Your most hated raid mechanic

[Deleted]

I have a love-hate relationship with mechanics that targets one player that, if not handled right, very easily wipes the raid. Such as defile from LK or the bomb thing that knocked people up in TK.
Mostly it's because it always seems to target the people that has the toughest time to grasp the mechanic out of all the players in the raid. It's stupid when it gets to the point that you have the kill as long as a few select players does not get targeted by it. But it always feels awesome when those bosses die after you've wiped countless times to said players getting targeted.

Amber Shaper's transformation also counts into this. Mostly since it's a vehicle thing that only targets one player at a time. Unlike Flame Leviathan in Ulduar where everyone had vehicles.

[Nox Drachen]

Unavoidable raid wide AoE.

[Nilinor]

Tank switch at X stacks, its monotonous and boring, now if they made it like it knocked you on the otherside of the room and you lose all aggro, thats fun, especially if its random, but 1.2.3 switch, 1.2.3 switch is boring as hell.

[Exeris]

I'll go with vehicles/UI changes where every raid member can be "transformed" and has to read the abilities...it's annoying.

I was a little unsure until I saw this, having to learn a new actionbar mid fight with all the things going on just sucks.

Also if you have a modified UI it might get messed up in the process.

[Zephire]

Hard enrages... After 10 min the raid dies! It's so absolute. I much rather have soft enrages like Gruuls stacking buffs.

[Deleted]

I like all boss mechanics except hard enrages, prefer soft enrages so boss doesn't 1 shot whole raid type of enrage.
Instead gets stronger and stronger or something like that

Dps check bosses are stupid

[Uoyredrum]

Any mechanic where the loss can be laid squarely at the foot of one person not performing a very specific role/task, especially when that person is randomly chosen. An example would be Black Temple's Teron Gorefield (the trope codifier, in my view) and his Shadow of Death mini-game. Any mechanic that arbitrarily chooses a raid member and thrusts them into an unfamiliar role, and places the whole weight on the encounter on their shoulders. Takes away from an RL's ability to control the raid, and also introduces an element that can be neither predicted nor practiced without lots and lots and lots of wipes.

I don't understand how people had a problem with gorefiend. It was 3 buttons and if you can read at an 6th grade level and understand basic game mechanics, you had time to look at the abilities, think for 2 seconds, and then do the encounter properly. That's assuming you don't look it up ahead of time, which basically just summed up that one button was frost nova, one was ice lance, and the last one was arcane explosion. I literally had time to figure it out while never doing it before and not only killed my ghosts but a few extra somebody else missed as well.

Seriously, although I RARELY got ghosted (not sure why) I never messed it up and I play a warrior, while I saw people who actually play mages mess it up despite it having the same abilities as their class. It wasn't difficult in the least. Also, somebody made a web-based game to practice that fight on, although fewer people probably knew about that.

I can understand the basic premise of what you're talking about, but I can't think of any encounters where it was a big deal. Gorefiend seems like a poor example because not only was that mechanic trivial to good players even when never seen before, the fight itself was laughably easy. The tank got trucked kinda hard until they geared up but that was about it.

As for the OT, I think the only thing that really bothers me is fights that have way too many mechanics going on at once, like Paragons. While paragons isn't that difficult of a fight there's way too much going on, too much to remember and watch out for and it's just a mess. I'd rather have a boss with 3-4 well designed mechanics than 20 brainless ones that mostly don't matter.

[Gevoth]

Three dimensional movement.

I feel like my problem with that one is the transparency of the effects make gauging distance to them feel a little off.

Knockbacks or MC for me I think. Tough call.

- - - Updated - - -

Unavoidable raid wide AoE.

Hah! Yes actually. As a healer definitely. Not something I thought of as a mechanic initially, but it definitely is.

Tanks probably feel very similarly about the use of debuffs to force a swap.

[Deleted]

"Here, fight a load of adds while the boss is immune/unreachable."

