How do you feel about Enrage timers?

[Chaosturn]

Enrage mechanics are just there to wipe you, what does it matter if it increases boss damage by a ludicrous amount, kill everyone instantly or something else?
And if there was no enrage timer people would just run with 10 healers on progress, which no encounter is designed for.

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If he can enrage.. why not do it instantly? And nuke us from orbit, Enrage timers dosen't really make sense imo

Stop trying to look for logic in a game that mails you dragons

[Calaba]

Hard enrage timers in SOO are mostly ok. Honestly never saw most of them outside of hard modes, or when drawing fights out for achives. Garrosh's soft enrage mechanics are pretty cool, they should do more like that.

There were some really bad enrage timers in the first tier of MoP, though. Garalons was by far the worst, even though it had a soft enrage with the pheramones, it still had a super-tight hard enrage. Blade lord had an enrage too but was less punishing. Spiritbinder in MV also had a nasty enrage considering it was only the 3rd boss, as did Elegon.

Also, I'll just point out that the hardest enrage timers aren't always the most difficult - Horridon's adds were origionally a nightmare if you went into normal 10man without fully upgraded hard mode gear from the previous tier on your entire raid. You could just get overwhelmed by adds. Terrible for a 2nd boss, as you only had the first boss to farm. It had to be nerfed a good couple of times as the burst dps requirements on the 2nd and 3rd gate were far too high in the first few weeks.

[Deleted]

Somehow this video seems relevant to this thread.

[Bullettime]

I prefer soft enrages when applicable or enrages akin to Dark Animus instead of "instant one shot."

[Socialhealer]

dragon soul enrages is how not to design berserk timers.

executing what miserable mechanics there was then wiping to LOL time up? nah that was retarded and just compounded dragon soul as the worst tier ever made.

Yor'sahj for example before nerf was killed on heroic by about 235 10man guilds but like 20 25man hcs guilds, and was the only case of 10mans killing 10:1 the amount of 25man, if there was no berserk timer it would of been slightly fairer, i mean 25man having a 11-12 minute fight while 10man has an 8-9 is hardly fair, an extra 3 minutes of combat is a pure disadvantage.

didn't mean to drag this onto 10vs25 but it's one progress boss in particular i really despised because we had ELEVEN legendary staffs and was very privileged in the fact we had that and many guilds did not, and still the berserk timer was too much and a nerf on the bosses health was required, how stupid =/, berserks should try to go towards soft enrage and not hard imo.

[Deleted]

Afair the bee-queen in AQ40 was the first boss to come with a berserk, because people actually started to do what you guys are talking about: Stack 4-6 groups of healers in a 40 man raid, maybe a couple of backup-tanks in case one dies and just make the fights last longer. My crappy raid guild back in BWL took an astounding 30+ minutes for an average nefarian kill and everyone was told to go to the bathroom before we pulled the boss.

Some kind of berserk is just necessary. Otherwise blizzard would need to give bosses some non-interruptable healing that needs to be out-dps'd by the raid. Don't know if that wouldn't feel quite annoying. Personally I'm fine with hard enrages on patchwerk-fights an soft-enrages/small dps-checks on tactic/execution-heavy fights.

[Notdev]

dragon soul enrages is how not to design berserk timers.

executing what miserable mechanics there was then wiping to LOL time up? nah that was retarded and just compounded dragon soul as the worst tier ever made.

Yor'sahj for example before nerf was killed on heroic by about 235 10man guilds but like 20 25man hcs guilds, and was the only case of 10mans killing 10:1 the amount of 25man, if there was no berserk timer it would of been slightly fairer, i mean 25man having a 11-12 minute fight while 10man has an 8-9 is hardly fair, an extra 3 minutes of combat is a pure disadvantage.

didn't mean to drag this onto 10vs25 but it's one progress boss in particular i really despised because we had ELEVEN legendary staffs and was very privileged in the fact we had that and many guilds did not, and still the berserk timer was too much and a nerf on the bosses health was required, how stupid =/, berserks should try to go towards soft enrage and not hard imo.

That was more of an issue with screwing up 10/25 man boss health tuning then enrage issues.

[PrairieChicken]

I think few oneshot enrages are good. Raids have combination of soft enrages and hard one so I don't really have problem here.

