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 encounter with Nezarec in the raid will feel familiar if you’ve completed previous encounters. Before discussing loadouts and strategies, understanding the mechanics and roles is crucial. The arena layout features platforms for dealing damage and light nodes on the left and dark nodes on the right. Familiarizing yourself with these elements is essential for a successful fight.

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.

• Runners connect light and dark nodes to initiate the DPS phase.
• Activate nodes by grabbing Field of Light or Flux of Darkness buffs.
• Buffs are obtained by shooting the initial node with the aura around it.
• Nodes activate in a relay system; directional indicators guide to the next one.
• Quick completion of node links is crucial to initiating the DPS phase before a potential team wipe by Nezarec.

• After activating all nodes, select a nearby platform for safe boss damage during the DPS phase.
• Eager Edge sword skating trick (used by warlocks in the team) facilitates rapid node connection during contest mode.

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 is crucial for handling mobs and the three colossi during the encounter.
• While two members align nodes, Nezarec charges the wipe mechanic.
• Communication is needed to shoot Nezarec’s critical spots: shoulders and chest.
• Shooting the chest gives the Nezarec’s Hatred buff, making him aggressive toward the player.

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.

• Shooting Nezarec’s chest emits a minor AoE explosion, indicated by a Blue or Orange hue.
• Depending on the color, you’ll need Darkness Refuge for orange or Light Refuge for blue.
• These buffs are familiar from the jumping puzzle encounter, requiring cycling between them to survive AoE explosions.
• To create these buffs, grab an opposing aura buff used for node connection and apply it to a non-aura-emitting node.

• To prevent the orange-colored explosion, acquire the ‘Darkness Refuge’ aura.
• Obtain the Darkness Refuge buff by grabbing an active ‘Field Of Light’ aura, then shoot a non-aura radiating node.
• For the Light Refuge buff (needed for blue-colored bursts), grab a ‘Flux of Darkness’ buff and shoot a non-aura light node to spawn it.
• The refuge buffs last for 15 seconds, so timing is crucial to ensure they don’t expire during Nezarec’s wipe phase initiation.

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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

• Other helpful mods also include the new artifact mod, the Volatile flow mod which can make clearing mobs instantaneous.

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, I 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.

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