One of the greatest blocks in the Raid since day one has been the Caretaker encounter, and the reason is that this particular boss acts as a DPS gate where dealing enough damage each phase is crucial to not wipe at the final stand. Furthermore, Destiny 2’s Caretaker encounter is notoriously lacking Special and Heavy ammo drops, which are important when it comes to DPS. With so many active roles in the fight, the Caretaker is hard for many groups because of how the obelisk portion of the encounter goes hand-in-hand with players taunting the boss. However, Destiny 2 YouTuber Vendetta managed to complete the encounter solo, rapidly switching loadouts based on what they had to do.

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Why Destiny 2’s Melee Builds Often Break Raids

This solo feat was achieved with lots of strategy and trial-and-error, but a clever move on Vendetta’s part was to use the sunset Mountaintop Kinetic grenade launcher with Sticky Grenades in order to open the door leading to the Raid’s symbol room. The player collected symbols and navigated the room with an Eager Edge sword combined with the Titan’s Lion Rampant to increase maneuverability, skipping the taunt phase by completing the obelisk offerings in seconds.

For DPS, Vendetta switched to the Wormgod Caress Exotic arms in order to deal damage with Shield Bash when the Caretaker was weakened after being hit with a One-Two Punch shotgun. Using Magnetic Grenades with the Echo of Undermining Fragment also helped to dish out enough damage, but hitting for over 900,000 damage per-Shield Bash is what allowed Vendetta to reach the final stand phase. At that point, the player used Destiny 2’s Witherhoard for additional damage over time and defeated the boss using a linear fusion rifle.

Vendetta is renowned for completing ridiculous challenges in Raids, such as defeating four Raid bosses with seven Throwing Hammers prior to The Witch Queen’s release. Completing the Caretaker encounter solo was no easy task, especially considering full Destiny 2 teams often fail at this step. This was the world’s first completion of Caretaker solo, which is great but poses a question as to how much longer the meta can take so many broken melee builds.

Another example comes from the Behemoth Titan destroying bosses with the Super’s Stasis crystals, which can be shattered for max damage through correct positioning. These melee builds are perhaps too strong on many occasions, and while they are niche - not necessarily something that a whole Destiny 2 team would use, they are outliers for broken combinations that revolve around Exotics like Wormgod Caress and Synthoceps. Overall, the Exotics themselves are not strictly the problem. Although they are very powerful, the fact that melee damage can scale so high with a lot of specific perks and combos can be aggravating when trying to balance the meta, and there’s a chance Bungie will hand out some nerfs in the near future.

Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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