Expectation is quite high in the guild this expansion, with clearing Mythic while it is still current content being the main aim.
We made the first big step to wards that goal this week!
Heroic was cleared with relative ease, taking less than 2 hours with a break in the middle. SpiderBird is still a mess but the rest are no problem at all.
That left us with an hour to have a go at Nythendra Mythic!
As is the way with Mythic fights now, it is pretty much the same as Normal/Heroic but with a twist to add complexity (and a boat-load of extra damage, of course).
The twist for Nythendra is that she will periodically mind control anyone with 10 or more stacks of the rot debuff. Thankfully, this wipes the slate clean and you can start again.
As there is no other way to actually drop the Rot debuff, it means that, sooner or later, everyone will be mind-controlled.
Dealing with this is straight-forward enough... everyone stacks just before the MC comes in and we AoE to break them out.
The key to the fight becomes making sure that there are never too many people MC'ed at the same time.
In an amazing turn-around from everything I have ever learned about raiding, this involves people deliberately standing in the bad stuff to push their stacks higher!
The best part of this whole mechanic is that it is up to the individual player to work out when to push their stacks and when to hold back. You have to be aware, not just of your own stacks, but of most of the raid's stacks too, and make a judgement call in the space of a few seconds before the MC.
I love this kind of personal responsibility in fights!
Needless to say, we got this wrong quite a few times :-)
The results varied wildly, sometimes as few as 1 person MCed and, at other times, around 10!
Eventually we got it under some semblance of control, mainly by pushing earlier and earlier to get people cleared in the first round of MCs.
We were still a bit short though and it looked like we were going to miss out on the kill. While we were improving all the time with the MCs, it seemed to be the Heroic mechanics holding us back!
Too many times we would come out of a dancing phase with a few people dead... or just surviving but with very high stacks, making the next MC phase impossible.
There was some debate as to the cause...
Was it people just not being good enough at dancing?
Was it people just getting unlucky?
Was it just too much damage?
I would like to say that people should just be better at dancing but I know from experience, sometimes it just feels like those bugs are out to get you!
It is like something from a cartoon nightmare, giant bugs rising up everywhere you turn, herding you towards inevitable death... that's my excuse anyway.
In the end, whether it was preventable or not, it was decided that there was too much damage for our 4 healers so our priest switched to his Disc spec to help out.
It gave us the breathing space we needed and two attempts later, on our 'famous last go', Nythendra lay dead at our feet!
Nythendra turned out to be a really fun fight. The added mechanic was enough to set it well apart from the heroic version and even allowed a moment for the Elemental Shaman to shine by using our artefact ability to great effect.
Stormkeeper buffs the next 3 lightning spells by 200% (also now makes them instant!) so timing it's use with the mind controls was incredible! With a bit of luck (there is a LOT of luck in shaman AoE), it would break everyone out in a single cast!
The huge effect it had was shown when I looked at the logs and compared to the other Ele Shaman in our guild. He had used his artefact ability on cooldown to maximise the number of uses.
Fair enough in a purely single target fight but Stormkeeper is far more effective with Chain Lightning than Lightning Bolt... I ended up doing over 11 million more damage with the affected spells on each attempt, despite only using it 5 times compared to his 7.
I told him my findings so expect it to be a lot closer next time :-)
Tonight, if we can gather 20 people (more on that another time), we are going for SpiderBird!
With it being an absolute clusterf*ck on Heroic, it should be fun :-)
Monday 31 October 2016
Thursday 27 October 2016
Being a Draenei Finally Pays Off...
I've never really paid much attention to the racial perks.
I've almost exclusively played on Alliance so missed the exciting ones like Berzerking. Even my human rogue barely used his Every Man For Himself as I've never been much into PvP.
Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, in Legion I have found myself incredibly thankful to be a Draenei!
I lost count of the number of times I used Gift of the Naaru whilst levelling, it without doubt saved my life countless times against rares or bad pulls. I still use it now while I am out doing WQs to reduce downtime and even in the raid for a free, instant-cast heal.
Gift of the Naaru is not the real reason I am thankful to be a Draenei though, can you guess what is?
+10 Jewelcrafting!
Yep, that's right. +10 JC has been incredible for me!
The profession overhaul has been met with mixed reviews... personally, I love it!
Fun little questlines and amusing NPCs add some depth and flavour to the usual grind to the next cap, do daily cd, gather recipes etc.
