WotLK encounters and the use of damage inflation mechanics. Overdone?

[Steady]

Going over the new encounters designed for WotLK thus far (i.e. ignoring Naxxramas), I noticed there seems to be a large number of fights which include mechanics to boost classes' DPS over what it would be with just raid buffs. Breaking them down:

Maly: Sparks, large damage inflation.

Sarth: ---

Ignis: ---
Razorscale: ---
XT: Heart Phase
Council: Runes of Power
Kologarn: ---
Auriaya: ---
Hodir: Storm Power, Moonlight, Singed debuff
Thorim: MC add haste buff, permanent mini-heroism
Freya: Mushrooms on Conservator phase
Mimiron: Grounded head on phase 3
General Vezax: Shadow Crashes
Yogg-Saron: depending on difficulty, up to 40% permanent damage increase.
Algalon the Observer: ---

Northrend Beasts: Stunned P3 add
Jaraxxus: --- (unless Mage!)
Haven't experienced other TotC fights. Anyone can comment on others?

Anyway, not that this in itself is a particularly bad thing but it seems that the fights are playing a little bit too much on the "OMG LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS" factor to me. Any thoughts on this?

[Proletariat]

Blizzard needs to hire that guy that's running the "MMO-Champion Clear My Raid Instance" thread for Icecrown imo

Edited to correct name of the thread /worship

[veemon_ro]

Yeah I do agree its kinda lame, but while the encounters increase the damage in diferent way its not THAT repetive.

[Fornaw]

Do mushrooms on Freya's conservator actually boost your damage? I thought they only prevented you from being pacified. Not that it really matters, you still need to be under a mushroom to be able to damage the boss.

That said I think there are a few good reasons why they do this

#1 Prevents encounters from being done "wrong"

It becomes much harder to kill Maly without sparks, I think most Naxx geared guilds would have trouble with XT if not for heart phases (at least my guild did at the time, he's taken some pretty severe nerfs since then), and Vezax would most likely be impossible without shadow crashes. Ignoring Icehowl's charge is another example, you not only get punished if someone fails, you get rewarded if everyone does it right.

#2 Good players in good guilds can manage their damage boosts.

Stacking sparks on maly, freeing mages, moving into runes of power/moonlight, are all things that good players can do. They get rewarded for their greater situational awareness with higher damage boosts.

#3 Blizz does not like Patchwerk tests (this one is more theoretical on my part)

As soon as you start introducing encounters without damage boosts and no mechanics that favor certain classes people begin to have a clear picture of what everyone's dps is like. Blizzard has a lot to do already in this game and keeping every pure's dps within .1% of all pures and all hybrid dps within .1% of all other hybrid dps is an impossible challenge. It is enough that they remain close and that guilds don't start benching certain specs. Meanwhile you can fool the masses with lots of dps boosts so that nobody out there is really sure who is the dps king at any given point.

[veemon_ro]

[quote=Fornaw ]
Do mushrooms on Freya's conservator actually boost your damage? I thought they only prevented you from being pacified. Not that it really matters, you still need to be under a mushroom to be able to damage the boss.

That said I think there are a few good reasons why they do this

#1 Prevents encounters from being done "wrong"

It becomes much harder to kill Maly without sparks, I think most Naxx geared guilds would have trouble with XT if not for heart phases (at least my guild did at the time, he's taken some pretty severe nerfs since then), and Vezax would most likely be impossible without shadow crashes. Ignoring Icehowl's charge is another example, you not only get punished if someone fails, you get rewarded if everyone does it right

Yes but the OP's questions is WHY they make fights where it boosts damage, not why do you use the mechanic.
They could of lowered the hp from vezax for instance to the point where you just stay in the crash to get lower mana cost on spells
They could of also made so icehow just gets stuned for a bit making easy for the healers to heal up instead of geting more damage on him.
So again the question is why so many fights compared to tbc and vanilla where it just boosts your damage.

#2 Good players in good guilds can manage their damage boosts.

Stacking sparks on maly, freeing mages, moving into runes of power/moonlight, are all things that good players can do. They get rewarded for their greater situational awareness with higher damage boosts.

I don't think the question is if they can or can't manage. The question is here, have they ran out of ideeas that they need to make players do more damage in over half the boss fights out there?!

#3 Blizz does not like Patchwerk tests (this one is more theoretical on my part)

As soon as you start introducing encounters without damage boosts and no mechanics that favor certain classes people begin to have a clear picture of what everyone's dps is like. Blizzard has a lot to do already in this game and keeping every pure's dps within .1% of all pures and all hybrid dps within .1% of all other hybrid dps is an impossible challenge. It is enough that they remain close and that guilds don't start benching certain specs. Meanwhile you can fool the masses with lots of dps boosts so that nobody out there is really sure who is the dps king at any given point

.

Player X is nr 5 on the dps meter
Player Y is nr 23

Both X and Y are casters, have equal gear => Y is crap, he gets benched. Regardless of the encounter being iron council or XT or w/e

[Larivas]

Whats wrong with upping the amount of damage that people do? It adds to the strategy and (as a poster before said) the situational awareness. We had a mage who had been 80 for two weeks hit 13k dps on Hodir. Thats nearly double our fully epic'd mage. Our fully epic'd mage would win on the majority of the fights, but on the fights that required attention and the correct usage of the buffs, the new 80 won every time. It lets the good players stand out more instead of just looking at who can stick to the rotation and watch procs the best, or who has the best gear.

[Steady]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying it's making encounters less enjoyable or cheapening the raid instance. Ulduar is probably my 3rd favorite raid.

I just find it odd that such mechanics have become so common, when I really can't think of such a high concentration of fights in TBC or Vanilla (granted I'm probably forgetting some, it's been a while!).

[Soapbox]

I think that the main reason for dmg inflation is because of the "Hard Mode" encounters. As others have said, these dmg buffs help out the better players more. I don't think it's overdone simply because it keeps you on your toes, and makes it easier to see who's not pulling their weight.

[Powell]

you forgot flame leviathan when destroying his turrets