Too Few Raid Mechanics, New Ones Needed

[OrcinusDrake]

Simplest way would be - Channel a cast that places stacking bad on the raid, when you interrupt all the bad that would've gone on the raid instead goes on the tank.

[Crillam]

Ehm, well they have introduced a lot of new mechanics just in HFC. each boss have something new to offer. They may be simmilar to others but thats just like saying every boss with adds uses the same mechanic when in reality they are diferent. Just look like that shit first trash boss in HFC. Just kill treash but they drop ammo that we but in giant canons something we have never seen before.

[enak101]

I agree with post above, some of OP's tone implied everything was the same but there is a lot of possible combinations and twists on mechanics to keep things interesting, of course you can classify mechanics very broadly that will never change.

[Herecius]

I agree with post above, some of OP's tone implied everything was the same but there is a lot of possible combinations and twists on mechanics to keep things interesting, of course you can classify mechanics very broadly that will never change.

Just acknowledging that the oversimplification was at least partly on purpose. The thread is mostly for folks to brainstorm new mechanics or twists on old ones that we've never seen before, though I think it already shows that quite a few folks think that Blizzard needs to really work on making the environment part of the fights.

[Jinpachi]

Personally I've always liked the thought of completely random boss mechanics for fights. At least for the highest tiers of raiding. Wanna be the best, prove you can be the best on the fly, and not just master an individual fight

[Fritters154]

Personally I've always liked the thought of completely random boss mechanics for fights. At least for the highest tiers of raiding. Wanna be the best, prove you can be the best on the fly, and not just master an individual fight

Would be interesting to not have easily tracked CDs on boss abilities. Like having 3-4 possible fairly different mechanics available to the boss at the end of a CD instead of just the one. Predictable boss abilities make it so you can effectively script out everything you will do in a raid. Having a variable mechanic would make things a little more interesting. Kind of like Lei Shi but maybe with more random mechanics.

[Herecius]

Would be interesting to not have easily tracked CDs on boss abilities. Like having 3-4 possible fairly different mechanics available to the boss at the end of a CD instead of just the one. Predictable boss abilities make it so you can effectively script out everything you will do in a raid. Having a variable mechanic would make things a little more interesting. Kind of like Lei Shi but maybe with more random mechanics.

Some fights definitely already do it, but I won't pretend it's always a fun experience... flashes of mythic Kromag, who did his abilities whenever he damn well pleased.

'Oh look at me, I'm Kromog, I'm going to delay the rune phase by 70 FUCKING SECONDS'

[Anthony3187]

Wildstar has the mechanic of group interrupts. Meaning if enough people interrupt the boss while casting a specific spell, then the boss becomes vulnerable for a couple split seconds and can then be stunned etc. More group coordinated things would be cool. EQ2 had "heroic events" or something along that. One person could start it and the other players could use an ability to keep a group combo going.

[styil]

1. Proximity mechanics: the closer you are the more damage you deal
2. Role reversal: ranged abilities have a 0 yard range, melee abilities have a 40 yard range. Healing damages the boss, damage heals the raid.
3. 100% execution fight: there isn't anything to DPS, only mechanics to avoid.
4. A completely freebie boss: you cannot "lose" or wipe, but the rewards are greater the better the raid performs
5. Jumping through hoops: hoops slightly elevated from the ground that need to be jumped through.
6. Linked bosses: defeating boss 1 in a certain way changes the mechanics of the following boss (boss 2).
7. Stunned boss: boss can be stunned, has no diminishing returns on stuns except if they are done by the same person too soon (then it becomes immune to stuns). if not stunned, does very damaging raid aoe. smaller groups may have the duration of their stuns increased. there's a period where you need to stop stunning the boss so it can aoe and destroy another raid-wiping mechanic in the environment.

[Celarent]

Players can't be healed during an entire phase even though they receive damage; to properly exit the phase, adds need to receive damage many times over their maximum HP, so healers heal the enemies.

[Amantino]

Would be interesting to not have easily tracked CDs on boss abilities. Like having 3-4 possible fairly different mechanics available to the boss at the end of a CD instead of just the one. Predictable boss abilities make it so you can effectively script out everything you will do in a raid. Having a variable mechanic would make things a little more interesting. Kind of like Lei Shi but maybe with more random mechanics.

