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Old 03/14/07, 8:10 PM   #76
Cel
Great Tiger
 
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Night Elf Rogue
 
Ysera
The single thing I'm seeing as a common thread in all these posts is:

Lack of control is NOT fun.

This is my issue with Gruul... it's a mostly uncontrollable fight, meaning you have to hope you don't get into a bad situation and wipe... there's very little you can do to completely alleviate all random abilities... it will be a fight where you always have a reasonable thought that you may wipe.

Same goes for fights such as Razuvius... We wipe on Razuvius in the same clear we kill Kel Thuzad? If it was some mistake made by a priest, or someone, that's fine, but it happens to be we get 2 MC breaks and we can't pick up another mob tank for more time than it takes to wipe.

Cthun is by far my favorite fight to date... very many things going on at once, but every bit of it is controllable. Every time we wiped we knew what caused it and came up with ways to fix it.

Cthun is a fight I'd like to see emulated to the degree that they make highly complex fights that are controllable. If they made it such that on Gruul you could out range the silence, but also be out of range to heal, that would make the silence controllable. If the knockback was written such that it made people land somewhat spread out, and not have the occasional 2 people land on the tank, game over... that would be better as well. Random targetted things like cave in is an example of random that's not bad. You can avoid the cave in easy enough.

All in all, when things happen such that you feel completely out of control, that is when thoughts of leaving the raiding scene, and ultimately the game start coming.... more so if the lack of control is repeated.

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell

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Old 03/14/07, 8:11 PM   #77
Bibdy
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I think everyone in my guild felt a little something like THIS when we brought down C'thun. The feeling was incredible. The build up through private messages through the instance was well thought out, the foreboding chamber of a god, the tension as he shifts between phases was amazing, the continuous battle of 'holding the fort' while you depend on everyone to do their job, the cameraderie and so on..all of it was just fantastic.

Beating C'thun really felt like beating the game because it was so dramatic. There would always be continuous chatter on vent - focussed entirely on the fight - and the sense of urgency and pride as you personally brought down that final stomache tentacle moments before the next wave spawned felt great - which usually involved screaming down the mic "Kill it! KILL IIIIITTTT!!! <insert DPS fest here> Awesome job guys, keep it up!".

And the best part was it didn't rely on consumables. If you knew what you were doing, you could tackle it and bring down a god. It relied entirely on 40 people to have a job and train them to do it well.

I live in hope that somewhere in TBC there are boss fights that feel the same way, but I think those days are long gone. Days where we felt like we were at the forefront where downing each boss for the first time was followed by hoots, yells and screams on vent for 2 minutes straight. Now its more of a "Booyah! Okay, what's next? We gotta farm gear/consumables for that guy too?! Awww...".

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Old 03/14/07, 8:32 PM   #78
Quigon
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Tauren Warrior
 
Kil'Jaeden
Consumables don't add to the fun of an encounter

C'Thun nor 4H really needed them. And most people would probably agree these were the best fights seen in this game.

They're also notably fights of execution and movement, fights of pure skill and everyone having a task.
Some guilds did go consumable heavy for these fights, but it wasn't ground breaking on the change in difficulty. Like say, Sapphiron was.

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Old 03/14/07, 8:52 PM   #79
Zagzil
Don Flamenco
 
Undead Warrior
 
Korgath
Originally Posted by Quigon View Post
Consumables don't add to the fun of an encounter

C'Thun nor 4H really needed them. And most people would probably agree these were the best fights seen in this game.

They're also notably fights of execution and movement, fights of pure skill and everyone having a task.
Some guilds did go consumable heavy for these fights, but it wasn't ground breaking on the change in difficulty. Like say, Sapphiron was.
No, but even "good" encounters (Gothik / Kel'thuzad) can be helped by consumables. Those were less painful though, because you felt you could tone down the consumable use over time.

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Old 03/14/07, 9:11 PM   #80
Playered
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Tauren Druid
 
Twisting Nether (EU)
A nice test to how fun encounters are, listen to your Vent/TS after you first down the boss:
Fun: "YEEEEAAAAAHHHHH OMFG LOL OMG WE RULE OMG I LOVE U ALL YEAAAAAAAAH" (C'Thun)
Not Fun: "Thank god we finally killed this piece of shit, now we can..." (Gruul)

I suppose the example of C'Thun v Gruul is not great, one is an end boss that before seeing want to kill for the sake of killing, other is just another loop in the chain you want to defeat to move on, Linear-Progression 4tl. However subbing in almost any of the Naxx bosses is good enough, each victory was met by a cheer rather than a sigh.

