I had a bit of an eye-opening experience yesterday in the hard raid. My usual raid group of 4 lv30 friends were carrying two 29's through who have never beaten the hard raid before. Now, I've always been the more serious, time efficient person in the group. I would always be the one standing on a sync plate already while everyone else was jumping around pre-atheon teleport. I would be the one to yell "wipe" as soon as we lost too many people or when I thought hope was lost. The hard raid run yesterday taught me not to give up so easily. Although we did fine on defending the first central conflux, both 29's died near the end of the second wave (left and right). Convinced that we had lost, I told everyone to wipe and jumped right off. The other 3 insisted on keep going "for fun", and somehow they managed to hold all 3 confluxes with only 3 people and not letting a single Vex sacrifice. I was genuinely very impressed, and praised them for the whole templar fight. Similarly, on the gatekeepers, we lost half our team again after grabbing both relics. This time, I decided to keep going since we managed to pull off the confluxes earlier. We ended up struggling, and 2 of the remaining 3 of us died at the very end, but the wave ended right before the last guy died from the relic's curse. At this point, we were super confident and it turned into one of out best Atheon fights yet. After the first portal phase, we were all just running around shooting atheon instead of using the shield. Both 29's died nearly at the same time to supplicants. It was just the first teleport, and we had barely chipped away at atheon's health, so I insisted that we got a fresh start. My friend looked around and said "meh, it's just the 29's, we can still do it." We then proceeded to have one of our most flawless Atheon runs yet. Timely portal openings, supplicants eradicated efficiently, and not a single other death in the next 4 teleports that it took us to take down Atheon with only 4 people. So let me ask you this, fellow guardians. When do you reach the point of "giving up" in the hard raid? After one person dies? After two? Until the last dying breath of your last teammate? Although there's a point to where difficult becomes impossible, I learned my lesson yesterday and encourage you all not to give up so easily. :)