No. I think most of us called it a night around 9PM. We made a couple attempts at Templar that didn't go so well, and that was that. 

The Templar challenge.  We got it done, fam.

Strategy?  Do what this guy right here does.  Credit to Outrider for sending me this, and Youtube user Volsus for making this video.




My personal notes and experiences:

Your relic runner should try to spec for as much armor and recovery as they can get, 'cause 390 light no teleport Templar is no joke.  The remaining five members of your fireteam can hide in bubbles or behind pillars, and can shoot back at whatever's shooting at them.  The relic runner, on the other hand, has to focus solely on blocking teleports, leaving them wide open to the shitstorm that's brewing from all the harpies and minotaurs from blocked teleports.  The video makes it look easy, but my first hand experience is that this very, very difficult and intense, requiring good RNG to get the blocked teleport cycle going, good maneuvering around to get from teleport to teleport, and a bit of luck.  I was a fingernail away from dying for most of the fight, just because between all the stuff shooting at you, there's hardly no time to recover.  The sheer amount of ads the game throws at you, the massive damage Templar can deal at the drop of a hat, and the longer you take to kill Templar, the more teleports you block, the more stuff that spawns in, which leads to...

Ammo up.  Everyone needs to have full primary, special, and heavy, with a synth ready to go, all supers charged for everyone else in the fireteam.  I'd recommend at least one titan with Weapons of Light, and at least one hunter with a tether.  More tethers is always better, stagger them so the Templar is always debuffed by shadowshot.  Bonus points if you've got a Celestial Nighthawk in there somewhere too.  You might want to have a guy with a void shotgun hanging around in the back as well if minotaurs get too close.  Saint-14 bubbles are nice for this too.  Maybe a warlock hanging around with storm or nova bomb for crowd control and additional orb generation.  When the DPS phase starts, the rest of the fireteam needs to beat the Templar like it stole something, dump everything, rockets, machine gun, Sleeper, snipes, primary, grenades, synth behind cover if you have to, supers, keep going non stop until he's dead or you fail the challenge and wipe, whichever comes first.

About blocking the teleports, which is the hardest part to get down - there's some timing to it.  You don't have to immediately jump up to the teleport to block it.  There's a fine line between the duration of the relic cleanse/shield you're gonna use to defend yourself from the Templar's fire when you're blocking the teleport, versus the time it actually takes to block the teleport.  This takes some getting used to, because if you immediately jump on the teleport point and pop the relic shield, the relic shield is probably gonna run out before the teleport is actually blocked and you're gonna get annihilated.  You have about a ten second window to block the teleport, and provided you get in there before that window expires, even at the end of it, you should block the teleport.  I didn't pay attention to the exact duration of the relic shield, but I noticed that if I waited 3-5 seconds before jumping on the teleport point, I usually had more than enough shield to survive until the light beam disappeared and the teleport was blocked.  For added insurance, don't raise the shield until you're actually getting shot at - if your team is going hard on Templar, which they should be, it will take the Templar a second or two to realize what you're doing before turning its fire on to you.  Again, this takes a little time to get the feel of it, because the damage comes so fast and you're directly in the line of focused fire from that thing, you can get killed very, very quickly.

Once you've successfully blocked a teleport, the beam of light indicating the teleport will disappear and you'll see a message saying "the Templar summons its minotaurs" or something like that.  As soon as you see that, you need to GTFO and start working your way to the next teleport.  Remember, with this strategy, you as the relic holder have one responsibility only, and that's blocking teleports.  It's hard, but you've got to ignore the ads, provided they're not an immediate threat to you, like a harpy shooting you in the back or something, you've got to ignore damaging the boss, you won't need to pick up any ammo or orbs during this phase, just block those teleports.  You've got to rely on the rest of your team to kill the boss, and to help keep you alive if you get in trouble with ads - especially blocking the right side teleport, because ads can spawn in behind you as you're blocking.  Communicate with your team, if you're in trouble, call it out, have someone throw grenades or rockets or a super to cover you, you've got to get those teleports blocked, that's the only thing you need to worry about.

Overall, it's a rush playing the encounter this way, it is very challenging as the relic runner, maybe slightly less so as a shooting on boss DPS duty.

Now, Atheon challenge, gonna have to work on that one next.

Oh, and as a relic runner at Templar, consider using Jolder's artifact. I died a few times to sprint lock trying to get to a teleport or run away from damage. Jolder's will help minimize that, cause you're gonna be doing a lot of running. 

Running the relic for the challenge mode is the first time in a while that I've had a rush like that in Destiny. 

The entire world is trying to kill you in there. The amount of ads the game spawns during the encounter is staggering. You've got to rely on your movement to keep you alive, because there just really isn't any time to deal with ads, and after one or two teleports there's so many of them that it's suicide to actually try to deal with them by yourself. 

And then facing the Templar straight up to block a teleport is a hairy experience in itself. Especially on the right side, because of the uneven ledge you've got to stand on/near to block it, and the splash damage sometimes clips through the relic shield and will crush you immediately. 

I've still got the checkpoint on another character, I'm probably gonna go back in there tonight just to practice moving around and blocking teleports. Or if enough folks are on, we can try to complete the challenge if you'd like. 

I plan on doing more VOG this weekend, and I want to practice with the relic. Plus I'm lacking weapons - I'd really like a legendary Vision of Confluence, the oracles seem quite a bit more sturdier than before and oracle weapons help out a lot. 

Tower hanger, to the right as you go down the stairs. 

Legacy special. 

Alpha Lupi, Shinobu's Vow, the Ram, Invective. 

Atheon challenge cleared.  Congrats to all, a couple Mythoclasts dropped, it was a productive raid night.

I think our method for the challenge is a little sloppy, needs some refinement.  I'd like to try and get another clear or two sometime over the weekend.

Oh, that's what you think.  We'll see about that.

I'll be on doing stuff regardless around then. 

We're gonna talk him into an MP5 clone before the night is over. 

No!  I'm not going and you can't make me. 

Okay, I kinda want the adept Doom of Chelchis from King's Fall...I guess I have to do the stupid raid. 

We've talked at length about King's Fall, but overall it's just a boring raid to me. It was amazing the first time, but after a few clears it devolved into "stand on this plate, shoot, shoot, shoot, hide from the boss' team killing mechanic," lather, rinse and repeat. 

The only real satisfying fight to me is Golgorath, and we really don't do that one the way they intended for it to be done anyways. 

And heaven help you if one or more people go down during an encounter. Automatic wipe in most cases, and very hard if not impossible to recover from otherwise.