EN was a bit of a joke after clearing heroic, the mechanics was pretty simple to do. After NH came out, it did 1UP EN, but I feel they could do so much more for this expansion's raids. Hoping ToS will be more different.
EN was a bit of a joke after clearing heroic, the mechanics was pretty simple to do. After NH came out, it did 1UP EN, but I feel they could do so much more for this expansion's raids. Hoping ToS will be more different.
En was bad and the other two are ok at best.
Not at all impressed with the raid design in Legion so far.
EN was pretty forgettable overall outside of Eye and Cenarius. I really expected more from that, especially Xavius.
ToV was ok but Odyn is really wayyy too long of a first fight, and it was overtuned for the crap gear it gave.
Nighthold is pretty great, the only bosses I'm not too big a fan of are Botanist and Tichondrius, and even then I don't hate them anywhere near as much as I hate some bosses in other raids (hello Immerseus and Tectus). I especially like Trilliax, Star Augur and Gul'dan.
Overall it's pretty good so far, but I'm hoping ToS and the Argus raid raise the bar.
Emerald Nightmare has cool fights but visually is just... bland. Red, red, red and red. Xavius encounter is a big disappointment... the encounter is easy and over simplistic, and the room is absurdly bland. Decent entry raid though.
Trial of Valor is awesome. Every fight is super cool and original, and it's short with not much trash. I really liked it. Mythic wise, it was AWESOME in regards of encounters (pre-nerf, of course, before they nerfed it to oblivion and turned it into shit). Loved it through and through. 10/10
Nighthold is very cool aesthetically (? hard word), and some fights are awesome, so, i'm pleased with it. Augur Mythic pre-nerf was probably the best encounter in the expansion so far, but the nerfs really trivialized most of the phases and i'm sad to have not completed it 'on time'. I like it, it's really diverse and beautiful.
Can't wait for Tomb, even if its more green demon'ish stuff.
Mythic odyn and star augur are some of my favorite fights in all of wow. EN was kinda eh. Tov was great and NH is pretty good too. Mythic botanist and mythic ilgynoth are some of my most hated wow bosses
You do, but that's not the same as FL. In EN you have to enter into some strange misty portal thing, and have some load screens which just kill the pace of the game.
In Firelands, there's ZERO load screens, zero misty things to wait and walk through. Everything is just clear wide open up for you to chose where you want to go.
Meh. Most bosses have been fairly boring this expansion. Some of them are hard, but not exciting or fun. IMO it's an over reliance on instant raid wipe mechanics where if even a single person makes a single mistake it's game over. I'm more a fan of if you screw up then you die, rather than the whole raid.
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I love this expansion. Raids are challenging
Overall I've really enjoyed it, many fights are epic and NH difficulty was tuned just right. M EN was definitely too easy, but it gave me a big confidence boost to try out mythic raiding, and now I'm part of a 6/10M guild and loving it. Encounters that really stood out to me this tier were Ilgynoth, Cenarius, Star Augur, Spellblade, Elisande, and Gul'Dan.
That being said, Blizz need to chill out with the "don't stand in the bad" mechanics for some fights, namely Botanist/Odyn. Sometimes dynamic movement-heavy fights work well, like Helya or Trilliax, but sometimes it looks like they just bloated a boss' toolkit with a metric fuckton of random AoE abilities. I'm a caster DPS and I get that we have to have some drawbacks, but when you spend 95% of the fight worrying about canceling a cast and constantly having to plan movement 10 seconds ahead, it gets tiring sometimes.
Sorry, but I disagree, Firelands was terrible. Everything was in the same colour tone, no variety, everything orange, and everything before Majordomo had the same rocks in there, maybe with slight difference with Beth having also spider webs. Many fights were stupid and annoying too.
From memorable raids you forgot to mention Ulduar and Throne of Thunder, both with a lot of bosses, variety of visuals / surroundings, and generally epic feeling. ICC / HFC were big, varied and epic in a way too.
Now, EN suffers the same syndrome as Firelands = everything looks the same, the same textures of red and black, only Xavius room isn't because... it's empty. Also it broke my old pc. Still baffles me how an empty room could ruin my fps so much I had to buy a new pc. Didn't like the place, the only cool fight was maybe Ilgynoth, mostly because he says weirdo crap and everyone was speculating like mad what does it forecast.
