A Reimagening of Tier 7

[CursedEmbrace]

Hello everyone, first let me thank you for taking the time out to read this topic.

So, I was initially dissatisfied with Tier 7, mostly the meat of tier 7; Naxxramas more than Sarth or Maly or anything, I found the dungeon too easy, many of the encounters were rather simplistic (though I'm almost assured this was because of their tuning in most cases) but I got on with the expansion and eventually read that some initial ideas were to have Utgarde Pinnacle serve as a raid instead of a 5man instance, which makes a lot of sense, given the amount of hyping Ymiron got during the Howling Fjord quests. So I set out to reshuffle, rework and create what would be my idea of what tier 7 and beyond would have looked like.

This project has stretched across... well, a long time as I kept stopping and starting when I had the time to mess about or when inspiration took me. What I have is a set of encounters made with some limited research with some numbers to kind of make them seem more believable and perhaps more easy to visualise, but the numbers are more or less arbitrary as they may be too low or high in many cases for the Hp pools and such tier 7 characters would have had.

Anyway, enough preamble. I will be posting each new raid boss periodically (as there are 5 in total) this is hopefully to allow each one to be discussed before moving onto the next. However, before we get onto the raid I should mention that the first thing I did was change the current Utgarde Pinnacle 5 man into "Utgarde Ascent", which would practically be the same instance but with a different end boss and more outdoor areas as you climb the mighty Vrykul citadel to eventually reach the new raid "Utgarde Pinnacle". As the last boss is the only change to the instance besides layout he is all I'll post from this 5man dungeon re-imagening.

War Thane Horrgrath
Overview: Horrgrath is primarily about positioning and clever use of his Vrykul Runes of Fury, the healer will need to watch the Tank's health closely as he occasionally uses an ability which will deal damage equal to 50% or 65% of the tank's health.

Hp: 460k (Normal) 650k (Heroic)

Abilities (Normal)
Dark Slash: Deals Shadow damage equal to 50% of the highest threat holder's Hp.
Axe Toss: Places a target recticle under a random player outside of melee range. After 3 seconds Horrgrath twill throw his axe at the target location which will deal 150% weapon damage. The axe will stay lodged in the floor and Horrgrath will run to retrieve it, during this time he cannot be slowed but can be taunted, if taunted he will forget about his axe and act as normal. If the axe is retrieved the time until this ability can next possibly be used again is halved.
Vrykul Rune of Fury: Places a floor effect centred on War Thane Horrgrath. Increases the damage done of all inside effect by 30% but every 3 seconds places a stacking DoT to all inside effect that lasts 9 seconds and deals 830 to 1,080 damage every 3 seconds. The runes persist until the fight is completed or resets.

Abilities (Heroic)
Dark Slash: Deals Shadow damage equal to 65% of the highest threat holder's Hp.
Axe Toss: Places a target recticle under a random player outside of melee range. After 3 seconds Horrgrath twill throw his axe at the target location which will deal 200% weapon damage. The axe will stay lodged in the floor and Horrgrath will run to retrieve it, during this time he cannot be slowed but can be taunted, if taunted he will forget about his axe and act as normal. If the axe is retrieved the time until this ability can next possibly be used again is halved.
Arc of the War Thane: This ability is used in place of Axe Toss if there are no targets outside of melee range. Deals 200% weapon damage to all players in melee range. Shares a cooldown with Axe Toss.
Vrykul Rune of Fury: Places a floor effect centred on War Thane Horrgrath. Increases the damage done of all inside effect by 50% but every 3 seconds places a stacking DoT to all inside effect that lasts 9 seconds and deals 1,170 to 1,530 damage every 3 seconds. The runes persist until the fight is completed or resets.

Additionally throughout the Heroic encounter groups of 2 Vrykul Scourgesworn will enter through the gateways behind the boss.

Vrykul Scourgesworn
Hp: 22k (Heroic)

Abilities (Heroic)
Shockwave: Deals 3,360 to 4,000 Physical damage to all targets in a 10yd frontal cone. All player(s) damaged by this ability will have their Dodge chance reduced by 5%. This effect can stack up to 2 times.

