Raid Boss w/ Hard Mode idea

[Mowg]

First off, I've not tackled with most of the raid bosses in WoW (although I started with Vanilla, I quit halfway through BWL and started again with WotLK as a super-casual, meaning I missed out a lot of content!) so if this idea is similar to any other raid encounter my apologies! Probably not the most original idea, but hopefully you guys like the idea of it and would want to tackle it.

The Boss

Basically looks and who the boss actually is, is completely undecided at the moment. The only thing concrete is what it does and how to tackle it. The boss in question won't be too difficult, at first. When the raid first encounter it, they'll notice that it isn't too powerful in regards to its melee/magical strength.

HP: 6,000,000

The Twist: Every 30 seconds the boss creates a duplicate of itself. The duplicate's HP is the sum of the original's HP (at the time of the split) + 30% (i.e. If you take the boss down to 3,500,000 health in 30 seconds, the duplicate will have 3,500,000 + 1,050,000 = 4,550,000HP). After the next 30 seconds, the duplicate then duplicates itself and the cycle continues (after 60 seconds, there would be 3 versions of the boss etc.). It's always the newest version of the boss that duplicates, so it's their HP that gets taken into consideration.

Each version of the boss (including the original) has an aura. This stackable aura raises all forms of damage by 30% to all duplicates/original in a 30 yard radius. All versions need to be killed in order for the boss to be truly defeated. Killing the original will only make the oldest duplicate the new original, and therefore all versions must be killed.

Abilities

Aside from normal melee/magic abilities, each version has the ability to use:

- Immolation. Basically this will do a ton of damage to melee damage dealers per second for 10 seconds. This ability is used frequently but not simultaneously amongst the duplicates. This forces the melee DPSers to either switch between duplicates or simply hang back.

- Teleport Switch. This allows the boss to switch places with any random raid member.

- Ice Block. Surrounds the boss with ice making it immobile but immune to all kinds of attacks/spells and also inflicts a lot of damage per second to anyone in an 8 yard radius. Lasts 10 seconds and only occurs right after Teleport Switch.

EDIT: Both Ice Block and Teleport switch will not be used by the newest copy (inc. the original when it hasn't duplicated).

Strategy

Obviously DPS will have to be on top form to get the boss' health down as quickly as possible, as it will inevitably create a duplicate of itself after 30 seconds. The new version will have more HP than the original and must be tanked/spanked on its own and 30 yards away from the original (to avoid them from benefiting the Aura). Damage Dealers and Healers will have to organise their positions so that they're 30 yards away from the version of the boss they're not fighting. This is to avoid the negative effects of Teleport Switch. The boss may switch with a raid member and cast Ice Block on itself, and if another version is nearby they will receive the benefit of the aura. If this occurs, the tank must move the other version 30 yards away. This proves more difficult the more versions there are at one time.

Although the version with the lowest health (the original's) being taken down first seems obvious, some DPS must be applied to the newest version to get its health down swiftly, so that when they duplicate, said duplicate will spawn with as little health as possible. It will also be better to switch DPS onto the newest version, so that their duplicate will receive very little health. This tactic, however, would likely mean that the raid will have to manage multiple versions at once.

Hard Mode Achievement

You must let the boss duplicate itself at least 9 times without killing a single version before you truly defeat it.

The only way this can be feasible is if DPS whittle down the original's health as fast as possible and then switching to the newest duplicate when it spawns (but leaving 2 members behind to deal with the previous version) and finally going all out when there's a total of 10 versions. Every raid member will have to be on top form to manage 10 versions of that boss at once, making sure those aura's don't stack and quickly moving in the right place when it inevitably does (due to Teleport Switch and Ice Block).

[superbotje]

Nice, you should work at Blizz.
Good idea.

You mean this will make bosses automatically harder if you have a very good group?

Maybe add some "extreme" mode to all instances/raids. Which is twice as hard as heroic. And make the adds not AOE-able.

[Sarbaz]

very interesting
u got my vote, sounds alot better then any of the encounters there are here in wotlk atm

[thelordymir]

Sounds like the first boss of AQ40 imo other then the abilites listed. He just spawned 2 versions of himself with the same hp that had to be tanked.

