You'd expect purchasing the new content ($20 whether you buy it on Xbox One or PlayStation 4, though the latter gets more content thanks to timed exclusivity) to raise the ceiling. Perhaps the most important piece of The Dark Below is that it raises the game’s level cap. Looked at another way, the expansion renders meaningless the several hundred hours we all spent addicted to bounties, upgrading exotic weapons, and slamming into bugs. Looked at one way, Destiny's first expansion, The Dark Below, finally fixes those kinds of problems going forward, for me and many others. Instead, my inventory was filled with literally more upgrade materials than I could use.
While I spent dozens of hours running that raid on both difficulties, the random number generators at Bungie never decided to grace me with the helmet or chest plate I needed. Getting to the 'hard' level cap relied on random drops from the endgame raid, The Vault of Glass.