Jabrul crashing his way into the serene JC shop in Dalaran still brings a smile to my face :-)
With the usual start of expansion drain on raw materials, having two crafting professions (JC/ENCH) on my main made it extremely expensive to level them. Enchanting wasn't too bad in the beginning, having HFC raid gear meant every drop and quest reward was disenchanted for the first few levels.
Jewelcrafting though, was a bit of a nightmare.
The new prospecting method meant that you often didn't receive any gems at all, just some practically worthless Gem Chips. With the price of the ore at 20g each for Leystone and 75g each for Felslate, it was quite an investment for potentially no gain.
Two things then happened at roughly the same time...
First, I decided to throw some gold at prospecting to see what the returns would be like. I wanted to work out what was going on with these gem chips and see just how many of the rare, valuable gems I would produce. So I spent around 100k split between the two types of ore and prospected it all away!
Second, my GM asked me to craft a load of gems and enchants to kit out the poorer members of the raid team. The guild would pay for me to level my professions!
GM: Hey mate, would you mind crafting a load of gems and enchants for the raid team? Take the money out of the guild back to buy the mats.
Me: (YES!YES!YES!YES!)... I'll see what I can do.
A captive market for my JC experimenting! :-)
I didn't make any profits from my own guild of course but using their gold to buy mats meant I could level up essentially free of charge, I even made them a little profit on the side selling the surplus.
All was good until my JC hit 780.
There were no (none. zilch. zero) recipes left that could increase my skill. I thought it must be a bug, tested out a couple of recipes with no luck, and scoured the internet for the answer.
There are 11 class-specific 815ilvl necklaces. The recipes were grey for me but, apparently, at rank 3 they were green... and the only way to level from 780 to 800!
These recipes were all hidden around the world or gated by long rep grinds and, even if you managed to find one, the materials were incredibly expensive.
I studied the list, the mats and the various drop places, until 1 stood out. The Druid neck recipe dropped from Shade of Xavius in Darkheart Thicket which I was running daily for the BiS trinket anyway, and the mats were predominantly the blue gems! Fantastic!
Nobody wants the blue gems anyway!
It only took me a couple more runs to get the recipe and it had by far the cheapest mats. By cheapest, you have to bear in mind it is all relative. It would still cost around 10k per craft and it would probably take around 40 (or more) crafts for those 20 skill levels.
400k for 20 skill levels!
And that was the cheapest one!
As it happens, I only needed 14! They only took me to 790 but the racial was enough to make it 800 and, at 800, is the holy grail of jewelcrafting... the Saber's Eye epic gem cuts!
Still expensive to craft, mats roughly costing 5k direct from the AH, but they sold almost instantly at 14-15k each! Even now, weeks into the expansion, they are selling for 10-11k each (albeit not quite as quickly).
The only reason I can think of to explain the price staying so high is the difficulty and expense of those last 20 levels.
People must not appreciate the riches that await you if you push through to the Saber's Eyes and it must seem like a huge obstacle. I hope they continue to shy away from it so the gold can continue to roll on in.
I may have to put up with weird hooves, tentacles on my face and my tail sticking through my cloak, but being a Draenei has finally paid off!
I've almost exclusively played on Alliance so missed the exciting ones like Berzerking. Even my human rogue barely used his Every Man For Himself as I've never been much into PvP.
Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, in Legion I have found myself incredibly thankful to be a Draenei!
I lost count of the number of times I used Gift of the Naaru whilst levelling, it without doubt saved my life countless times against rares or bad pulls. I still use it now while I am out doing WQs to reduce downtime and even in the raid for a free, instant-cast heal.
Gift of the Naaru is not the real reason I am thankful to be a Draenei though, can you guess what is?
+10 Jewelcrafting!
Yep, that's right. +10 JC has been incredible for me!
The profession overhaul has been met with mixed reviews... personally, I love it!
Fun little questlines and amusing NPCs add some depth and flavour to the usual grind to the next cap, do daily cd, gather recipes etc.
Jabrul crashing his way into the serene JC shop in Dalaran still brings a smile to my face :-)
With the usual start of expansion drain on raw materials, having two crafting professions (JC/ENCH) on my main made it extremely expensive to level them. Enchanting wasn't too bad in the beginning, having HFC raid gear meant every drop and quest reward was disenchanted for the first few levels.