[PalliesThrowStuff]

Ice Block isn't a good enough hurtle for Ranged DPS.

If you punish one type of tank/healer/DPS more than another in any given encounter, you make it too easy to just stack a raid with the other type/s and decrease difficulty.

Other than being about as anti-melee as a fight can get, it's a neat idea.

[xebtria]

very nice idea, but 2 abilitys that both hurt only melee dps/tanks seems a bit unfair.

I got a nice idea for a change to immolate: I dunno, how large the area of the bossfight would be, but Imagine the immolate (or however it would be called) like a fiery spring from the ... whatever of the boss (maybe the head? :>). any raidmember which is further away from the boss as ... 75 yards will take this fire dmg. so the raid will be forced to come closer to this actual immolating copy of the boss.
maybe add a casting time additionally to an emote and then a channeling of this spell so range actually have a chance to react to this spell

it will be improve the difficulty of the hard mode achievement aswell

[PalliesThrowStuff]

I've always thought a cool idea for a boss fight would be to make you have to climb them to kill them.

We fight all these giants and dragons and so on, and all we're doing is chopping at their ankles all day.

That seems sort of silly when in the case of bigger enemies, you could just scale them and stab them in their squishy parts.

Maybe even a boss where you have to deal damage to each of their body parts seperately, starting with their legs so they can't move, then their tail/back/mounter laserguns/etc to lower their damage, and then finally work their head down, or any combination of moving from one part to another.

Most beings, especially magical ones, aren't going to die by having a bunch of tiny guys chopping away at their ankles. What are we doing? Hoping they bleed to death?

[0xdeadc0de]

I've always thought a cool idea for a boss fight would be to make you have to climb them to kill them.

somebody have played Shadow of the Colossus lately

Nice idea, I really like fight with phases that give you different experience through the same fight.

[Gigthedin]

Not a bad idea, and certainly not like any other boss encounter currently. I'm curious as to your strategy however. I'm not convinced it would work. On the original it should be no big deal to ensure that the next duplicate spawns with less HP than the original started with, doing a little math shows that the original would need to reach 4.6 million HP within 30 seconds, which if we assume 17 dps in the raid (might be a bit high of a number, figuring 2 tanks and 5 healers, which honestly might not be enough, but the dps mark I'm listing is also lower than what should be sustainable) each dps'er must sustain 2.8k dps on the original or the first split will arrive with more HP than the original, giving the original 4572000 HP remaining, and the first duplicate 5943600 HP. Now, the first duplicates HP must be brought lower than the originals HP is within 30 seconds, or the next duplicate will spawn with the same amount of HP the first duplicate did, or more. You would have to be able to kill the original and bring the first duplicate down enough that the second duplicate won't spawn with more HP within 1 minute, or else the duplicates HP will just continue to climb. According to my calculations, each dps'er (again assuming 17 dps) would have to sustain 5.9k dps in order to kill the original within 60 seconds, and the first add would spawn with 3.9 million, but after 60 seconds there would be a second duplicate which spawns at 5.07 million. If dps then switches to the first duplicate, the second will split before the first one dies, giving the next duplicate 6.6 million HP. One solution might be to switch to the second duplicate when the original dies, bringing it down to about 2 million HP, giving the third duplicate 2.6 million HP.

Based on the behavior seen above, unless dps'ers are able to pump out more damage than this in higher tiers or the numbers you provided change, I believe the most efficient method for killing this boss is to continually switch dps to the newest duplicate in order to insure that the next duplicate spawns with less HP than the previous until a point is reached where the newest duplicate is able to be killed within 30 seconds, which if 5.9k sustained dps from each of 17 dps'ers is possible, should result in no more than 3 versions of the boss being alive at any given time. Original will be at 3 million at the spawn of the first duplicate, giving it 3.9 million, switching dps to it will bring it to 900k before the next duplicate spawns. The dps should be able to kill the second duplicate before the next duplicate spawns, infact it should die within 15-20 seconds, giving the dps time to go back to the first duplicate (I'm assuming if the newest duplicate is killed, the previous duplicate will split again after the 30 seconds is up) which should be dps'd down low enough that the duplicate it spawns next will be able to be easily killed by a few dps before the next split. If the first duplicate is killed, then the original would split resulting in a higher hp duplicate than is desired. Dps should be focused on the original at this point (with a few of them also handling the duplicates every 30 seconds), after the original is dead, drop the newest duplicate then finish off the first duplicate. Remember that I used an average of 5.9k dps with 17 dps to arrive at these numbers, and that is with perfect timing and pick ups from tanks with threat not being an issue at all, additional temporary buffs such as Bloodlust would probably make reaching the dps requirement for the original and part of the first duplicate a little bit easier.

