With TBC out for quite a while now and the mechanics for most of the bosses reasonably well known, I'm wondering how people actually feel about the current trend for enrage timers on bosses?

For me on the whole, I don't like it. Whilst for some encounters its kinda fun to know "ok we have 10 minutes to beat this guy", the novelty definitely wears off a bit when you execute a fight flawlessly up until the boss is at 5%, then he enrages and wipes your raid because you were less than a few percentage points short of the required dps, either because your top dps Rogue died or because the raid is marginally short of the gear requirements.

My other beef with enrages is that back in BWL the fight I loved the most learning/beating before Nef was Chromaggus (apart from the Hourglass Sand issue) - the fact that I knew I had to last ~15min (was specced full Resto at the time), the sense of achievement when we beat him. Obvously once we geared up the fight was significantly shorter, but in the beginning the fight really felt epic compared to the shorter, more vicious encounters.

My main concern is that we are seeing enrage timers more and more often rather than other mechanics to limit fight duration (such as healer mana a la Patchwerk). For that matter why limit fight duration at all? I suppose that with no enrage you could potentially stack healing to the max and go for a long fight intentionally but a longer fight opens up more opportunities for something to go wrong - is this any worse than having to stack dps and "get it over with fast"?

I really liked how they did it on Ragnaros. You wanted to dps fast because your raid would be weakened with each "sons-appearance", but with good players not prone to panic you could still do it.

Curator is good too, I suppose. He does, I've heard, have an enrage timer, but it's largely theoretical. At least I can imagine a group able to survive and kill the adds for so long but unable to kill him.

What's good about those is that it allows you to go with a non-optimal class balance. One less dps and one more healer would mean a longer fight but still doable. I remember a memorable Ragnaros firgt were more than half the raid were healers; we had 14 holy paladins among others. It was not a short fight, but we managed. Had there been an absolute timer on that fight, I guess we would have had to go to Scholo instead.

If your rogue died you didn't execute flawlessly.

Enrage timer is a part of the encounter concept I don't think you can classify it good or bad independent of the actual encounter. Sometimes it's a good thing to add, sometimes it isn't.

The idea of enrage timers versus other mechanics to limit fight duration is an issue I won't argue with you on: I would like to see more diverse mechanics for limiting fight duration.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to disagree. If you have the boss enrage at 5%, you simply haven't executed flawlessly. Such a boss would be unbeatable. Rather, dying to an enrage (assuming your stated "flawless execution") should cause you to rethink how you are approaching the encounter. If we didn't have time limitation mechanics, you would be faced with raid dynamics that would heavily favor stacking healers while learning encounters, as you could stack healers until they were mana stable, and then slowly grind down the boss with your limited DPS. Such an encounter would be neither challenging nor interesting. Without time limitation mechanics, every fight essentially turns into Onyxia's 1st phase.

I completely agree, enrage timers promote class stacking (at the moment) to a certain degree or rigging the fight with certain classes for certain bosses. The first time we met an enrage timer that actually meant anything was on the twins our first few goes were so close to the timer it was an adrenalin rush to say the least, but now it's almost accepted that most bosses will do it, it's kinda 'meh' I suppose.

I also liked the Rag style spawn-cycle of his adds which didn't force you to mass dps but it was a hell of a lot easier if you did, also stuff like Anub'rekahn fights that the longer it went on the more chance of someone stepping in the wrong place or the spawn overwhelming someone quickly, so the faster you did it the easier it would eventually be on the healers. There are plenty of good encounters in Naxx that seem so much better than TBC for some reason, maybe it's 40 man over 25 man, touching on the other post about how every person has to pull their weight or things go south quick compared to 40 man when you could lose quite a few and it still be a fair fight.

I see enrage timers as a useful feature, since it in a way pushes the DPS classes into doing their job well enough, and the entire raid to do everything right. Of course if the timer is too short, it encourages raid stacking and less freedom of raid spots but that hasn't been a big problem so far in TBC - not as far as I've noticed, at least.

As long as the timer is not too short or too long, I fail to see a problem about it.

So you would be in favour of never being able to beat a boss if a member of the raid dies or if your gear is marginally not good enough? I'm interested in opinions on this, especially with the consumables changes meaning you can't make up that dps gap as easily any more.

