Destiny 2 Raid Ideation - Health Regeneration

I was originally going to write another longer post that would set up the 2nd encounter, but I find myself stuck on the first encounter and a design choice I made that has major implications for the entirety of The Emperor's Tomb* raid. That choice being "while under the effects of Endurance, Agility, or Wisdom, health regeneration is greatly decreased". I want to dive into that a bit more here, and why I think this system adds a unique challenge, fits within the existing systems of Destiny 2, interacts with existing player systems in a new and fun way, and could be scaled to Master difficulty.

* I'm going with a name-change since Labyrinth of Empires was originally just a name I used for that specific encounter.

The Challenge of Lowered Health Regeneration

In Destiny 2, there are three stats that govern player abilities and three that govern player properties, with one of those corresponding to each class ability. Recovery is one of the latter, and provides players with the most value by a wide margin (as of 2021). Boosting both health regeneration rate and decreasing health regeneration delay, it gives a good deal of survivability in both PvE and PvP content. Furthermore, it decreases the cooldown of Warlock's class ability Rift, which can either provide healing — even while taking damage — or increase damage output. Reducing a player's innate regeneration through modifiers like Attrition and Momentum provides an interesting gameplay paradigm not present in other content, where players have to change positioning in order to heal.

The system I proposed in the prior posts is most similar to Attrition, where players regenerate health very slowly unless a Wisdom player triggers a Tincture. Tinctures provide a similar benefit to picking up a Well of Light in that they give immediate and un-cancellable regeneration that lets most players tank through some enemy fire while still reaching max health.

So why does this pose a challenge to players?

Attrition is a modifier commonly used in Master/Grandmaster Nightfalls and Master Lost Sectors. It changes gameplay such that players have to carefully position themselves and keep their health-pools high, lest an enemy kill them suddenly because of low health. This, to me, is a key part of these activities. It slows the pace of combat down and makes players much more cautious and aware of combatant and environmental damage. Introducing a similar but more forgiving system into a raid forces players to reevaluate how to engage with raid combatants and changes encounter pace, upping the level of attention needed for combatant challenges. This is in direct contrast to mechanical difficulty, which most other raids focus on.

Interactions With Existing Systems

Currently, for each class, there are multiple avenues for health regeneration that are separate from generic regeneration. A few examples include:

Titan:

Crest of Alpha Lupi (Exotic Armor)

Defensive Strike (Void Melee Ability)

Hunter:

Wormhusk Crown (Exotic Armor)

Combination Blow (Arc Melee Ability)

Warlock:

Karnstein Armlets (Exotic Armor)

Devour (Void Melee Ability)

As for weapons and armor mods, which are class-agnostic, there are many ways to regain health. The perk Unrelenting triggers on multiple combatant defeats and regains health, and it can roll on quite a few legendaries. Crimson heals the user on any kill. Lumina can hipfire healing bullets. There are more, but I won't get into each of them here. The point I'm making is that in Destiny 2, any player of any class has a few options for a build that can provide healing effects. This raises a question, though.

Why limit health regeneration if, within a fireteam of six, most players can mitigate the effects completely?

To this I would say that mitigating the effects of lowered health regeneration, which is technically a core mechanic of the raid that defines its encounter design and 3-role mechanic, is actually a good thing and should be embraced. Say for instance a fireteam of 6 includes an average distribution of classes — two titans, two hunters, and two warlocks.

On initial attempts, this fireteam would come to the raid using standard raid loadouts. Presumably, one titan would be using Ward of Dawn, one hunter would be using Tether, and one warlock would be using Well of Radiance. The other three would either be running backups of these, or damage supers like Thundercrash and Golden Gun. This strategy would prove adequate. The classes best apt for Endurance would be the Ward of Dawn and Well of Radiance users; Agility would fall to the damage super users; Wisdom would go to the remaining two. By diversifying the subclass choices in the fireteam, most combatant encounters are handled, and the raid team has a high chance for success.

On subsequent attempts, however, this fireteam might realize that there are ways to speed up encounter progression and mitigate risk by crafting builds that tackle the raid's mechanics. And that's a good thing! Players should utilize existing systems in creative ways to address the challenges of endgame content, and the systems they interact with shouldn't be limited to encounter-specific gun loadouts. It should include subclass choice and armor builds. The fireteam could build a team composition for encounters that

• maximizes the durability of Endurance players, using Sentinel, Arcstrider, or Voidwalker;

• maximizes the lethality of Agility players, using Striker, Gunslinger, or Stormcaller;

• maximizes the utility of Wisdom players, using Behemoth, Nightstalker, or Shadebinder;

This intersection of raid mechanics and build planning allows for underutilized aspects of Destiny 2's sandbox while also creating a unique encounter space for players that should provide enough replayability to satisfy the average raider for several months, as it focuses more on combatant challenge than mechanic challenge and encourages build specialization in an endgame activity where players can show off their mastery of mods and weapon loadout systems.

A Master Difficulty Variant and LFG

I won't talk too long on this as Master Raids aren't available in game yet, but I have an inkling of how they would change a raid. Increased combatant level, additional negative modifiers, increased champion density, and locked loadouts. I think that the structure of mechanics in The Emperor's Tomb allows for greater role specialization than other raids currently do, and as such would work quite nicely with locked loadouts. Players would be encouraged to pick one of the three roles (Endurance, Agility, Wisdom) and craft a build around maximizing their effectiveness in that particular role, as loadout locks would prevent players from switching roles on the fly. This should give a raid team (assuming consistent members) a good sense of progression and mastery as they craft builds that make runs of the raid more efficient.

As for LFGs, I think a form of this already exists in class selection. Typically pickup groups want at least one titan and one warlock, for damage buffs and boss DPS survivability. These groups also want either experienced raiders (KWTD) or inexperienced raiders (Sherpa). Regarding the former, LFG would somewhat mirror the paradigm of traditional MMORPG party finding. As for the latter, new players can fulfill any role! Doing so allows them to decide, for future raid runs, if they want to specialize or be a jack-of-all-trades that can handle any role.

What Happens if Health Regeneration is Unchanged

The short, simple answer to this is the encounter becomes easier.

The long answer to this is the Wisdom role has its utility greatly diminished and Tinctures become trivial. Encounters become faster-paced and less methodical, where teamwork isn't as important as efficiently running-and-gunning. Cover in the environment is trivialized outside of Contest or Master modes, and combatant threat is lessened. The labyrinth encounter, and other encounters, would play in such a fundamentally different way that many would probably consider them to be equivalent to a six-man strike.

Slowing down health regeneration makes combat mistakes more costly and heightens the level of focus players need to succeed in encounters. In other raids, attention tapers off as a player's power level exceeds the encounter's power level because of lowered combatant threat. Mechanics are generally a small portion of an encounter, requiring a player to engage for only a few seconds to half a minute, where the remainder of time spent in an encounter is defeating Minors/Majors and damaging the boss (if one exists). Having a more combat-focused raid experience should alleviate some of the tedium that comes out of outgrowing combatant challenge while still allowing players to master raid encounters. A light focus on mechanics preserves that 'raid feeling' while promoting a focus on the core gameplay of Destiny 2 and the ability for players to craft niche builds with powerful results.

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To close this out, I want to say that I'm really enjoying this process. It helps me consider how prior raids introduced and then solved problems by attempting certain designs, and I think this one is doing wonders for my understanding of the core Destiny 2 systems and how they work together to promote a fun and engaging sandbox for players to experiment and triumph in. I have a low-fidelity general raid overview coming up soon that covers the entire raid space and breaks it up into the three planned encounters. I hope you're looking forward to it.