More mechanics=good raid boss?

[Rixarius]

"There were too many tank and spank style encounters in the past, leading to players being bored. Now Blizzard is trying to ensure there is at least one thing for everyone in the raid to think about during the encounter, rather than just focusing on the boss as a target dummy."


Now let's look at that. The idea that a boss with multiple phases and mechanics means that the boss will be good in most cases. I don't completely agree with this. Some of my favorite bosses in WoW history haven't been bosses with a ton of mechanics, but difficult DPS checks. While I think that having these multiple mechanic/phase bosses is good, and alot of them are fun, I feel that the 'tank and spank' bosses with tough DPS checks are one of the most rewarding bosses to kill. I look at heroic Baleroc from Firelands, or Heroic Ultraxion. Neither of these bosses had tough mechanics to master, but one of the best things about them was having to learn to maximize your DPS and squeeze out every number you can, and getting that kill with a second or two to spare before they one shot the raid.

Having every boss be a simple DPS check isn't a good idea, but doing away with them all together isn't good either, IMO. Even once you overgear a Patchwerk style fight and it's not difficult anymore, I still enjoy a simple 'stand in one spot and pew pew' boss every now and then to take a break from all the hectic fights. I kinda find it relaxing in a strange way :P

Does anyone else share this opinion? Maybe I'm just lazy haha

[Noorri]

Some complex bosses are fine. The current ones are just way to much though. Every single boss has a list of abilities that looks like a novel and I am quickly getting tired of there not beeing any bosses that you can chill on. I enjoy the occasional tank&spank fight where you can focus on playing your character well instead of having to remember a bazillion abilities and different adds and what everything does.

While only Patchwerks would get boring quick, a few of them thrown in here and there is a good thing.

[edlike]

I'm just happy when they vary the amount of phases/length of fight/position of difficulty (front-loaded or backloaded)

as long as there is enough variance in the fights i'm happy. There are still patchwerk-esque fights (jin-rokh/gara'jal) with minimal mechanics. The playerbase has evolved beyond a pure and simply 0 mechanics stand still and dps fight.

[Forsedar]

With the addition of multiple DBM style addons plus many others (such as ShaAssist, etc), it has allowed Blizzard to make more dynamic fights. I personally favor fights with a lot to do. Anyone can just power through a boss because of gear- but if something has tight mechanics, gear can only make up for slight lack of paying attention.

[Socialhealer]

as an elemental shaman u can take fights like heroic ultraxion, and shove it right up your ass.

we're made to dps on the move and aoe, and when it comes to standing still and nuking the boss the spec is hilariously outclassed by nearly everyone, also the lack of cooldowns to soak at ultraxion god that fight was bad.

i love fights with moving around avoiding stuff popping minor cooldowns at the right time to help soaking damage, if i wanted to patchwerk i'd go LFR where you can actually chill ignore mechanics and you'll be fine nuke that target dummy.

only fight with maybe too much was heroic sha...god 18:45 fight that really dragged on, but then again made the kill just that much more EPIC.

[cFortyfive]

I don't mind the occasional patchwerkish encounter. Maybe not every tier - but still.

[Tax]

Id prefer a mix of both, doing the tango on every single boss is exhausting. They can make tank and spank fights interesting if they wanted to, they would rather turn every fight into dodging, dispelling, killing 500 adds.

[Boogieknight]

Mechanics make the bosses interesting, but there's a time and place for some straight DPS check target dummy fight. Also overly complicating the fights just makes them annoying when they're on farm and in LFR. Normals and heroics get some kind of progressive nerf but LFR stays the same difficulty with a regularly changing landscape of geared characters. Tsulong and Lei Shi were testing my last nerve every week in LFR and spamming them multiple times a day trying to get my helm token from the Sha was getting progressively more and more annoying. I'm not even looking forward to dragging my alts through those fights.

[Armourboy]

I will admit that sometimes its just nice to kick back and do your rotation and melt face. Sure its easy, but everyone like an easy boss here and there. I wouldn't want a raid full of them, but not every fight needs 40 million mechanics to get down.

[GennGreymane]

the best bosses are memorable

YOU FACE JARAXXUS!

[Seezer]

Some complex bosses are fine. The current ones are just way to much though. Every single boss has a list of abilities that looks like a novel and I am quickly getting tired of there not beeing any bosses that you can chill on. I enjoy the occasional tank&spank fight where you can focus on playing your character well instead of having to remember a bazillion abilities and different adds and what everything does.

While only Patchwerks would get boring quick, a few of them thrown in here and there is a good thing.

The Journal makes everything look complicated. Look at council. It looks insane in the journal. But is very simple.

[Deleted]

It's better than Dragon Soul and its ½ stack-spread-stack and ½ stack-nuke fights.

[zenyatta]

I remember the first time I fought Lich King... all I could think was that he had way too many abilities. It was like the devs couldn't agree on what abilities he should have, so he got them all.

[Rixarius]

I don't mind the occasional patchwerkish encounter. Maybe not every tier - but still.

I say mix one in with every raid, at least. Like someone said, I get tired of having to stress my brain on every fight. (Horridon, as a tank, is an example)

Jin'rohk I guess is this raids tank and spank.

[Kiteh]

Durumu.

I watched the PTR tests on this boss. People said on stream 'I hope this doesn't make it to live'

We killed Durumu a few days ago (normal). We raided for probably 7 hours on this boss, but when we killed, was all the more rewarding. (can post 2 hour long attempt , resulting in kill, if you desire)

Tonight we kill Ion Q or w/e its called and mechanically its a far easier fight.

I LOVE what Blizzard have done with the fights. I'm sure some will change on HC thus balancing them to be easy>hard through 1-13.

[ShimmerSwirl]

Its just amazing how Blizzard is slowly realizing that that all the Vanilla/BC designs they undid in wotlk were in place for a reason. They are slowly converting this game back to its BC state.

[The Madgod]

With the addition of multiple DBM style addons plus many others (such as ShaAssist, etc), it has allowed Blizzard to make more dynamic fights. I personally favor fights with a lot to do. Anyone can just power through a boss because of gear- but if something has tight mechanics, gear can only make up for slight lack of paying attention.

This is my opinion as well. If I were an encounter designer for Blizzard I wouldn't really want to make a simple fight where the challenge wasn't in mastery of play as much as the stacking of gear. I loved raiding in those simpler times, but my favorite encounters have been those where I have a lot to keep track of. It's a challenge, which was ultimately why I raided.

[Tax]

Its just amazing how Blizzard is slowly realizing that that all the Vanilla/BC designs they undid in wotlk were in place for a reason. They are slowly converting this game back to its BC state.

Nothing in T14 or T15 makes me think back to AQ or BT, care to explain?

[Kaleredar]

Its just amazing how Blizzard is slowly realizing that that all the Vanilla/BC designs they undid in wotlk were in place for a reason. They are slowly converting this game back to its BC state.

You'll excuse me for laughing in your face if you're asserting that vanilla and TBC bosses used complex mechanics while WotLK and onwards did not.

Because that's pretty much the exact opposite of what happened.

[zephid]

More mechanics to handle usually means harder boss, and harder boss means better boss imo.