Followed by anything that makes you have to control a "vehicle".

[Hyve]

Nazgrim HM logic: "Let's make the Heroic Shockwave that one-shots raid members the same color as the floor and fire on the walls. Oh and let's make it an add fight where player AOE spell effects cover up the floor to boot."

I'm colour blind and I have no issue seeing the Shockwave on the floor, if people are using that as an excuse in your team, they're just playing badly.

Thok is still the worst design though. Doing in on HM now and I want to smash my head against a wall. Fucking bats.

Same as before, the bats are not an issue at all if handled right. Just stun lock them.

On-Topic: Personally, as a Tank, it's the standard Tank Swap ... Sha of Pride as a slightly interesting take on it, but I quite liked Garalon as a Tank, having to position myself carefully with the other tank, be in a radius and such.

What I'd like to see is a mechanic where both Tanks took the same damage, much like Blood Queen and so both tanks still had to keep up their active mitigation going, rather then a lame DPS rotation.

[Dukenukem]

The healing shields - Tortos HC and Malkorok

I really want to kill that guy who thought spamming heals around is fun for healer

[Deleted]

The healing shields - Tortos HC and Malkorok

I really want to kill that guy who thought spamming heals around is fun for healer

Ok I have to admit this, really horrible feature

I'm colour blind

You can only see red? /cower

[Cranial]

The most horrible mechanic for me as a DK tank is definitely HM Immersius.
Fuck whoever thought of the stacking debuff.

[Shuji V2]

The wind mechanic really blows. Also, vehicle boss fights.

[Wrinkle]

Dorumu's maze had the worst graphics effect ever. Trying to see where the clear spot was amongst all the purple shit was just an exercise in frustration. Like trying to make players work out one of those stereoscopic 3d pictures while moving and casting.

[The Kao]

Unintuitive stuff, like certain void zones that kill / wipe you when you enter vs. void zones that kill / wipe you when you don't enter. It's like having two sorts of bottomless pits in a 2D game where one kills you and the other is just a connection to the next room while they can't be distinguished other than by knowing the result for each specific pit.

That's not good game design. It's not fair to the player. It takes away from intuitively reacting to something that's thrown at you and requires you to know fights without giving the player the chance to learn through experience. You know like, every void zone up to the point was evil. Next one isn't. Player dies because game changed the rules on the fly, without explaining. Results in frustration. Dumb game.

And raid-wide unavoidable AE. Great way of entertaining healers just because you ran out of ideas.

[Darththeo]

I'm colour blind and I have no issue seeing the Shockwave on the floor, if people are using that as an excuse in your team, they're just playing badly.

Either you aren't color blind OR you have no clue what color blind is. If you are color blind (unless you are completely color blind), you see different colors than other people. It is highly possible YOU see the difference BECAUSE you are color blind.

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Anyway, my least favorite raid mechanic is long transitions between phases, especially when you can't do anything during the phase transition, like heal up.

[Hyve]

Either you aren't color blind OR you have no clue what color blind is. If you are color blind (unless you are completely color blind), you see different colors than other people. It is highly possible YOU see the difference BECAUSE you are color blind.

Being Colour Blind is to have difficulty differentiating different colours from each other. Shades of Blue & Purple I can't see the difference of, the same with Green & Brown, and shades of Reds and such. I have a pretty bad version of it, and yet I still see that perfectly fine. The people are bad.

[Stormspark]

Either you aren't color blind OR you have no clue what color blind is. If you are color blind (unless you are completely color blind), you see different colors than other people. It is highly possible YOU see the difference BECAUSE you are color blind.

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Anyway, my least favorite raid mechanic is long transitions between phases, especially when you can't do anything during the phase transition, like heal up.

There are many different types of color blindness. And it's true that some types will make things that appear similar to people with normal vision highly contrasted.

[Osmeric]

The wind mechanic really blows.

I see what you did there.