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Old 03/14/07, 9:41 PM   #81
Elsia
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Earthen Ring (EU)
Hmm interesting. Don't really know. The lack of control thing is intriguing. I never liked Sartura simply because it felt so random if someone died, even with all the motion and positioning that one can do to try to counter the random pathings.

She never wiped us once learned, but it still never felt like "great, we have mastered this", rather "uhm, we just randomly got her down again". A sense of being responsible for things going well definitely a good thing.

Also I do like execution fights, like C'Thun. I like oddball fights like Buru, which just breaks the mold of "there is something dangerous, tank it down and heal", similar to Little Red Riding Hood in Kara now. Story, plot scenary helps. Wiz of Oz is fun, with class abilities tied into the story. Dynamic adjustments, like for example the pre-twins trash I thought was nice too. Not completely known at pull, so gotta be ready for what you actually get. The "observe and adjust" thing that is so much more interesting than the stand and deal damage. I really like how interrupts and CC play an increasing role in Kara for this reason.

Best I would also like encounters that don't need addon crutches like timers. I'd prefer the twin emps to emote before teleporting, than addons timing the teleport for us and warning. Especially when this is really crucial to execution. Ideally boss designs should be doable without any addons (3 bugs for example, where Yauj has a very visible heal animation, and with build in cast bars it's even easier now). Or C'Thun who clearly indicated where the dark glare is going to go. Makes it less "I'm paced to a clock or a warner" and more "I pay attention and can respond to what's happening".

Tight DPS races can be exciting actually. Like Moam or Huhuran, but once gear outpaces the situation it becomes boring. But just barely squeeking by and making it can be very cool the first time.

Like Vael, the first time the tank rotation really clicked and rogue DPS went through the roof was a thing of beauty and it's just a huge difference from the 1% wipe to a just rock solid clear kill of such a wipe-easy boss.

I do like when the whole room is part of the encounter. Like the pillars in Neffy's room, the stairs at Razorgore or the alcoves between Firemaw and Chromaggus. I like the feel when walking into a room you get the feel that blizz just carved a hint book, visual guides and clues to things that help into the architecture. Think the architecture of C'Thun's room, or even Maiden's room in Kara.

Good raid boss learning is a riddle book, first you see the abilities, then you try to find counters. Coolest are the counters that are non-obvious but make sense.

Coordination and info sharing also cool. C'Thun's gut tentacles come to mind.

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Old 03/14/07, 9:52 PM   #82
Russta
King Hippo
 
Human Paladin
 
Argent Dawn (EU)
What constitutes fun to me is where skill and coordination will outshine any overuse of consumables and/or stacking of the raid. For that reason, C'thun, Thaddius and Netherspite will probably remain my most enjoyable fights for some time to come. Maybe less so with Netherspite but watching everyone slowly perfecting the strat then pulling it off is the most satisfying thing in the game.

And how many people ran to check the Thaddius loot before the polarity switches wore off? Lasting memory right there.

Aside from enjoying the environment being involved in fights, I don't really have anything more to add to that as it's all been said already. That said, I vehemently echo the sentiment that lack of control isn't fun.

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Old 03/14/07, 10:00 PM   #83
Jayde
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Silvermoon (EU)
To chime in on what someone said a few pages back, though... In general, my guild seems to agree that Moroes wins as the "coolest" boss ever. His voice acting alone makes the fight worth doing every time.

"Now....where was I? Oooooh yesss....." Priceless.

Honestly, most of Karazhan's fights are pretty high on the fun scale, with R&J and Prince a bit below par compared to the rest IMO. I laughed tons when I first ran into Oz (was our first Opera event) and still think it's one of the most enjoyable encounters in WoW--even if it isn't "epic" at all.

