Raid encounter design - death by a thousand paper cuts

[Elbob]

In modern incarnations of WoW, you are correct. But, if you were to reduce the power of healing spells, then you are wrong. In vanilla, a healing spell healed much less in proportion to the health of the player. In addition, the cost of the spell was far greater in proportion to the healer's total mana, throughout the fight.

Healing spells heal for much LESS of a players hp. Please see Holy Light for pallies in Vanilla and TBC, bombs like HL were very expensive but also healed for huge portions of player HP. Mana regen was generally very High for spirit using healers and using things like OoC regen during boss fights via clearcasting procs and unlimited mana pots (outside 2min cd)healer mana generally went further back then compared to now for spamming expensive spells. Back then healers also downranked spells to heal people in less dire need of healing. Holy pallies often had upwards of 3-5 ranks of HL on their bars.

Tanking now is arguably faceroll compared to vanilla. The boss tells you when to use taunt. The boss tells you when to use your cooldowns. Like i said, i last seriously raided in Cataclysm, and last seriously raided on a tank in Wrath of the Lich King. In LK, tanking was awfully simple for most fights.

Tanking rotations now are more then just taunt and threat. they have sensitive active mitigation and resource generating rotations that make huge differences between good tanks and bad. I prefer the current tanking model to vanilla through wotlk any day. Also its not bosses telling you when to taunt is addons like DBM. Most tank swap mechanics are not TAUNT NOW OR THE OTHER TANK DIES. Most are "this is the minumun number of stacks to guarentee a stack reset between 2 tanks so taunting now is optimal to reduce dmg."

Soft enrage isn't really an enrage. It just means you ran out of resources. It allows the raid flexibility, but having everyone heal except the tank or two tanks is quite the exaggeration. Blizzard put in the enrage timer so they can tell the raid exactly how much of a role you have to bring.

Lots of fights are currently soft enrages atleast for for mythic raiding. Host, sisters, avatar and kj all kill you via mechanics not "lul 500% increased dmg cause I'm mad now". I think a balance is fine.

While i like Gruul's design (especially an earlier iteration), i am not arguing for no multiple phase encounters. I am arguing to reduce it tremendously, for example, to end bosses only.

You want end tier bosses to be a repetition? What? You want to do the same 3-5 mechanics for 6min on the LAST boss? This makes 0 sense to me. The average raider is leaps and bounds better then they were back in BC and learn single phase encounters quickly. Single phase bosses die very quickly compared to multiphase ones and should be used to early/mid tier fights only.

It's really hard to find a good example in WoW, because of Blizzard's intent for an arcade game. Think chess. Beating your opponent can be really difficult even though you have a lot of time (at least compared to one's own reaction time) to make a move. You have to think for the future. This is largely non-existent in WoW, especially in anything past-BC.

Imagine you have to fight four trash mobs, W, X, Y, and Z. W is the highest damage, because he is a caster mob. X is a healer. Y is medium damage dealer, but cannot be tanked. And Z is a tank, who stuns and is otherwise a pain to leave up. You have only two forms of CC. Now, just like chess and current WoW, you come into the game with a plan. But, unlike current WoW, let's have our four mobs react to your actions. You cc X and Z, thinking you can just burst down W, and out heal all the damage that's coming up. All of a sudden, Z gets a random buff that grants him immunity to CC. How do you respond?

Now, i am not advocating for WoW to turn into a turn-based mmo, but just asking for more time to think. Of course, if you are given more time to think, those decisions must be more impactful. Right now, you either make the clear right choice or the clear wrong choice, but in a matter of a second. I shun this kind of design (at least, when it is every single fight).

Unpredictable bosses would require the mechanics they perform to be significantly less threatening. Please see Faction champs in ToC. Most of their mechnics were easily avoidable or did non threatening amounts of damage. And even then people found ways to control the npcs and who they would go for. WoW encounters are datamined and tested before hitting live. People know how mobs will react and what buffs they can get. They have also allowed for raid choices in HOW you kill bosses. Mythic Botanist had 3 p3 options but people quickly found out the easiest one and 99% of guilds opted for this route. We live in a world of reddit gaming where everything is common knowledge amongst the community.

On your 2nd point about time.. we aren't playing a board game or a card game. Reactions are also a measure of difficulty/skill. Why should we get to see a cast go off then later decide if it should be kicked.

Perhaps it was, i haven't played Legion. Though, i think if you were to count the amount of utility spells in the game right now, i would imagine most of them came with the original game, or some variation of it. Life Grip and Smoke Bomb are two that i know are not (and that was in the start of Cataclysm, when Blizzard was trying to relaunch vanilla, in some ways).

The issue i have with raiding nowadays largely stems from two things. 1) The unholy trinity of class design; and 2) The arcade feel of raid design.

Because of this, players have, generally, infinite resources in an encounter. Mana management is pretty much out the window. Thus, player health is out the window. You either have health, or you don't. When you add in more finite resources, you add in a whole new level of game design.

