phase with pure skill without ever bothering with the wipe mechanic. Even if you do it using the legit strategy, it still feels like DPS is started on the players' time rather than the encounter's time. With the planet encounter feeling like the only one with raid level mechanics (that require 4 people who understand what to do) and with those mechanics being so different from the rest of the raid, it feels like RoN was meant to be a dungeon with 3 encounters and the planet encounter was added to bring it up to raid status.

Can’t believe Elitist Datto has been sealed into the Destiny Content Vault😢

Elitist Datto is a very important voice in the community. Even if it feels like you can't convince anyone, simply by being a beloved figure in the community advocating for hardcore PvE content. It means a lot to us. I completely understand if we don't see videos like this again, but I really, really, really hope we do. You lend a sorely needed voice to the hardcore audience that isn't immediately written off by casuals (because almost everyone in the community loves you, as they should). I really appreciate you Datto, and the work you do.

I didn't complete the raid day 1/2, and have never done a day 1 before, but jumping in on contest to help our team out fill it for the 3rd encounter I was shocked at how easy it was. Didn't need anything but my voltshot ikelos smg for the ads and fusion nades once in a while, and it was just so easy compared to other activities. This was more like a heroic NF

I think part of what made Last Wish really cool too were the mechanics. You had to sit down and figure out what to do, especially with the Vault encounter. Sure the power gap was incredibly large, but at the very least, it felt like you really had to (and still have to) think about how you clear each encounter there.

On the topic of Last Wish being unusually epic - Ya know how when you're in life-threatening situations, you get a huge boost of adrenaline and can do things you normally can't, like lifting a car off of someone? That's your body disabling its safety systems because you can't be safe ever again if you're dead. That was Bungie with Forsaken - pull out all the stops or the game gets canned. It's simply impossible to put out raids of that scale year after year, but it had to be done that one time out of sheer desperation.

GOOD SHIT DATTO. WE NEEDED THIS VID

Always love to see how legend lost sectors are harder than day 1 raids. Hopefully bungie will see how power crept we are. Great video