Aran is tough to learn, but really rewarding fight. One of those fights you really feel like you "earned" the win on. Very little luck, very little bullshit tactics, just you and having to execute everything right or die. Aran was probably the first fight we ran up into in TBC where we actually felt, "damn, that was a good kill."

Kara's problems lay in other issues than encounter design, but I can give them a lot of credit for actually making some pretty fun encounters there.

I also have yet to meet anyone who didn't love the mini-Thaddius in heroic Mechanar. Great idea there.

Last edited by Jayde : 03/14/07 at 10:06 PM.

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Old 03/14/07, 10:04 PM   #84
Playered
Soda Popinski
 
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Tauren Druid
 
Twisting Nether (EU)
Originally Posted by Jayde View Post
To chime in on what someone said a few pages back, though... In general, my guild seems to agree that Moroes wins as the "coolest" boss ever. His voice acting alone makes the fight worth doing every time.

"Now....where was I? Oooooh yesss....." Priceless.
Hah yes, him and Aran are quite good soley due to this, theres no end of "Preparations must be made." quoteing on vent even now.

They may not add anything to the boss encounter itself, however the gain towards the ambience is really nice and makes people get more involved with the encounter.

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Old 03/15/07, 1:11 AM   #85
Khlysti
Ithyphallic
 
Night Elf Death Knight
 
Silvermoon (EU)
I can safely say that of everything I have experienced in this game (killed everything in version 1, working on Gruul atm) Karazhan is the most fun instance by a huge distance.

It has drawbacks sure, the trash respawn rates (esp curator) sucked a bit while learning and the short lived nightbane with magic immune skellies was awful, but overall I love the place. Starts off with a short trash section through the stables to a simplistic first boss that basically checks you remembered to come in a raid group that has players in it. It still feels 'right' as a start point though. We then hit the balroom, for atmosphere with a large range of trash pulls its awesome, the small pulls have a nice range of emotes, the large ones throw spoons at my face, what more could I want?

Moroes is fun basically due to setting, emotes and voice acting alone, the fight isn't actually well done imo, and the difficulty seems slightly too high for the place in the instance, but the things he says and the wide range of abilities we get to use when killing the adds makes it good fun. The key things here are atmosphere and a chance to use 'non-standard' abilities in a raid. Depending on raid make up there are so many things you can do to his adds.

The balroom trash is fairly long and doesn't change mob types much, but the setting helps it, we then hit some more 'annoying' trash both on the way to maiden, and in the form of the Ushers. However I enjoy both of these are its a change of pace, its fun to see ushers die flawlessly, and to see one run around ganking people. But the gank section is only 'fun' becuase there are so few pulls, in the same way post emps trash in AQ40 could have been fun if there were 2 pulls of mindrapers, not 84.

Trash pacing matters so much, too little leaves no 'slack' time between the bosses, too much of the same thing, even more so when it never felt like it should be there at all ruins the whole instance. When staying at my parents during holidays I requested food be ready for the time I knew we would be doing that trash, probably the one reason we stopped doing AQ40 as early as we did was that trash, awful mind numbing repetative crap is not fun. Hard trash can be good (twin firelord pulls were really, really harsh when we first hit them) but aslong as its only a few pulls its fine, it can be good fun if its a kind of 'mini boss' trash. This is where MC did do quite well, as the trash was a constant change between different mob types (to a point), then suddenly we are past garr and its lava packs as far as the eye can see. Can't be that supprising that shazz -> sulf was another 'high' point in number of people afk.

So back to Kara and we are now at the opera, 3 great encounters all fun in their own way. All do very well at atmosphere, great lines for the characters and a slightly 'silly' feel to the whole thing. Wolf (utterly trivial) is great fun despite the complete lack of challenge due to the whole girl in a dress running away thing. Romes 'n' Jules is a nice 'control' fight, purge their buffs fast, interupt spells, collect loot. And Oz is kind of controlled chaos, incomming damage on a wide range of the group at the same time, many targets to take down but a good variety of different methods for aiding control with each mob.

Here we have each member of the raid needing to do something, and do it right to get a kill, you need the buffs purged fast, heals interupted, riding hoods kiting, tinhead rusted, strawman on fire etc. Most people feel what they are doing contributes enough to the fight that if they stopped doing it you would wipe, and thats great. If half your raid can turn off for half the fight then its really badly made.