Agreed enrage should be selectively applied, but the prevalence of enrage in TBC encounters seems to me as if it is added due to shortcomings in the design of the encounter rather than as a feature of the encounter itself.

Kyrillian: Not that relevant to 25-man, but have you ever let Illhoof enrage? Mind you, that at least is a good example of an acceptable enrage. If he he enrages it's not usually because you lacked dps, but because you faild to deal with Demonic Chains efficiently.

Enrages have their place as gateway bosses for unkeyed instances. Anyone can zone into BWL or Naxx, Vael and Patchwerk were the gateway checks for skill/gear.

Putting an enrage timer on every single boss is just silly. Raid designers forgot one of the things that makes raiding fun - getting a boss to farm and goof off status. MC was boring as hell but I always looked forward to blowing up people as the bomb. A guild that is deep into Black Temple should not have to "focus" for SSC, they should be able to run through it with alts and treat it as their offtime fun raid where people play music and everyone jokes around. Hopefully in the coming months that is achieved, many guilds already have Karazhan at this level (except for Aran... damn you person who moved! lol)

Time-based enrage timers do nothing other than make sure that you have used enough consumables for every attempt. Having more subtle timers is better (Lurker's adds each time he submerges) or having enrage timers that aren't guaranteed wipes and simply change the encounter (Four Horsemen's 100 marks).

Flawless execution is not same as lack of dps. You can execute any fight flawlessly and still come up short in the end because your raid lacked X factor to beat it. That is when you step back and reevaluate the raid makeup. DPS matters a lot more due to many enrage timers in the game. So pre patch 2.1 you had option of brute forcing your way through said lack of dps by using alchemy to the max effect and post patch 2.1 it will come down to gear and skill checks.

But as you have said you could stack healers to learn encounters. Nightbane is a perfect example of stacking healers, there is no limit to the fight. You can go as long as you can maintain mana regen and as you gear up you can go from 5 healers to 4 or 3 and shorten the fight.

I think flat enrage timers are boring and just frustrating.

Fights where they had intervals/stages or times where you had to burn the boss down before/during the next interval were a little bit more exciting (ex: C'thun, Ragnaros).

They just need to add more creative ways to punish the raid for lacking DPS other than stupid flat enrage timers.

It's part of the purpose of a specific encounter. If a particular encounter is meant to be as demanding as this then yes. Wether you think this or that encounter isn't supposed to be as demanding as it is is another question entirely.

I think also, that its meant to make raid leaders think about how to use their dps resources, how many healers to bring, consumable level. The old raid instances were pretty much bring whatever you want more or less. Its nice to have dps actually have to perform instead of just the healers and the tanks doing all the work. Now healers can blame the dps for sucking instead of healing sucking!

The only enrage timer I've seen be near to completion in TBC is Leotheras, and even then I've never actually seen him enrage (nearest was a few seconds away when he died I think, and that involved a few people dying early).

If we take Leotheras as the example, its not hard to not die, its not hard to stop dps just before any of his aggro wipes. Its not hard to get out of range of his whirlwind before it starts, or to heal a few people through it who get hit. What makes the fight a challenge is doing this while trying to maintain high dps on him, and the only reason to do this is the timer. With no need to 'push' dps to beat a timer you can relax hugely and the whole thing becomes trivial. However, even with the timer, once people are used enough to exactly when to stop/start dps, when to move etc it becomes easier, less focus is needed to maintain a good try when you know the fight well. Therefore even with 'harsh' timers an alt run (with well enough geared alts) will not need huge levels of concentration as you will know the fight so well.

Other than Leo current timers merely stop you from getting a kill if you lose a large number of people. I don't really see an issue with this, if multiple people are dying during a fight (that doesn't force death like Vael) then you need to improve. A 'fun' raid to me is simply one where I can relax, not where everything is so easy I have no need to look at my screen at all (hi there BWL/MC).

Then we have Al'ar (not seen much of phase 2, so just commenting on p1) and solarian (test version, live can in theory go for ever) where other factors force you to be quick with dps (al'ar spawning mass adds after a set point, solarian reducing resist levels to a point that wrath+missiles will kill anyone it touches). Are these really more elegant? Is it somehow better than Leo? I don't think so, it just means you need a certain amount of dps, and that if more than X people die you will lose. Having a requirement to have most of your players alive and at the best of their ability is sensible.