Jewelcrafting though, was a bit of a nightmare.
The new prospecting method meant that you often didn't receive any gems at all, just some practically worthless Gem Chips. With the price of the ore at 20g each for Leystone and 75g each for Felslate, it was quite an investment for potentially no gain.
Two things then happened at roughly the same time...
First, I decided to throw some gold at prospecting to see what the returns would be like. I wanted to work out what was going on with these gem chips and see just how many of the rare, valuable gems I would produce. So I spent around 100k split between the two types of ore and prospected it all away!
Second, my GM asked me to craft a load of gems and enchants to kit out the poorer members of the raid team. The guild would pay for me to level my professions!
GM: Hey mate, would you mind crafting a load of gems and enchants for the raid team? Take the money out of the guild back to buy the mats.
Me: (YES!YES!YES!YES!)... I'll see what I can do.
A captive market for my JC experimenting! :-)
I didn't make any profits from my own guild of course but using their gold to buy mats meant I could level up essentially free of charge, I even made them a little profit on the side selling the surplus.
All was good until my JC hit 780.
There were no (none. zilch. zero) recipes left that could increase my skill. I thought it must be a bug, tested out a couple of recipes with no luck, and scoured the internet for the answer.
There are 11 class-specific 815ilvl necklaces. The recipes were grey for me but, apparently, at rank 3 they were green... and the only way to level from 780 to 800!
These recipes were all hidden around the world or gated by long rep grinds and, even if you managed to find one, the materials were incredibly expensive.
I studied the list, the mats and the various drop places, until 1 stood out. The Druid neck recipe dropped from Shade of Xavius in Darkheart Thicket which I was running daily for the BiS trinket anyway, and the mats were predominantly the blue gems! Fantastic!
Nobody wants the blue gems anyway!
It only took me a couple more runs to get the recipe and it had by far the cheapest mats. By cheapest, you have to bear in mind it is all relative. It would still cost around 10k per craft and it would probably take around 40 (or more) crafts for those 20 skill levels.
400k for 20 skill levels!
And that was the cheapest one!
As it happens, I only needed 14! They only took me to 790 but the racial was enough to make it 800 and, at 800, is the holy grail of jewelcrafting... the Saber's Eye epic gem cuts!
Still expensive to craft, mats roughly costing 5k direct from the AH, but they sold almost instantly at 14-15k each! Even now, weeks into the expansion, they are selling for 10-11k each (albeit not quite as quickly).
The only reason I can think of to explain the price staying so high is the difficulty and expense of those last 20 levels.
People must not appreciate the riches that await you if you push through to the Saber's Eyes and it must seem like a huge obstacle. I hope they continue to shy away from it so the gold can continue to roll on in.
I may have to put up with weird hooves, tentacles on my face and my tail sticking through my cloak, but being a Draenei has finally paid off!
Tuesday 25 October 2016
More Elemental Buffs...
New patch, new buffs!
Not many this time so this will be brief.
15% buff to Earth Shock.
Pretty small buff to our single target damage, equating to about a 1% increase overall.
Earth Shock is in a pretty strange place at the moment. It is supposed to be our big Maelstrom spender but, unless it crits, it feels incredibly weak.
15% sounds quite substantial but I think it is just to keep it ahead of Earthquake in our single target rotation, which shows just how weak it is currently!
Stormkeeper tweaks.
The live version is an instant cast spell that buffs the next 3 Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings.
The new version is a 1.5 second cast that still buffs the next 3 lightning spells but ALSO makes them instant cast!
Now this is a change I really like!
It's not massive but it helps us in two of our weakest areas, target-switching and movement, while also adding some depth and decision-making to the gameplay.
The Stormkeeper buff doesn't really amount to a lot on Lightning Bolt so it can be used to manage movement a little easier with some planning. There's a lot of RNG involved in working out at what point using it for movement is a gain even if you end up missing out on a cast over the fight, I'll leave that to the mathemagicians.
It will definitely be useful though. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the repositioning on Ursoc and running to cleanse on Cenarius but I'm sure there will be many more opportunities.
The main strength of Stormkeeper is using it with Chain Lightning, particularly alongside Lightning Rod. The synergy of these spells is incredible!