Now on to the raid that would replace Naxxramas as the meat of Tier 7 "Utgarde Pinnacle", I won't go through the minor details of the instance like trash or any real layout (not least because I don't have any maps or the like prepared!) but instead focus on the bosses, now I have written 10 and 25 man versions of almost all abilities but I will focus on just the 10 man version just so as to not extend this post any longer than it will already be! Now on with the first boss of the new Utgarde Pinnacle.

Skvaldor the Drake Master
Overview: This fight stars with Skvaldor sitting on his large Proto-Drake Eldfrang high above the room and un-attackable, however he will attack the raid throughout the fight. On the ground there will be 3 other large Proto-Drakes, Blodsric, Fjornkval and Grollskir whom share a Health pool and will need to be tanked through phase 1 of the fight.

Skvaldor Hp: 1,600,000 (10 Player)
Blodsric, Fjornkval and Grollskir Hp: 2,800,000 (10 Player)

Phase 1/2
Skvaldor the Drake Master
Abilities (10 Player)
Multi-Shot: Fires a bolt at a random target and every other target within 2,000 yards dealing 2,450 to 3,600 Physical damage.
Baited Shot: Fires a bolt at a random target that is not first on the threat tables of either Blodsric, Fjornkval or Grollskir that causes 1,300 to 2,200 damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. All Vrykul Proto-Drakelings will attack this target relentlessly. When this ability is used 12 “Vrykul Proto-Drakelings will spawn around Skvaldor and fly down to attack the person affected by Baited Shot.
Molten Regurgitation: Skvaldor's Proto-Dragon fires a ball of fire at a random target that is not first on the threat tables of either Blodsric, Fjornkval or Grollskir that causes 3,000 to 4,000 Fire damage to the player and an additional 2,200 to 2,600 Fire damage every 1.5 seconds to anyone within 6 yards of the initial impact for 21 seconds.

Blodsric
Abilities (10 Player)
Breath of Blodsric: 2.5sec cast time. Deals 5,500 Fire damage every 1.5sec for 3 seconds in a frontal cone.

Fjornkval
Abilities (10 Player)
Breath of Fjornkval: 2.5sec cast time. Deals 5,500 Cold damage every 1.5sec for 3 seconds in a frontal cone.

Grollskir
Abilities (10 Player)
Bloody Wound: Deals 3,600 to 4,700 Physical damage to the highest threat target and places a debuff a on the affected player causing them to gain 1 stack of “In for the Kill” each time they are attacked by Grollskir for 30 seconds.
Blood Frenzy: Places a buff on Grollskir for 30 seconds increasing his attack speed by 300% but decreasing damage dealt from automatic attacks by 50%. This ability is used just after Bloody Wound. This buff ends immediately if the highest player on his threat table changes.

Debuffs (10 Player)
In for the Kill: This debuff is caused by Grollskir attacking a target already affected by “Bloody Wound”. This debuff stacks infinitely. Each stack increases the damage taken by the affected target by 5% from Grollskir.

Vrykul Proto-Drakeling
Hp: 55,000 (10 Player)

Abilities (10 Player)
Vicious Bite: Deals 1,300 to 2,000 Physical damage and interrupts spell casting and prevents any spell in that school being cast for 4 seconds.

Phase 2/2
Phase 2 starts when the combined health pool of the 3 Proto-Drakes is brought down to 0. Skvaldor will land and you will fight him on the back of his Proto-Dragon. During this phase Skvaldor will continue to randomly attack players with his ranged automatic attack while his Dragon will attack his highest threat holder.

Skvaldor the Drake Master
Buffs (Both 10 and 25 Player)
Incredible Anger: Increases Skvaldor's damage by 25%

Abilities (10 Player)
Multi-Shot: Fires a bolt at a random target and every other target within 2,000 yards dealing 2,450 to 3,600 Physical damage.
Baited Shot: Fires a bolt at a random target that is not first or second on Skvaldor's threat table that causes 1,300 to 2,200 damage every 2 seconds for 12 seconds. All Vrykul Proto-Drakelings will attack this target relentlessly. When this ability is used 12 “Vrykul Proto-Drakelings will spawn above Skvaldor and fly down to attack the person affected by Baited Shot.
Molten Regurgitation: Skvaldor's Proto-Dragon fires a ball of fire at a random target that is not first or second on Skvaldor's threat table that causes 3,000 to 4,000 to the player and an additional 2,200 to 2,600 Fire damage every 1.5 seconds to anyone within 6 yards of the initial impact for 21 seconds.
Iron Bite: Deals 11,300 to 12,700 Physical damage and places a stacking “Bleed” effect on the affected target causing additional Physical damage every 3 seconds.
Eldfrang Inferno: 5sec cast time. Deals 22,600 Fire damage in a frontal cone evenly split amongst players in the effect.

