With Mists of Pandaria drawing to a close (hopefully) quite soon I thought I would take a look back at the raids in this expansion and give my thoughts. First up was...
Mogu'shan Vaults
The architecture for this raid was magnificent. It was beautifully created and atmospheric, with Cho's commentary adding to the experience. A fantastic setting for our first raiding adventures in Pandaria...
Stone Guard
4 giant Quillen with different abilities with only 3 active each week (I only ran this on 10man).
The variety of abilities and their synergy, coupled with the rotation each week kept this boss feeling fresh for an incredibly long time.
An interesting twist on the tank switch kept them on their toes and the wide variety of raid damage, both avoidable and unavoidable, pushed the healers to the limits while still mostly in dungeon blues.
A fairly tight enrage timer, for a guild like ours anyway, meant we often traded damage taken for dps and still had to fight hard to beat the timer.
Our watershed moment came when we realised we had the healing (our strongest department at the time) to heal through the damage of the Cobalt mines. This allowed the dps to ignore them and massively reduced their movement thus increasing their dps by enough to get the kill.
An excellent and challenging boss when done at the correct gear level, the main downside was the massive disparity in difficulty depending which combination of Quillen were active at the time.
The Jade quillen was only a passive damage increase while the others all increased movement but, if done properly, caused less raid damage.
In practice, the passive damage increase was much simpler to deal with than the extra movement so the fight was always easier with Jade active.
Feng the Accursed
The raised circular, well-lit platform with barriers all round the outside always put me in mind of a boxing ring. I always felt like it was a gladiatorial contest between us, similar to the Master Snowdrift gauntlet and fight in Shado-Pan Monastery, rather than fighting a bitter enemy to the death.
Another interesting twist for the tanks had them 'stealing' one of Feng's abilities then using it against him, or using a barrier to mitigate one of his other abilities. These added to the tank's gameplay which is often considered quite dull... face away from raid, taunt at x stacks... and I hoped they would continue on into the expansion.
Random players would be targetted by fire or arcane storms and these would have to be dealt with correctly or the damage would quickly spiral out of control. Healing requirements were high throughout and each little mistake would increase the difficulty.
Another enjoyably challenging boss to our casual raid team that began to emphasise a level of personal responsibility not often seen in Cataclysm (Pushing a button for Ultraxion does not count, no matter how difficult some people seemed to find it)
Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
Time to give the tanks a rest after their exploits on the first 2 bosses... A simple tank and spank, even the taunting was done for them! This time it was our damage dealers that were sorely tested as this boss was a dps check with a tight enrage timer.
In the normal realm, it was all about hitting the boss as hard as possible with the majority of damage coming from the Voodoo Dolls. The tank and 2 others would be connected by the dark arts and any damage taken would be carried across the link so all 3 suffered. Healers had to be at their best to keep the squishy dps alive as the boss pummeled the tank.
The interesting part of the fight though, was the spirit realm. Voodoo masks would spawn in the spirit realm and target players across the void in the normal realm, again this was damage that could be spread to others via the Voodoo Doll link.
To prevent being overwhelmed by damage from the Masks, dps had to venture into the spirit realm to kill them. Healers had to accompany them to bring them back but it also regenerated their mana allowing them to deal with the massive raid damage.
A tough challenge for a week or two but was very quickly overcome once we had some more gear. The enjoyment came from the difficulty particularly late in the fight as damage would ramp up and it would become a race against time to kill him. Unfortunately, it didn't take much gear to trivialise this fight and it became boring very quickly.
Spirit Kings
4 bosses with different abilities again, this time one after the other. As one King dies, the next activates but the dead king lingers on to torment further with one of his abilities.
Personal responsibility and awareness were again the order of the day with positioning key to the fight. Find yourself in the wrong place and very quickly you would be trying to react to dangers coming at you from all sides.
I would watch with dismay as people caught all 3 shots from the volley without moving, or stood obliviously tunneling the boss while a rank of soldiers marched on their position.