(Progressing on Nythendra Mythic in our last raid, I was lining up Stormkeeper for as many of the mind controls as possible. If I timed it perfectly, with my CL cast finishing just as everyone turned hostile, it was awesome!)
Shaman AoE - Also in a strange place at the moment.
There are so many random factors that go into our AoE that it is either completely underwhelming or utterly devastating, and everything in between. I'll go into that more another time.
The other use of the buff is here, burst AoE.
Shaman has pretty good AoE after the last round of buffs but the ramp-up time means it has very few uses in raiding. Now we have burst AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, very handy for things like the MCs on Nythendra or the Bloods on EyeTree boss.
That is the trade-off of course, we can't use it for movement and save it for AoE phases so it will need some planning for each fight.
There's nothing wrong with that though, having real, impactful decisions to make is often what makes the game interesting.
Will the buffs make any difference?
The overwhelming opinion of the shaman community is that the buffs are nowhere near big enough to make us competitive at the top level. Added to that, the classes and specs floundering alongside us at the bottom of the rankings are receiving much bigger buffs.
I'm not at the cutting edge and do ok in my raid team so I'm just happy with the playstyle improvements.
Not many this time so this will be brief.
15% buff to Earth Shock.
Pretty small buff to our single target damage, equating to about a 1% increase overall.
Earth Shock is in a pretty strange place at the moment. It is supposed to be our big Maelstrom spender but, unless it crits, it feels incredibly weak.
15% sounds quite substantial but I think it is just to keep it ahead of Earthquake in our single target rotation, which shows just how weak it is currently!
Stormkeeper tweaks.
The live version is an instant cast spell that buffs the next 3 Lightning Bolts or Chain Lightnings.
The new version is a 1.5 second cast that still buffs the next 3 lightning spells but ALSO makes them instant cast!
Now this is a change I really like!
It's not massive but it helps us in two of our weakest areas, target-switching and movement, while also adding some depth and decision-making to the gameplay.
The Stormkeeper buff doesn't really amount to a lot on Lightning Bolt so it can be used to manage movement a little easier with some planning. There's a lot of RNG involved in working out at what point using it for movement is a gain even if you end up missing out on a cast over the fight, I'll leave that to the mathemagicians.
It will definitely be useful though. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the repositioning on Ursoc and running to cleanse on Cenarius but I'm sure there will be many more opportunities.
The main strength of Stormkeeper is using it with Chain Lightning, particularly alongside Lightning Rod. The synergy of these spells is incredible!
(Progressing on Nythendra Mythic in our last raid, I was lining up Stormkeeper for as many of the mind controls as possible. If I timed it perfectly, with my CL cast finishing just as everyone turned hostile, it was awesome!)
Shaman AoE - Also in a strange place at the moment.
There are so many random factors that go into our AoE that it is either completely underwhelming or utterly devastating, and everything in between. I'll go into that more another time.
The other use of the buff is here, burst AoE.
Shaman has pretty good AoE after the last round of buffs but the ramp-up time means it has very few uses in raiding. Now we have burst AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, very handy for things like the MCs on Nythendra or the Bloods on EyeTree boss.
That is the trade-off of course, we can't use it for movement and save it for AoE phases so it will need some planning for each fight.
There's nothing wrong with that though, having real, impactful decisions to make is often what makes the game interesting.
Will the buffs make any difference?
The overwhelming opinion of the shaman community is that the buffs are nowhere near big enough to make us competitive at the top level. Added to that, the classes and specs floundering alongside us at the bottom of the rankings are receiving much bigger buffs.
I'm not at the cutting edge and do ok in my raid team so I'm just happy with the playstyle improvements.
Friday 21 October 2016
Xavius...
The final boss of the first raid, who has taunted and menaced us throughout Val'sharah, has been considered quite undertuned by most people.
I wondered if this opinion was based on the mythic 'race' to world first and didn't really apply to us mere mortal raiders.
I'm not even convinced it applies to Exorsus et al who approached this boss with unprecedented gear levels for early expansion content.
We are used to seeing the world first race fought in dungeon blues with a smattering of raid gear, this time the winners were fully decked out in mythic+ gear better than heroic raid level!
If the current gearing model continues, this could spell the end of the world first race as we know it, with the number of Mythic keystones the top guilds can lay their hands on being more important than raid performance.
