Bosses Be Gone: How to Defeat the Pillar of Denial in Destiny 2’s The Final Shape
The second mission in Destiny 2: The Final Shape brings new puzzles to solve and terrifying bosses to take down in your Guardian's attempt to bring an old friend back from the brink.
Destiny 2‘s latest expansion The Final Shape brings a conclusion to the overarching narrative of the war between Light and Darkness while managing to make meaningful connections to previous expansions and its talented cast. With a lot of positive attention from audiences and critics alike, it’s evident that Bungie has hit another home run with an expansion that is thrilling to experience.
Among its many pros is the addition of new mechanics, levels, and enemies for your Guardian and their Ghost to take on. The Final Shape brings a lot of unique new bosses to life as well, building up to some memorable encounters against enemies designed to keep new players and veterans on their toes as they seek out their objectives in the expansion’s new narrative missions.
Resisting the Temptation of Darkness
After the events of the expansion’s first mission, in which your Guardian is privy to a touching reunion with returning character Cayde-6, with Nathan Fillion reprising his role, you find that Crow has vanished and has left his Ghost Glint behind. Suspecting the worst, your Guardian and their allies set off in pursuit of him, hoping to prevent a less than favorable outcome for their ally.
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This kicks off the second mission of The Final Shape, aptly titled Temptation. Your Guardian and the rest of the crew head into the Pale Heart to dig up more information and clues as to the whereabouts of Crow, encountering some stiff resistance along the way from enemies and the environment alike. One of these threats is the Pillar of Denial, a boss encounter that is as unique as it is memorable.
Bosses Be Gone: How to Defeat the Pillar of Denial in Destiny 2’s The Final Shape
While you may be forgiven for thinking that the opening fight against the Tormentor is the hardest challenge you will face in this mission, that is hardly the case. You could use the conveniently placed balconies with their excellent sightlines to use long-range weapons like the Hung Jury Scout Rifle to attack weak points on its chest and shoulders while avoiding the worst of the Tormentor’s attacks.
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After this fight, you find yourself in front of a cave that is blocked off by a Psionic Shield that requires you to solve a puzzle to power it down. This puzzle can be a little hard to solve, considering that the game doesn’t tell you precisely what you need to do, letting you figure things out for yourself instead. You could check out our detailed guide to this puzzle in case it’s giving you a hard time.
With the Psionic Shield powered down, heading through the cave brings you to your next challenge in The Final Shape’s second mission: the fight against the Pillar of Denial. This boss spawns along with two Taken Blights and takes refuge in either one of them to make life harder for your Guardian. Taking them down is a crucial part of beating this encounter and continuing your pursuit of Crow.
New Taken Blights spawn every time you remove a quarter of the boss’ health bar, making you repeat the cycle of taking them down and damaging the boss until you finally bring it down. There are multiple smaller enemies for you to deal with as well, making crowd control an important part of any strategy you may adopt to take down the Pillar of Denial.
A reliable approach to this encounter is to put as much distance as possible between your Guardian and the boss, using the hill you just climbed down to pick off lesser enemies from afar using your Scout Rifle. This should clear up the field enough for you to focus your attention on the Blights and the Pillar of Denial.
Be ready to run when you destroy a Blight that is housing the Pillar of Denial, as the area-of-effect explosion that ensues can quickly turn the odds against you. It can be a good idea to retreat back to the hill and damage the boss from afar when it is exposed until new Blights and enemies show up.
Attacking from range can make this fight relatively easy, as the boss does not attack when it is inside one of the Blights. As long as you are patient and back away in case you are getting overwhelmed, you should be able to bring down the Pillar of Denial with ease and continue with your mission. Just remember to stay on the move and do your best to ensure that it’s just you versus the Blights duking it out in the arena.
Defeating the Pillar of Light opens up the cave ahead, allowing you to progress with the mission by taking on the Enlightened Omen before finally catching up to Crow and encountering the Witness along the way.
If other bosses or missions in Destiny 2: The Final Shape are giving you any troubles, do check out our detailed guides to learn more about how to overcome them and bring the game’s strong narrative to its conclusion.