[xebtria]

It's funny to watch, if someone just puts out a crazy boss with some crazy abilitys, how the first one starts thinking about the tactics, including the math....

so at the end you simply proove, that this boss is nothing more but also nothing less than a simple dps check... jesus ;>

[Gigthedin]

It's funny to watch, if someone just puts out a crazy boss with some crazy abilitys, how the first one starts thinking about the tactics, including the math....

so at the end you simply proove, that this boss is nothing more but also nothing less than a simple dps check... jesus ;>

Thats not exactly true, but then again how many bosses aren't more or less dps checks? The encounter could also be healing intensive, given that in the example I used with 2 tanks, you'd have probably the duplicates getting a 2 stack of that dmg multiplier aura, and specific damage ranges weren't given.

[superbotje]

Only phase 3 must be among the most hated phases to the majority of players (see also: The Occulus - End boss ^^)

Serious, that one is easy. How can anyone hate that?

[xebtria]

it's goddamn easy if anyone has raidframes to see the health of other's dragons (regardless if default ui or Grid or whatever)... and if anyone knows what the fuck to do and what the fuck not to do.

sunday evening, eye of eternity.

raidleader: healers for phase three are group 5. so they are: player 1, player 2, player 3, player 4, player 5. ok?
player 1 says: alright
player 2 says: alright
player 3 says: alright
player 4 says: alright
player 5 says: alright

raidleader: phase one: well done.
raidleader: phase two: jesus 3 people dead... don't move to the discs while aoe is up... but ok, none of the healers dead.
player 2 says: shit, i don't see any drake, i cannot heal anyone
player 4 says: me too...
player 5 says: drakes? i thought, i should heal the players, not the drakes. but i dont see any drakes in my ui, too.


but beside this... I absolutely hate fights, where you have no control over your own character. where you have to use some kind of ... vehicle. malygos and occulus (not only the endboss, the whole instance)... they all should burn in hell. at least the boss designer, who created them. I really hope, that there aren't any further boss fights, who are based on this system.
I want to play my own character. and I want to be rewarded with an easier fight if I get better gear. I don't want the same experience of a Boss fight if I am (and the complete raid/group is) full T9 geared, as I had with questing greens and blues...

[Mowg]

Whoa, thanks for all the good words everyone, really appreciate it!

Sounds like the first boss of AQ40 imo other then the abilites listed. He just spawned 2 versions of himself with the same hp that had to be tanked.

Checked it out on Wowwiki (The Prophet Skeram) and yeah, the whole duplication aspect of my boss ain't anything new. I remember the final boss in the Diablo II expansion (or was it Diablo himself?) duplicated himself and you had to figure out which the original was to take it out; the clue to the original was in the name or something. I've always thought that was pretty damn cool and it seems Skeram is like that but the opposite. From what I understand, you have to figure out which are the copies and take them out first before getting the original Skeram at 50% or 25%.

I think I wanted to take the duplicate aspect of the fight differently. Instead of basing the fight around figuring out which was a 'fake' version, I wanted the focus on taking out all the copies, where the 'original' had little relevance and every copy needed to be taken out. Essentially the boss battle could last a very long time with new versions being created every 30 seconds! That being said, I still love those mystery boss fights where you got to work out which is the 'fake' etc.

Ice Block isn't a good enough hurtle for Ranged DPS.

very nice idea, but 2 abilitys that both hurt only melee dps/tanks seems a bit unfair.

