Raid design lessons for Blizzard from mythic Azshara

[Krille]

If you had finished reading the first sentence of my post you woulda realized that I didn't make a single statement about Azshara but instead the core complaints of the OP that apply to literally every single encounter in this game. You don't need first hand Naxx40 Kelthuzard experience to give your opinion on someone else's opinion of too many minions in a fight.



Yes, Blizzard probably didn't consider guilds bringing 2-3 healers while at the same time bringing people with like 30k less max hp then they could/should have. You acting like Blizzard have never repeated, let alone made a mistake in the past. Shit like that constantly slips through their testing/designing. Like, it could even be the opposite, that they've deliberately designed this fight to punish people for wearing low ilvl whateverness by making it so that they just won't survive certain parts of the fight - which is a completely legitimate thing to do.

Benthic as a concept is new. Equipping low level gear with sockets isnt. They 100% thought about it.

[Gasparde]

Benthic as a concept is new. Equipping low level gear with sockets isnt. They 100% thought about it.

Even if they 100% accounted for it... I don't see a problem with punishing people who are overly greedy when it comes to trading HP for damage. Like, that was pretty much the basis for the whole warlock class in Classic. If the fight is at all doable without benthic shenanigans... then it's really just a question of possibly skipping a mechanic with damage vs possibly surviving mistakes/mechanics with HP... and that's always been a thing people were min-maxing. I don't see an Azshara-specific mechanic being a problem here - it's not like they're making people chug stamina flasks.

[Moggie]

Eh, in general the fight is fine. But I've said it before, there's just way too many mechanics being tacked onto some of these bosses. Pretty soon, an end tier boss will have 30-50 mechanics. Half being neutralized by boss mods and WA. Introduce a new new ability/feature that's not a refresh of previous boss' abilities that makes it iconic like Lei Shen(sp?) in ToT, Garrosh in SoO, Nef in BWL, Yogg0 in Ulduar, even Archimonde in HFC while trimming down end boss abilities quite a bit. Make it difficult with too much health and damage like a Mythic fight, not some game of memory. And enough with the endurance check. 10+ min to down a boss is enough to stab eyes out.

Then again, Azshara just isn't fun in the slightest and raid quality in BFA is a bit of a disappointment vs. other expansions. Even WoD, while it'll go down as the worse thing ever, the raids were quite top notch.

[Krille]

Eh, in general the fight is fine. But I've said it before, there's just way too many mechanics being tacked onto some of these bosses. Pretty soon, an end tier boss will have 30-50 mechanics. Half being neutralized by boss mods and WA. Introduce a new new ability/feature that's not a refresh of previous boss' abilities that makes it iconic like Lei Shen(sp?) in ToT, Garrosh in SoO, Nef in BWL, Yogg0 in Ulduar, even Archimonde in HFC while trimming down end boss abilities quite a bit. Make it difficult with too much health and damage like a Mythic fight, not some game of memory. And enough with the endurance check. 10+ min to down a boss is enough to stab eyes out.

Then again, Azshara just isn't fun in the slightest and raid quality in BFA is a bit of a disappointment vs. other expansions. Even WoD, while it'll go down as the worse thing ever, the raids were quite top notch.

Uu'nat mythic is the best fight they've made in years, perhaps ever. Sadly not a lot of ppl experienced it.

[Gaidax]

Uu'nat mythic is the best fight they've made in years, perhaps ever. Sadly not a lot of ppl experienced it.

Ehh, Uunat was OK, but nothing that really makes me cream myself over. IMO both Azshara and Jaina are better, more epic fights.

IMO a lot of Uunat positivity comes from Cabal being literal shit, horrible fight.

[Teaon]

i am just mindblown how the weakaura destroy the decree mechanic on azshara to the point of it being useless easy mechanic.

this reminds me how archimonde hfc lasers turned into a joke with exourses addon.

[msdos]

Azshara and G'huun are in my top 10 worst encounters in all of WoW. The fights are a strange, bitter combo of boring, underwhelming and confusing: "who are these things, why do I care about them, why are they talking, why is half the raid not even hitting a boss half the time, why is this not fun??"

If you play a low mobility class like DK or warlock, you are not having fun in these raids, period.

