Speak for yourself, all the healers in my guild loved that fight.

The general consensus in my guild was also that the Rajaxx fight was horrible. It was a long event involving wave after wave of similar NPCs culminating in a stupid, awful bossfight punctuated by a lesson in babysitting. Nearly every complaint I've ever heard about Hyjal applies equally to Rajaxx.

I liked the Rajaxx fight, although I must confess I only ever once saw the legendary reset bug, and that was only one wave in so not too much time was wasted.

Rajaxx was a horrible fight for the healers that frantically tried to heal after each AE because they didn't understand the mechanics of it, but I personally didn't mind it at all.

I loved the Rajaxx fight too. Was a really nice change of tempo at the time compared to all the other bosses out there.

I main healed Rajaxx and I loved it. It was actually a challenging fight to keep people up on.

I didn't mean to derails that >,< (story of my life, hm?)

OT - I'd like to see level design in the 5 and 25 man portions take a cue from Silvermoon. Aesthetically, the city is impressive; it brought back the same feelings when I walked my first little rogue into Darnassus when I started this game. I wouldn't be surprised to see a strong theme of magic addicton/corruption for some of the lesser bosses.

Given its geographical location and general theme, I would imagine that it just-about has to.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, new curves they try to throw us with boss' abilities - there's very little they can do to ramp up difficulty from BT other than smush multiple bosses together, or just vastly alter the damage-to-player survivability ratio.

Given that we know we're up against 6 bosses, and seeing the trends thus far, I expect:

- at least one encounter involving 4+ 'main' targets (there's one in every raid instance so far - Maulgar, Karathress, Vashj, Kael, Council, etc.).
- at least one encounter requiring some/all raid members to use resistance gear (with frost/nature/shadow/arcane previously used to some degree, I would bank on fire).
- at least one encounter involving an unusual alteration to general mechanics. With the prevalence of magic-usage amongst the Blood Elves, another Shade of Aran-esque encounter (tankless, purely magic attacks) wouldn't be out of the question.
- Kil'Jaeden (I'm just on the bandwagon here - lore-wise, he has to go down, since he poses a greater overall threat than Arthas [as far as we know!]). They blessed well better give him a new model, though.

/agree; this seems be to one of blizzards cornerstones these days.
god i hope not, but probably, yes.
agree in theory, but im thinking something even more dramatic; maybe something pet-bar based.

Blizzard doesn't really seem to let us "kill" bosses anymore. i expect a "20%, you are not prepared, foolish mortal, its not yet time" sort of a thing, personally.


It seems like theres a very finite set of gimmicks that blizz re-uses, in different combinations, for each boss encounter. I think its highly probable that we'll see an encounters that involve:

• Random relocation of raid members throughout a large room, coupled with environmental damage
• Interaction with set-items in order to counteract a raid wiping ability
• partial or full debilitation of a portion of the raid for a set period of time
• An environmental condition that temporarily weakens the boss mob to certain types of attacks.
• Assistance from lore-driven NPCs

Am I forgetting any obvious ones?

I like the NPC addition to some fights as implemented lately. I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in this thread already, but a new chess event type fight could be a lot of fun. It doesn't even have to be super easy, and perhaps it could have a 'pet control' phase so that your gear is still meaningful. Basically, I like the idea of multiple people controlling NPC actors.

I think another opera-type event could have some potential as well.

I just hope that if you have encounters where an individual can wipe you (ala Teron), they will think about it before designing the location he is situated at.

Or you just cancel the summoning process somehow.

So is there going to be a new reputation for the 5-man? They said there would be a heroic version of it, which means that it will probably require Revered with something. Consortium maybe? (I only say this as someone who grinded rep for enchants for them)

I'd really like to see more fights with a thrown item component like Vash. I've had an idea for a long time but wasn't really sure how it would work.