Very good points, and the whole anti-melee thing definitely needs to be tweaked. The reason I decided to add some anti-melee into the fight was all down to "Teleport Switch". I wanted to make that ability very important but it also favours melee a lot. If Teleport Switch was a game-breaker, then it'd be best to go all out melee, since it's more likely the boss would switch with someone right next to him and thus diminishes all kinds of danger the move was intended to have (to disrupt positioning and potentially apply the 30% damage aura to any copies nearby). With some anti-melee properties (since Teleport Switch is anti-ranged), it would hopefully mean going 100% melee isn't the best idea. Immolate, as well as being anti-melee is there to spread everyone (except the tank) around, solely to make Teleport Switch more deadly.

As with Ice-Block, although I said "usually occurs after Teleport Switch", I guess it's best that he only does it after Teleport Switch. That way, it's still a danger to ranged if the boss teleports to the ranged group and instantly Ice Blocks.

I got a nice idea for a change to immolate: I dunno, how large the area of the bossfight would be, but Imagine the immolate (or however it would be called) like a fiery spring from the ... whatever of the boss (maybe the head? :>). any raidmember which is further away from the boss as ... 75 yards will take this fire dmg. so the raid will be forced to come closer to this actual immolating copy of the boss.
maybe add a casting time additionally to an emote and then a channeling of this spell so range actually have a chance to react to this spell

it will be improve the difficulty of the hard mode achievement aswell

This is a great idea! It got me thinking and I really like the sound of an opposite-immolate - maybe have it inflict max damage if you're 51-75 yards away, medium damage at 31 - 50 yards and low damage at 8 - 30 (no damage below 8 ). It's something that would really keep ranged on their toes if a copy far away initiates the move, but then it dawned on me... it's anti-melee too. There will be multiple copies around the place and melee will inevitably be far away from a copy, meaning they're just as susceptible to this attack as ranged are :S

Although, it makes the ability even better in my opinion! It would be great to replace the normal immolate spell, and in most cases it may force the tank to move a copy towards another in order to avoid the ranged damage and sustain the DPS - it'll be a decision the raid will have to make, either DPS run towards the copy and switch DPS temporarily, or the tank will move in with them too, applying the 30% damage increase aura BUT sustaining DPS on the target that needs to be taken down.

Not a bad idea, and certainly not like any other boss encounter currently. I'm curious as to your strategy however. I'm not convinced it would work.

Great post Gigthedin! Yeah I first described the tactics as taking out the original first in order to keep the numbers low, but later I talk about switching your DPS to the newest copy and burning his HP down asap. I was hoping both options were viable and give a bit of choice to the battle, but reading through your post it seems burning down the newest copies HP is the only way to go! That being said, your post opened my eyes a little and this boss fight seems far too hard IMO. I was hoping an easyish boss fight suitable for casuals but the hard mode achievement being absolutely difficult.

so at the end you simply proove, that this boss is nothing more but also nothing less than a simple dps check... jesus ;>

It is a good point, but I think Gigthedin also makes a good response too. I was hoping to make a boss battle that combines a DPS race as well as survivability. Patchwerk is a good example of a standard DPS race, and you're literally given a time limit to defeat him. However, although this boss does appear to be a DPS race, there is no time limit (though it is possible to be overwhelmed by the numbers) and with a good balance of DPS and survivability, it's still possible to eventually win the battle.

Also, combining the Hard Mode Achievement where you need to face 10 copies simultaneously, it's as much about survivability as it is about DPS since you'll be spending the first 5 minutes trying to survive the onslaught of the boss gradually increasing in numbers.

Apologies for the huge post :P

[Mowg]

Shameless bump and a note on my edit. I realised that Ice-Block would be a complete bitch if you had 30 seconds to burn the newest copy of the boss down asap only for it to Ice-Block for 10 seconds. That would completely crap-up DPS and luck would play a big part to this raid encounter (I can imagine people giving up straight away if the first original ice-blocks).

So in order to change this, I thought it'd be best to make it so that the newest copies are unable to use Teleport Switch and/or Ice Block. This would mean for the first 30 seconds of the encounter with the original, those abilities won't be used. Only copies that are no longer the newest version have the ability, and when an old copy becomes the newest copy (due to the raid killing the newest copy before it duplicates) it too will cease to use those abilities.

(Also, I'm pretty useless with the lore but are there any suggestion of certain characters/enemies/monsters from the lore that this boss could potentially be?)