About long bosses

[Deleted]

After clearing tier14 don't you think that the three final bosses are too long (nowadays Will of the Emperor is not a long encounter but it was when only MV had been released)?

Heroic Will of the Emperor > 12 min
Heroic Grand Empress Sheek'zer > 14 min
Heroic Sha of Fear > 17 min

I strongly prefer 10 min fights, no problem if they are extremely hard ones, but no longer than 10 min. I would like to know your opinion about this

[Imnick]

Sha's a bit long definitely, especially on Normal Mode where there isn't even a phase two to break the monotony

[Ciah]

There are ways to make bosses feel epic without being long fights.

Mimiron Firefighter was 10 minutes and tense as hell.
Algalon was 6 minutes and crazy intense (though that was largely because of the pressure due to the timer)

These short but super intense fights are my favorites.

[TheWindWalker]

Somewhat related question. On these long fights where the boss can be under 35% health for as much as three to five minutes, do classes with executes pull ahead dramatically by the end?

[GhostSkull]

I agree, the ten minute fight is an excellent rule of thumb.

[Dossou]

Sha's a bit long definitely, especially on Normal Mode where there isn't even a phase two to break the monotony

Our last normal kill before we killed Heroic was 4:35.

lol

---------- Post added 2013-01-05 at 04:52 AM ----------

Somewhat related question. On these long fights where the boss can be under 35% health for as much as three to five minutes, do classes with executes pull ahead dramatically by the end?

It's all relative.

They spend an equivalent amount of time at each % of boss health, unless the boss has 2 execute phases, like Heroic Rag.

[Dracodraco]

Our last normal kill before we killed Heroic was 4:35.

lol

---------- Post added 2013-01-05 at 04:52 AM ----------



It's all relative.

They spend an equivalent amount of time at each % of boss health, unless the boss has 2 execute phases, like Heroic Rag.

Basicly, yea.

8 Min with 100K dps.
2 Min with 130K dps.
48000K Damage + 15600K Damage, for an average of 106K dps.

A 15 min fight:
12 Min with 100K dps.
3 Min with 130K dps.
72000K Damage +23400K damage, for an average of 106K dps.

An encounter that's 50% longer, but same average dps.
The difference comes in to play when the boss has some kind of damage buff (such as elegon, windlord, ambershaper, etc) or enrage-phase towards the end that makes it especially dangerous (garajal, spirit kings, vizier, garalon, empress, lei shi).
Execute-classes will be marginally more usefull for those fights, if your issue is the end-phase, as they do more effective DPS at that point than other classes, making the phase easier dealt with. For overall enrages, they do not matter.

[Zantos]

I agree. When I first started Will I didn't and still don't feel like its hard. Just long and boring. Honestly, if fights get to much longer I doubt I'll be able to focus the entire time. The long fights really aren't to hard, just long and dull.

[Dossou]

I agree. When I first started Will I didn't and still don't feel like its hard. Just long and boring. Honestly, if fights get to much longer I doubt I'll be able to focus the entire time. The long fights really aren't to hard, just long and dull.

Sha of Fear P1 isn't dull. It's like Afghanistan in P1 for melee.
P2 is long and boring and only gets semi exciting around 20% (which is probably because I've only killed it twice)
Grand Empress is boring P1, annoying P2, and semi-interesting P3. I actually enjoy P3 Grand Empress.
Doing will as a DK with GG using the 4 mage strat was painstakingly boring. We had 3 DKs so we could even fuck up once and a while and it didn't really matter a whole lot.

I haven't done it recently except tanking 10 man, which I find fun.

[Keoren]

I'd say that anything between 10 and 18 minutes is a fair length for a final boss, assuming enough variety if the encounter is on the long side. Short fights are important and can be intensive but an increased duration tends to help in making a boss memorable.

That said, Sha of Fear heroic which in the beginning was clocking beyond 20 minutes was too long considering the quite static contents of the fight. It's not very exciting.

[Daverid]

10+ Minute fights aren't that bad as long as they have some randomness in nature and different phases with enough varying mechanics to break the fight up.

For example; Yogg-Saron, Illidan, Kil'jaeden, Lady Vashj, Kael'thas, Lich King and more recently, Ragnaros. There's more to that list pre-Ragnaros, and naturally this is simply my opinion, but TBH they kind of suck at making enjoyable over 10minute fights in Cataclysm and now in MOP. I love this Tier of MOP, I think it's awesome, but all the over 10minute fights haven't been anything special.

[Harsesis]

It's a touchy road. I don't think H Rag couldn't have been as good of a fight as it was without being that long. At the same time it became painful when learning P4 to have to go through P1-P3 again, and if you wiped in those phases... They fixed that a bit with H Sha with the buff that helps you get back to P2 quicker. Overall the fight is still way too long. I think they could have found a health value that was high enough to give the fight a good length and make sure you couldn't just zerg P1 while still low enough that it was as long as it was.

For me a 10min fight is a good length. 12-14min is on the long end. 15min+ is just too long. I'm okay with some 15min fights but they need to have variety in the phases. Sha's 2 phase nonsense isn't going to cut it.

[Deleted]

I like long fights as long as they have multiple phases to break up the monotony, and all phases are interesting and challenging in some way. 10 minutes of boredom followed by 5 minutes of challenge is not great encounter design.