found this hard mode walkthough. interesting they didn't kill the boomers, so that the wizard would never spawn. they just stunned them to draw their fire away from the guy with the sword.
[Show spoiler]Obviously there are a lot of guides going up right now roughly repeating and refining the same basic process. I decided I would sign on and just hop in and see how far I got without much expectation of actually beating Crota with a PUG group from /r/fireteams.
Here's my general strategy that we developed on the fly, last night.
The Pit
There are multiple ways to approach this, but being fairly casual about this run we just went with the age old, everybody try to make it to the end and wing it approach. We utilized the rock, but had people running around firing rockets left and right at ogres trying to stay alive. It took some tries, there are better guides for this phase, so I'll just save the time and say eventually we made it.
The Bridge
Our plan of attack was to send as many across as possible that weren't warlocks, then have the warlocks wipe, despawn enemies and self-res. We had two Titans across who hid behind the front lamps after killing the Gatekeeper. We traded bubbles to keep safe as splash damage from Knights was causing issues. The 1-2 Warlocks damaged the Ogres and we as Titans helped as much as we could. This was not very efficient, but again, PUG group, somewhat casual, and eventually it worked.
Thrallway
I tried to compose my group for a strategy, but Leeroy Jenkins in the group just rushed it. I'm not sure what happened, but I just focused on shooting a Shrieker that was alive and someone made it to the chest. Leeroy died. We all laughed.
Ir Yut
I find this to be the easiest part. We sent one person right and one left to draw out the Wizards. Once they were down, we sent one in on both sides to kill the Shriekers. Two Gjallarhorns per Shrieker on HM apparently. Lesson learned the hard way. Once the right Shrieker was down everyone grouped on the left side and cleared the room and put damage down on the singing lady. She starts her song faster, we panic'd ran out of ammo and I ended up killing her with my last Fusion Rifle bullet, literally. This is really just a shoot shoot shoot encounter.
Crota Himself
We felt really good about this strategy after trying a lot of different things and it wasn't too difficult once we nailed it down. We did try the 3 damage phases per sword with a bubble Tactic, but we only had one Titan left at this point and I didn't reliably have super. We just decided it wasn't worth it and focused on taking our time and being safe.
Phase one, kill everything. We didn't make much effort here to do anything special, but obviously try and not take damage. Pro tip, kill the Acolytes first. They hurt you because they shoot you. Leave the Knights alone until they are all dead and then focus them minimizing damage taken. Don't leave the rooms until everything is dead and your team is ready to roll. Timers don't start until you do, so take your time.
Leave the room and run to the middle. Instead of going down where the Gatekeeper is (bad idea) hop on the ledge right outside the crystal room. Boomers don't have the range to hurt you here.
At this point roles come in to play. Obviously establish who is doing what prior to this point. We had 3 people on Crota duty. They are solely responsible to taking his shield down (yes it was 3 Gjallarhorns). One Hunter sword carrier. Invisibility yo. One guy, one black hammer (or Icebreaker) occupying boomers. The last man was my role. I did whatever I had to do to help. I'd fill in for Crota guys if they needed more firepower or were out of heavy. I'd occupy boomers with Black Hammer, but mostly I'd unload heavy on the Swordbearer. I ran Black Hammer / Gjallarhorn.
First sword. As soon as you are on the middle platform, kill that Swordbearer as soon as he leaves the doorway. Just snipe him in to a stun lock or heavy. Some of this is luck as he tends to go where he pleases. When he's low, send your sword carrier. Finish him and let the guy pick up the sword and go to the right or left rocks. The sword guy will call out when to down Crota. 3 stagger fired rockets will down him. The Boomer guy is just staggering boomers and drawing their focus. Don't kill them both or the wizard spawns. It's not the worst thing, but we did it with out ever spawning a wizard (obviously if one spawns, focus fire it). This part is largely the same at this point to normal mode. Go for 2 damaging phases per sword. If you think you can make three, you are committing to a 2 sword kill. You make this decision here.
As soon as the second damage phase is done you're running back inside as a team. I, a titan, liked to call out my direction (left or right) and drop a bubble in the doorway. This gives blessing of light and protects the team from boomer damage. At this point the team is inside and Crota has moved right. Just chill and keep and eye on him. As soon as he goes to move back center run back out and repeat the damaging phase above.
Keep an eye on his health. We managed to do too much damage here and enrage him but not kill him with the second sword. Bad idea. The goal is to set him up for death on the third sword, but not enrage him by the end of the second. Enrage is at a certain damage point (10-20%) you kind of just have to know or eyeball it. We'd typically get 13-14 sword strikes on him in the 2 swords. That seemed to be perfect.
Once you are back inside after the second sword the ogres come. At this point the team should go to the right or left side inside (we picked right because Crota should be left). Stand far back from the door to not get shot by boomers. Wait for Crota to go middle again. Kill the 2 boomers. Run out to the platform outside the door (where Crota would stand) and look down. The ogres should be there. Kill them. We just dumped all our heavy on them and they died quickly. Be mindful if a wizard spawns after killing the boomers. Just unload everything on the boomers until they die. One or two people should be killing any thrall trying to cramp your style. They come from all directions, but there's not a lot so it's manageable. Once the ogres are dead its on.
You have a decision to make once both ogres die. You can rush that third sword while Crota is still middle or wait for him to go left and then back to middle. I forget what we did on our successful run, but you have plenty of time to wait him out.
Final sword. Back middle, Crota should be middle. At this point Crota should die on the second damage phase of this sword. Woooo! Don't panic, as the team needs to be ready and understand he will enrage, after the first damage phase. Kill the Swordbearer, everybody keep to their tasks. As soon as he enrages the oversoul shows up and some sort of shockwave is sent out and you take a lot of damage. I also suspect it will explode rockets as one blew up in my face and killed me on one run. Either way you have completed one damage phase on Crota, the sword guy is ready, the oversoul is up and it's all or nothing now. Take down his shields and the sword guy should finish him off before the oversoul wipes everyone. Cash in on that sweet loot and do a little dance. You're done.
It took us a couple hours to do the whole thing, but this was a PUG group. We had one 31 during Crota and everyone else was 32. I think you could be 31 and do this as long as you are either on Gjallarhorn or boomer duty. A 32 is obviously needed as a sword carrier.
As time goes on I'm sure strategies will improve, but hey we just grouped up and took him down.
Hope this was helpful. Ask away if I wasn't clear. Sorry I have no videos to share, but I think there's a good amount of content out there to help give visuals to the general strat.
Note - Why we didn't go for the two sword kill. We were hearing/seeing talks of this strat and discovered it was possible to get 3 damage phases in with one sword. We went for this for a good hour or so, but we found it to be pretty inconsistent. We'd either have a Swordbearer run out of sight before dying, a sword glitch, Crota stomp on a Hunter despite invisibility, etc. The list kept growing and we decided to ditch it because it seemed like we were gambling for th perfect run rather than controlling the encounter.
As for the Titan bubble to protect the boomer bit. PUG / one Titan. I didn't reliably have a super up to make that strat work every single sword. We tried it, but in the end felt like it put another player at risk, when we were already risking the sword carrier. Again, as a random group and not a well tuned machine we just favored the safe reliable approach. We were having no issue stunning or drawing aggro from the boomers to keep them from firing on the sword carrier while attacking Crota. I actually don't think he ever died to them a single time throughout all of our attempts. We tried killing the Knights early one, but why deal with the Wizard if you have a choice?
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