Modern raid design: it's a clusterfuck. In a circular room.

[Wilfire]

What do all forgettable, boring and uninspired raid encounters have in common? They're all clusterfucks in circular rooms. What exactly does the Cabal do? I can't really tell you which mechanic is supposed to be the main feature of this encounter.

Is it debuff management? If you screw it up, you get instagibbed by [Crushing Doubt]. But if at least one raider falls asleep and dies to [Void Crash], you might as well wipe it anyway since the timers will be off. Missed interrupts will instagib the whole raid. Someone overaggroing at the start will instagib the whole raid. Sometimes you won't have enough cooldowns to handle the relics and they will instagib you too. The point is, I can't really tell what's supposed to be the defining mechanic of this encounter. It seems like there's just a bazillion instagib mechanics coming in from every direction. Cabal might as well be called "death by a thousand paper cuts: the boss".

Uu'nat has the same problem. It's a clusterfuck in a circular room. Conclave was a clusterfuck in a circular room. Mythrax was a clusterfuck in a circular room. So was Zul. Compare and contrast with encounter like Mekkatorque, Opulence, and Vectis. You know how to describe them in one mechanic. Mekkatorque is the voicecom encounter. Opulence is the gauntlet run encounter. Vectis is the debuff management encounter. How would you describe the Cabal? It's a clusterfuck in a circular room.

[PaladinBash]

I mean I do agree with you in part but ToC was a raid in a circular room with no trash at all and yet every single one of those encounters felt fun and engaging in some way or another with very clearly defined mechanics except for Champions, which itself was one of the most unique fights in the whole game.

[Netherling]

I mean I do agree with you in part but ToC was a raid in a circular room with no trash at all and yet every single one of those encounters felt fun and engaging in some way or another with very clearly defined mechanics except for Champions, which itself was one of the most unique fights in the whole game.

So many people hate ToC and I've never fully understood why. For what it was, I really enjoyed it

[Cracked]

I mean.. Lich king was a clusterfuck in a circular room.

[erifwodahs]

I really like CotS Cabal fight on mythic. Really fun fight for minmaxers. Also Star Augur Mythic was in a circular room and I loved every bit of it. Elisande comes to mind, what a fight! Botanist was a complete clusterfuck tho

[M1r4g3]

They pruned the living crap out of classes so they had to compensate for the removal of rotations you can fuck up by adding a crapload of mechanics and random graphical bloat in the encounters themselves.
It has nothing to do with circular rooms, mekka and oppulence are just as much of a clusterfuck as the rest, vectis was ok-ish, tho the blood pool wave things and soaks were kinda a clusterfuck.
People keep talking about encounters without mentioning the ''playing your class right in that situation'' part, which is non-existant since legion but probably even more important than the encounters themselves considering you're playing your class 100% of the time as opposed to the few hours you spend on the encounters.
Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

[Kralljin]

I think you should really stick to your rants in the lore forum, at least those are halfway decent.

Here, you start off with an extremely broad title, then basically rant over a single encounter.

On top of that, i have no idea what you want to say, is your problem that the design of a boss room is boring?
That the room of a boss itself is relevant is more the exception than rule, if you look at the vast majority of bosses, most encounters could take place basically anywhere, barring perhaps the element of running out of space on certain encounters.

Is your problem the overall encounter design? Okay, then what has this do with the room itself?
As said above, most encounters do not involve the room itself except for the space of the room itself.

Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

They don't exist anymore because in a world where you can beat a tree as often as you like for heroic gear (meaning M+10) and on top of that, those items can titanforge up to (or even over) mythic loot, there is no point in them anymore.

The solution to a gearcheck encounter would not be "play better" but "farm more M+".

[Wilfire]

I think you should really stick to your rants in the lore forum, at least those are halfway decent.

Here, you start off with an extremely broad title, then basically rant over a single encounter.

On top of that, i have no idea what you want to say, is your problem that the design of a boss room is boring?
That the room of a boss itself is relevant is more the exception than rule, if you look at the vast majority of bosses, most encounters could take place basically anywhere, barring perhaps the element of running out of space on certain encounters.

Is your problem the overall encounter design? Okay, then what has this do with the room itself?
As said above, most encounters do not involve the room itself except for the space of the room itself.



They don't exist anymore because in a world where you can beat a tree as often as you like for heroic gear (meaning M+10) and on top of that, those items can titanforge up to (or even over) mythic loot, there is no point in them anymore.

The solution to a gearcheck encounter would not be "play better" but "farm more M+".

