Destiny 2 Leviathan Raid: these 5 tips will have you spanking the Cabal in less than an hour
Destiny 2's Leviathan Raid can be tricky, but these five advanced strategies should help you tear through it faster than you ever thought possible.
As part of our Destiny 2 guide we have a complete walkthrough of Leviathan, Destiny 2's first raid. But in the time since the Raid first dropped, clever players have discovered new, faster ways to get through encounters - if you've got the skills to pull them off.
Arekkz has been through the Leviathan Raid multiple times now and come up with some hot tips for getting through this most challenging of Destiny 2's PvE content. Put these strategies to work and you'll be done in no time, and can get on with finding the Leviathan Raid secret Exotic chests.
If you master these strategies you can complete the Castellan and all three encounters in one phase each, and the whole Leviathan Raid run can last as little as 50 minutes. We've presented these advanced strategies in both text and video form - your choice!
Leviathan Raid tip #5: send three Guardians after the first two Standard Bearers
In the Castellan, where Raid teams must bring down Standard Bearers and return their flags to a plate, you can get through the process much more quickly if you divide your forces evenly. Provided the three Guardians you leave on the plate are doing okay with their defence, your three flag-seekers can pile extra DPS on the Standard Bearer and get the chore over with. This works well for the first two flags, because there won't be time for enough adds to spawn to worry the plate team. For the third flag, you should keep four Guardians on the plate as it gets too hectic for three. All this should only take a few minutes.
Leviathan Raid tip #4: assign Guardians to fixed positions in the Royal Bath
Rather than rotating your teams through positions, give four players a plate they need to guard. This reduces their responsibility to clearing adds and occasionally refreshing their buff; this is really low stress for new raiders. Your two most Powerful Raiders should pick a side each and act as backup, helping to kill the Bather as it arises, and then holding the plate for each of the other Guardians in turn as they refresh their buff. The backup player helps the top plater, and then the bottom plate, and by the time the second plate holder returns, they are ready to refresh their own buff. After two rotations you'll be ready for the centre phase, and if you can get one player clearing adds so everyone else is in the circle, with a Super and the other five focusing on DPS against the canisters, you can complete this encounter in one phase - especially if everyone has Merciless.
Leviathan Raid tip #3: stack Empowering Spore to 60
This strategy relies on the fact that the dogs stay out for a very long time on the first rotation, and return to a specific flower once alerted. Assign every team member a specific dog to defeat. Have your crystal bearer guide the team through the maze, sneaking past the dogs, to gather as many stacks of Empowering Spore from flowers as you can - at least 60. Keep gathering buff stacks if you can (there's no harm in trying) or proceed straight to damage phase. Once the dogs spot someone, they all run back to a specific spot on the map by a flower. Every team member also heads to their assigned spot and kills their dog - don't try to damage them before they get back to their flowers. Every player should call out when their dog is down, and head to another spot to help another player.
Leviathan Raid tip #2: Clear all the adds before taking down Calus's shields
Again, what we want to do here is gather as many stacks of the Force of Will buff as we can - and we do that by giving the dimension team as long as possible to destroy skulls in their weird twilight world. This means the real world team needs to delay dropping the shield - and the easiest way to do this is to focus on killing adds before targeting the shield. It takes some brass thanks to the Impending Doom countdown, but if you stay calm you'll see the timing is generous enough. Wait until Force of Will reaches about 50 before dropping the shield for best results. A Warlock with Healing Rift will allow you to survive the damage the real world team takes. This should leave you with 80 stacks of Force of Will by the time the shield comes down, and if you're rocking Coldheart, there's a good chance you'll drop Calus's health by half in one rotation, and if you can survive to 100 Force of Will you can even do it in one phase. The video explains the fight step by step using this stragey from about 12:10.
Leviathan Raid tip #1: Leave four people in Calus's dimension
This one's tricky and only for advanced players, but if you're confident, only send two Guardians back to the real world to handle the adds, Counsellors and Calus's shield. This allows the four players in the dimension to rack up tons and tons of skull kills, which makes it really easy to kill Calus in one phase.