Okay, so it’s list-a-mania time. I wanted to list out my favorite/most hated raids thus far in this expansion. I’m going to not include world raid bosses, although Oondasta has to be the one where I’d love to permanently punch the designers face in, if you can imagine that. Regardless, this comes after mindlessly doing them for so long that I wanted to vent a bit. So here it’s goes:
Bottom Raids
5) Dark Animus – This fight is more of a chaotic mess than anything. You can barely see anything going on and it feels more like a case where people just run around with their heads cut off because there’s too much crap everywhere. The sad part is that it ends up being a really simple fight where once you get passed all the nonsense, you just have to tank-n-spank the big robot thing. I think the best thing I’ve heard about this fight is someone calling it “Dark Anus” then another person responding, “That’s what she said.” Yeah, that one.
4) Lei Shi – This boss gets my vote as the #1 annoying boss just based on the voice acting and let down leading into the Sha of Fear. Lei Shi feels so out of place as a boss overall. It’s more like sick comedy. But the developers are laughing at us not with us. From an encounter point of view, it’s frustrating because you have to time your cooldowns right. If you don’t time them correctly, you end up wasting them. Part of me feels that the asshole developers have created an algorithm where they detect how many people pop their cooldowns at a certain time before Lei Shi enters into one of her annoying phase transitions. Add to the fact that so many people die from simple things like standing in front of the boss, or the tank not swapping then dying and the elementals not being marked. It’s really an easy fight but with some basic communication flaws and mistiming, the whole thing can go down the pit. But here’s the topper: Lei Shi has an enormous loot table, some of which are piled up for certain classes. Let, on average, you’ll just get gold for all the trouble of this stupid encounter. Again just a really fucked up, stupid boss.
3) Garalon – This encounter should go down better but it rarely does. Too many idiots triggering the Crush ability, tanks not taking blows in front of the boss, dumb asses stealing pheromones, people unable to kite, no one attacking the legs, morons not moving after killing the adds just before the boss and initiating the fight before people can adequately prepare, and of course all the people getting locked out just before the fight. Even with the nerfs, this boss must definitely be one of the most hated around. The fight is designed with far too much margin for error. And I’m certain most people won’t forget how everyone would drop out of LFR before the nerfs came in. That was before the Determination buff too.
2) Durumu the Forgotten – Someone had the bright idea of introducing a “puzzle” encounter. I’m not sure if this was the “puzzle” encounter or Dark Animus, but that person needs to be beaten up, thrown into a trunk then driven into an active volcano. For the most part, the encounter is fine because most of the mechanics are more or less straight forward….right up until the stupid maze aspect. The maze is horrible because it’s not very obvious and you don’t have much time to learn how it works and react appropriately. You know an encounter is pretty horrible when you’re forced to nerf it, even with a mechanic like the Determination buff in place. That said I get great joy out of imagining the designer for this encounter’s head put into metal crushing device where someone is using a crank to slowly smoosh his skull in. And I’m 100% certain everyone who does this encounter feels the same way. Fuck you.
1) Amber-Shaper Un’sok – I’m certain by now that the person who did all these encounters is the same person (actually, the guy does have a name but I’ll withhold it despite the fact that I’d love to hear about a public lynching over this stinky asshole). But I ranked it #1 mostly because it’s a lesson in extremely poor UI. Most bad encounters, imo, are the result of bad UI, although some of them might be cases of overtuning. In this case, there is one situation which makes it stand out almost further than the others on the list. It’s that you’re turned into a vehicle with four buttons. The buttons have descriptions, but you’re in the middle of a fucking fight and have a responsibility. Who the hell has the time to sit down and read a paragraph when people are dying in an encounter? I will crusade forever on this topic because I hate poorly designed UI.
