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Slootbag talked to Morgan Day (lead encounter designer) about Raids, Dungeons, and Tomb of Sargeras.
Raiding
- Raiding has worked well so far this expansion. The team hasn't had to make any huge changes to raiding like they have in previous expansions.
- Mythic raiding requiring 20 people is working well.
Gear
- The item level rewarded from Nethershard gear won't be changing in Patch 7.2.5.
Raid Design
- The first raid of an expansion is an exception to normal raid design, as it could be a player's first raid ever.
- Raids after the first generally have a similar difficulty curve and are more difficult than the first raid.
- The team started with 8 bosses for ToS, and added a 9th with Maiden.
- The number of bosses in a raid partially has to do the with environment.
Raid Testing
- Kil'jaeden being tested late is just how things worked out. Players may still have been working on Gul'dan when the Tomb testing started.
- The team had always planned to test Kil'jaeden.
Raid Design
- The team tries to always have a single target encounter and a multi target encounter.
- Beyond that the team looks at the DPS profile of the remaining bosses.
- Being able to use class specific abilities and mechanics would be cool where it makes sense.
- Having a Mythic only mechanic that requires a specific class might be okay, as the team knows you will have 20 players and the likelihood of having a Mage or Warlock is fairly high.
- Small raids make sense when there is a really compelling story line.
- Having Mythic only phases or bosses are okay when they make sense and fit the story.
- If story is locked behind a Mythic requirement, you can usually see videos of it or go back and do it yourself in a later tier.
- Sometimes the team is testing an encounter and they realize they have accidentally created a Mythic fight.
- New tech and environments help to keep encounters feeling fresh.
- Keeping mechanics easy to understand is important. If raid damage is going out, does it need to be a huge visual effect? If there is a swirl on the ground, does that mean the player needs to run to it or away from it?
- When you go into an encounter and can understand what is going on just by looking at your screen that is helpful.
- The team tries to avoid ever making an encounter more difficult after someone has killed it.
- The team may increase the damage a boss does and decrease the healing needed to tweak the raid composition people bring.
Mythic+ Dungeons
- The team is fairly happy with Affixes as they are now.
- They will continue to iterate and take into account player feedback.
- With Patch 7.2 dungeons were re-balanced to keep the difficulty reasonable. There aren't any plans to add another Affix to make things harder at higher difficulties.
- Adding more rewards in the future is something to consider
Tomb of Sargeras
- The team is using the environment a lot more in these encounters, such as the Fallen Avatar fight.
- Breaking up the floor into lots of pieces is challenging from a technical perspective.
- Keeping visual indicators consistent between encounters is something the team worked on.
Raid Design
- Fight pacing is duration is often tied to the story being told.
- With Gul'dan there was a lot of story to tell in the fight, as well as giving mechanics time to breathe, so it resulted in a longer fight.
- Blackhand was a big orc that hit hard. That was the story, which is why the fight was shorter.
- The team tries to keep the number of tanks and healers in a certain range for all of the fights. Usually the fights are balanced around two tanks, but once in a while it might be a fight where a third tank role would be fitting.
- Mounts are a really compelling reward.
- Sometimes transmog sets are a nice reward too.
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