Dragon Soul - just as bad as ToC? Discuss

[Gunmoku]

well let's see this chart
1.Beasts-You had to move from 1.the poison pools, the debuffs on the worms 2.icehowl's charge
2.Jaraxxus-Flames(admittedly not much thinking/moving involved)
3.Champions-Don't even let me get started
4.Valkyrs-Again.. don't let me get started on it
5.Anub-Only ice etc and run from the spikes(admittedly not much thinking/moving involved)

Now Dragon Soul
1.Morchok-melee-stand still,ranged soak the crystals till the black pool phase
2.Zon'ozz-stand still and hug
3.Yor'shaj-stand still and hug
4.Haggara(Actually the most entertaining fight in the whole DS)-Run from the Ice Spikes, spread the link on Storm, deal with the icy shards
5.Ultraxion-stand still and hug
6.Blackhorn-Ok here you actually run a bit for the Barrages and Twilight Onslaughts
7.Spine-stand still and hug
8.Madness-Jump on platforms, stand still and hug.
Yes DS is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse than ToC, which atleast had some interesting fights tactic wise. DS is just tedious and boring and on heroic the damage is increased by 5000% as well as the hp of the bosses, the new abilities on heroic add nothing on heroic apart from high damage(maybe Zon'ozz is an exception from the ability thing)

Ummm....what? Clearly you haven't done Dragon Soul on normal mode.

- Morchok you have to move towards the crystals, you don't just sit there and wait for something to happen. Plus you move when Black Blood happens. Heroic mode you have to effectively double your efforts since there's two Morchoks in play.

- Zon'ozz, you have you move when the ball bounces between the groups and then move the boss himself when melee people need to move when you need to let Zon'ozz absorb the ball.

- Hagara is as you described it, so at least you got one thing right.

- Ultraxion requires certain players to move when crystals spawn near the rear of the platform.

- Blackhorn requires movement, obviously. Absorb small blasts as an individual, dodge the Charge from the Dreadblades and Slayers, intercept Sappers, stack on Assaults, etc.

- Spine requires people to move left or right as a whole group to dump adds off Deathwing so you can manage one add at a time to detonate when it absorbs nine bloods.

- Madness requires players to move between two adds on a platform and then move to Elementium Bolts when they spawn.


Dragon Soul is nowhere near as halfassed as ToC was. It only feels a bit rushed because Blizzard was trying to release to compete with the Winter releases (*Cough* SWTOR.). We at least got unique events and bosses that each feel different from each other besides Ultraxion who was Patchwerk with a button. ToC was just a boss gauntlet. Dragon Soul tells a story as you progress like Ulduar, ICC, or even Blackwing Descent did.

[Mitsjel]

Go over the thread and look at the chars in peoples sigs. Alot of them are complaining about being already burnt out on the content when they all have multiple chars (some up to 5 or 6) doing both lfr and normal every week.
I find it ridiculous to race trough content like that, instead of pacing yourselves, and then complain about it when you knew from the start there would be no new content out for 8+ months.

[Tarok]

I think a lot of people have forgotten clearing ToC four times a week instead of just once (maybe just two or three for some people). That's definitely where I lost my interest in ToC. It was released at a very poor time: as others have pointed out already, too many guilds were still progressing through Ulduar, mine included. To add insult to injury, the next tier, ICC, ended up being the longest raid tier to date, lasting just over a year I believe. They could have simply released ToC a few months later and had much better reception. Clearly the release of ToC was rushed for some reason.

They didn't skimp on the mechanics of the individual bosses, however. Everyone had something to do and it stayed interesting. The difficulty curve between normal and heroic was pretty drastic, but the curve between each boss of normal and heroic were scaled pretty well. Faction Champions was an important experiment in what raiders would tolerate in unpredictability; I think they could revisit this concept and improve on it greatly.

As a DPS warrior, Dragon Soul is probably the most boring raid tier I can remember. Every fight feels like Shannox to me: occasional DPS swaps, avoid a few traps, and otherwise DPS the boss. I'll describe my experiences in heroic mode.

Morchok's "doubling" is moot after splitting the raid and giving distance between your split raid parts. After that, I just run to the rock sometimes, where the difference between getting under the sphere or not is a bit of healing. Running out of the black shit is a joke.

Yorsahj involves killing the called slime, usually green, then AoEing. Absolutely zero raid awareness issues.

Zon'ozz as a melee involves leaving the boss at a certain time, calling for a dispel of the debuff if I have one at this point (there's some awareness), then quickly DPSing two or three tentacles on my designated side. Sometimes I have to hit a defensive or healing CD so I don't die during black phase. Then it's back to DPSing the boss.

