5 hours into the raid and we have cleared the baths and race track but of course now that is left is the pleasure garden. I hate this game.
yeah gardens are the most difficult section. gauntlet is easiest by miles. baths and calus are about equal in terms of not being "difficult" but being more about endurance and just trying to be as efficient as possible.
I actually think the baths are easiest. Gauntlet can be screwy because of the part where everyone has to run at the end. If I had to rank easiest-to-hardest, I'd go: Baths Gauntlet Dogs Calus And even the dogs is going to be way easier once your team has the right loadout and all have a high Power level. You could easily do it in one-or-two phases at a 36-stack of the spores.
Merciless SHREDS through the dogs. I was close to one-rounding the dog at a much lower power level when we did it.
Yeah and the pulse grenades too. You throw down two of those at 36 stacks and they're almost dead just from those alone. Datto also found out that a rocket launcher with cluster bombs (like the raid rocket) can do them in like two rockets at 48 stacks.
This raid was extremely difficult at first but now I think it might be the easiest. I ran a group last night with 2 people who had not run the raid before, and we cleared the gauntlet, baths, and gardens on our first attempt. Calus (who 4 of us had attempted but not beaten yet) ended up taking us about an hour to clear. The baths I find extremely easy once you have merciless, the orange bar guys go down extremely quick. The gauntlet is super easy just because of the fact that there's barely any enemies. The end part can get a little hectic. Once you know the map for the gardens (which I do because I spent like 8 hours trying to beat it lol) it becomes really easy to get 4 or 5 stacks of the damage buff and clear them in 1 or 2 attempts Calus is high stress when the team gets split up
so the summary of our raid experience last night was we beat the baths and race track in like 4 hours. The final challenge was the pleasure gardens and it took us two hours before we gave up. We did spend a little time going into the underbelly and looting some chests. think we might try and finally finish it this weekend.
I feel like this raid was a ton of fun to do blind, but once you get the mechanics down, its going to become a chore to do. I didn't play the WotM, but nothing have come close to replayability like VoG.