On which note, a quick detour to unfunville. Nightbane, oh dear this thing sucks so hard, yeah its easy now with the changes that have been made, but I feel we could comfortably 8 man this guy, and maybe do it with 6. (6 when BoP worked would have been easy, if insanely long and dull) DPS on this fight feel like they could sit in a corner doing nothing in the ground phases, and thats becuase they can. Molten Core was the king of 'get enough healers so the tank will never die, then add some dps so the boss eventually does'. Since then we have had AQ40 and Naxx where the vast majority of fights made the dps feel there was good reason for them to push as hard as they safely could. Any fight where I could not only underperform, but be removed from the raid with no effect except a slight lengthening of the kill should be the first boss of an instance, not a late boss that keys for raids. He also seems to lack any form of atmosphere out on that terrace.

Curator is fun because of the 2 stage (kind of 3 with the enrage) nature of the fight, there are 3 things to heal (tank, bolts, add damage) 2 things to dps (boss and adds) and a reason to be positioned in a certain way. Its a multi stage fight where you do need dps on the ball the whole time, where a better performance in once phase can help a slightly worse one in another, and best of all, popping heroism during an evocate makes for a huge amount of nice big pretty numbers.

Aran is a good laugh, it definately favours my class and spec but for me atleast this is one of the high points of the raid week. Theres 3 different aoes to react to, 3 single target spells to interupt (or not in the case of AM) a 'timed enrage' in the form of the poly/pyro, but where we control the timer by a good interupt strat. He also has a 'low hp enrage' with his elemental summon, all of these things are entirely controllable, yet all are things you have to pay attention to (except blizzard as melee really, but even here being extra careful to HS/pot if needed due to low hp and healers moving from the blizz is needed). I also have no worries about threat (if he is going to melee anyone its me, but hey, its fun to own up KTM aswell as the damage meter). It has that 'dps race' feel to it where all our dps are doing their best to kill him asap, but its also about total control of his spell casts. Giving the players control of the 'enrage' timer here is pure brilliance.

Netherspite, despite being far too easy is also fun because of the whole portal-beam nature of the fight. Theres reason for people to move (Vzones) and some classes get to do things outside their normal role. The banish phase still needs some polish, but overall it is a good original and fun encounter.

Then there is chess, such a lovely interlude between the 'real' encounters I don't know if its possible to actually lose if you try to kill their king and don't suicide your own, but it doesn't matter at all that we 'can't lose'. Yes its free loot, utterly trivial and completely without challenge, buts its a laugh, a nice break in the instance. Hell, even if it gave no loot and just opened the door to the Prince it would still be fun to do.

Finally I suppose the biggest reason I love this place is its me and 9 other people having a laugh on vent and playing a game we enjoy, its somehow just the right size for a group to talk complete crap for hours on end. A pub trip as a 10 man works fine, a 25 or 40 man raid to pub leaves you unable to talk to or be with most of the others at any one time, and removes that sense of all doing something together.

That said I did enjoy 40 mans, and still like some 25 mans, but the 10 man size seems somehow more suited to fun to me, while 25 and up is more the 'work' bracket.

For a fun fight I should feel at risk of death at any moment, that death should be entirely preventable either by my own actions (to avoid damage) or by others (to heal it), I should feel as though whatever my role in the fight is can lead to a victory if done well, and a wipe if I suck. The fight should feel as if it 'belongs' where it is, the boss with his surroundings and the abilties with the boss. Sometimes it feels as if something was tagged on at the end of design, chances are it was tagged on at the end and it ruins the fun. We should be able to go into a fight, and assuming we are using a valid strat and actually improving then the boss hp should steadily get to lower levels each try. And having the whole raid blow consumables should not mean we go from chain wiping at ~50% to a win (hi to you Sapphiron). If a fight has a hp tollerance level for all players (doomwalker / sapph) it should be low enough to be achievable by simply using high stam gear. And not be done in such a way that the fight continues to get exponentially easier the more hp you stack.

Quite alot of these things need to be got right for a fight to be really fun, but getting one thing wrong can so easily lead to a suicide inducing miasma of effluent. The two biggest culprits by far are taking control away from players (mainly via unavoidable deaths, if you do something perfectly but still die because thats what the dice chose its unfun) and either trivialising content via consumables (sapph) or making it impossible without (loatheb).

