Destiny 2: How To Beat Nezarec Final God Of Pain

Nezarec, the Final God of Pain, is the last encounter of the Destiny 2’s Root of Nightmares raid Lightfall. The encounter combines almost every mechanic you learned thus far in the raid and pushes all six of your fire team members to the limit to be precise and agile. Despite the encounter now having the contest mode difficulty removed, it is still imperative that players know the proper loadout for each class in order to provide efficient DPS on Nezarec as well as the overall strategy to overcome this encounter and complete the raid.

Final Encounter Mechanics Explanation

The critical thing to note here is that if you’ve completed the previous encounters in the raid, then this entire ordeal against Nezarec would seem pretty familiar. Before we discuss the loadouts and the strategy to execute the fight properly, let’s establish a baseline first for how the mechanics work and the roles of this fight altogether.

Plus, before we even get into the mechanics, we strongly urge you to get a layout of the arena as shown in the image we have provided from our run. There are a few platforms here from where you and your team dish out damage to the boss but most importantly, the light nodes on the left side and the dark nodes on the right side.

Light And Dark Node Runners

First things first, there are two different spherical nodes scattered around the arena in this fight, which are the same ones that you encountered in the first and second encounters of the raid itself previously. The light nodes can be found towards the left side and dark on the opposite. You will need to designate two members or ‘runners’ to each node here.

• The role of the runners is that they need to connect these light and dark spherical nodes, respectively until they align and declare the DPS phase.
• The nodes themselves can be activated by first grabbing the Field of Light or the Flux of Darkness buffs by shooting the initial node with the aura around it.
• To better explain it to those who aren’t familiar with these nodes in the preceding encounters of the Root of Nightmares raid, these nodes will need to be activated in a relay system manner.
• By grabbing the buff we mentioned, these nodes display a directional indicator of where you may need to go in order to activate the next one. But the fact remains that you will need to accomplish these node links quickly to initiate the DPS phase before Nezarec can wipe your team.

• Upon activating all nodes, choose one of the nearby platforms from where you will begin damaging the boss, as it will ensure he doesn’t damage you amidst the DPS.
• The strategy that my team personally used was the Eager Edge sword skating trick as warlocks which allowed them to connect these nodes at lightning-fast speeds during contest mode before any issues could arise, but despite that, let’s discuss what the other four members of your fire team will be doing during this encounter.

Controlling Nezarec’s Hatred

You can delay the wipe mechanic during the Nezarec, final God Pain encounter by simply passing his attention or, in MMORPG terms, his ‘aggro’ between the other four players who are not designated to running the light and dark nodes. It is done by shooting a vital spot on his body in order to gain a status effect called Nezarec’s hatred.

• Team composition plays a critical role once again, as not only will you have to clear the dozens of mobs that spawn during the fight, but there will also be three colossi in the fight, as shown in the image above.
• While your other two members are carrying out the node alignment, at the same time, Nezarec will be charging up his wipe mechanic to kill you instantly.
• So in order to prevent this from happening, you and your teammates will need to communicate and shoot Nezarec’s critical spots, which are his shoulders and chest.
• You can freely shoot his shoulder but be ready to communicate which fire team member shoots his chest as upon doing so, and the following player will gain the Nezarec’s Hatred buff, which will make him aggressive towards the player and target them with void attacks.
• However, there is another hidden mechanic discovered here which will prevent the wipe phase altogether in which Nezarec will instantly kill your team, so let’s discuss how you can accomplish that too.

Preventing The Wipe Phase

It is worth stating that with most LFG groups that will be knowledgeable of the fight, you can completely skip this part if the Node alignment mechanic is done quickly enough. Nezarec will start preparing the wipe phase right after the fight begins, as there is essentially a timer that is counting down during the fight. But, there is a bit of a little legwork that you can do in order to prevent the wipe phase from killing you and your team.

• During the moment when you or one of your fire team members will be shooting the critical spot on his chest to gain the Nezarec’s Hatred buff, upon shooting the chest area, there will be a minor AoE explosion emitting around Nezarec which will either be indicated by a Blue or Orange hue as shown in the image above.
• Now depending on which of the two colors were emitted by shooting the weak point on the chest, you will either need the darkness refuge buff if it was orange or light refuge if it was blue.
• Most players might recognize these buffs from the jumping puzzle encounter during this raid, where you had to cycle between these buffs in order to survive the AoE explosion that killed you in that area.
• To put it plainly, in order to make these buffs for you and your teammates, you will need to grab an opposing aura buff that we used to connect the nodes and then use them on a non-aura-emitting node.

