Too Few Raid Mechanics, New Ones Needed

[Deleted]

Shade of Aran had a "unique"-ish mechanic, in that your raid wanted to manage his mana to alter the flow of the fight. You don't get a lot of bosses where you can dictate when a specific ability will be cast.

http://muppets.wikidot.com/aran

We haven't seen any threat-less or dps-tank bosses in a while, either.

[Deleted]

Heal absorption debuff that deals damage to allies when healed.
Positioning adds on designated spots to (de)activate a mechanic.
Fire that spreads in the direction of moving players.
Heavy raidwide damage that periodically increases based on how much raw healing is being done.
A fixate add that protects its target from a lethal debuff.

Dunno if any of these have been used or whatever, just throwing random shit out there.

[Squirl]

Wildstar had an intresting mechanic. Abilities that needed X amounts of interupts to be interupted. adding another layer of difficulty when assigning more than 1 interupter per cast.

Oregorger had a similar mechanic where he would chain cast the same spell 5 times. Not exactly the same, but it's closest WoW can come to interrupt armor without just copying it.

As a melee, I've always found interrupting incredibly boring. WoW can do and has done better.

[Gaidax]

Heal absorption debuff that deals damage to allies when healed.
Positioning adds on designated spots to (de)activate a mechanic.
Fire that spreads in the direction of moving players.
Heavy raidwide damage that periodically increases based on how much raw healing is being done.
A fixate add that protects its target from a lethal debuff.

Dunno if any of these have been used or whatever, just throwing random shit out there.

Most of those have been done. 3 of the top ones literally exist in WoD already... 4 and 5 are slight evolution of what we had in past.

As for OP, I honestly think there is an underestimation of what has been done over the years - many mechanics are indeed bland stuff we have seen over the years, but almost every boss nowadays comes with at least one unique mechanic or perk. I think raiding in WoW is well executed and this is one of the reasons I think so, because we have new stuff we haven't seen yet every time.

[Herecius]

Oregorger had a similar mechanic where he would chain cast the same spell 5 times. Not exactly the same, but it's closest WoW can come to interrupt armor without just copying it.

As a melee, I've always found interrupting incredibly boring. WoW can do and has done better.

Blizzard is nothing if not the best kinds of copycats, taking the systems of other games and improving on them in some way.

There was Heroic Garrosh, where you had to use the kited Ironstar to interrupt him... perhaps if interrupting a boss cast wasn't done by using a player ability, but instead by repositioning him somewhere. Though Heroic Ragnaros had it with the roots and Empowered Sulfuras as well, I suppose.

[Herogamer555]

... Play pinball to beat a boss?

[Herecius]

... Play pinball to beat a boss?

Zan'ozz in Dragon Soul kinda did this, but the implementation was clunky as all fuck. Wouldn't mind trying a way more refined version of bouncing a ball all over the place for a mechanic.

[Zelk]

There are a few unique fights you didn't mention, Alysrazor has you flying through rings and Ryolith has you moving the boss via dps. Any new mechanics will probably be gimmicky thinks which would get boring after a couple of bosses.

[Tenjen]

wod really had a lot of varied bosses, the last tier especially had lovely raid mechanics.

There are plenty of arena type fights. almost all bosses are fought on a flat plain. multi room bosses or phasing bosses are quite neat but can get tiresome.

[Deleted]

No real defined abilities, but something like
- the first trash add towards Xhul in HFC, with the moving LoS rectangle.
- at the start of A fight force people to take a buff/debuff: faster movement but lower output, or slower movement with higher output.
- during the fight have 2 or 3 people do a gauntlet and the raid gains a buff or debuff depending on how close to each other they end their gauntlet
- some flying mechanics, like on the healing dragon in ICC

[Herecius]

- during the fight have 2 or 3 people do a gauntlet and the raid gains a buff or debuff depending on how close to each other they end their gauntlet

Oh that's cool. Boss could teleport two players to two identical gauntlets maybe (or phased from one another in the same one), and they have to run it, dodging void zones and such, and the idea is to finish at roughly the same time, causing something Good to happen to the raid, or if they finish at too different of times, causing something Bad to happen?

[Deleted]

that was the idea yeah. Will be pretty moot though with voicecoms

[Herecius]

that was the idea yeah. Will be pretty moot though with voicecoms

Nah, the fact that voice communication makes it 'simple' doesn't really change that it necessitates that communication aspect, making people actually coordinate. For lower difficulties the mechanic could be more generous or less punishing when not lined up properly.

Voice mechanics makes everything 'simple,' and I as Blizzard has said that they pretty much design from the top down - maximum difficulty and then paring down mechanics - they should design fights with the assumption that the players are using voice comms I think, and then when rebalancing for lower difficulties simply rebalance the punishment for poor communication.

[Alvito]

I have always liked the bosses that can change week to week. The slimes in DS or the 1st boss in BoT. When you run the same place over and over and over..................................... you need something to switch things up. The crazy thing is the fights themselves weren't amazing but the break from the same nonsense week to week was nice. Of course once you were doing heroic now mythic that kinda went away.

[Herecius]

I have always liked the bosses that can change week to week. The slimes in DS or the 1st boss in BoT. When you run the same place over and over and over..................................... you need something to switch things up. The crazy thing is the fights themselves weren't amazing but the break from the same nonsense week to week was nice. Of course once you were doing heroic now mythic that kinda went away.

Problem with bosses that change from week to week of course is the rollercoaster of difficulty it tends to give. Halfus could be a breeze or nightmarish (at the very low gear levels that people encountered him at, obviously) depending on what set of dragons you had available, for example.

[Deleted]

Interrupt armor from Wildstar was pretty good, not only because it was a mechanic of its own but because it lent itself to more mechanics. For example on Golgox the Lifecrusher's empower phase in Phageborn Convergence, each interrupt caused an AoE splash. This meant you had to prioritize healing and interrupts before his cast finished. Interrupts which removed more IA were obviously preferred.

[Deleted]

- a full flying/swimming boss where you leave globe voidzones, not flat ones. That way you have to use the full 3 dimensions of a room. I bit like the last phase of the Al'Akir in Throne of the 4 winds, but then with individual voidzones placed.
- getting buffs while people are within a different height in a zone and turning into a debuff if too many are at a certain height.
- again flying/swimming, have a total combined 'depth' or 'height' of all players shown as a bar, getting raiddamage if you go over it. And then certain abilities ofc that force you to move

[Alvito]

Problem with bosses that change from week to week of course is the rollercoaster of difficulty it tends to give. Halfus could be a breeze or nightmarish (at the very low gear levels that people encountered him at, obviously) depending on what set of dragons you had available, for example.

It certainly isn't a perfect set up and it did give us fits at first. But by the time we were doing it on heroic it was a breeze because we had seen all there was to see and knew how our group would handle each drake/whelp and moved right past it. I just like the ability for a raid to change even a small degree week to week. Even if it was something with trash hallways. Different lanes from boss to boss open each week.

[Deleted]

Paradropping while doing damage to a flying boss, having to DPS down a shield or something. Because of the paradrop you have limited time doing this. When landed the boss has health depending on the damage done in the air phase, possibly combined with certain abilities you can unlock in that airphase, so you have to choose between certain buffs/abilities or a lower HP boss in the next phase

Have the raid devided over 2 planes that work like a scale. If one side does more healing AND damage then the scales tip and the whole raid gets a debuff. Maintaining a perfect balance gives some buffs however (boss that takes more damage, a haste or other stat buff to the raid etc).

[rayden54]

You don't have stop dps or die, boss goes immune/switch targets