I don't have to describe every single "clusterfuck in a circular room" encounter in this game because they're all exactly the same fight. Blizzard has this huge team of developers and yet they take an extremely formulaic approach to designing encounters that makes vanilla single mechanic encounters look like masterpieces. Take a look at any raid tier and there's going to be a fuckton of those completely boring, unremarkable encounters.

The problem is not rooms being circular. There have been plenty of great encounters that took place in circular rooms. The problem is that every single boring, unremarkable encounter takes place in a circular room. It feels like a spreadsheet or a meeting of shareholders desgined those encounters rather than a dedicated raid dev team. "Circular room - check; fuckton of instagib mechanics - check. Sounds like a great encounter to me, I'm sure people will love it!"

[Kralljin]

I don't have to describe every single "clusterfuck in a circular room" encounter in this game because they're all exactly the same fight.

[Opinion]

Take a look at any raid tier and there's going to be a fuckton of those completely boring, unremarkable encounters.

So that's not a problem of modern raiding but a problem since forever?

take an extremely formulaic approach to designing encounters that makes vanilla single mechanic encounters look like masterpieces

And that's just one of those pointless hyperboles.

The problem is that every single boring, unremarkable encounter takes place in a circular room. It feels like a spreadsheet or a meeting of shareholders desgined those encounters rather than a dedicated raid dev team.

Because there is no need for obstacles within an encounter room unless it is somehow relevant to the encounter.
If there is one, without the actual encounter requiring one, you just keep the boss away from it because it is at best just useless and at worst could cause a wipe due to LoS.

[Trumpcat]

Completely agreed and coming from conversations with my guildies we all share the same opinion. What do all dull fights regardless of their difficulty have in common? Clusterfuck in a circular room. So true!

No, that doesn't mean every fight in a circular room is dull or is a clusterfuck, but the bad ones are. It's been so many years now and they

[silmarilen]

Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

You mean dps checks like like fetid (adds), mythrax (adds), zul (p1), ghuun (p3), rasta (bwonsamdi phase)? Even jaina p3 was a dps check, altho not by fight design but because of the tactic used.

Or do you mean dps checks like patchwerk where you're just standing still hitting a punching bag without mechanics?

[Wilfire]

[Opinion]



So that's not a problem of modern raiding but a problem since forever?



And that's just one of those pointless hyperboles.



Because there is no need for obstacles within an encounter room unless it is somehow relevant to the encounter.
If there is one, without the actual encounter requiring one, you just keep the boss away from it because it is at best just useless and at worst could cause a wipe due to LoS.

Nope, there were dull encounters in circular rooms but at least they weren't clustefucks. It wasn't until MoP that Blizzard started to double down and add a gazillion mechanics to every encounter.

[grexly75]

They pruned the living crap out of classes so they had to compensate for the removal of rotations you can fuck up by adding a crapload of mechanics and random graphical bloat in the encounters themselves.
It has nothing to do with circular rooms, mekka and oppulence are just as much of a clusterfuck as the rest, vectis was ok-ish, tho the blood pool wave things and soaks were kinda a clusterfuck.
People keep talking about encounters without mentioning the ''playing your class right in that situation'' part, which is non-existant since legion but probably even more important than the encounters themselves considering you're playing your class 100% of the time as opposed to the few hours you spend on the encounters.
Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

Dps checks still exist, the most notable is the Jaina fight, where you have to bust through the ice wall break out Nathanos all before getting iced.. Another of sorts is Heroic Opulence phase 1, getting through the rooms before you are overwhelmed with all the crap on the floor..

[Battlebeard]

So many people hate ToC and I've never fully understood why. For what it was, I really enjoyed it

I LOVED ToC. I mean, the scenery (tournament grounds) was pretty meh and the encounters themselves were not super. But I hate trash with all my heart and to avoid it and just do boss fights is the best concept they ever added!

- - - Updated - - -

What do all forgettable, boring and uninspired raid encounters have in common? They're all clusterfucks in circular rooms. What exactly does the Cabal do? I can't really tell you which mechanic is supposed to be the main feature of this encounter.

Is it debuff management? If you screw it up, you get instagibbed by [Crushing Doubt]. But if at least one raider falls asleep and dies to [Void Crash], you might as well wipe it anyway since the timers will be off. Missed interrupts will instagib the whole raid. Someone overaggroing at the start will instagib the whole raid. Sometimes you won't have enough cooldowns to handle the relics and they will instagib you too. The point is, I can't really tell what's supposed to be the defining mechanic of this encounter. It seems like there's just a bazillion instagib mechanics coming in from every direction. Cabal might as well be called "death by a thousand paper cuts: the boss".