[KaPe]

If you play a low mobility class like DK or warlock, you are not having fun in these raids, period.

As a Warlock, you're playing *two* exciting minigames: "Where do I cast my Gate in this phase?" and "Where the hell is my imp and why didn't it dispel properly?"

[Notdev]

Blackhand was one of my favorite endbosses that went against the grain. Adds were never the main focus of the fight (p1 and 3 and 0 adds, p2 had adds that were handled by a small portion of the raid), and it was around 6-7 minutes long, mostly non stop action, and lacked any boring "filler" phase.

You completely remove P1 of Azshara and IMO it becomes a much better fight while not losing anything and barely becoming easier.

- - - Updated - - -

i am just mindblown how the weakaura destroy the decree mechanic on azshara to the point of it being useless easy mechanic.

this reminds me how archimonde hfc lasers turned into a joke with exourses addon.

Blizzard is currently in an arms race against addon developers. It is nearly impossible for them to come out with mechanics that aren't trivialized by weak auras, so they respond by stuffing an entire raid's worth of mechanics into one boss. They could break weak auras (and in turn break a ton of addons) but then fights would have to go back to WoTLK/Cata level difficulty or easier.

[Denymeplz]

Imo what blizz did wrong this tier was having fights that "punished" you by having more dps cause mechanics would overlap, this is just dumb, whats the point of min maxing and optimizing stuff if you are just going to stop dps, i just hated this on zaqul and azshara, they need to stop doing this, its frustrating, aside from that the fight was fine, they maybe overdid it a bit with the LoS, but then i remember Tomb of Soakgeras so i dont know whats worse tbh, LoS mechanics are getting old pretty fast, Mekkatorque was already annoying af and then Azshara was like a punch to my balls.

[Gaidax]

Imo what blizz did wrong this tier was having fights that "punished" you by having more dps cause mechanics would overlap, this is just dumb, whats the point of min maxing and optimizing stuff if you are just going to stop dps, i just hated this on zaqul and azshara, they need to stop doing this, its frustrating, aside from that the fight was fine, they maybe overdid it a bit with the LoS, but then i remember Tomb of Soakgeras so i dont know whats worse tbh, LoS mechanics are getting old pretty fast, Mekkatorque was already annoying af and then Azshara was like a punch to my balls.

I think much of that is byproduct of raiders finding some loopholes. For example, no way in hell this whole P1 waiting for Zaqul is the way it was really intended to be.

IMO, pacing DPS to hit a specific transition sweetspot is good overall, just for Zaqul specifically it sorta backfired. IMO, holding DPS for 10 seconds or so to hit that best transition window is good, but 2 minutes - nope.

[Denymeplz]

I think much of that is byproduct of raiders finding some loopholes. For example, no way in hell this whole P1 waiting for Zaqul is the way it was really intended to be.

IMO, pacing DPS to hit a specific transition sweetspot is good overall, just for Zaqul specifically it sorta backfired.

Yeah i can most definitely understand it was unintended, i just hope blizz designs mechanics that doesnt punish you by having more dps, like if your raid wide dps goes up, it should make the fight easier, not having to reprogress a bit so your dps fits your new pace, at least not as punishing as zaqul or azshara.

[antelope591]

Personally I'm just disappointed that designing fights for class stacking seems to be here to stay for the long term. Being punished for bringing more than 3 heals on Azshara, making things a lot harder if you don't have disc priests on certain fights. Tiers which vary from 5 heal to 2 heal fights, etc. It seems its the only way Blizz can have real difficulty these days. I know they still have to challenge guilds like Method in some ways, but this design has hurt more casual guilds a lot since the start of Legion.

[Marrilaife]

I think I had enough of fights and raid tiers designed around Disc Priests and Brewmaster Monks. I'd swear every other raid tier is about them. I'm sick and tired of "dehomogenization" of the classes paired with "we'll design raid mechanics that always punish the same specs and reward the same specs, over and again". This goes all the way back to MOP, and even longer for Disc (hc Lich King / hc Anub'arak).

Same can be said about fights that punish melee. How many endbosses punished ranged? I believe only Gul'dan. Now Azshara, there's a wall you can shoot spells through but cannot pass through... obvious solution is to put more ranged as it helps those cases of "what if your players end up on the wrong side of the wall".

