anyone else tired of the MoP raid designs?

[Destruktion]

I too am tired of the endless bar-raising of encounter complexity. When designing encounters, they should decide on a few mechanics, then tightly tune the fight damage and healing-wise and throw in active aggro management. There should be periods were DPSers need to do damage slowly to avoid gaining aggro, nuking periods, and periods where healers need to heal sparsely to avoid aggro.

[Mawnix]

I too am tired of the endless bar-raising of encounter complexity. When designing encounters, they should decide on a few mechanics, then tightly tune the fight damage and healing-wise and throw in active aggro management. There should be periods were DPSers need to do damage slowly to avoid gaining aggro, nuking periods, and periods where healers need to heal sparsely to avoid aggro.

Fights..still have that though?

[Okacz]

It's kinda simple. With all that gear leveling and stats growing, looks like Blizz get themselves cornered. Since average DPS is very high now, thanks to the thousands of stats, average HPS is also huge, they have really no way to create a single boss mechanics without stupid adds and tons of incoming raid damage. Or maybe they are just too lazy to invent something new. Nothing is more simple then throw a boss which hits entire raid every here and there for 400+k damage (stupid healing manasuck), then give him superhardhit ability for tanks (yet another stupid healer manasuck, yeah yeah our regen is so high blablablabla, we so like this craptastic raid and tank damage spikes oh yeah, especially love when you have to outheal tanks AND raid at the same time, wow, bursting heals are SO interesting. First time since playing healer since BC, I feel like I'm having to do some absurd skills rotation on a healer, pure nonsence it is), then let him spawn tons and tons of adds (dps sink). I think by this pattern you should've recognized a standart boss mechanic for the last three years. You may add more frustrating shit that forbiddens a role from using its role abilities in the course of fight - add healing debuff (yet moar manasuck), add casts that needs to be interrupted at almost same time on a bunch of thrash (dps suck), add tank debuffs that turn tank survivability into dust, add precious debuffs that are cast every 1 second on entire raid while your dispell skill is on new glorious omg-its-almost-a-hour cooldown (yet another manasuck with almost 100% of frustration impact on healers, oh yeah baby, its not-to-mention that not every healer class can dispell every debuff type, so if you have two priests, you will never win a fight).
I'm gonna tell you this. I'd love Blizz to start making raids without stupid lfr/norm/hm diversity, just as they've done in the glorious past. And, for the sake of my mind's sanity, I hope they'll make That Great Item Squish as soon as possible, coz this add fights mechanic is awful, and I think pretty much people will agree to this.

Well, I'm kinda against the item squish, and still don't see a reason behind tons of adds in every damn fight.

Big damage mechanics are fine, since you learn to counter or dodge them, thus utilizing every skill a player has in some way. Big dps numbers actually show that with each piece of gear, each patch, each expansion you grow better and tougher. Adds... they are freaking annoyting and don't have anything to do with everything else.

Check ICC, one of the best raids ever (not as good as Ulduar tho, but still great). What are the most memorable fights there? Festergut/Rotface, Professor, Sindragosa, Deathbringer, Queen and of course Lich King himself. NONE of those fights are tedious add zergs like Madness, Will or (most probably) Horridon. You've got a well-developed boss with some neat mechanics, and perhaps a few adds that don't really count as anything else then just one more mechanic. Those were the best fights ever. Like Mimiron from Ulduar, Ragnaros from Firelands and Illidan from BT. No adds, or making adds just a small part of the encounter, is a way to go.

How is Blizzard missing that?

[SamR]

What I was saying is that as the market changes, so does the customer and what they want.

Although I don't agree with a lot of his opinions, Osmeric makes a good point: there has been a substantial drop in Raiding Activity with this expansion.

Raiders are the minority, and they're the few who still enjoy doing such an activity.

Players are looking for more and more to do, which is why Mists included so many features outside of raiding.

That's the unfortunate reality of it. I'm simply laying a base down, and my own personal explanation plus opinion, as to why things are like this.

REGARDLESS! I do love Raiding myself, especially when it's for story purposes and simply challenging myself, and I love the new raid in its entirety.

Raiding in WoW is moving to Raid Finder much like dungeon running in WoW moved to the Dungeon Finder.

There were way more people who saw Empress and Sha of Fear the last 6 months than saw Illidan in all of TBC. Raid content is now consumed by a much larger audience than before. So raiding isn't dying. Hardcore progression raiding might be declining(like in every other MMO), but casual raiding is huge now and overshadows progression raiding in numbers.