Even now, a lot of the wonder has gone for me. I used to be astounded that they could produce such amazing results from such meagre gear, I used to know those players were just flat out better than me! Now though, it's all about the gear... honest :-P
World first races aside, the rest of us are just plodding along at our own pace.
So how did you find Xavius?
I still haven't worked out what the whole grey room thing is about, I really should pay more attention. Nobbel has a Xavius lore video out so maybe that will shed some light on it.
The main mechanic (gimmick?) of the fight is Corruption. It's mostly your typical 'don't stand in the bad stuff' check but it has some really nice aspects that set it apart with further mechanics being introduced as your corruption rises.
At 33% giant corruptors appear at the edges of the room and occasionally throw out balls of corruption which cover about a third of the floor.
At 66% there are even more adds which throw smaller balls of corruption but much more frequently and they can land anyway, often making you dance to stay alive.
At 100% corruption you briefly become more powerful until you succumb to the corruption and it controls you, forcing your friends to kill you.
I particularly like how it affects each individual separately rather than the whole raid, you can't even see the mechanics affecting the other people until 100% corruption, and how this then plays out with the other positional mechanics.
On top of the accidental corruption, there are some mechanics to deal with that are guaranteed to give you corruption.
This is where the 'dream' state comes in...
Half the raid are pulled into the dream state which has no effect that I can tell apart from resetting your corruption when you wake up and return to the real (nightmare?) world.
It has the nice bonus of resetting your cooldowns too.
All corruption mechanics should therefore be dealt with by these people as it will be reset, and this makes the fight much more interesting. Reaching 100% corruption in the dream state even gives you the power boost and you return to the real world instead of being mind-controlled when it ends.
This is much more difficult than it sounds though, I've tried to reach 100% in phase 1 but there doesn't seem to be enough corruption to go around!
Phase 2 is probably the most interesting but the hardest to deal with as a shaman. It's the old weaknesses coming to the fore again... low health adds and high movement. I'm always tempted to ignore the adds, they die so quickly that it hardly seems worth switching to them and some classes are just so much better suited to killing them than the elemental shaman.
Our raid leader rages about switching to the adds all through the phase. They die almost instantly so it's never an issue, soaking the pools they leave behind is the only issue that really comes up, but the raging continues.
It's quite amusing to be honest :-)
Phase 3 is just a straight sprint to the finish line. Can you kill him before he kills you or too many people are mind-controlled?
For some reason, one of our healers is always mind-controlled quite early. It's always the same guy, no idea what he's doing wrong but his corruption just rises so much faster than everyone else's.
We killed Xavius on heroic for the first time on Monday then repeated it on Wednesday as part of a full heroic clear.
Our first kill... Xavius Heroic
How does Xavius compare to other 'final' bosses?
Visually, he is far superior. Even in a grey, featureless room, the fight looks fantastic! It is almost the antithesis of the grand arenas from MoP's Mogu'shan Vaults but it uses that bland background as a blank canvas.
Demons from your nightmares slowly march from the fog, while others stay on the periphery as ghostly images to assault you from afar.
It's all done superbly and adds to the nightmare feel of the instance.
While it appears to draw mechanics from some past bosses, corruption/mind control from Cho'gall in BoT being the most obvious but not the only one, there is enough of a twist to keep them fresh.
Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the same challenge as any final bosses that spring to mind...
Even if we just stick to the first raid from each expansion, how does the challenge measure up?
Highmaul - Imperator Margok? A gruelling fight
Mogu'shan Vaults - Will of the Emperor? Arguably similar but we also had to contend with Empress Shek'zeer and Sha of Fear.
Cataclysm - Cho'gall, Al'Akir and Nefarian? Not even close.
You might have to go all the way back to Kel'thuzad in Naxx'ramas for a comparable challenge.
Am I judging it too harshly though?
Are we over-gearing it much as Exorsus over-geared the mythic version?
Am I just better now than when I failed all those many, many times on Nefarian?
Probably yes to all three.
Bring on the Mythic!
I wondered if this opinion was based on the mythic 'race' to world first and didn't really apply to us mere mortal raiders.
I'm not even convinced it applies to Exorsus et al who approached this boss with unprecedented gear levels for early expansion content.
We are used to seeing the world first race fought in dungeon blues with a smattering of raid gear, this time the winners were fully decked out in mythic+ gear better than heroic raid level!
If the current gearing model continues, this could spell the end of the world first race as we know it, with the number of Mythic keystones the top guilds can lay their hands on being more important than raid performance.