RNG factor is never a good thing. There will always be one option thats easier than the others, 'dance' in p3 Archimonde is a good example of this.

[OrcinusDrake]

4. A completely freebie boss: you cannot "lose" or wipe, but the rewards are greater the better the raid performs

Yes! Like a gauntlet which starts off lfr level, then gets more and more intense until it becomes mathematically impossible to progress further. Could make it a raid with loot scaling on your performance, or a slightly more disappointing but still pretty cool version would be make it like a multiplayer proving grounds. The latter I'd prefer as a 5 man though.

[Deleted]

Arguably one of the reasons I quit raiding, and wow was because the mechanics are all the same, Just in a different order or called something differently. Is about the extent of their imagination, waves of adds? Surely the designers can come up with new and interesting ways to not only interact with a boss, but kill it? Where are the bosses we heal, we've had a few and of them they have been enjoyable bosses, a change to the pace. Why not add a boss that makes use of the stealth which so many classes have now? We've seen they can do stealth pve content (with the legendary rogue quest line), so why not add it to a boss somehow? Something similar to Thorim but instead of a boring linear pathway, make it so only stealthed classes can go down that route. All they need to really do is find a way past the whole combat stealth thing.

[Varaben]

Pvp encounters in Raiding
Look at ToTC

Not my cup of tea but some would like this

We have gotten some new mechanics like the ones on Tyrant or Gorefiend

Totally agree here. That one fight in ToTC was really fun and required you to really play your class in some cases. Of course, once you could power through it, it wasn't a big deal, but requiring interrupts and CC and such are the best mechanics IMO.

I dislike the gimmicky mechanics like the ghost thing on Teron Gorefiend or the pacman encounter on Sha of Pride (Heroic/Mythic). I think good mechanics force you to know your class, use your whole toolkit, while still doing dps/heal/tanking. "Dance" mechanics aren't really my thing.

I do like encounters that feel hectic. You know the type, where you're running around and there's just a ton of shit going on. That doesn't mean a LOT of mechanics; it could mean there's lots of the same mechanic. Fire fucking everywhere or knockdown from the bosses tail or massive raid damage or whatever. I also like the type of fight where there's heavy damage interspersed with lighter damage, which forces healers to contribute by DPSing or whatever. Just the fight changes and requires quick adjustments like that.

[Caladia]

I personally feel that vehicles will always have their place, and should continue to have their place... but we should never, ever have to have the entire raid in vehicles ever again, ALA Flame Leviathan or Malygos. Completely detaching all of the players from their characters is silly.

I should have specified raid-wide vehicles. Socrethar is fine, only a small subset of the raid need to learn that mechanic and deal with it. Not everyone like Flame Leviathan and Malygos as you said.

[judgementofantonidas]

So, inspired by this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...6#post36502626 I got to wondering...

What would a brand new mechanic in WoW look like?

Does anybody have any good ideas for a brand new mechanic, something that actually forces a player in a raid change how they play? And no, vehicles are a cop-out for this discussion, as you can't just say 'give all the players totally different abilities to make them play differently' I think (not that vehicles don't have their place in raids still!).

So I want to use this thread to cultivate players' ideas on brand new mechanics, or at the very least, variations of current mechanics that we have legitimately never encountered before.

WoW has had 18 tiers of raids. Hundreds of raid bosses. And yet, the mechanics have not changed all that much over the years, and how many are there, even?

Get the debuff and move out of the group. Sometimes the debuff requires you to only move a certain amount out of the group, or inversely requires everybody to move away from you.
'Thing' (boss ability, debuff on player, something in the arena) produces green/purple/red/TRAIN bullshit. Get out of the bullshit (choo choo motherfucker).
The boss/add cleaves, either just as a cleave, or because he does a flashy cone aoe explosion/breath of some kind. Don't stand on the tank.
'Thing' (boss ability, debuff on player, etc) hits for a very high, shared damage amount. Stack the appropriate number of people to share damage.
Excessive raid damage happens over a short period of time demanding increased healer output during that time.
Interrupt X Ability on boss/add or something Bad happens.
Add/boss fixates on player, player must run with add/boss. In some cases, functionally, but not visually identical to getting a debuff and running out of the group.
AoE interrupt shout forcing casters to stop casting.
Knockback that makes you reposition.
In Cataclysm, we got the extra action button that allows us to have 'debuff that requires us to press extra action button at the right time, occasionally while targeting the correct thing.'
Debuff on player that goes up and up, and must be dealt with (dispelled, killing an add/boss, not standing in bullshit, healed), or it eventually kills/mind controls/makes that player go thermonuclear.

