When I think about encounters, there are several factors to consider when tuning difficulty. Player ability. Player management. Boss management. Traversal. With the announcement of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep - I wanted to explore a possible raid encounter in the Black Garden that would demonstrate an age old encounter design that has been largely lost on the Destiny meta. No adds. For years, we have had many encounters that rely too heavily on the involvement of adds or trash mobs. You go from one phase to the next, dealing with adds, and then onto the damage phase. So, for Black Garden, I wanted to design an encounter that was centered very heavily on boss mechanics and pattern recognition. Could you design an encounter that relied heavily on the difficulty of the boss, and not the overwhelming nature of horde mode mentality? Let’s find out.