Basically there is some sort of item that the raid must pass amongst themselves continually during the entire fight. Possessing it would greatly inflate or deflate some stat such that making sure the right person having it at the right time would be key to victory. This of course would be somewhat random, so as not to be planned around. The item can only be handled for 10 seconds at a time or it blows up the possessor and all around him for a large amount.

We could go endlessly on about abilities bosses could have however.
You could have a throwing item, each time thrown it deals an increasing amount of damage, when its 'too big' to risk throwing to another member, you throw it on the boss and it deals 500% more damage or so, and if you dont throw it within 15sec it explodes and deals 200% of the damage to the holder.
1st pass - 1000 damage to target, 2nd pass - 2000 damage to target... 8th pass - 8000 damage to target. At this point you cant risk throwing for 9000 damage to a raid member, so you throw it on the boss, and it takes 45000 damage and an effect which increases damage done against it by 9% for 15sec.

Throwing action is quite fun

At the risk of posting this without sources, I was pretty sure that a new reputation had been ruled out, and the heroic attunement would be of the "skillful" (45 min clear, some hard quest, etc.) variety.

I don't think this was a "blue post"; I think it was just something a regular joe posted, and everyone /cheered.

I sincerely hope they don't try to "wrap up all this business with the Legion" and let us kill Kil'jaeden and assume Sargeras dead. I'm gunning for 'Shadow of Kil'jaeden' who will look identical to Archimonde but be in Shadowform...

Looking forward to the new 5-man as well actually, I hope it's on the level of current Heroics with an even tougher Heroic mode.

Games for Windows article on Wotlk has info on the sunwell. They say it will look like silvermoon city and have KJ as the final boss.
"In the end you will take on Kil'jeaden himself. Something that 25 level 70 players shouldnt be able to do. He will only be possible because he is just a half formed abomination, stuck in the middle of some twisted birthing canal".
The blood elves will be toiling away with crates of power from the manaforges trying to reignite the sunwell.

I bet we'll see him in some form. I'm thinking of something roughly like Akama - you interrupt the summoning in time, and maybe kill him in a weakened state, or he wtfpwns you. That could also be almost any of the encounters in there, maybe you'll be up against the final, very pissed boss after you've destroyed his work.

From what I gather he will be somewhere on the same page as Ragnaros. Not quite finished being brought into the real world, so not as powerful, and 'killing' him is more just destroying his weak, earthly body and interupting the summoning than actual death.
That said I would expect to see some NPC adds in the KJ fight (the ones summoning him).



...and as much as it makes me want to stab myself in the eye repeatedly, I expect we will see Kael'Thas again in this instance.

Reputation-wise the new five man could be tied to Shattar faction. It would seem the most logical choice as they are the faction most opposed to the Legion in-game so your Warp Forged heroic key could be used. Of course, we still don't know how exactly the Sunwell will be implimented.

Will they just retune a few parts of Eversong Woods or will they add an entirely new zone? If they do add a new zone they could easily create another faction tied to outdoor quests, dailies, etc. That would make a decent amount of sense since this five man is the only new instance non-raiders (and by that I mean total non-raiders, i.e. no Karazhan no Zul'Aman) will have since TBC release and will have to tide them over how many months until the expansion.

On the subject of Kil'Jaeden. Although it seems they have already set up their all too standard 'but you don't fight him at full power and/or he doesn't really die' cavaet according to the magazine article; I myself don't really see a problem with Kil'Jaeden being completely destroyed. He's served his purpose for the better part of nearly five years now as the de facto head of the Legion. It isn't that lore-jolting to go with the premise that he dies thus putting the Legion in turmoil for the immediate future. Players will be turning their attention to the other great evil -- the Lich King -- in the next expansion so it's perfectly acceptable to just write off the Legion for a few years.

Sargeras (apparently, I'm not completely informed on lore) is arguably not gone for good and as the ultimate leader of the Legion it can always be brought back under him with any number of named lackeys serving under him. You also have plenty of other threats to pit players against such as Azshara and the Old Gods which Blizzard can probably milk another three or four years of content from.