Am I the only person who actually liked DS? >_>

[Temp name]

I liked DS.. I just didn't like that it lasted 8 months. 3-4 would've been nice though.

[Deleted]

I think there are two important points that contributed a lot to people disliking DS.

- LFR
- no new content for a long time

Now those two points have nothing to do with DS per se.

Also a lot of people dit not like the idea of reused zone. If you think about it though, DS was unique in this matter and kinda shattered the boundaries of what a raid is. Normally a raid is confined to a single place, while DS had you travelling from Northrend to the maelstrom.
That being said while the idea was great, the actual thing may not have been as good as it could have.

[inboundpaper]

I like it when I step back and look at what happens in the background, it really is a last stand. Blizzard did not convey the feeling well when actually playing through it.

[Deleted]

I loved the tier. But not necessarily due to the fact that DS was a great raid, but rather because this was my first "hardcore" raiding experience. Up to that point, all I did was pugging and doing some 10man in WotLK with friends. Still, Warmaster HC is my favorite bossfight ever. Oh and we had a break for a few months after downing Madness HC, making the tier not really last that long.

[Gandrake]

Many of the fights were tank and spank, got pretty boring

I think the only encounter I really enjoyed was Heroic Zon'ozz, because Warriors really shined on that fight. Actually, they were quite practically the best melee DPS at the time. But the fight made a lot of the Warrior's arsenal, and I enjoyed that a lot.

[Deleted]

How does spine made sense? Seriously?! Deathwing could have killed us the instant we were on his back. He could do the barrel roll for 500 times. And also: How is a airship fast enough to keep up with Deathwing in the first place?! None of this made any sense. At least a face to face battle with deathwing would be more epic. Plus Spine is a VERY horrbile design overall, especially in HC where you needed an insane raidcomp, which nearly no guild had (and I'm not talkting about the world first guilds here, I'm talking about world 10++).

Yes they could have killed us at any time.

Aparrently Ultraxion can /cast Hour of Twilight at will and end the world of all life when he pleases, yet he chose to wait until all the aspects are together protected by a shield and a sizable force were gathered to guard them.

Deathwing can fly to the Maelstrom and /cast cataclysm at will it seems but only does it when we actually force him to crash land there.

Idiotic villains. Seems the old gods choose only the most stupid to be their weapons of doom.

[TJ]

Yes they could have killed us at any time.

Aparrently Ultraxion can /cast Hour of Twilight at will and end the world of all life when he pleases, yet he chose to wait until all the aspects are together protected by a shield and a sizable force were gathered to guard them.

Deathwing can fly to the Maelstrom and /cast cataclysm at will it seems but only does it when we actually force him to crash land there.

Idiotic villains. Seems the old gods choose only the most stupid to be their weapons of doom.

Because "Deathwing has awakened, oh look he flew into the Maelstrom and killed every one" wouldn't make a very good expansion or story.

[Hubbl3]

Yes they could have killed us at any time.

Aparrently Ultraxion can /cast Hour of Twilight at will and end the world of all life when he pleases, yet he chose to wait until all the aspects are together protected by a shield and a sizable force were gathered to guard them.

Deathwing can fly to the Maelstrom and /cast cataclysm at will it seems but only does it when we actually force him to crash land there.

Idiotic villains. Seems the old gods choose only the most stupid to be their weapons of doom.

Have you read the guy I'm quoting? My point is, that, like you said, the villains must act stupid for us to have ever a chance. So the "that made sense" argument for a boss encounter is not vaiable, because it doesn't have to make sense and never will make sense. So it has to be fun. And a face-to-face battle is more fun than killing adds. As a DD I could go afk on spine hc for 90% of the fight. The blobs were kited. On the big adds we had to stop dps and wait for enough blood to spawn (first 2 plates). And on the tendrils I did almost no damage, because I was not a rogue/mage. My rotation was: DPS big add, wait, tendrils for a few sec, wait, reapeat. FUN.
Yes, this is my personal opinion (and the opinion of almost every member of every guild that tried to kill spine pre-nerf (15% or 20?% tendrils hp nerf). The guys I talked to all hated spine for what it was, an add fight with no real boss and an absurd design premise. After the nerf the boss was even MORE boring, but at least now you could bring classes like shamans or hunters or moonkins.