Uu'nat has the same problem. It's a clusterfuck in a circular room. Conclave was a clusterfuck in a circular room. Mythrax was a clusterfuck in a circular room. So was Zul. Compare and contrast with encounter like Mekkatorque, Opulence, and Vectis. You know how to describe them in one mechanic. Mekkatorque is the voicecom encounter. Opulence is the gauntlet run encounter. Vectis is the debuff management encounter. How would you describe the Cabal? It's a clusterfuck in a circular room.

I would say some of the absolute worst raid encounters, Hellfire Assault, Galakras, Any mount hyjal boss, any overall any boss where you need to run to special places, visit multiple rooms etc are not in circular rooms. Sure, there are bad fights in circular rooms too, but the more gimmicky and strange and unique a boss fight gets, usually, the worse the fight also get as well.

[Kralljin]

Nope, there were dull encounters in circular rooms but at least they weren't clustefucks. It wasn't until MoP that Blizzard started to double down and add a gazillion mechanics to every encounter.

The fact that encounters have seen a greater focus on actual strategy and just couldn't be outgeared like previously is more of a fact that gear as a progression system is entirely broken.

I've talked about this above, that's why anything close to a gearcheck encounter has vanished since Legion, due to M+, the loot acquisition is pretty fucked up, now throw in alternate power progression system such as Artifacts or Azerite, then it becomes rather difficult to gauge the power of a certain player at a given boss.

In earlier expansions, certain bosses could be designed around a given damage check, that has become a lot more difficult.

In other words, that's not really a concious decision but simply a consequence of another problem, as encounters would then be either complete jokes because players outgear them easily or tough as shit because the intended Ilvl is too high.

And aside from that...does Zul'aman happen to be your favorite instance? As far as i recall, every encounter had a rectangle room there.

[M1r4g3]

You mean dps checks like like fetid (adds), mythrax (adds), zul (p1), ghuun (p3), rasta (bwonsamdi phase)? Even jaina p3 was a dps check, altho not by fight design but because of the tactic used.

Or do you mean dps checks like patchwerk where you're just standing still hitting a punching bag without mechanics?

None of those are dps checks, as long as you do the mechanics correctly up to that point you're fine, no one that raids mythic can fail their 3 button rotations. So how can a dps check exist when you cant fail it? Its all gear checks now.

Dps checks still exist, the most notable is the Jaina fight, where you have to bust through the ice wall break out Nathanos all before getting iced.. Another of sorts is Heroic Opulence phase 1, getting through the rooms before you are overwhelmed with all the crap on the floor..

Yea, no. When i was progressing on jaina not once did we not break the wall in time, even with a bunch of people dead, as for oppulence, you're more likely to die of old age than you are to fill up the room with the orbs...

[Qnubi]

Raiding as we know it (mechanically super complex mythic raiding) is dying fast. vast majority of people don't want 100 abilities spammed at their character. Classic raiding will be more popular although it takes a lot more time to farm. Mythic raiding is absolutely unnecessary for WoW success. Raiding should be about thematic memorable raid encounters with 1-2 cool abilities and very few "side" abilities that need to be taken care of, not a dance contest with dozen of things to consider. I have no idea how this raid design even gets remotely played by anyone. It's not what made WoW raiding great. I partly blame the rise of addons and homogenization of classes, if everyone can do everything you can put every possible obstacle into the boss design that's why it's so stacked with crap to do during the fight.

[apples]

Nope, there were dull encounters in circular rooms but at least they weren't clustefucks. It wasn't until MoP that Blizzard started to double down and add a gazillion mechanics to every encounter.

i notice you never raided in vanilla

[Socialhealer]

I mean.. Lich king was a clusterfuck in a circular room.

to someone who has never played WoW before or is retarded, maybe, just maybe.

[Arainie]

They pruned the living crap out of classes so they had to compensate for the removal of rotations you can fuck up by adding a crapload of mechanics and random graphical bloat in the encounters themselves.
It has nothing to do with circular rooms, mekka and oppulence are just as much of a clusterfuck as the rest, vectis was ok-ish, tho the blood pool wave things and soaks were kinda a clusterfuck.
People keep talking about encounters without mentioning the ''playing your class right in that situation'' part, which is non-existant since legion but probably even more important than the encounters themselves considering you're playing your class 100% of the time as opposed to the few hours you spend on the encounters.
Also the reason dps checks don't exist anymore.

Oh cut the crap, rotations have always been easy. If you ever stuggled with rotations and mechanics combined you just lacked the experience or the ability to think ahead.