Hagara is somewhat interesting during ice phase when I have to be dispelled inside the bubble and also when avoiding the various void zone equivalents in lightning and ice phases. Melee don't do much different from boss DPS in normal phase.

Ultraxion is a joke on normal, but heroic is a pretty nice improvement actually. The fading light debuff duration varies from like 3 to 8 seconds, requiring some attention, but DBM holds your hand for any debuff length. The twilight is quicker, too. But still no movement. Every tier can have a "stand-and-DPS" fight like Ultraxion. But not as many as DS seems to have.

Spine heroic is even more boring than normal. Rolling is a test of patience more than anything; we've never had anyone die from not getting into the socket soon enough, but from leaving too soon because the Blizzard UI call-out for when the roll is complete is, in my experience, buggy. The raid is usually waiting on CDs to clear before beginning another tendon DPS phase. The tendon DPS is exciting as it's a very tightly-tuned burn, but there's no awareness in this fight.

I haven't done heroic Madness, but I won't bother going through normal as it's been covered several times already.

Outside of the boss mechanics themselves, the environments are literally all rehashes. The only new model for sure is Deathwing's Spine and HUEG FACE (the scaling here is atrocious; I can't possibly describe how big this dragon must be), maybe Spine's tentacles, and I believe Nozdormu got a remodel that has been used a few times this tier. The trash is tedious and uninteresting, never wiped to it once. Ultraxion's Skyrim is an abomination of trash clears. A good minute's worth of RP makes it the silliest trash in the game.

DPS checks alone do not make fights fun. ToC is a better raid than DS. DS is a better tier than ToC.

[zsun]

From the encounter design perspective, TOC was better than DS. But I overall still hated TOC more since it was a raid tier that did not have hard caps on emblems of triumph. This, plus the fact that 10, 25, Normal and Heroic did not share lockouts, made me do each boss 3 or 4 times per week to maximize emblems.

Now doing the same 5 bosses 3 times a week on 1 toon quickly gets boring no matter how interesting the encounters were. At least in DS I can choose not to do LFR and still maximize VP gain.

[roahn the warlock]

This is why true raiders have quit the game, it will just be casuals playing going forward and therefore nerfs to heroic bosses will be part of the package even with LFR.

LFR tried to solve many problems:

1) Low pop realms
2) Shift workers
3) Bad players
4) Most importantly it tries to replace Guild masters and officers who have quit the game as they are a dying breed in wow.

Well if you didn't need to front 15 bucks a month to be able to talk...

[Sterilize]

I'm about 80% confident that if Dragon soul and Ulduar had swapped places in time, we'd still be having these conversations about the most current raid tier.

[surfbigwaves]

At least ToC was a new setting...

After killing Cho'gall, Nefarian, Onyxia, Ragnaros, all over again, I was hoping the DW would be totally new, but the last thing that I wanted to see was Wyrmrest Temple.

[Gray_Matter]

I am really enjoying DS. ICC was a bit better but not by that much. I haven't enjoyed the content in between that much or TOC. Ulduar was a little bit before my time.

[Methias]

I'm sorry but you have VASTLY over glorified ToC's encounters.

Northrend Beasts - P1: Attack boss, kill adds when they spawn. I honestly can't remember having to watch my positioning too much although I was melee DPS at the time. Tank swap.
P2: Don't stand in shit, move away from raid if you get burning debuff. Kill worms.
P3: Nuke boss, avoid shit. That's it.

90% of that fight is move from crap, kill adds and nuke bosses with tank swapping when necessary. This fight, albeit in 3 phases, is less interesting than most fights in ICC, and even in DS. I found Ulxatron more fun because I had to push a button in it. I wouldn't say that this fight was particularly great.

Jaraxxus was, quite frankly, nuke boss, kill portals and your expected adds (Melee on sluts, ranged on Infernals) with a debuff to get rid of. There was nothing else to this fight. Solid burst requirements? I'm not sure if my guild was just good or if you're making this sound harder than it was, but DPS was NEVER an issue.

Faction Champions: I'll give you that one. This actually was an interesting fight to deal with.

Twin Valky's: Good fight as well. This is probably the best fight in there imo. Make sure you're the right color, nuke boss, avoid shit and use cooldowns on the shield phase.

Anub: P1: Kill boss, kill adds, have a DPS deal with the orbs in the air for frost.
P2: Run away from the spikes.
P3: Nuke the boss as quickly as possible before he heals back up, save CD's for this phase if you get there quick enough.

Now I may be being bias, but I've quite effectively done exactly what you did with the dragon soul encounters - Boil them down to the bare minimum. You COMPLETELY ignored the orb on Zon'ozz, which is unlike any other mechanic I can remember. You admittedly said it 'boils down to', but you didn't do the same for ToC. You merely tried to make your point sound more valid. If you're going to do this for the DS mechanics, do the same to the ToC mechanics and I'm sure you'll find there's not much difference. Yorsaj - You forget to highlight that you have 3 different Oozes you could attack, and selective DPSing is key. That in itself is a mechanic you're ignoring.