Let me know what you think of the replaced end boss of Utgarde Ascent and the first boss of Utgarde Pinnacle.

[kingriku]

Kinda late on this one huh?

[Calene]

Kinda late on this one huh?

You clearly did not read any of this topic.

So no, they are not late on this on this one. There is nothing to be late at.

[kingriku]

You clearly did not read any of this topic.

So no, they are not late on this on this one. There is nothing to be late at.

Yes i did, i get it took him some time and this is a reimagination of what could have been. Thing is it was 2 Expacs ago and even though its cool to see, there isn't much to take from it. If this was posted during ICC i could see alot more people psyched about what could have been but now its soo long ago it's not as interesting.

[Hoomin]

Yes i did, i get it took him some time and this is a reimagination of what could have been. Thing is it was 2 Expacs ago and even though its cool to see, there isn't much to take from it. If this was posted during ICC i could see alot more people psyched about what could have been but now its soo long ago it's not as interesting.

It's amazing that science and social advances have gone so far as to allow one man to speak for an entire group of people with 100% accuracy and zero consideration.

Simply amazing.

More on topic, I like the changes, and everything seems interesting. I wish Blizzard were more concerned about old content, enough to potentially implement changes and keep said content fresh as well. Mostly because every expansion past Wrath so far has been sh*t.

[CursedEmbrace]

Yes i did, i get it took him some time and this is a reimagination of what could have been. Thing is it was 2 Expacs ago and even though its cool to see, there isn't much to take from it. If this was posted during ICC i could see alot more people psyched about what could have been but now its soo long ago it's not as interesting.

Well, perhaps but I do a lot of what you might call 'creative' stuff in my spare time, write stories and ideas for games or game systems, expanding the rulesets of board games and so on but I don't have a lot of confidence in my work. Sometimes this stuff takes a long time to complete, just because of how stop and start I can be for some projects.

I wasn't even going to try posting this now but I was encouraged to, so here it is.

More on topic, I like the changes, and everything seems interesting. I wish Blizzard were more concerned about old content, enough to potentially implement changes and keep said content fresh as well. Mostly because every expansion past Wrath so far has been sh*t.

I wouldn't go so far as to call them sh*t, in fact I think Mists is perhaps the best expansion yet in certain terms (coming from a person who likes lore, story, the pet battle system and pve, specifically raids) but the compliment is well received.

To add perhaps more to discuss or what not maybe I should have included an idea of what the strategy/tactics for the boss might have been? Or perhaps my inspirations on what gave these (and later) bosses life.

Well I'll give it a go anyway.

Skvaldor was mostly born because I liked the idea of having two tanks each tank a Proto-Dragon and kind of bounce a 3rd one between them, one that was more dangerous and output considerably more damage than the other, weaker two. The rest of the fight kind of evolved from that nascent idea, you would probably encounter him in a kind of roost area and I imagine the trash leading up to Skavaldor and all his dragons would perhaps be similar to the room in Utgarde Keep with Proto-Dragons kept in a kind of almost stable with small bunches of tenders or Drake-masters in training or similar.

As mentioned the tanks would have a single weaker Dragon on them at all times (tanked facing away from the raid, of course, to limit breath damage from either dragon) while they alternate tanking of Grollskir to drop the "Blood Frenzy" buff from him so that they limit the stacks of "In for the Kill" enhanced attacks Groll gets on either of them. The only other real 'thing' in Phase 1 is to have players move from the Molten Regurgitation pool.

Also I guess when the little Proto-Drakes come down because of Baited Shot they need to be aoe'ed down by some people.

During phase 2 the tanks alternate tanking Eldfrang to drop stacks of the bleed from Iron Bite, also people stack for the big breath so damage is shared out.

All in all I'd say its one of the less inspired (not that I'd call any of the bosses I've thought up that) bosses. Also, come to think of it I never did come up with loot tables for any of these bosses, although they would doubtless just have basically Naxx loot, but I think Skval would have a big epic crossbow or something on his loot table.