Oh and Madness HC? It sucked less than spine. And it was a walk in the park. We spend maybe 20 tries on it and killed it the day after spine hc. Same problem as spine, most of the fight is fucking boring. The only real challenge was... I don't remember any challenge in that fight. Okay, you should not die, because the DPS requirement in the last phase is kinda high. But it's very hard to die at this fight at all, except the game is bugged and you could not make the jump. Oh, and don't do too much damage when you change plattforms because you can trigger the blood thing without knowing. Oh, and it was also an add fight with no real boss.

I know, that a guy like deathwing would be impossible for "normal guys" to beat - but what about... I don't know EVERY OTHER BOSS in the game? We killed the Lichking by smashing his face all the way from 100% to 0%. We didn't attack... the Frozen Throne while the Lichkings summons ghouls. We hit him in the face!
We had the support of every dragon aspect on Deathwing, that should do the job and allowing us take on the whole dragon and not only his "immune system".

TL;DR: Spine and Madness are very, very bad and boring encounter designs, the worst end expansion boss up to this date and they don't make more sense than any other boss in the game. A failure all along.

[Deleted]

It was shit from beginning to end...bosses had great potential, but ended up as retarded fights.

[Puppy]

I cleared all heroic DS and tiers before it and I have to say... DS was really boring after a while.
The biggest flaw about the raid is that it lasted too long and the Deathwing encounter was really bad.
Now don't get me wrong but Wrath was one of my favourite expansions, I loved ICC, ToGC, and Ulduar I mean I farmed ICC for almost a full year!! and never got tired of it.


Cata was just a bad expansion in my opinion

[Deleted]

Because "Deathwing has awakened, oh look he flew into the Maelstrom and killed every one" wouldn't make a very good expansion or story.

Well that's a better story than "Dragon awakens, half arses shattering the world, vanishes for a year doing naff all, comes back to visit a dragon temple and promptly run away, only to finally moments before death remember he can recast his world shattering spell"...

That is the extent of Deathwing's villainy in Cataclysm. At least Arthas HAD a plan with his actions (lure the mightiest heroes to Northrend test their worth in battle and convert them into scourge), Deathwing had nothing.

[TrollShaman]

I only liked it because most of my 85 alts could raid that place, giving them equality to some degree as well as being able to raid with friends and casual guildmates for only that tier.
What I don't like about the raid is the duration of the tier which was way too long, which ends up repetitive and boring the more I enter the raid.

[Kisho]

I like it when I step back and look at what happens in the background, it really is a last stand. Blizzard did not convey the feeling well when actually playing through it.

This is a good way of putting it. When you step back and think about what's happening, then it should've felt tense, exciting, and desperate. But that feeling just didn't come across for some reason.

It seems to be a re-occuring theme really... The Halls of Reflection, where the last boss is us running away from the Lich King, didn't really come across as a desperate rush for survival either. I think it's something to do with the MMO setting; there's never any danger, because you know you can come back again next week.

On that note, Algalon is a potential example of getting that feeling of desperation, with the 1 hour timer. After 1 hour, no more attempts at all in that week. That gave you the tense atmosphere, but it also had its downsides (disconnections could really screw you over, for example).

It's a tricky feeling to convey and difficult to get right, especially in an MMO setting. So that could definitely contribute to DS falling a bit flat. The boss fights themselves were quite fun, and it's certainly a better raid than almost anything from Vanilla and some TBC raids, but it just wasn't enough for many reasons.

A shame, but hey. Blizz is learning from their mistakes; MoP is far and away the best expansion we've ever had, especially for the raids.