Destiny 2: Forsaken has fixed the franchise’s biggest raiding problem

Raids have always been the highest point of any Destiny experience. Players first fell in love with Destiny when the Vault of Glass released, and the Taken King expansion is best known for the excellent King’s Fall raid. Every Destiny raid going forward has had the same major problem: consistency. But Forsaken has finally provided a solution that players have been asking Bungie about for the last five years.

[Warning: Very minor Destiny 2: Forsaken vendor inventory spoilers are ahead.]

When players fail in a raid — called wiping — they respawn like normal, but they’ve lost any Supers they’ve spent or power ammo they’ve fired. This results in a major problem of consistency. How can you expect to progress through a fight gradually when you don’t have access to the same tools each pull?

Simply put: You can’t. This is why the Destiny community has relied on using “ammo runs” for years. Essentially, players start the fight, run around, and kill enemies until they’re full up on power ammo and have more Super energy. The team then wipes intentionally so that everyone can get a fresh, optimal pull. It adds minutes onto the reset time if players want a prepared shot at the boss.

But all this will be a thing of the past when the Last Wish raid opens on Sept. 14. When players reach the Dreaming City, they’ll gain access to a new vendor — whom we won’t spoil here. One of the items that players can buy from this vendor is a Raid Banner. This new item can be used by raid-mates before a fight to place a rally banner down in the encounter room. All of the raid members can then ready up on the banner to fully refill their Super energy and heavy ammo.

While these items are consumable — meaning that when you use one, it’s gone — they’re very cheap, costing either 5,000 Glimmer or a measly three Legendary Shards. The entire process is actually very similar to bringing a feast to a raid in something like World of Warcraft, where all players benefit from an ally’s generosity.

We have no idea how the Last Wish raid will work, or where it’ll sit in the pantheon of Destiny raids. But, no matter what players think of the raid, this new Raid Banner system will allow them to give each pull an honest shot without having to worry about how much power ammo Colonel_the_chicken_6 has in their rocket launcher.