Fights that can be 1-tanked (pre nerf Zaquul) or 2-healed are also an abomination and Blizzard should ensure during beta testing phase these don't go live in that state. These fights are extremely punishing to half your tank / healer roster, especially when you have fights like Orgozoa that required 3 tanks and 5 healers originally (damn, I've seen guilds that 6-healed Sivarra).

No, really, I can get behind over-reliance on weak auras, bosses being "clusterfucks in a circular room" and add fiesta, but I can't get behind the fact class design team and raid design team can't sit together and invent raids / bosses that actually favour different classes and playstyles. Some classes (like warlocks) are nearly always "in the meta", some other classes, like death knights or shamans are rarely good, or they have 1 tier where they shine then back to dumpster bin, and no, them having a spec good in pvp or some other aspect of the game doesn't compensate for it.

In the last 5 years I've spent maybe 2 raid tiers playing my class of choice, rest I was either perma benched or had to reroll to something "viable". After promising BODA we went back to the same garbage that I had to suffer in Uldir. This is neither fair nor fun, and I'm done paying for being spat in the face (together with the sorry state of Alliance in the mythic raiding scene that Blizzard did nothing to prevent or revert).

[Wilfire]

Here's a thought: how about breaking WeakAuras but designing easier bosses that don't need WeakAuras to handle them? The need for WeakAuras comes in the first place only because Blizzard keeps designing mechanics that need complex communication between several raid members to handle them (Mekkatorque, decrees on Azshara). Just don't design mechanics like that and you're fine.

1 subgroup of 2 players communicating to handle a mechanic = fine.

2 or more subgroups of 2 players simultaneously communicating to handle a mechanic = clusterfuck that needs a WeakAura.

1 subgroup of 3 or more players simultaneously communicating to handle a mechanic = clusterfuck that needs a WeakAura.

[Gaidax]

"Break Weak Auras" - that pretty much means shutting down access to huge parts of API that a lot of beloved addons rely on.

And for what sake? So that they could nerf mythic raiding which is what like 1% of population do?

You don't need Weak Auras for heroic or lower. So what's the point of breaking the bloody game?

If you want binary one trick bosses, just because you are scared of an addon - go play Classic. You have boss mods there too, always had, btw.

[Dracodraco]

Here's a thought: how about breaking WeakAuras but designing easier bosses that don't need WeakAuras to handle them? The need for WeakAuras comes in the first place only because Blizzard keeps designing mechanics that need complex communication between several raid members to handle them (Mekkatorque, decrees on Azshara). Just don't design mechanics like that and you're fine.

1 subgroup of 2 players communicating to handle a mechanic = fine.

2 or more subgroups of 2 players simultaneously communicating to handle a mechanic = clusterfuck that needs a WeakAura.

1 subgroup of 3 or more players simultaneously communicating to handle a mechanic = clusterfuck that needs a WeakAura.

What you're asking for would break virtually every addon because the weakaura that "solves" decrees is super fucking basic in so far in what it actually needs:
It looks at your debuffs, and based on an algorithm, gives you a position to stand in depending on what combo of debuffs you have.

That means to break the decree-WA, you'd have to stop *all addons*, *ever*, from getting info about your debuffs.

Likewise for the soak-WA, all it does is send a message on-screen to someone at a specific time (atleast reloe's). That means that you'd need to break the time-keeping-aspect of every addon that might rely on a timer (because preventing an addon from showing data would literally mean nothing ever would work again. Can't see it, it doesn't exist).

[Twdft]

i am just mindblown how the weakaura destroy the decree mechanic on azshara to the point of it being useless easy mechanic.

this reminds me how archimonde hfc lasers turned into a joke with exourses addon.

The reason WF guilds (have to) go all out on weak auras IMO is the batshit crazy bad visual information Blizzards provides us with through the standard interface.

[Denymeplz]

Personally I'm just disappointed that designing fights for class stacking seems to be here to stay for the long term.

Wtf, EP has anything but class stacking, if a guild needs to class stack then they just need to git gud.

[TyrianFC]

The main 'lesson' from this thread is that most players would make terrible encounter designers. Playing the game doesn't mean you could design it.