The following guide recap courtesy of Datto
The Vault of Glass is the first raid in Destiny. It is much more difficult than your typical strike and requires 6 people. The first encounter is with The Templar.
You may have already seen the guides we’ve posted for the Vault of Glass, and if not, click here. There’s a lot of good overview information there, but in this article we’re going to be focusing on the Templar.
DattoDoesDestiny explains this fight very well, walking you through step by step, about what you need to watch out for and remember to do.
Team composition
An ideal team composition is pretty much any setup. I would say that Striker Titans and Bladedancer Hunters are less than ideal due to higher risk of death, but experienced players who know the fight very well can use these subclasses with minimal issue. You can always change your subclass during the fight to fit the needs of the team anyway. There’s a mechanic in the Raid that does not encourage the use of melee attacks, so they’re not recommended.
Weapon prioritization
For this fight and for the entire vault of glass, you will want to prioritize void damage over other sources of damage if you have weapons with equal attack values. Minotaurs will be spawning, during the fight, but they are the only things that have shields. If you have a strong special weapon, you are fine to roll with a non-void heavy weapon should you not have a legendary or exotic void heavy weapon.
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Phase 1
Phase 1 starts when you jump down into the boss area. You’ll see a conflux hanging out in the back of the area where you jump down. In phase 1, you’ll need to defend this conflux and prevent vex from getting close to it and sacrificing themselves to it. If four vex make it to a conflux, your raid group dies after about 5 seconds, it is an immediate wipe. Goblins, Hobgoblins, Minotaurs and Fanatics will spawn out of many portals in the front of the area. The boss will also be sitting up in the front of the area.
Templar Phase 1 positioning
Fanatics and Mark of Negation
Fanatics are the main thing you should be worrying about in this phase, they usually don’t spawn too frequently until you see the message, “The Templar summons its legions”. When you kill a fanatic, they drop a green field. If you touch the green field, you’ll get a debuff called Mark of Negation. Periodically, the boss will cast Ritual of Negation. If you are not marked, this does absolutely nothing. If you are marked when Ritual is cast, you die immediately. The only way to rid yourself of the mark is to cleanse yourself in the middle, where the main stair case goes down. To cleanse, just jump into the light and you will be cleansed. Be warned that you can only cleanse yourself so many times per fight, so try not to get marked too often, or ever if possible.
Group positioning
For this phase, you should have your group split up into 3 groups, left, middle and right. The left group will be watching the far left door and the left area in general. The right side will be pushed up a little bit more towards the right side spawn doors. One person is usually enough to cover the middle, but if you need two, that’s fine. A player with an upgraded legendary or exotic hand cannon can kill goblins, hobgoblins and fanatics in one shot with a shot to the weak spot, making them very efficient at keeping the middle covered. The final player can either help middle or help where ever they are needed.
One thing to worry about is that the vex can teleport very long distances, so it’s possible for them to blink straight to the conflux and sacrifice themselves. Keep an eye on your radar.
When the Templar summons its legions, this is when the fanatics show up in great numbers, along with Axis Harpies. Fanatics spawn in the middle and people should focus their attention on the middle, using rockets and ranged supers like Nova Bomb. Do your best to keep them contained because if one gets close to you, it’ll explode and you’ll likely get marked. The harpies spawn from the other doors and should be focused on whenever possible. When the Templar summons in this fashion, it means the start of the next phase is coming. As soon as the harpies and fanatics are dead, you’ll start phase 2.
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Phase 2
Phase 2 is nearly the same as phase 1, except now you’ll have two confluxes, one on both the left and right instead of the far back. Other than that, there are no differences from phase 1. You will transition to phase 3 in the same manner as you transitioned to phase 2, with all the fanatics spawning.
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Phase 3
Phase 3 is the same as phase 1 and two, except now you have all three confluxes active at the same time. Your group formation does not need to change, it should stay the exact same.
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Phase 4
Phase 4 changes things up. The goal of phase 4 is to kill oracles that spawn in the area. Oracles are these yellow glowing cubes that hover above the ground. They do not deal damage to you, they can’t attack and they do not move. When first starting phase 4, the oracles will ping their locations and the sound they make when they spawn. Each oracle has its own note, so if you have a good ear, you’ll be able to tell which oracle spawned where based on the note. There are 7 different areas that the oracles can spawn in. Callouts frequently used in my group include: middle, left stairs, low left, left hidden, low right, far right and right hidden.
Templar Phase 4 positioning
Hidden oracles
The hidden oracles are ones that are behind the bigger pillars that are closer to the boss and will most likely be the ones that cause you problems. Should an oracle not be destroyed quick enough, your entire raid group will be marked for negation and you should all immediately run to the middle area to cleanse yourself as the boss will continue to use ritual of negation during the fight.
This is the longest phase of the Templar fight. You’ll end up with 7 waves of oracles. The first wave will come immediately after the oracles ping their locations. Each wave spawns 50 seconds after the previous, up until the 5th wave. The 6th and 7th wave will come after a minute instead of 50 seconds. The first and second wave, you’ll have 3 oracles spawn, the third and fourth waves spawn 5, the fifth and sixth spawn 7 and the seventh wave spawns 9. You should have a similar setup as you did for phases 1, 2 and 3. Have one person on the left and right be the designated hidden oracle killer. If no one sees an oracle that spawns, they should be checking those two hidden spots immediately.