[Osmeric]

Raiding in WoW is moving to Raid Finder much like dungeon running in WoW moved to the Dungeon Finder.

There were way more people who saw Empress and Sha of Fear the last 6 months than saw Illidan in all of TBC. Raid content is now consumed by a much larger audience than before. So raiding isn't dying. Hardcore progression raiding might be declining(like in every other MMO), but casual raiding is huge now and overshadows progression raiding in numbers.

LFR in T14 was distinguished from normal/heroic in two ways:

(1) numbers were tuned way down, and

(2) encounter complexity was massively reduced, due to neutering or removal of many mechanisms.

In the context of this thread, LFR shows that the complexity the devs are striving for really is a very minority taste.

They want to make mechanics more important in T15 LFR. I suspect this attempt will be entirely disastrous, not least because the players who do LFR don't want more complexity. It's almost as if the devs are miffed that players are spurning their creation, and want to force the complexity on them regardless.

[Tax]

Horridon and council are sensory overload.I like challenging fights but theres just too much going on it exhausts me.

[SamR]

LFR in T14 was distinguished from normal/heroic in two ways:

(1) numbers were tuned way down, and

(2) encounter complexity was massively reduced, due to neutering or removal of many mechanisms.

In the context of this thread, LFR shows that the complexity the devs are striving for really is a very minority taste.

They want to make mechanics more important in T15 LFR. I suspect this attempt will be entirely disastrous, not least because the players who do LFR don't want more complexity. It's almost as if the devs are miffed that players are spurning their creation, and want to force the complexity on them regardless.

And if the new LFR turns out to be too hard, they'll nerf it. Just like they nerfed LFR Garalon. There's no binary state to LFR difficulty. They'll aim for a target and tweak if it doesn't work. LFR Garalon was nerfed at least twice as I recall.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I like how you say this and then tell me this:



How's it feel to be a hypocrite? If you can't even stand by your own values, why are you even posting? Just to be a hypocrite?

At least pick one side and stick to it, don't be bi-polar.

So I can't express my opinion on his opinion without being called a hypocrite? Get over yourself.

[Anafielle]

Not tired of designs at all. MOP raids are fantastic. T14 and T11 are probably my two favorite tiers of raiding ever, and T8 hard modes. T15 so far feels pretty well designed although we'll see.

If you don't like complexity, then run LFR. Raiding is for challenges.

[kouby]

So, people actually miss DS? You realize you guys are not actually human right? It's impossible.

Seriously these raids are a breath of fresh air compared to retarded playgrounds like DS, there was NOTHING interesting in Dragon Soul, not one fight. So to bitch about fights with too many mechanics?... My god, people will bitch about anything Blizzard does I guess.

[XingoJenkins]

What made me quit is this pattern of many bosses. Most of them have the same pattern: "Kill things > Kill Boss > Void zone > Repeat".
And yeah, this is through the WHOLE fight. And isn't one, two, but 80% of the raid. I just few bit bored raiding MoP.

Wanna be sucessful in raids? Forget the fancy skill names and simplify it. For example: Amethyst Pool = Fire.

If you learn the pattern, welcome to the Club of bored WoW players

[SamR]

If you learn the pattern, welcome to the Club of bored WoW players

The same could be said for every single raid that's ever existed in WoW. If you don't like raiding, that's fine. But I don't see why you would blame MoP specifically for it.

edit: You kind of missed the point of this thread. This thread is complaining that the patterns in MoP raids are too complex and there are too many of them.

[suicidebears]

i think a huge problem is the lore in this expansion. who seriously cares of pandaria? i didnt think for a single nanosecond about it before the expansion released...

what about the characters everyone cares about? saurfang? rexxar? the old gods? the titans? burning legion... sargeras? bolvar?... any of the alliance lore characters...? out of all of that we get the thunder king? which noone has ever heard of or cares about? and sha?

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

i think a huge problem is the lore in this expansion. who seriously cares of pandaria? i didnt think for a single nanosecond about it before the expansion released...

what about the characters everyone cares about? saurfang? rexxar? the old gods? the titans? burning legion... sargeras? bolvar?... any of the alliance lore characters...? out of all of that we get the thunder king? which noone has ever heard of or cares about? and sha?