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Old 03/15/07, 6:37 AM   #86
kamii
Von Kaiser
 
Orc Warrior
 
Dunemaul (EU)
Originally Posted by Dendory View Post
I donno, it may be group makeup, gear or luck, but I don't see how any group can get to curator and find him easy. Personally I've been blocked on both Curator and Romulo for a while and it's not from a lack of trying. Several evenings of wipes with a semi-balanced group, using (at least some) consumables and knowing the strats pretty well by now. Something just always seems to go wrong.
Bit offtopic:

We're a semicasual guild that didn't even kill Nefarian before the expansion. We're not farming any heroic stuff and aren't equipped totally imba in any way. Few Kara drops, lots of questrewards and blue drops, plus some crafted epics.

What we did is simpify the fight (instead of complicating it) and excute the simplified strats extremely well. Our tactics for the Curator:

1. MT1 (prot warrior) - tank curator - normal stuff, but go to devastate, shieldslam + hs only at evocation.
2. MT2 (feral druid) - stay second on threatlist & eat bolts - help healers to heal yourself back up to full health after each bolt. Go bonkers on the Curator during evocation.
3. DPS - kill flares - keep up dots on the curator if you can (but only if there's no flare up) - go absolutely BONKERS during evocations.
4. Healers - keep up raid, keep up tank - priests throw on mana pets on second evocation (our priests were back at 100% mana) - shammy spawn fire elemental during evocation.

Raidsetup: G1 - prot warrior, dw enh shammy, combat rogue (mace), afl. warlock, feral druid. G2 - 2 x holy priest, resto shammy, shadow priest, frost mage.

If i remember right after the third evocation the Curator was at 11%. At that time i (MT1) popped shield wall and everybody nuked him to death. We oneshotted him like that on our first try ever without potting, flasking or using any resistance gear whatsoever.

Last edited by kamii : 03/15/07 at 6:55 AM.

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Old 03/15/07, 9:56 AM   #87
Fenrus
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I'd just like to echo the general sentiment of this thread that too many uncontrollable/unavoidable elements can have an adverse affect on the fun factor of an encounter. All encounters should have an element of bad luck, but a well designed encounter is one that isn't dominated by luck. So C'Thun = Good, Gruul = Bad.

That said, so far I have to say that Blizzard has done a great job with most of the new boss encounters in TBC. Most of the bosses in Karazhan and the 5 mans are very fun fights, and Maulgar is great. The only gripe I have is about the relative difficulty of some of the earlier 25 man bosses, but that is more of a tuning issue than an overall enounter design issue.

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Old 03/15/07, 11:33 AM   #88
jilanea
Von Kaiser
 
Undead Rogue
 
Shadowsong (EU)
Ragnaros is probably the fight I'll always remember most. He's just massive, when you walk in for the first time and he does the speech it really feels epic and when he one hit kills domo, (that most groups there for the first time just struggled past) you really think your in for something good. As the last boss of the first real raid zone most of us finished, from a grandeur perspective Ragnaros still wins for me Hands down. Until I replaced my PC I had a screenshot of my first death on Ragnaros as my wall paper, even now its a screenshot I'll probably keep forever.

Other key things for me for a good fight are that I feel at least partially needed to complete it, that it doesn't play exactly the same every time, I use more than 2 abilities during it, and that it feels fair. Also absolute precision requirements, especially ones for other people often suck.

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Old 03/15/07, 11:57 AM   #89
Earthhoof
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Tauren Druid
 
Arathor
I'll second the elusive "Epic Feel" to an encounter as a major part of the enjoyment.

My single favorite encounter from vanilla is probably Rajaxx. Yes, it was buggy, and it was a lot of waves of trash - but the feel of staving off the Qiraji hordes, while their General screams rabid zealous rage into his troops, is just beautiful. As someone quoted, I always used to shout along with the line, "Fear is for the enemy! Fear and DEATH!" The voice-acting on Rajaxx was superb, and never failed to get me pumped.

