More mechanics=good raid boss?

[Deleted]

Somewhat? It's a bit of both imo. For a boss to be really difficult these days, it needs to be complex. Players have become better over time, and that's fact. But the first time I thought Blizzard had officially shit themself was on Klaxxi. 9 bosses in which they usually have 3 - 4 abilities each. The tactic based on all the different mechanics was so difficult to explain, I basically just tried to explain on the go as we progressed on it. Bosses have only continued to become more complex, although less abilities than Klaxxi.

The only bosses that resemble something you'd see from Vanilla in WoD would probably be Fel Lord Zakuun and Butcher mythic. They are fairly mechanical, but the sole difficulty lies in the numerical difficulty. It's not hard at all to grasp either boss. It's almost a basic tank and spank with a few shit mixed in, but the few shit mixed in can usually screw a kill. Fel Lord is/was usually nerve wrecking to do on farm for that reason imo. It's just so easy to wipe on a numerically difficult boss.

Personally I prefer a mix of both.

[Donald Hellscream]

I think a decent mix is good, if a boss has too few abilities it just ends up being a boring tank and spank fight but if it is a fight like durumu or the paragons then it becomes a total clusterfuck.

[Deleted]

These days their formula seems to be '40% mechanics you can bypass with class stacking + 40% RNG + 20% bruteforce'

[Zka]

Less mechanics = better raidboss. Almost everytime. Ever since Cata they went overboard with mechanics.

[Terahertz]

Not exactly. It simply makes a fight more of a clusterfuck to the point where you need DBM or you'll become overwhelmed.

I still don't understand why Blizzard allows DBM to give away so much information with the radar thingy and having the addon actually fucking locate objectives with an arrow on your screen. Such bad design.

[Socialhealer]

people just think they need to understand every single mechanic and what it does.

paragons at first seems fucking insane, but after 30 pulls i already knew what was coming everytime, where to stand what to do, when to use personals, when to use cooldowns, etc etc.

it's not that bad it just looks bad, it probably scares some newer players away, well don't be scared try the fight eventually you get into a routine and mechanics aren't a huge issue.

[MoanaLisa]

No, I don't think that stacking one mechanic on top of another is either really great design or necessarily contributes to the makings of a good raid boss. It's a by-the-book way of introducing more difficulty. Difficulty is not a problem but reaching for the same solution all the time--more mechanics to manage--isn't very interesting either. Blizzard does not seem to have much of a handle on the 'less is more' thing. For them, it's nearly always 'more is more'.

[Socialhealer]

No, I don't think that stacking one mechanic on top of another is either really great design or necessarily contributes to the makings of a good raid boss. It's a by-the-book way of introducing more difficulty. Difficulty is not a problem but reaching for the same solution all the time--more mechanics to manage--isn't very interesting either. Blizzard does not seem to have much of a handle on the 'less is more' thing. For them, it's nearly always 'more is more'.

mythic guilds are too good, less mechanics = this is just a dps check, dps checks are balanced around the average player being able to make the dps, so mythic guilds who stack the best classes just walk over these fights.

[ro9ue]

I'd rather 2-3 good and fun mechanics like safety dance or the you are the bomb thing. Any more than that just for the sake of more complexity is a little too much. The end goal should be fun imo.

[Tryuk]

Depends, in general more mechanics != better fight. However sometimes throw away "Don't stand in the fire" mechanics that require no explanation can make the fight more interesting. A good example is every Wildstar fight ever, wrong game, similar intent though and what I'm most familiar with currently

Edit: x89 is pretty simple though, it has less mechanics then half of the minibosses

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Absolutely not. More Mechanics = Overwhelming Shit Boss.

[Schwert]

I find raiding right now to be obnoxious - less so in HFC than last tier.
A lot of the fights last tier felt they had mechanics tacked on just for the sake of it and it didn't feel right. I actually realized I'd probably get sensory overload on the last phase of Iron Maidens and just threw in the towel and only came back this patch to raid casually.

I've been playing a few other MMO's and I do agree with the "simple mechanics but harder output" feel that WoW used to have.
I really don't see why they had to move away from that.
People weren't bored in vanilla, BC or WoTLK and things weren't even that bad in Cataclysm. It seems this is a trend that mostly started in MoP.