Even now, a lot of the wonder has gone for me. I used to be astounded that they could produce such amazing results from such meagre gear, I used to know those players were just flat out better than me! Now though, it's all about the gear... honest :-P
World first races aside, the rest of us are just plodding along at our own pace.
So how did you find Xavius?
I still haven't worked out what the whole grey room thing is about, I really should pay more attention. Nobbel has a Xavius lore video out so maybe that will shed some light on it.
The main mechanic (gimmick?) of the fight is Corruption. It's mostly your typical 'don't stand in the bad stuff' check but it has some really nice aspects that set it apart with further mechanics being introduced as your corruption rises.
At 33% giant corruptors appear at the edges of the room and occasionally throw out balls of corruption which cover about a third of the floor.
At 66% there are even more adds which throw smaller balls of corruption but much more frequently and they can land anyway, often making you dance to stay alive.
At 100% corruption you briefly become more powerful until you succumb to the corruption and it controls you, forcing your friends to kill you.
I particularly like how it affects each individual separately rather than the whole raid, you can't even see the mechanics affecting the other people until 100% corruption, and how this then plays out with the other positional mechanics.
On top of the accidental corruption, there are some mechanics to deal with that are guaranteed to give you corruption.
This is where the 'dream' state comes in...
Half the raid are pulled into the dream state which has no effect that I can tell apart from resetting your corruption when you wake up and return to the real (nightmare?) world.
It has the nice bonus of resetting your cooldowns too.
All corruption mechanics should therefore be dealt with by these people as it will be reset, and this makes the fight much more interesting. Reaching 100% corruption in the dream state even gives you the power boost and you return to the real world instead of being mind-controlled when it ends.
This is much more difficult than it sounds though, I've tried to reach 100% in phase 1 but there doesn't seem to be enough corruption to go around!
Phase 2 is probably the most interesting but the hardest to deal with as a shaman. It's the old weaknesses coming to the fore again... low health adds and high movement. I'm always tempted to ignore the adds, they die so quickly that it hardly seems worth switching to them and some classes are just so much better suited to killing them than the elemental shaman.
Our raid leader rages about switching to the adds all through the phase. They die almost instantly so it's never an issue, soaking the pools they leave behind is the only issue that really comes up, but the raging continues.
It's quite amusing to be honest :-)
Phase 3 is just a straight sprint to the finish line. Can you kill him before he kills you or too many people are mind-controlled?
For some reason, one of our healers is always mind-controlled quite early. It's always the same guy, no idea what he's doing wrong but his corruption just rises so much faster than everyone else's.
We killed Xavius on heroic for the first time on Monday then repeated it on Wednesday as part of a full heroic clear.
Our first kill... Xavius Heroic
How does Xavius compare to other 'final' bosses?
Visually, he is far superior. Even in a grey, featureless room, the fight looks fantastic! It is almost the antithesis of the grand arenas from MoP's Mogu'shan Vaults but it uses that bland background as a blank canvas.
Demons from your nightmares slowly march from the fog, while others stay on the periphery as ghostly images to assault you from afar.
It's all done superbly and adds to the nightmare feel of the instance.
While it appears to draw mechanics from some past bosses, corruption/mind control from Cho'gall in BoT being the most obvious but not the only one, there is enough of a twist to keep them fresh.
Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the same challenge as any final bosses that spring to mind...
Even if we just stick to the first raid from each expansion, how does the challenge measure up?
Highmaul - Imperator Margok? A gruelling fight
Mogu'shan Vaults - Will of the Emperor? Arguably similar but we also had to contend with Empress Shek'zeer and Sha of Fear.
Cataclysm - Cho'gall, Al'Akir and Nefarian? Not even close.
You might have to go all the way back to Kel'thuzad in Naxx'ramas for a comparable challenge.
Am I judging it too harshly though?
Are we over-gearing it much as Exorsus over-geared the mythic version?
Am I just better now than when I failed all those many, many times on Nefarian?
Probably yes to all three.
Bring on the Mythic!
Tuesday 18 October 2016
The Emerald Nightmare... Style over Substance?
Ahead of the Curve: Xavius!
Visually striking from the outset, you can tell that a tremendous amount of effort has gone into the look and feel of Legion's opening raid and it is incredibly impressive.