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Old 03/15/07, 1:45 PM   #90
Bibdy
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Originally Posted by Elsia View Post
Hmm interesting. Don't really know. The lack of control thing is intriguing. I never liked Sartura simply because it felt so random if someone died, even with all the motion and positioning that one can do to try to counter the random pathings.
That's what I loved about Sartura. People would be screaming "GAAH! ITS IN MY HAIR! GET IT OFF!", some dude standing next to you would die, most would live and at the end of the day you could still beat the encounter with half the raid dead. Its been reiterated a few times now that Gruul could be one of the most fun fights in the game if it was just more forgiving. Kinda like a rollercoaster ride.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

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Old 03/15/07, 1:51 PM   #91
vhell
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I don't enjoy too many PvE fights, but the two parts I enjoy are:

1) Good Voice Acting (not kidding, Ragnaros and Thaddius are my favorite fights because of this)
2) Something where downy ducks get themselves killed (Thaddius/Heigan/C'Thun)

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Old 03/15/07, 1:54 PM   #92
Jayde
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Silvermoon (EU)
Originally Posted by Bibdy View Post
That's what I loved about Sartura. People would be screaming "GAAH! ITS IN MY HAIR! GET IT OFF!", some dude standing next to you would die, most would live and at the end of the day you could still beat the encounter with half the raid dead. Its been reiterated a few times now that Gruul could be one of the most fun fights in the game if it was just more forgiving. Kinda like a rollercoaster ride.
Well, it was fine if you happened to be one of the ones that usually survived, but I doubt it was very fun for those taking dirt naps due to an unlucky cleave... Sartura was one of those fights I think my guild universally hated, despite the fact that I never remember us ever wiping on her after the first kill. In some ways, she was terribly easy--could keep on trucking and take her down with half the raid dead--but easy doesn't mean she was "fun."

Any encounter where you can say, "yep, only 12 people died that time...not a bad attempt," is one that has some serious issues IMO.

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Old 03/15/07, 2:01 PM   #93
Recoil
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as far as current encounters go, i would have to say shade of aran is easily the funnest and most well scripted fight that i have been through. it's a coordinated movement type fight, and it has it's randomness to it but you can keep it under control if you understand the concepts of the fight very easily. just an all around good encounter.

edit: and to go off vhell's post, the voice acting on aran is pretty kick ass.

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Old 03/15/07, 2:14 PM   #94
berg
Don Flamenco
 
Undead Rogue
 
Tichondrius
C'Thun - Best effort to date still in my opinion.

I loved this fight because it needed people to dynamically do what was most intelligent at that specific time. Sure you could generalize peoples roles but players had so much freedom to do more than what was generally expected of them.

Everyone could dps in P2.
Everyone was free to dps little eye stalks.
Interrupting silencing big eyes was heroically important.
Lots of running around and positioning coordination.
Finally (and I think most importantly) players randomly getting put into the belly required dynamic adjustments to be made to cover all the things above.

We killed C'thun plenty of times and every time was going to play out differently and that is why it was great.


I think 4H was really good too but I think the tank requirement was an unwelcome throw-in whose only place was to slow people down. Remove the annoying tank requirements and that encounter improves but in my mind it never can achieve the dynamic feel of C'Thun.

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Old 03/15/07, 2:34 PM   #95
vhell
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Undead Priest
 
Blackrock
Originally Posted by Recoil View Post
as far as current encounters go, i would have to say shade of aran is easily the funnest and most well scripted fight that i have been through. it's a coordinated movement type fight, and it has it's randomness to it but you can keep it under control if you understand the concepts of the fight very easily. just an all around good encounter.

edit: and to go off vhell's post, the voice acting on aran is pretty kick ass.
Yep, forgot that encounter too.

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Old 03/15/07, 2:50 PM   #96
Eej
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Eej
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Personally I thought it was awesome to be introduced to Naxx by, "Closer now... tasty morsels. I've been too long without food. Without blood to drink."

Then again, Naxx was the first instance where pretty much every boss that could talk had voices, which made it awesome in my book.

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Old 03/15/07, 3:05 PM   #97
vhell
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Originally Posted by Eej View Post
Personally I thought it was awesome to be introduced to Naxx by, "Closer now... tasty morsels. I've been too long without food. Without blood to drink."