Now, were these timers all set such that one death at 8% would mean a wipe for sure, then yes, they would be bad. But they aren't. Most people don't know Magtheridon can enrage because its such a long timer (15?20? minutes), with a decent strat there is no reason to ever be near Hydross, Karathress or Void Reaver's timer. They are there to make sure you don't have afk dps (or 12 healers) which is good.

Al'ar pre 2.1 is overtuned, thats the one timer (but not an enrage as such) which really punishes you. But hey, thats been admitted as an untuned fight that has been changed on test in a large enough way that the timer is probably going to be a non issue to any guild who has put a decent amount of time into him.

A wipe to a timed effect with a boss on low hp makes me think 'ok what needs doing to make sure we kill it, do we need more gear? more consumables? (not really relevant after 2.1, but hey ho) can we swap a tank or healer for dps? etc' You shouldn't think 'oh dear, we were perfect and yet wiped' as you wiped you clearly weren't perfect. If the rogue died make sure he lives, if your gear lacks, then its a gear check you don't pass, go get better gear.

There are probably a few too many timers in TBC, but I still far prefer feeling some reason to boost dps and don't want to see overly long repetative bore fests where very little happens all fight as you whittle away a mob's health with no concern for how fast, just needing to make sure the tank stays alive.

I've always seen enrage timers as a test of dps talent, much like longer fights are a great test of healer efficiency -- of course, both scenarios need a balance of both skill-sets.

Speaking from personal experience, I remember during one of our first curator attempts, we went through something like seven or eight evocations before taking him down. Our healers were proud as sin in being able to keep the entire raid up as we went through this, but our raid lead was very dismayed at the terribly sloppy dps. An enrage timer is a good "goal" for DPS'ers to hit, and I would rather have DPS checks in my raid progression, instead of tank gear checks, to be honest =(

Edit: Of course, if you have a fully talented DPS backbone and you need to pop every consumable to down a boss before the the enrage timer ... then the timer is at an unreasonable point.

Static enrage timers at an arbitrary time when a boss goes into OMFGPWN mode are kind of meh for me. Patchwerk, Thaddius, Sartura, Hydross, Karathress etc... they just don't seem to be very creative.

I'm personally in favor of more dynamic enrage type abilities, even if they aren't nessesarily enrages. Gruul's enrage is a good example of a dynamic enrage timer that gives you leeway either way, Aran's Polymorph... sort of, Kazzak's enrage that is surviveable the first time but very unlikely the next time around. Either abilities that slowly build up over time but aren't a STATIC/FIXED time, or abilities that are very strong and used inoften enough that you can recover from a couple times of it, but eventually will overwhelm you.

For me the more dynamic ones just make the fights more fun than, "We must kill this boss in set X amount of time or wipe."

I dislike the static timers, as others have said, they only really encourage direct stacking for dps & tend to feel artificial.

I'd prefer much more indirect timers on encounters, Prince Malchezaar for example is a pretty good example of an indirect enrage timer, the longer the fight goes, the better the chance you get a bad combination of infernals. Even C'thun had a pretty good indirect timer, the longer you went, it was more likely you'd lose dps for eyes, tentacles, etc.

The key is designing the indirect factor to be overwhelming enough in the right period of time, while still being manageable prior. With direct timers, and the smaller raid sizes, it just feels like 1 unlucky death at the wrong time pretty much guarantees a failure & you're better off just wiping & trying again. With indirect timers (and larger raids), it usually felt like you could overcome the setback & still had the hope of pulling it out.

I personally hate berserk timers for most fights. Patchwerk was an example of a berserk timer that was a pure DPS check, which is fine. Thaddius was a berserk timer based on execution, which given the fight mechanics was fine as well. Most TBC berserk timers are "Did you stack your raid with few enough healers" which i'm not fine with. Raid stacking is a fucking thorn in my side :P

I like there being pressure on DPS to do their job, because often their job has been easier than the job of healers. Things like Magtheridon's adds are an implementation I feel represent "good" pressure on DPS. The Spitfire totem on Karathress would be another such example.