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Dgrip, typhoon, ursols, spellwarding, CloS, intervene, stampeding roar, PW:B, Aura Mastery, Spirit Link, Demonic gateway, and darkness all have been added post vanilla with some being added in each expansion. Sure things like stuns and kicks are still core to the game but they aren't remaking the bicycle every expac.

I haven't raided in Legion, so, i understand a lot of my points can only reflect the general feel of the modern state of the game. But, you hit on something very key. Let's say we have two classes, one is a marksman, the other is a demolitionist. The bombs guy clearly does more damage, so much more it is not even a contest. However, when he explodes the boss, he will be sure to do damage to all (friendly and enemy) nearby targets. The marksman's damage only hits the target of his choice.

With this, you put the damage onto player decision. Again, coupled with boss reaction, could make for some really interesting encounters.

I've referenced unpredictable bosses already so I'll just comment on the FF class design. Its a game where people can min max like crazy. If you could just bring 10 ranged dps that splash melee but do way more damage thats all top guilds would do. If the damage was raid wide, top guilds would just find the easiest balance of healers to demo's . It is not how wow is designed if you don't want to play a trinity mmo... wow is not for you. Most wow players like the trinity. It assigns roles and specializations so players can play they want to.

[Jastall]

ToS definitely has too many soaks, but I thought Nighthold has a good mix of mechanics. It could have used a few more things for melee to do, but overall the fights were different enough. I especially liked Star Augur and Gul'dan.

From what I've read on the dungeon journal, Antorus seems highly varied too, but we won't know until it releases.

[Tojara]

ToS isn't that bad. I think a lot of them had potential to be remembered if they had tuned them a bit better. A couple of them are pretty frustrating because of horrible overlaps, some RNG elements, and an over reliance on soaks. Despite the tuning being low, I think Maiden is a memorable boss as is Mistress (which only sucks because of some bad timings in the last phase. Avatar on Mythic is actually a good boss if the tuning was correct from the start and if they actually cared to make the last phase a little less random (tornado running on top of your soaks).

Firelands only had a couple bosses that were interesting IMO. Ragnaros and Alysrazor. Rhyolith was creative, but it wasn't fun. Majordomo was essentially stack and spread out over and over. Baleroc was basically a rotation of soaking, much akin to Avatar in ToS.

I think that recent raid design is shallow though, but I don't think it's too much of a departure from raids of old. ToS did have a heavy reliance on soaking or stacking for split damage though, which is frustrating. Especially when the majority of them can be dealt with by immunities.

[Deleted]

Wildstar failed. Can we say the unholy trinity failed, too? Of course not. This is a misconception that because Guild Wars 2 poorly implemented an alternative, that all alternatives must be bad design. All we can say is that GW2's alternative is poor.

Wrong. GW2 did not fail. It has spawned an awesome xpac some time ago and next one is coming soon, which I'm actually awaiting with eager anticipation. It simply caters to a much smaller customer base. Blizzard is not defined by catering to a small customer base with overblown demands, even if it ended up doing it in WoW.
Alternatives will never be particularly catchy for a very simple reason: your average human likes having a defined role and judging himself by their performance in the chosen role.

[Deleted]

Ok, i backtrack on the failure part. But, my point is that pointing to GW2 model as the only alternative to the unholy trinity is wrong. Even WoW didn't release with the unholy trinity (at least anywhere near its current iteration).

It released with clear intention to provide the one and only right, holy trinity. If I recall MMO threads correctly, for a long time there was literally 1 viable tank spec, so for a time it failed to deliver on its promises, but that's about it.
BTW, calling on Blizz to abolish the holy trinity, besides effectively being a call to alienate a solid chunk of the glue keeping together whatever passes for WoW's in-game community, would also be coming ways too late. Current team can't even handle fully-fledged talent trees, so abolition of the trinity would in their hands be a guaranteed cataclysm.

[Aphrel]

It seems like these days there are only two types of bosses in raids: those that flood the room with adds and those that flood the room with dodge / soak mechanics. After raiding ToS for 3 months I can't say there are any memorable encounters in that place. Looking back at another mid-expansion raid (Firelands), bosses there had defining mechanics. Rhyolith? Oh that's the boss that you have to turn. Alysrazor? Oh that's the boss where you have to fly. Fandral? Oh that's the boss where you have to manage his forms.

In ToS the only boss that sticks in mind is Maiden. As for the rest of them, I can't say that any of them really have any defining mechanics. It seems like most of them are just different mixes of one shot soaking / dodging mechanics and adds. I guess the world top 10 raiders enjoy those kinds of fights where you have a million things to watch out for but I'd really like to see some more bosses with unique mechanics.

P.S. how many more bloody circular boss rooms will we have to suffer through?

i agree that there is to much soaking mechanics especially on the last 2 bosses. But i disagree that the encounters doesnt have uniqueness.

Have you done mythic sisters? The moon phase and the debuff you get from crossing the line is a VERY defining mechanic of that encounter imo.
Misstress hydrashot, winds and maw stands out imo, whouldve been a great fight had it not been for the shark attack being on set %hp and not on timers..

