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!
No comments:
Post a Comment