Then again, Naxx was the first instance where pretty much every boss that could talk had voices, which made it awesome in my book.
I always figured Zul'Gurub would have been your favorite. That and LBRS.

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Old 03/15/07, 3:08 PM   #98
Eej
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Eej
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Originally Posted by vhell View Post
I always figured Zul'Gurub would have been your favorite. That and LBRS.
Warmaster Voone doesn't talk. :<

While I love my tusks and feet, I love Crypt Lords (and pretty much everything else in Naxx) more.

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Old 03/15/07, 3:37 PM   #99
Ladnil
Glass Joe
 
Gnome Warrior
 
Crushridge
Originally Posted by Earthhoof View Post
I'll second the elusive "Epic Feel" to an encounter as a major part of the enjoyment.

My single favorite encounter from vanilla is probably Rajaxx. Yes, it was buggy, and it was a lot of waves of trash - but the feel of staving off the Qiraji hordes, while their General screams rabid zealous rage into his troops, is just beautiful. As someone quoted, I always used to shout along with the line, "Fear is for the enemy! Fear and DEATH!" The voice-acting on Rajaxx was superb, and never failed to get me pumped.
Rajaxx always seemed to be a "bring enough healers, DPS will kill it sooner or later" type of fight. As a raid leader and a tank there, I wouldn't bother trying him without 6 very good healers, 8 or more if I didn't know and/or trust my healers. Tank the big guy off to one side and kill him, split up heal assignment, hope you can keep the general alive. On the flipside, Rajaxx when you lose the Lieutenant General on the 5th wave is actually quite fun, tanking him required myself and my other tank to communicate in vent, and the healers I'm sure were in panic mode. But, to echo what people have said, it was a controllable fight. Half the raid was dead, so the DPS felt needed and the healers were using every trick they had to get through it while the tanks were coordinating taunts to keep him aggro'd through the knockback.

My favorite fights overall were anything involving movement, unfortunately my experience in AQ40 through emps and Naxx through Maexxna(4% wipe before 2.0 killed our raiding QQ) was entirely as a fury warrior trial member of a top raiding guild I had joined while they were working on the emps. I could see things like Anub, Sartura, Fankriss, and even the bug trio being tons of fun, but my experience with them was "follow a rogue to know where to stand and try not to eat aoe damage."



One thing I think would be great is a fight with movement and a complete reversal of roles, where somehow your raid members were targettable and damage healed them while healing damaged them, so your healers become the DPS and tanks while your DPSers are beating the crap out of their allies. Throw in a few adds that are damagable in the standard way so that your excess DPS has something important to do besides just being another guy backstabbing a healer and add some movement and you have a fight I'd definately be interested in. Not sure how you could fit healing someone with a mortal strike to the forehead into the lore but thats Blizzard's job.

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Old 03/15/07, 4:07 PM   #100
Foxery
Von Kaiser
 
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Tauren Druid
 
Auchindoun
Originally Posted by DeeNogger View Post
Shade of Aran wins the coveted prize of favorite and most hated encounter. I love it cause its a pure dps slug fest. But I hate it because I go through a lot of consumables on it, and the near mandatory warlock is disappointing. I also would like to say that the first few times I did Aran I was completely distracted by the voice acting.
Aran stands out as one of my favorite TBC fights, especially for his voice acting. Moroes and The Curator also sound fantastic. I love a lot of Karazhan's voiceovers; finally turning my game sound back on is enjoyable after 2 years of 40 "clank-clunk-brrrriinng" sounds. I was actually so enthralled by Aran's wide variety of lines that I didn't notice each one correlated to a specific spell cast until my groupmates got upset enough with my deaths to tell me so.

Back on topic... I like new fights which feel like they require more thought and less gimmick. King Maulgar and Moroes have more mobs than you have warriors for, but each one has a logical counter which someone else in your group can provide. Call it still a gimmick if you want, but it doesn't feel like one to me. Shade of Aran gives you a use for buttons other than your "1" and "2" keys. (Please trim the Elementals to 2 or 3, though.)

I also hope these fights won't feel boring over time, the way most of BWL eventually turned into sleepwalking. To me, an ideal fight keeps me on my toes, but not so terribly much as to be frustrating. (as with Noth, Gruul)

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