Unfortunately, once people were properly aware of the dangers that could arise, the boss was far too easy. Meng's insanity should have been the major difficulty in this fight... as he gained insanity his damage would increase either through a reflected dot (glyphed Grounding Totem ftw!) or a buff to his own damage.
Alas, both were so undertuned that they were virtually ignored.
In fact, the major talking point from this fight was the order which the kings became active. As with Stone Guard, there was a huge difference in difficulty depending on the order (particularly if Meng was early and particularly on heroic). Unlike Stone Guard, the most difficult combinations were almost impossible to beat and the order was random with every pull rather than every week.
This led to raid teams deliberately wiping until they got a favourable combination and Blizzard reacted by actually removing the randomness and setting the order with Meng last.
Elegon
A fantastic fight challenging all aspects of raiding plus... it's a dragon made of light! What's not to love?
Wow, this fight was hard!
First, there was a buff to dps and healing for standing on the platform of light in the middle. Unfortunately, it also gave you a stacking debuff which increased the amount of damage you took meaning you had to run off the platform periodically to reset the debuff.
Next, an add spawned that had to be killed very quickly but did massive raid-wide damage when it died. This damage was reduced if it died off the platform but it took less damage there so the tank had to time it right, moving it off the platform just before it died.
Once a couple of these adds were killed we would push the boss into the next phase.
Now 6 balls of power would spawn at the boss and move slowly to the edge of the platform. If any reached the edge they would power a pylon which would then power the rest of the pylons and signal the end of the phase.
Each time a set of power balls was killed the boss was debuffed to take more damage and this stayed for the rest of the fight. It was imperative to kill as many sets of balls as possible but successive sets would spawn and move faster and faster.
A point in time would come when you realised you wouldn't be able to kill the next set so you would ignore it and try to damage the boss as much as possible before the phase ended and the platform disappeared!
The 3rd phase consisted of trying to destroy the powered-up pylons as quickly as possible while dealing with spawning adds. The difficulty was that the pylons produced energy fields cutting the room into 6 until opposing pylons had been destroyed. The adds would be buffed each time a pylon died so you would aim to have all pylons die together ending the phase with as few adds as possible.
The platform would return and the phases would cycle again but after the second cycle, Elegon would enter a burn phase. The exterior of the room would be covered in a swirling empowered lightning making it virtually impossible to reset your stacks of the debuff. Elegon would begin pulsing raidwide damage and it would be a race to kill him before the damage became unhealable and he killed you.
A wonderfully challenging fight but it was so difficult that many guilds just couldn't progress past it until they had gear from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring.
Will of the Emperor
A stream of Mogu would enter the fight from the tombs around the outside of the arena, each with different abilities to handle, before 2 giant Mogu emperors, Jin'xi and Qin'xi, would enter the fray.
The smaller mogu were easily dealt with, focussed down quickly before they could cause any major problems to the raid.
The main part of the fight though was the 2 emperors and the 'dance'.
Periodically throughout the fight, the emperors would perform a Devastating Combo - a series of telegraphed attacks that need to be dodged by the tanks and melee. Fail to dodge them and you took massive damage but dodge all of the attacks in a combo and you were rewarded with the opportunity to impart extra damage on to the boss.
Another interesting twist for the tanks (and melee this time) which continued the theme of giving them more involvement in the fights. It worked well but unfortunately, left the fight feeling rather dull for ranged and healers.
Summary
An enjoyable opening to Mists of Pandaria raiding. Bosses were varied with interesting mechanics but the tuning curve wasn't quite right with Stone Guard tuned much tighter than the next 3, and Elegon far more difficult than the final boss of the raid.
Elegon should probably have been the final boss, it even felt like an additional boss similar to Algalon in Ulduar.
Still, despite the tuning flaws, a very enjoyable and atmospheric raid.
Added Extras
5 out of the 6 bosses were fought in circular rooms. Not important, just thought I would point it out.
Trash before Elegon was hilarious, tanks flying across the room.
We went in blind and ended up wiping to this trash more than the previous boss!
Next up will be the much maligned Heart of Fear...
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