[britishbubba]

Every boss needs to have some sort of "hard" enrage where if you meet it, you have to die. But, that hard enrage should be something like garrosh's. No one hits his actual hard enrage, you die to the several soft enrages that are present in the fight long before the hard enrage ever does anything to you. If that hard enrage wasn't there though, you *could* just say, 3 tank 10m garrosh and kite adds in p3 for awhile while bringing a bunch of healers so that you know you won't die.

There were a few fights this expac that had REALLY well designed enrages. Dark animus is probably the best example of this, and sha of pride is another good one. You'll never actually hit sha's hard enrage (if he even has one?) but you do eventually have your entire raid get mc'ed if you fuck up.

[yetgdhfgh]

It stops stupid things like stacking all tanks and healers.

Its a necessary evil plus it gives incentives for DPS to know what they are doing

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It stops stupid things like stacking all tanks and healers.

Its a necessary evil plus it gives incentives for DPS to know what they are doing

[Harsesis]

I would like them to just not do enrages that are instant wipes. I prefer to see enrages that give you some time afterwards to kill the boss. Also, more environment enrages would be cool. For example take Butcher from Diablo 3. His enrage is that whole floor sets on fire and you take constant damage until you win or die.

[Mormolyce]

You're describing a soft enrage.

But I do agree that hard enrages are a pretty un-fun mechanic. Usually these days if you're hitting enrage something is seriously wrong though, outside of world first raiding enrages are pretty generous.

I also think that enrage-driven DPS race bosses are an example of fake difficulty.

[Ihnasir]

Some variety could be cool, but they serve a useful purpose. If anything, they're liberal with the time they give you for most encounters

[Harsesis]

You're describing a soft enrage.

I consider a soft enrage as something that is present for a large portion of the fight. Whereas I consider a hard enrage more of a switch that gets flipped.

[MrExcelion]

I prefer soft enrages myself, but I'm cool with mixing it up depending on the encounter

[cuafpr]

I despise the basic oh well its been 15 mins the boss will now one shot the raid type of enrage timers... Design the encounter to have natural timer (the floor is slowly turning into fire for a quick example).. or just leave them out. every boss could have a real timer not some lame one.

[Luuth]

If I was a boss I would just enrage right away. I don't even know why they give us a chance to kill them in the first place. Fantasy seems to be the exact opposite of reality in this instance. Normally the more you beat on something the weaker it gets, unit it dies. In this game its health just goes down, but it doesn't get any weaker, until finally it becomes God mode and kills everything. If I was a WoW boss, I would just smash myself on the head with a rock until I enraged and then destroy the raid.

[Mormolyce]

I consider a soft enrage as something that is present for a large portion of the fight. Whereas I consider a hard enrage more of a switch that gets flipped.

Soft enrage is generally something that stacks or gets stronger progressively whereas hard enrage is just boss 1-shots everyone.

[Mammoon]

As cool as soft enrages are, you end up with bosses like Baleroc who were an incredibly tight DPS check on heroic the first few weeks... but 25 man guilds were able to push him for 30-45 seconds AFTER enrage and were able to kill him.

So what happens? The next tier (DS) Blizz implemented enrages like Ultraxion on tight DPS bosses where he just auto 1-shots the raid.

Also, as cool as Gruul enrages are, people were still able to push him much farther than Blizzard intended... to the point where there are videos of pushing Gruul's stacks so far that they eventually reset.

As bad as some of the enrages are, most of the time they need to be hard enrages.

[Durantye]

I mean I don't see much meaning in making enrages fun, I mean if they could do it without affecting anything else AT ALL, that'd be cool to see intuitive ways for him to enrage, but really it isn't content you'd even strive to see because no one wants to get that close to enrage.

We can't have a game without enrage either that is foolish to even think possible as mentioned multiple times in the thread already enrages prevent stupid comps. It isn't a matter of lore, why can't thok just eat our tank and entire raid whenever he feels? I mean he is literally 20-30 times our size and swallowed the jailers whole who are much larger and stronger than a player character. Don't look for meaning in every little thing you'll just be disappointed.

I'm content with enrages, I've personally encountered very few this tier because they are so lax anyways, the only boss I believe possesses a truly tight enrage at this point is spoils of pandaria.