Destiny 2’s Ghosts of the Deep dungeon has been out for a while now, having been released on May 26 at the start of the season. While much of the conversation around it was positive, many agreed that the amount of health its final two bosses had could be borderline obnoxious at times—especially for solo players.
That particular critique has been repeated after a Reddit post gained a lot of traction today begging Bungie to nerf the boss health in Ghosts of the Deep. Redditor Krazy_Dragon_YT told of a familiar tale of spending multiple hours in the dungeon solo, and of the final boss only being wittled down to half health in 45 minutes. Despite some pushback from hardcore Destiny players, the large majority agreed with them.
“I don’t understand why a dungeon boss has to have this much health,” they said, in reference to Simmumah. “Especially a Wizard that has a crit spot that is VERY annoying to hit, especially when I’m using a linear fusion rifle.”
Not only that, but as they then point out, just reaching the damage phase requires a lengthy setup lining up symbols, killing Hive Lightbearers in three side rooms, and gathering Deepsight. Even on my own runs that were far smoother than this player’s, the tedium of the last encounter is impossible to dispute in comparison to the far simpler—and quicker—dungeons that came before it.
“Bungie. Please. Adjust the health,” they pleaded. “We’ve been asking for this since day one. Make it scale with fireteam size. This dungeon is insufferable solo.”
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Difficulty scaling with fireteam is certainly something that Destiny 2 could use more often in this new era of challenge that Lightfall ushered in. Ghosts of the Deep is still of a similar difficulty to the Duality dungeon in a fireteam of three, but exists in a void of its own when it comes to its difficulty for solo players. Fireteam scaling, as Krazy_Dragon_YT suggests, would potentially amend that and make the difficulty between the two party compositions more balanced.
However, it wasn’t just boss health that the comments underneath the post took issue with. Instead, many players believe the mighty health bars are only one element of a wider problem with the dungeon making everything more “tedious” than previous entries.
“I just don’t understand the need for a shield at all when there’s already mechanics to start a DPS phase,” wrote u/Chiesel. “It’s like they tried to make this dungeon as tedious as possible.”
“‘Make it tedious as possible’ sums up the entire dungeon,” agreed another comment. “The dungeon is tedious incarnate, I don’t know why so many people here say it’s the best dungeon ever. It’s all so slow and you cant speed it up at all by playing clean and effective.”
The shield being referenced is one that both Ecthar and Simmumah have that needs to be destroyed at the beginning of every damage phase. The shield has made the Arbalest Exotic linear fusion rifle a requirement for many teams, as it’s one of the only weapons that can effectively destroy the shield in one or two shots and save precious seconds for actual healthbar damage.
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The issue of the shield came up again in another comment, and it’s clear some players believe it is this mechanic—not the total healthbar of Simmumah—where the issue lies.
“Her health isn’t really the problem, it’s the overshield. She only has about 8~ million base health, but the shield adds about another 650k with each damage phase,” read one reply. Another echoed the sentiment, suggesting it is where the bosses need to be nerfed, writing: “Just remove the shields. They inflate HP values and they make Arbalest feel required.”
However, even in a world where Bungie did remove the shield, Simmumah’s notable amount of health is only one facet of what makes it such a difficult fight. The healthbar might be comparable to other dungeon bosses, but the steps to reach a DPS phase are not. Removing the shield that the dungeon bosses have in Ghosts of the Deep is a good first step, but complaints about the difficulty of these encounters will probably persist beyond it until the healthbars themselves have also been reduced.
Considering that Bungie has not brought up the feedback around Ghosts of the Deep’s difficulty level since its release over two months ago now though, Destiny 2 players can’t be too certain that any such changes will be instituted at all.