Trash mobs and priorities
You’ll have the usual goblins and minotaurs spawning throughout the encounter, but now the hobgoblins will be spawning on 8 different platforms, 4 on each side, on the outer parts of the area. These need to take priority over everything except oracles; they will absolutely cause deaths if not dealt with quickly. Everyone should be on the lookout for the hobgoblins and killing them as soon as possible. Use the callouts, left 1, 2, 3, and right 1, 2, 3, 4 to communicate where they’re spawning. Left 1 would be the platform farthest from the boss and 2, 3, and 4 are the platforms that get closer to the boss.
Ritual of negation
The boss will prepare ritual of negation 20 seconds after the first and second wave of oracles. For waves 3 and 4, it’ll be cast after 25 seconds, 5 and 6 is 30 seconds and 7 is 35 seconds. This means if your group gets marked, you have very limited time to cleanse. Something to also keep in mind: If your group gets marked, that wave doesn’t count and you’ll have to repeat it, so you really don’t want to miss any oracles at all. You’ll know when you’re on the last wave when you have to kill 9 oracles. Your priorities should be: oracles first, hobgoblins second, Minotaur’s third and goblins last. Obviously cleansing yourself of the mark is of the utmost priority.
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The Final Phase
After you kill the final of wave of oracles, it’s time to fight the Templar. You’ll have some time to collect ammo and whatnot, because the Templar fight doesn’t start until you pick up the Relic. There are two roles in this fight, you either have the relic or you don’t.
Throughout the fight, harpies will be spawning from many spawn portals. They are not particularly strong by themselves, but in large numbers, they will quickly take people down. Meanwhile, the Templar is immune to all damage while his shield is up. There is only one way to bring down his shield and that is through the relic’s super ability, which is an arc blast. On top of that, you will periodically get oracles during the entire fight that must be taken down.
The relic holder
If you are the relic holder, you are the key person in this fight. The relic holder must bring down the Templar’s shields as much as possible to let the team deal damage to it. The relic holder also has the ability to quickly take down the harpies with the relic’s attacks. R1 is a dash attack, R2 is a slower, more powerful attack, jumping and hitting R2 in the air does a death from above style shield slam attack and L1 is your shield and cleanse ability.
Should your group ever be marked for negation because you missed an oracle, your group needs to group up on the relic holder and the relic holder needs to cleanse the group with the L1 shield. Make sure to hold it down for a second, because if you just press and release quickly, the barrier won’t be up long enough and you won’t be cleansed.
The relic holder should be doing their best to take down harpies and the team should let the relic holder kill any weak harpies if possible because kills charge the super meter faster. The super meter will charge quickly over time, but the boss enrages after about 7-8 minutes, so you need as many shots on boss as possible. This isn’t to say you should just ignore low health harpies if they’re killing you if you don’t have the relic. If you do not have the relic, you should just be killing harpies and staying alive. The relic holder should be careful about attacking harpies on the edge of the platforms, you don’t want to fall off. If the relic holder ever dies, someone needs to pick up the relic within 5 seconds. If you don’t, your entire team will die and you’ll have to start the fight again.
Final Phase positioning
How to take him down
When it’s finally time to blast the Templar, everyone should find a safe spot – don’t move. The reason you shouldn’t move is because when the blast hits the Templar, 2-3 people in your group will become detained. Those who are detained will have a shield put around them that dramatically reduces their movement speed and won’t be able to damage anything except for the shield itself. To damage the shield, just shoot it off. Your teammates can help shoot off the shields as well. This is also why no one should be using grenades or rockets until the shield is completely off. If you launch a rocket while detained, you will blow yourself up. If you throw a grenade, you will damage yourself heavily. Just don’t use them.
The reason you shouldn’t be moving is because if you are jumping in the air when the detain shield comes up, you will NOT be affected by the movement speed reduction. Sounds good, until you learn that if you leave your detain shield before breaking it, you’ll be affected by Suppression field. Suppression field will kill you very quickly if you do not re-enter your shield, but it typically results in death. This is mostly a problem for the relic holder, since the dash attack will still move you at full speed. It is very easy to dash out of your own shield and die. To prevent this, just go back and forth until the shield is removed, it should only take a couple of hits to break. Or, you can quickly tap jump and shield slam the ground and it should break off in one hit.
Breaking the shield
The relic holder will break the Templar’s shield and damage needs to happen after that, because you only get a few seconds to damage it. The final thing you need to worry about is his teleport. After his shield is broken, the boss will attempt to teleport. When his shield is about to come back, that’s when it’ll teleport.
The location the Templar will be going to is marked by a circle with a vertical beam of light coming out of the middle of it. It is possible to stop the teleport by standing inside of the circle, but it will spawn additional enemies and is generally not worth stopping. It’s much easier to just call out his teleport location instead of trying to stop it. He can teleport to 1 of 5 places. Callouts are: back left, back right, middle, top left and top right. The location should always be called out so players can move away.
Rince and repeat until he dies
To recap, relic holder uses super ability to remove boss shield, everyone should kill oracles and harpies, break out of detain shields, damage boss, boss then teleports, repeat until the boss is dead.