The highlights include the corruption visibly flowing through Nythendra's body and the ghostly form of Ursoc swiping mercilessly at those who dawdle in the Miasma void zones.
Even Xavius, which is set in an empty grey space (if someone could tell me what all that is about I would appreciate it), has nightmare images coalescing in the fog to quite chilling effect.
Unfortunately, the innovation doesn't stretch to the fights themselves which are, for the most part, a little unimaginative. I'm still enjoying the raiding immensely but I think that is more down to the fun group of raiders we have than the raid itself.
There are a couple of notable exceptions...
Elerethe Renferal (aka - SpiderBird, SpiderBird, Does whatever a SpiderBird does!) is a fantastic fight!
I can't even put my finger on why I enjoy it so much... it might be the personal responsibility aspect of the fight... or it could be the variety of mechanics... or it could be the complete and utter mayhem when it all goes wrong :-)
Crossing the web 'bridges' without hitting the eggs or tornadoes is a challenge in itself for most of our team but it's on the second platform that we tend to lose our shape and positional sense, particularly when it comes to the tornadoes.
A poorly placed tornado can spell disaster for the raid but even if they are all placed perfectly, it can still go downhill spectacularly fast.
You are forced to watch impotently as a wilful tornado slowly wends it's way across the room towards the (also perfectly placed) pools of Necrotic Venom, praying that it alters course before reaching them... I imagine it laughing at our prayers as it careers into the venom, flinging it all over the raid.
Malicious tornadoes and the laughable ineptitude of some of our raiders when it comes to crossing those bridges has meant that each time we have killed this boss, half the team has been dead! Even on our kill video recorded by the GM, he is dead for the last 30%
Cenarius also stands out for me... I've always enjoyed fights like this, where you have some control over how it plays out and can adapt it to your raid's strengths and weaknesses. Yeah yeah whatever, we just do what Fatboss tells us to do anyway :-)
While the other fights feel a little shallow they look fantastic, I can't help feeling that most of the design focus was on the spectacle rather than the experience.
If it was, they certainly excelled themselves but I'm hoping the fights really come to life in Mythic!
Visually striking from the outset, you can tell that a tremendous amount of effort has gone into the look and feel of Legion's opening raid and it is incredibly impressive.
The highlights include the corruption visibly flowing through Nythendra's body and the ghostly form of Ursoc swiping mercilessly at those who dawdle in the Miasma void zones.
Even Xavius, which is set in an empty grey space (if someone could tell me what all that is about I would appreciate it), has nightmare images coalescing in the fog to quite chilling effect.
Unfortunately, the innovation doesn't stretch to the fights themselves which are, for the most part, a little unimaginative. I'm still enjoying the raiding immensely but I think that is more down to the fun group of raiders we have than the raid itself.
There are a couple of notable exceptions...
Elerethe Renferal (aka - SpiderBird, SpiderBird, Does whatever a SpiderBird does!) is a fantastic fight!
I can't even put my finger on why I enjoy it so much... it might be the personal responsibility aspect of the fight... or it could be the variety of mechanics... or it could be the complete and utter mayhem when it all goes wrong :-)
Crossing the web 'bridges' without hitting the eggs or tornadoes is a challenge in itself for most of our team but it's on the second platform that we tend to lose our shape and positional sense, particularly when it comes to the tornadoes.
A poorly placed tornado can spell disaster for the raid but even if they are all placed perfectly, it can still go downhill spectacularly fast.
You are forced to watch impotently as a wilful tornado slowly wends it's way across the room towards the (also perfectly placed) pools of Necrotic Venom, praying that it alters course before reaching them... I imagine it laughing at our prayers as it careers into the venom, flinging it all over the raid.
Malicious tornadoes and the laughable ineptitude of some of our raiders when it comes to crossing those bridges has meant that each time we have killed this boss, half the team has been dead! Even on our kill video recorded by the GM, he is dead for the last 30%
Cenarius also stands out for me... I've always enjoyed fights like this, where you have some control over how it plays out and can adapt it to your raid's strengths and weaknesses. Yeah yeah whatever, we just do what Fatboss tells us to do anyway :-)
While the other fights feel a little shallow they look fantastic, I can't help feeling that most of the design focus was on the spectacle rather than the experience.
If it was, they certainly excelled themselves but I'm hoping the fights really come to life in Mythic!
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