In order to make new bosses, raid designers have to constantly try and vary, combine, and tweak this fairly small set of mechanics in order to keep raids fresh.

What are your ideas to add to this list of brand new mechanics? Even if it's something so unique it could only be used for one boss at most! I'll add my own idea later, I want to see what other folks have first.

All mechanics can be boiled down to a variation of a very small list.

1. Don't go there
2. Do go there
3. Use something to mitigate this
4. Heal this
5. Damage that

[Herecius]

All mechanics can be boiled down to a variation of a very small list.

1. Don't go there
2. Do go there
3. Use something to mitigate this
4. Heal this
5. Damage that

Well... yes, that was sortof the point, but I don't really want the discussion to be about that. I want to keep this thread about the creation of mechanics we haven't seen before in a raid setting, such as an emphasis on the environment, as many have talked about so far.

[Deleted]

A debuff shield, that deals damage when dispelled, but also reduces the amount you get healed, so you need to heal for a bit and dispell later.

[Xenryusho]

This discussion can't really go anywhere until you make a firm statement that you must adhere to describing how simple we can generalizing things. Moving, hitting buttons, using the mouse, looking at the screen. We can simplify everything down to this and the only thing left for blizzard to do is implement a fight where you need to talk into a microphone. Furthermore you seem to be simplifying other suggestions down to concepts so core that no matter how unique or interesting they are you don't accept them; meanwhile a lot of your suggestions have already been done many times previously but you choose not to narrow your scope for them.

For example

dodging void zones and such

'Thing' (boss ability, debuff on player, something in the arena) produces green/purple/red/TRAIN bullshit. Get out of the bullshit

...

causing something Good to happen to the raid, or if they finish at too different of times, causing something Bad to happen?

Debuff on player that goes up and up, and must be dealt with

Excessive raid damage happens over a short period of time

What do you think is going to happen? Forced movements already been done, being teleported has already been done, you've cordoned off taking damage or getting a debuff.

[Herecius]

This discussion can't really go anywhere until you make a firm statement that you must adhere to describing how simple we can generalizing things. Moving, hitting buttons, using the mouse, looking at the screen. We can simplify everything down to this and the only thing left for blizzard to do is implement a fight where you need to talk into a microphone. Furthermore you seem to be simplifying other suggestions down to concepts so core that no matter how unique or interesting they are you don't accept them; meanwhile a lot of your suggestions have already been done many times previously but you choose not to narrow your scope for them.

For example
...

What do you think is going to happen? Forced movements already been done, being teleported has already been done, you've cordoned off taking damage or getting a debuff.

What? I'm not doing that at all. I'm really not trying to make this a discussion about how 'lol guys raid mechanics are all the same,' and I've even said a acknowledged bunch of times that new mechanics that we really haven't seen before tend to rely on the old mechanics being given a new variation, twist, or something else.

I'm fully aware that it's pretty absurd to ask that something genuinely crazy and brand new be invented just for a raid mechanic. The closest anybody has even been able to get to something like that was a few pages back when Osmeric suggesting incorporating non-euclidian geometry, which is really cool to think about, but obviously shows the limitations of the game's engine.

This is purely for brainstorming new types of boss encounters and mechanics we haven't seen before, whether or not they're variations of ones we've already seen. No malicious intent, I swear. Was only making that list to point out the most common and basic types of mechanics we see, where no matter what the numbers are or what they're called, they function identical to one another. A good variation on the split damage mechanic for example is Archimonde's shadow burst, where you're having to spread out, and then 'catch' the person from taking fatal damage, as opposed to Lei Shen's static shock which was as basic of a split damage burst as you can get.