Hagara? Less interesting than any fight in ToC? I dunno what you're smoking but I want some. It certainly isn't "DPS boss, DPS add" in a repetitive loop. One phase, you have to run in a conga line to link some rods. In the other, you have to avoid a rotating wall of ice while DPSing certain targets. Two mechanics you don't mention once again. You also forget the attack she does constantly during the phases you fight her, where people get targetted by ice shards. The very ice shards that others are meant to cover. Again, you've dumbed this down too much and merely done so to enforce your point.

Spine: Kill a blood talon thing. Mob spawns. Kill bloods and get the mob to collect the blood orbs. Once enough have been obtained, nuke the mob. Once that is done and it explodes, nuke the thing holding the armor on. Rince and repeat. Not that interesting, but more entertaining than I ever found Northrend Beasts.

Madness: Simply put a massive letdown of a fight.

Now I'll say this again: If you want to boil DS fights down to the bare minimum, do the same for the ToC fights. You'll be surprised at how wrong you really are.

I'll admit as well that my opinion may be slightly bias. The weeks I put into ToC in an attempt to get Tribute to Dedicated Insanity was just awful. 49 attempts left was the closest I personally got :<. But I'll say again, ToC mechanics weren't as great as you're making them out to be.

[Rekenna]

I personally loved ToC and the story/content that came with it. DS.... not so much.

[malevolant]

TOC was the worst thing to happen to WoW minus Ghostcrawler.

[Mekco]

Toc was different from most raids but it wasn't bad and it was great either. I can only do LFR at the time so DS is more of chore than anything , I would imagine doing it on normal with a guild would make it more enjoyable. But as of now I would say DS is worse.

[UJellyBro]

Think a lot of it has to do with who you're doing it with. Personally i find DS much more interesting than ToC but that might be because i'm raiding at a different level now. I can agree on DS normal modes not being very special and innovative but the HC modes are a lot more interesting in my opinion.

[Jumpieboi]

All raids from now on will be designed for LFR first and then have numbers tuned up for Normal/Heroic with maybe 1 mechanic added. Blizzard will pick one fight to be "impossibly hard" for heroic to act as the gatekeeper between world first guilds and the rest.

That's how raiding is going to be. They aren't going to waste time designing a boss that can't be done in LFR - so expect more tank and spanks. Tuning will be to just increase the incoming damage enough so that the gear curve smooths that out. It will no longer depend on players being individually good.

Thanks, that's regression, something Blizzard has sworn not to do (I know tin foil hats off for a second) they probably want to please the community.

Also - You apparently haven't done LFR/heroic all bosses.

For an example, H Warmaster has many more mechanics on Heroic mode than on LFR.

Finally - not sure when psychics became true, but by god people, we have one here! /sarcasm

[Larath]

I love DS its a place were you finally have to wipe some again cause the encounters on heroic are actually hard and the fights themselves actually engage your full raid most of the time compared to ToC, I disagree with most of your point in the OP, I love that we are fighting deathwing in dragonblight the new five mans does a really good job at explaining why aswell.

[invader]

the thing with ToC is that at the time everyman and his dog were like "why the fukk do we gotta kill piles of useless trash to get to each boss, pisses us off and wastes time, trash is there for no reason blah blah blah".. so blizz then decided to make ToC to please the moaners ;p (it failed ofc cos it seems whatever blizz do they get it wrong but HEY your still playing lol). a raid in 1 room, no trash and STILL that wasnt good enough for some ;p....

i personally enjoyed ToC quite a bit (after i got over being REALLY pissed off that it came too soon for many as many were still doing Ulduar) and it was THE first raid to introduce "proper" heroic mode settings and it was a great challenge (ulduar had hardmodes you had to activate which imo is a much better n funner way to do it)..

so yea ToC was ok, DS however seems lame in comparison to ALL raids that have gone before....

[Potentio]

both 2/10 for me

so the part "as bad as" seems fit

[TJ]

It is pretty bad.. hopefully blizzard redeem themselves in mop though since cata has been the definition of let down, bar heroic rag though since that was probably the best fight ever released.

[McNeil]

Cataclysm as an expansion in general was very bad, there wasn't a single raid I really liked. Even the patch trailer of DS was really bad, they didn't even bother to voice it in. Compare the 4.3 trailer to the 3.3 one, you'll see which one is far superior

[gmart248]

T11 is still by far my favorite tier this xpac.
T12/T13 are sadly a disappointment imo.