Here’s the thing. If you ever have taken any class whatsoever on the subject of User Interfaces, social computing or work on front end development, you’ll realize very quickly what a challenge good User Interfaces are. I am a front end developer and have been doing front end development along with back end development for 13-14 years now. I have a pretty good understanding of the issues in situations like this. And it’s simple: when a person has to rapidly change environments, they will fucking hate it! Why do you think Facebook constantly gets all types of shit from users? It’s because they keep rearranging shit and making their interface even more unfamiliar than what people are used to. Same with YouTube’s constant front page layout changes, Amazon’s clusterfuck product pages, etc.
People need time to learn how to adjust to a new environment. They need tools or practice for getting used to the new environment or system. Here, you’re thrown into a boiling point situation and suddenly something happens unexpectedly. You have no time to react and you’re expected to perform on the spot. If the UI isn’t made obvious then it shouldn’t exist. It’s just unnecessary stress.
Top Raids
5) Will of the Emperor – When I first did this fight on my paladin, I struggled a lot on the dance aspect. However, somehow in recent days, I finally figured out how to handle the dance and find the fight far more enjoyable. In fact, I actually like playing a melee class just to do the whole dance part. It’s a good mechanic because it’s not an instant death thing that penalizes you but actually provides something like a bonus objective where you can do extra damage for correctly avoiding all the blows. It’s actually a well thought out mechanic that isn’t too difficult once you get the basics down and encourages a nice reward for performing well.
4) Imperial Vizier Zor’lok – Once you get through the horrible trash mobs (which may very well be the worst aspect of Part 1, even worse than Garalon), you get to this guy who has some pretty decent mechanics, none of which are all that challenging but does provide enough flavor for a reasonable encounter.
3) Horridon – I would rank this encounter as my personal favorite at the moment just because the fight as one person put it is quite dynamic. There’s a LOT going on and at first I thought it was going to end up being a horrible clusterfuck. It is a horrible clusterfuck but what makes this encounter interesting is that you’re constantly on the look out for something. I think the fact that you’re in something like an arena with a lot of open space provides the opportunity for better movement and flexibility, whereas other encounters are too claustrophobic and just try to funnel you into a tight space where you can easily jack up the raid by a simple misstep.
2) Tsulong – I think the guy from Big Nash Gaming made me partial to this encounter, saying that it was well done at the time (well he did say Lei Shi was fun too, but read my write up for my hate on that encounter). This one isn’t bad. No stupid trash pulls, just kill the Protectors, stand back and you’re right at the encounter. There’s a lot of movement in this encounter but people have multiple roles, especially in the light phase. There are ways to make this encounter really painful like tanks aiming the dragon into the light beam or where almost everyone stands in the light beam, triggering a nightmare effective right in the light beam when you have 9-12+ stacks. But it’s not boring to say the least.
1) Sha of Fear – I’ll admit it. This encounter is boring (Empress is that way too, maybe even more so). But it’s where LFR needs to be to be honest. As sad as this sounds, this encounter is at the level where most people can handle the mechanics. Visually, it’s not that bad of an encounter where there’s enough happening without the horrible distractions and mess of shit hitting you from all over. The “worst” part about this encounter is just being pulled in randomly into the pagoda building where you have to down the mini boss. Outside of that, as long as your tank is up and standing in the glowing circle, your healers doing a reasonable job and people occasionally killing adds, the fight is a breeze.
But that’s the thing is the elements in this encounter are pretty self-evident. It’s not a situation where suddenly you have your head cut off and you’re running around for no apparent reason. It’s a fight where you can go head in and pretty much do well the first time through with little to no explanation.
See my thing is that I don’t mind a challenge but I hate frustration. And I hate needless frustration even more. That’s what a lot of these encounters feel like to a degree. But what makes the encounters needlessly frustrating usually isn’t the encounter themselves at the end of the day. It’s the way the group operates together in this type of environment. Take Garalon for instance. By this point, I’m more convinced that the group cannot kite and will have a pretty chaotic encounter based on my experience. I’m sure I’m not alone neither in this situation. But the elements that allow for these situations to occur compound the frustration exponentially. And it’s that frustration that makes me just want to walk away and play something else.