I have really enjoyed naxx (not counting the retarded repair bills). On the whole, I have found the encounters fun, difficult and interesting. I have been put off by the repair costs and conumables required by some of the encounters.
Best encounter:
I think thaddius is probably my favorite encounter so far. It has nice stages that are intresting. The final phase is pretty cool since it is pretty fun and in some respects easy but very unforgiving. Like cthun, one idiot can end the raid. I just thought it was a pretty neat way to make an encounter which is very doable but which has a small margin of error.
Worst
I would pick raz. This is one of the coolest encounters, in theory at least. We eliminate the main tank and force our priests into an offensive roll. This was a brilliant ideal. The reason I hate these is mind control has some wierdness. In theory, you can play PERFECTLY and still wipe to raz from horrid luck. I don't think ANY encounter played to perfection should be failed. Once you get the hang the encounter wipes will be rare. My point still remains that perfect play should 100% of the time lead to a victory.
Bad planning on loatheb happened 3 years back when they said "hey, shadow oil... shadow... protection? GENIUS!!"
Because of this you need to 1 shot him or waste many hours of herb gathering, to one shot him its necesary to get world buffs which take like 30 mins to fit your raid with.
The encounter is a really nice design.
The encounter requires a reagent not found in zone. Bad planning.
Agreed. Working through no-pot practice attempts last weekend, many people commented on how fun the encounter was. Then our first potted attempts failed thanks to healers in the rotation disconnecting...and sticker shock at the price of an attempt set in.
Funny. I think Loatheb is the only encounter in Naxx that I actively dislike. The rest are fun. Loatheb pisses me off. The heal mechanic is interesting. The rest is just painfully simple. We are not "better' at this fight than we were two months ago. We just use one fewer GSPP than we used to, and don't need as many world buffs to kill him in under 5 minutes, though we still use world buffs for some margin for error. I dislike spending 10 minutes handing out pots and healthstones, and the logistics of all the buffing involved. The fight is intense because we have a lot on the line, but flipping a coin would be "intense" if you had a lot riding on the outcome. That doesn't make it fun.
From the perspective of someone dealing with macro-level strat for a raid group, I think that Gothik and the Four Horsemen are pretty brilliant (invisible void zones aside).
We have 8 bosses down so far (hopefully Gluth this week) and my favorite has gotta be Noth. As a shaman, I get to DPS some which is a nice change of pace. Least favorite are Grand Widow... it's just kind of chaotic, and I have a love/hate relationship with Heigan. I enjoy the dance, but the tunnel is not my friend.
Best - Heigan
I absolutely love the splashing dancing and dodging.
Worst - Loatheb
This fight takes me to anxiety levels unimaginable when I sit their watching the Tanks health not being able to do anything about it because of the healing debuff.
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Well I value best and worst based off of a combination of technical merit and how fun the encounter is.
I find Maex to be the worst encounter. It is the closest thing to a pure tank 'n spank. The fight starts, then I drop totems and start healing. I never move unless I get tossed on the wall and I only have to think when it comes to timing my heal prior to the webspray. This fight would have been better if the people got webbed in front of her so the tank had to drag her around so the webbed people do not eat her poison cone.
My second favorite is Noth. I have class bias here but Shaman get to do a little bit of everything on the Noth encounter. I like how this fight has so much going on. Everyone gets to dps some, priests can shackle shaman can nuke/melee et.
My favorite fight is Thaddius even though we have to raid him at 10am on saturday mornings *grrr*. I think if they had just held this encounter back for 25 mans and new hardware in the expansion that it would be considered one of the best encounters ever. It's many faults aside, this encounter is fabulous. Constant moving around, everyone gets to dps, thorough theorycrafting with many viable strategies and most importantly everyone plays a critical role.
From a design standpoint, the Four Horsemen are the most enjoyable in terms of execution. When you finally defeat them you get a great feeling of accomplishment. It's a fight you really have to work at and get your execution down to perfect.
The worst fight is easily Gothik for me. It's just a boring by the numbers fight without a lot of excitement. It would have been cooler if there was a neat gimmick when he came down, but he's basically a loot pinata at that point.
Originally Posted by valner
Worst
I would pick raz.[...]The reason I hate these is mind control has some wierdness. In theory, you can play PERFECTLY and still wipe to raz from horrid luck.What do you think?
There are ways to control this. First off, priests should gear themselves appropirately for the encounter to minimize MC breaks and when it does break, what's the best class to keep him in position until another add can be brought it? Rogues. Raz is the most rogue friendly fight in the game.
