Destiny 2 S19 Spire of the Watcher Dungeon Review

A couple of days after Season of the Seraph S19 launched, Bungie released a new dungeon called Spire of the Watcher. How did it hold up to the hype? Just like many others, I wish Bungie would actually try to hype up their seasonal releases a bit more. It’s usually radio silence until the season has launched, which is pretty stupid in my book.

The dungeon was released to mixed reviews, and this was mostly due to some reused content. It’s not the best dungeon, but it’s a fun activity that has some great loot. It’s also new. In my opinion, Duality was a lot better. Duality felt crazy. I didn’t mind the reused bosses because they fit the seasonal narrative really well. While Gahlran was a Crown of Sorrow boss, and the Cabal bosses to open up the vault were a bit inconsequential, Destiny 2 dungeons have always had pretty memorable bosses. I’d say that the Fallen Captain in Grasp of Avarice was also a bit forgetful.

Now that I think more on the matter, a lot of the bosses have been reused assets in a lot of the dungeons. I think why it’s more evident and obvious now is that Bungie is reusing a lot of their vaulted content. People are still salty about losing what they paid for, myself included. This means that if we pay $10 per dungeon, I expect it to be completely new content.

Prophecy and Duality are my favorite dungeons. There’s something about Prophecy that’s just so beautiful. Duality was difficult initially, and had many bugs. However, the quality of the the dungeon excused that.

In Spire of the watcher, there’s only one mechanic. You get the Arctrician buff from the shielded minotaur, and shoot nodes in sequence to create a circuit. First off, after some light platforming, you make your way to the top of the Spire, which counts as an encounter. At the top, you’ll find the first reused boss, Akelous. The reuse as the Consecrated Mind from Garden of Salvation was pretty bad in my opinion. The mechanics to get to the DPS phase is fine, but they should have used something else. That raid hasn’t even been sunset.

Then you make your way down to the final boss. The descent is fine. It has some fan blades from Zero Hour. I felt some Trvr vibes at one point. The final boss is a giant Wyvern, basically one of those jive turkeys. It’s sad that they didn’t do much to differentiate the final boss from a normal Wyvern. If they did, it was too subtle.

You complete a couple of circuits. First, to let the boss into the reactor room. Then to activate more cores. Once they blow, you have a short DPS window. I use Witherhoard with the Weakened Breach mod, a adept Hothead with Clown Cartridge, and an incandescent primary. If I’m on Arc, I’d switch to the Ikelos SMG with Voltshot.

I haven’t gotten the exotic so far, it’s a bow, Hierarchy of Needs. The more triumphs you complete in the dungeon, which has its own seal, WANTED, the more chances you have of getting the exotic. That’s actually not a bad system. The catalyst drops from the Master version. By day 1, I already had people in my new clan who had solo flawlessly completed it. The emblem is pretty nice.

The armor is nice too. There’s a space cowboy motif, and all of the classes have a hat of some kind. However, the drop chances are ridiculously low, probably lower than the exotic, which is stupid.

There are four new weapons, including a stasis sidearm that can roll desperado, which is a first, but the perk was nerfed pretty hard, so it’s not as OP as before. There’s a legendary scout rifle called Long Arm. It’s hip fire isn’t as good as Dead Man’s Tale, but it feels pretty good. There’s a dual launcher breech loaded grenade launcher, which is also a first. I haven’t gotten it, but it’s incrementally better than others. Sadly, it’s void, so no perk like chain reaction, voltshot, or incandescent. Only Repulsor Brace, which isn’t bad, but not as good as the others.

Now there’s another really bad thing. They’ve reissued two more Seventh Seraph weapons, the 180 rpm handcannon and the 450 AR. They can roll some DSC perks, but it was a terrible idea. Unlike the Epicurean and Fixed Odds, well mostly the Epicurean, they’re pretty bad to be honest and they’re thankfully not craftable. I’ve only gotten 1 red border from Duality and have stopped running it so I don’t think I’ll progress it that much. The only thing that made the Seventh Seraph weapons good was that they could generate warmind cells, back when they were good.

Not only are those weapons kind of meh, they also dilute the loot pool with bad weapons, meaning that you’ll be getting a drop of them and you’d want to get one of the new weapons, which is what everyone wants. It didn’t help that they shut down DIM the weekend of the launch, making it impossible for me to really switch builds, so I ran it for the first time on Arc hunter.

I didn’t really talk about the story of the dungeon. It’s pretty simple to be honest, and it kind of ties in with the story, though the reused bosses were a bit of a faux pas.