[cparle87]

I want a boss-room that's a maze. You have to chase the boss through it. He keeps making remarks about how "a-maze-ing" his maze is

The goron boss in BRF? Pac man meets raiding.

[Mixxy]

In ToS the only boss that sticks in mind is Maiden. As for the rest of them, I can't say that any of them really have any defining mechanics. It seems like most of them are just different mixes of one shot soaking / dodging mechanics and adds. I guess the world top 10 raiders enjoy those kinds of fights where you have a million things to watch out for but I'd really like to see some more bosses with unique mechanics.

Maiden, Engine of Souls, and the Mistress Snek are all pretty memorable bosses, design-wise.

Maiden? Oh the Guitar Hero boss. Engine? Oh the one where your raid is split into two different phases to fight the same boss. Mistress? Oh she's the one where you gotta block tornadoes and feed ink to a whale.

[cparle87]

Current team can't even handle fully-fledged talent trees, so abolition of the trinity would in their hands be a guaranteed cataclysm.

You mean the old style talent trees where you put all but 1-5 of your points in the same place or you didn't get a raid invite because you weren't viable? I remember in ICC I had a grand total of 3 points I could wiggle around. Either 2/4/6 energy off the cost of mangle, or something else. Depended if I was the mangle bot or not.

[Mixxy]

I want a boss-room that's a maze. You have to chase the boss through it. He keeps making remarks about how "a-maze-ing" his maze is

You mean the Beholder thing in Throne of Thunder? I hated that mechanic.

[Xarathan]

Demonic inquisition is memorable as the only boss fight without a soak mechanic in Tomb of Soakeras

[Mixxy]

Demonic inquisition is memorable as the only boss fight without a soak mechanic in Tomb of Soakeras

I could be wrong, but I'm preeeetty sure neither Goroth nor Engine have soak mechanics either.

[Teomas]

I could be wrong, but I'm preeeetty sure neither Goroth nor Engine have soak mechanics either.

Goroth Mythic has a soak mechanic to prevent adds from spawning and Desolate Host got Spear of Anguish on Mythic to soak if you cant solo soak it.

[Mixxy]

Goroth Mythic has a soak mechanic to prevent adds from spawning and Desolate Host got Spear of Anguish on Mythic to soak if you cant solo soak it.

Ah. Wouldn't know about Mythic; I only do Heroic.

[cparle87]

They couldn't handle it back then, either.

So what you're saying is they've never been able to handle it, even in WoW's heydey?

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Ah. Wouldn't know about Mythic; I only do Heroic.

The spear is on heroic also.

[fenixazul]

It seems like these days there are only two types of bosses in raids: those that flood the room with adds and those that flood the room with dodge / soak mechanics. After raiding ToS for 3 months I can't say there are any memorable encounters in that place. Looking back at another mid-expansion raid (Firelands), bosses there had defining mechanics. Rhyolith? Oh that's the boss that you have to turn. Alysrazor? Oh that's the boss where you have to fly. Fandral? Oh that's the boss where you have to manage his forms.

In ToS the only boss that sticks in mind is Maiden. As for the rest of them, I can't say that any of them really have any defining mechanics. It seems like most of them are just different mixes of one shot soaking / dodging mechanics and adds. I guess the world top 10 raiders enjoy those kinds of fights where you have a million things to watch out for but I'd really like to see some more bosses with unique mechanics.

P.S. how many more bloody circular boss rooms will we have to suffer through?

Have you tried mythic?

[Deleted]

You mean the old style talent trees where you put all but 1-5 of your points in the same place or you didn't get a raid invite because you weren't viable? I remember in ICC I had a grand total of 3 points I could wiggle around. Either 2/4/6 energy off the cost of mangle, or something else. Depended if I was the mangle bot or not.

I mean the talent trees which allowed me to have 6-8 ICC-viable specs on Death Knight and to choose, of all of them, the dual wielding frost tank. I suspect they were completely different trees in a different game, like one played to have fun and not resulting in an anal haemorrhage whenever my sim numbers were not exactly fotm-level, which is clearly what happened repeatedly to all the folks who also raided ICC but somehow made it the purpose of their life and never ventured to take the choices offered by the character customisation.

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So what you're saying is they've never been able to handle it, even in WoW's heydey?

But of course, those 12M subscribers were just plain wrong.

[cparle87]

I wouldn't call it WoW's heydey, but yes, mastery over talent trees have always seemed to elude Blizzard.

You don't consider WotLK to be WoW's heydey?

[Toogoodman]

As long as they're not as tiny or restricted (awful camera positions) like Star Auger or Sisters I don't really care what shape a room is tbh, I'm focused on the boss not the room, unless of course there's something you can physically fall off of... Then I can kill my guildies with Swapblasters. Yes, I'm that guy.

Nothing is as bad as Mistress' room, that place is painfully small. Sisters however, that room is so bright sometimes i cant even see my character (sub rogue)

[dreamdaddy]

You don't consider WotLK to be WoW's heydey?

Legion is the best WoW has been.