Loatheb is my favorite fight in there. The herb farming is a pain, no doubt, but we can usually one shot it. I think I like it because everything goes like clockwork. You have to pay close attention to bandage and potion cooldowns.
I don't like Grobbulus, not because it's a bad design, but because it's so easy to heal through. I think 1 rejuv + 1 renew can keep up the MT. Somehow I just feel sorry for Grobbulus, cause he's such a puss.
The fight I dislike the most though, is Gothik. His loot sucks for his difficulty. I don't like the difficulty because it's not always controllable. For example, 1 tank may end up getting too many mobs on him, and ending up dead in 3 seconds (that sunder armor is ridiculously IMBA) and it makes me feel like crap.
Loatheb is stupid. I don't appreciate any fight that exercises personal and guild wealth over player skill and ingenuity. I also don't like Gluth when I have to kite because I suck at kiting but the encounter itself isn't bad when you have experienced people doing it.
Favorite fight has to be Thaddius or Maexxna, but I haven't personally experienced the Four Horsemen for myself so I can't say anything about it.
Rating "best and worst" as "most and least fun" to me personally, Gluth is probably my favorite fight since I kite all the zombie chow around. Basically I do something different in that fight than any other. Worst I would say so far is Heigan, because gauntlets suck.
For "best and worst" design, I will probably say Loatheb as the worst when we try him this week or next, but for now I'm going to stick with Heigan, purely because again I think gauntlets are lame. For best designed, Gothik is definately the best macro-strategy I've seen so far (having not done 4h).
Still though, C'thun is still the best fight in WoW from both design and fun perspectives. It's a DPS fight without a cheese enrage timer. It has multiple phases that manage to be different from each other. It requires individual and raid-level awareness. It makes classes perform multiple jobs (or have the opportunity to) and use skills the don't call on in PvE very often. It emphasizes movement and awareness rather than whack-a-mole healing. And consumables, while useful, are not required to defeat the encounter in the slightest.
Any fight where I have to exclude 4-5 people because of disconnects and issues is poorly tuned. What should I tell the priest who has raided with us for a year and a half and tops the healing charts... get a new cable internet provider? Oh, that's impossible. Sorry, this content isn't accessible to you then. As optional content, it would be fine. As progression tied, I don't like it at all.
*** Who Dares Wins ***
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Best would be Gothik. I really enjoy that encounter for some reason.
Worst is a tossup between Thaddius and Loatheb. Thaddius still lags painfully during our raid times, but Loatheb just has "Stupid design" written all over it.
Noth (being a Mage switching around targets a lot, a semi-chaotic environment [however predictable] is still fun)
Heigan (I'm just good at the dance, and I like seeing others die, alright?)
Thaddius (aside from the Wights at the beginnning, I like this encounter because of the big numbers, and the chance for incredible loot)
I inwardly dread fighting:
Razuvious (I'm always top DPS, so ... if something goes wrong...yea, I die like 75% of the time there)
Loatheb (for painfully clear reasons - we had our first kill this weekend and it was only possible with the ZG buff)
Patchwerk (I find it boring)
i like every fight in naxx. my favorite is probably 4h, just because it's such an incredible design. my least favorite is probably thaddius, just because we have so many people who tend to go link dead at the worst possible time (including myself last night at one point, which resulted in a sub-1% wipe. hot.)
I love the Four Horsemen fight, it's absolutely brilliant. I could have wiped on them for two more weeks and I prolly wouldn't have minded.
For some reason I hate the Gluth fight, and I really REALLY dislike Thaddius when raid IQ is low. It's just new stupidities that can arise there, today we had a Hunter who forgot to turn off Aspect of the Cheetah, got dazed and blew up the positive half. Very frustrating.
As a Fury warrior, I also have a special place in my heart for the Patchwerk and Loatheb fights. Nothing like a total reckless dps fight to get the night started.
I will agree with Amera that trash guantlets need to go. In our history nothing slaughters guild morale faster than clearing trash guantlets repeatedly. Guantlets are just poor design inherited from earlier (inferior) games. No one wants to kill trash repeatedly. If they want to limit attempts, they should just have the boss despawn after an hour like old Vaelestrasz.
I will agree with Amera that trash guantlets need to go. In our history nothing slaughters guild morale faster than clearing trash guantlets repeatedly. Guantlets are just poor design inherited from earlier (inferior) games. No one wants to kill trash repeatedly. If they want to limit attempts, they should just have the boss despawn after an hour like old Vaelestrasz.
09/27/06, 4:41 PM
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