I also like "soft" enrage timers, ie where you have to deal with additional significant difficulty after X time. To this extent I like for instance, Ragnaros, Vaelestraz et cetera. I think the auto-wipe enrages need to be used extremely sparingly and ONLY in situations like Patchwerk. They're not nearly as fun, generally speaking, and a lot of times they are simply an annoyance that doesn't contribute meaningfully to the difficulty of a fight.

What I mean by that is that healing is pretty much always difficult. You don't just dump heals into someone and hope that they stay alive until the boss dies. It's a lot more complex than that. Giving all your healers 200 +healing is cool, but if they don't know when and how to heal, your tank will still die. Flasking all your DPS (pre-patch) on the other hand will simply make a fight X amount easier for you even if your dps don't really know how to dps optimally.

In this way, I would say that flat enrage timers don't so much add difficulty as require gear (even though skill can make up for lack of gear sometimes, the difficulty can be solved more easily via gear), and for this reason I am against them except in gear-check fights. If you want to test dpser's SKILL use mechanics like the Spitfire totem or Magtheridon's adds.

A timer once in a while as a gear/dps check is ok, but not on every or almost every fight. For hardcore guilds it will likely never really be an issue, but guilds guilds that have fluctuating attendance, or a few casual players, or no real luxury in their raid setup, can not only be hampered but completely crippled by lacking a certain class or player type.
A lot of people just raid with the people that can be online that day. Now if you have plenty of content, lets say like when you are training on Loatheb in Naxx, you can look at your raid and say: well, today we have too many healers/tanks to do it, then you could just go do AQ or another wing. Now that you don't have such an alternative the timers (at least in early raid zones) should not be as strict as they are pre patch, simply because having a non ideal raid can mean that you have to cancel or attempt something that just isn't possible with your current setup.
I don't want to skip raids just because I have 2 healers and a tank too many that day. And even so, Loatheb and Patchwerk were totally retarded fights that had very little amusement to offer.
And if you want dps to pay attention, then there are plenty of ways to get it from them. Also I don't get what the person above meant when he said he has not seen raid stacking in TBC so far, when in fact I have seen nothing BUT raid stacking.

Well pre-bc i felt that for the biggest part of the game dps was much less important than healing and execution of tactics, i can however only speak from a dps point of view regarding old wow. This made dpsing both easier than healing/tanking as it just didnt really matter whether you were dpsing well or not. Damage meter got people motivated to a certain extent but there were still slackers who just did not care that much about topping it. Of course there were some exceptions to this such as patchwerk and vael.

Now BC has changed this quite tremendiously and even in 5man theres elements of timers and necessary high dps, which forces dpsers to actually start speccing for raiding and actually to start thinking about their dmg rotation and gear. Of course its unfortenate if enrage timer in the end just come down to better gear, but then again some bosses are just powerful and do require high end gear, that is a part of Mmorpgs so I accept it.

Now speaking from a healer point of view in BC (and 5man dps view :P) i can say that healing is not unsimilar of pre-bc dpsing as i feel mana efficient is important, and becomes more and more important as we progress in 25man content, however lack of it can be easily compensated by using ungodly amount of mana pots

I don't think there's a whole lot of substance here. You have two poles:
1. Everyone should have to use a lot of consumables. You should stack your raid for every encounter. Your DPS classes should spec for maximum raid dps and nothing else. One death should mean a wipe. Every member of the raid should have to play at their maximum potential for the full duration or you wipe.
2. No one should have to use consumables except in emergencies or if they want to. You should never have to staick your raid. Your DPS classes can choose a variety of specs. A reasonable number of deaths should not doom the raid. Some amount of inattention or less-than-perfect skill should not doom the raid.

Each of us falls somewhere between these, except Blizzard who basically went with #1.

Personally I think the raid game should scale from #2 towards #1 as you progress, like it did in vanilla. As has been discussed many times, MC and the 20mans didn't ask much of your raid, but as you progressed to BWL, AQ40, and finally Naxx, you had to perform closer to your potential to succeed. Right now we're in a place where huge consumable bills, raid stacking, no-deaths-or-it's-a-wipe, etc. are realities right from the starting raid (obviously folks who are in SSC and TK25 don't think Kara is hard; you are not everyone), and a lot of us don't find that terribly fun.

Whether you agree with that, and how you place yourself on the spectrum of opinion w.r.t. how demanding raiding should be, is really just a preference. I don't know if we can convince each other of anything.