Why do you have a problem with new lore? If we keep on using old characters everything will be the same and the lore will never expand.

EDIT: Also, all you're trying to do is talk crap about everything in the expansion. You're pretty much talking to yourself and going off-topic in your own thread.

[JhanZ]

So I can't express my opinion on his opinion without being called a hypocrite? Get over yourself.

No, I think I'll put you on ignore instead. Because you don't even understand what I wrote, and are just being hostile for the sake of being hostile.

[Deleted]

So, people actually miss DS? You realize you guys are not actually human right? It's impossible.

Seriously these raids are a breath of fresh air compared to retarded playgrounds like DS, there was NOTHING interesting in Dragon Soul, not one fight. So to bitch about fights with too many mechanics?... My god, people will bitch about anything Blizzard does I guess.

oh stop with the mindless hate, bosses in DS actually had new and memorable mechanics. People don't hate that raid for lack of interesting fights, but because it was nerfed really fast and we had to do it way way to long.
Only fight that was underwhelming was sadly Deathwing himself, (Spine and Madness), thats the fight that should be most epic, but we ended up killing his nails and some adds.
Rest of the raid was good imo.

[Sky High]

well thankfully this is only your opinion, so of course it holds no water. however i do not AT ALL agree that 2 mechanic fights can still be fun, sure they were fun back in vanilla, TBC, but today? well just as you call blizz lazy for making fights complex (which doesn't make any fucking sense to me) they would be in an uproar with fights being recycled over and over and over again. sure they could be more punishing, but by no means FUN (subjective of course), i like fights where i have to do more then avoid 1 or two things to see the boss fall over dead.

[Ryanlol]

learning and mastering your class sounds like a much better target for raid design.

If this were the case, you would learn your class and then be done with every boss that Blizzard ever creates. There needs to be some challenge for people that don't spend months figuring out how to use their class.

Edit:

oh stop with the mindless hate, bosses in DS actually had new and memorable mechanics. People don't hate that raid for lack of interesting fights, but because it was nerfed really fast and we had to do it way way to long.

I don't mind you having your opinion, so please don't tell me to change mine. Dragon Soul was not shitty for me because of the amount of time it took or the nerfs. It was shitty for me because not one new mechanic was introduced and every boss was completely forgettable, along with the fact that every single part of the entire raid was a re-used model. In my eyes, the hate for Dragon Soul is completely justified, and any community that accepts a raid like Dragon Soul without asking for more is not a game or community I want to be a part of.

[reLik]

i think a huge problem is the lore in this expansion. who seriously cares of pandaria? i didnt think for a single nanosecond about it before the expansion released...

what about the characters everyone cares about? saurfang? rexxar? the old gods? the titans? burning legion... sargeras? bolvar?... any of the alliance lore characters...? out of all of that we get the thunder king? which noone has ever heard of or cares about? and sha?

I think you are using your own opinion and generalizing it to think that everyone has the same opinion as you do. I personally enjoy that even normal modes have a lot of mechanics to worry about and a lot of people need their own personal skill to complete it. Pandaria's lore is much nicer than Cataclysm's in my opinion and what you are able to do in Pandaria is more interesting than any what you could do in Cataclysm at max level. To go with Pebrocks The Warlock, he also says that without going to new things it will not expand. Also keep in mind that Pandaria and Pandaren are not just barely made up things, they have been here a long time just not in World of Warcraft.

You have your opinions and that's great, but please don't make them seem like everyone shares your opinion.

[Raqu]

Sure, every raid has its own ups and downs and everyone have their own opinion of those ups and downs. The thing with this expansions is that 3-4 mechanic fights, where you were thrown 1 mechanic at a time, became too "easy". So they decided to make encounters where you have to deal with much more mechanics that could even happen simultaneously. Plus the fact that the majority of those mechanics going wrong could mean a wipe.

In my opinion doing 1 mechanic every 1.5 minutes is boring. Whereas dealing with adds, boss buffs, different boss abilities that can one shot people, positioning and aoe raid dmg at the same time is not boring. Its challenging even fun. The fights engage everyone in the raid and no one is left to just stand still and spam heals/dmg. Sure there are some fights where this could happen but only a few.

To name a few hard/fun bosses: C'thun prenerf, Yogg + 0 25, LK 25 HC and Ragnaros 25 HC. Those were the days. This tier only had Imperial Vizier preNerf. Waiting for more...