• So in order to prevent the orange-colored explosion from killing you, you will need a ‘darkness refuge’ aura.
• For the darkness refuge buff, you will basically need to grab an active ‘Field Of Light’ aura first and then make your way to a non-aura radiating node, and shoot it, after which it will drop the Darkness Refuge aura for you and your teammates to pick up at that node.
• It is vice versa for the Light refuge buff needed when Nezarec emits a blue-colored burst of energy. Simply grab a Flux of Darkness buff first, and shoot a non-aura light node to spawn the buff.
• Lastly, it should be noted that these refuge buffs will last for 15 seconds, so you will need to time it efficiently so that the buff does not run out as Nezarec is initiating the wipe phase on your team.

The Best Subclasses & Loadouts

Now another important detail that most new players attempting the encounter for the first time will want to know eagerly is the best loadout setups for each class, including the Best PVE weapons to use here too.

But before we entail that, it is essential to note that you can use whichever loadout works best for your play style, but in order to dish out a high amount of DPS with your teammates, you will need to rely on a few of the best gear currently available in the game as well as the ‘meta’ subclasses for this fight right now.

• The best DPS weapons to use on any class right now for this encounter include Exotic Weapons such as the Thunderlord LMG, Gjallarhorn Rocket Launcher, and the kinetic Sniper Rifle, Izanagi’s Burden. The exotic catalysts for all three weapons can greatly increase their effectiveness.
• In terms of Legendary weapons, you can’t go wrong with the Forbearance grenade launcher from Vow of the Disciple or other strong mob-clearing weapons such as the Funnelweb with great PVE rolls will do you good during the encounter.
• The Hothead legendary rocket launcher with Vorpal Weapon or Explosive Light can be paired extremely well to use in a hot swap combination with Izanagi’s Burden to deal high DPS.

• Furthermore, another vital part of the overall loadout is that you should stack the Void resistance mod on your chest piece that we have shown in the image above since Nezarec will mostly use his void attacks to harm you, especially when you grab his hatred buff.

• Other helpful mods also include the new artifact mod, the Volatile flow mod displayed in the image above, which can make clearing mobs instantaneous due to its ability to apply volatile rounds to your void weapons on the orb of power pickups.

Titan

For other fellow Titan mains out there in Destiny 2 Lightfall, the best subclass to use in this encounter is easily the Thundercrash super of the Arc subclass. The reason why is that you can use the Thundercrash super to sink in a tremendous amount of damage onto the boss provided that you use the exotic chest piece, Cuirass of the Falling Star, alongside it, which will greatly increase the damage of the super itself.

Additionally, Hammer of Sol can also work strongly here to clear heaps of small-fry enemies and for boss DPS too, but again, we wouldn’t really recommend substituting it over the insane damage potential of the Thundercrash.

Hunter

Hunters are pretty flexible for this encounter, as they can preferably use shadow shots on the boss during the DPS phase to boost everyone’s damage. But if anyone from your squad is already running damage-multiplying weapons such as Divinity, then you can just use either Golden Gun paired with the Celestial Nighthawk Helmet or even the new strand super; thread runner can work excellently here if you want to try something new.

Warlock

Warlocks can truly shine here with their Well of Radiance solar subclass, along with the exotic chest piece, Starfire Protocol. Not will you be able to keep your teammates healthy and alive, but it will also let you spam Fusion Grenades onto the enemies and, most importantly, on the boss for extra DPS.

Although the chest piece states that you can gain fusion grenade energy back from their kills on enemies, you will still gain energy whenever you damage someone with them too. So make sure to endlessly spam them on Nezarec immediately after activating your Well of Radiance.

Empowering rifts are also preferred, so in case you’re the only warlock in your fireteam, you can then put it down for your fireteam members once your well of radiance runs out.

The Wrap-Up

Destiny 2 has an intricate background of lore that ties into its magnificent universe, but if you happen to wonder anything about Nezarec on why he’s called the ‘Final God of Pain’, this subreddit post might point you in the right direction as players discuss his nature along with the other primordial beings within the game.

If you’re right at the beginning sections of the Lightfall campaign or just trying to unlock everything about the new Strand Subclasses then consider checking out our guides to the Strand Sources Bonded questline. The Lightfall expansion certainly has a lot of secrets to discover at every corner of the way, so make sure to check out our Exotic Armor Tier List in case you’re looking to get ready before tackling endgame activities such as this raid.

For now, though, this wraps up our guide to the Nezarec, Final God of Pain encounter in Destiny 2’s Root of Nightmares raid. If you have any further questions with the guide or queries then let us know down below in the comments section. As always, eXputer wishes you and your team luck with this fight!

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