TOV - Odyn was cool, but very melee unfriendly. Guarm was lame design, for dps it was pure patchwerk while all the work was on healers and raid leaders to figure the dispel puzzle. Also before the nerf the most common strat obsoleted at least half the tank classes. Helya... in a different scenario it could've been a cool fight, in Legion she brought out all the flaws of top raiding: exploiting, class stacking, being forced to nolife farm AP. Also the instance launched very buggy, because the patch was rushed.
NH is kinda cool of a raid with varied interiors (and outdoor areas), varied bosses, nice graphics and interesting mechanics. Again, it was tainted by the class design and system design that existed during the time NH was released. First, it emphasized the disparities between "good" and "bad" specs. The "bench your fire mages for DHs" was a common advice in early days of Krosus progression. Again, half the tank and healer specs were underdogs. Early star augur mythic was "must have holy pala + resto shaman + guardian druid maybe brewmaster monk end of story" no wonder he got hotfixed in like a week or so... System design flaws was the "must have 54 traits for second half of mythic" and "no upgrades from mythic unless titanforged", which generally creates burnout and wave of mass quitting I didn't even see during the boredom days of HFC, SOO or Dragon Soul.
NH would be a really amazing raid if the system design team and class design team did their job properly, all the memorable old raids be it Ulduar or HFC or SOO had specific difficulty curve, and feeling of progression, there were odd easier or harder bosses here and there but overall it felt more smooth, in NH you had 3 blocks of difficulty, and you still do, just Star Augur after nerf moved from block 3 to block 2.
But yeah, bosses like Aluriel, Star Augur, Elisande or Gul'dan are worth remembering. In EN most bosses are forgettable, well Cenarius is a major lore character so maybe he's a bit less forgettable. Anyway mythic Ursoc gets the prize for the "simplest yet most frustrating boss since hc Maloriak pre-nerf" (note: pre nerf Maloriak required you to decide in split second if the cast he is casting now is the one you need to absolutely interrupt or you wipe, or you absolutely cannot interrupt because you will wipe later on, and the casts weren't on predictable boss timer, he could cast them in either order, the nerf added a small "wind up" cast before the real channel, so you had more time to react)
NH also has this BT vibe we're again crawling from the sewers / underground up. The lore of the place is cool, the build up to NH opening gave it nice frame, it had potential to be so much more... The problem was heroic tripped over in a week even for mediocre / low mythic guilds and then these guilds would proceed to be bored of easy heroic yet stuck on some early mythic bosses hopelessly. I would hope TOS heroic is actually harder and a better bridge between normal and mythic.
Also 7.1.5. reshuffling of class / spec balance paired with "it's expected to have 54 traits when you're into second half of mythic" unfairly punished people who invested in nerfed specs / classes and set them behind. Our mages had to switch from fire to frost and while in any other expansion this would be a small deal in this one it's a major effort. I'm worried for 7.2.5 before TOS, especially for rogues, warlocks, healer priests and monk / druid tanks, pray Blizzard knows what they're doing...
And yes, raid experience can be tainted by inept class balance, TOT was a cool raid, but what is remembered most are broken UVLS warlocks, ICC was a cool raid, but the endless wars over armor pen loot and deathbringer's will weren't funny, mythic Blackhand was cool but tainted by the notion "do you have boomkins / hunters to do the balconies". Heroic Lich King was epic, but again it was "hope you have a disc priest or at least a good resto druid with val'anyr".
One day Blizzard's balance and class design team will stop ruining the gorgeous work of artists and encounter designers who create all the awesome bosses and interiors*. One day...
* except TOGC, Firelands and EN, I swear their environmental artists went on vacation and the work was handed to interns. Excluding vanilla ofc because the game was still in toddler state back then so a lot is forgiven.
I raid on two of my toons (see sig below), but my other two alts aren't far behind them in gear and they've never done anything above N. My four toons are currently (equipped) 910, 905, 895, and 894. I do run some M+ on all of them, but you can gear up pretty good just from WQs, the world bosses, and nethershard vendor.
"I Am Vengeance. I Am The Night. I Am Felfáádaern!"
I stopped playing after M ToV progression but EN and ToV werent bad but they werent great either. Also, I dont agree with what you say about WoD and MoP raids being terrible. I would say that BRF and TOT were pretty awesome. I would say my top 5 favorite raids were:
1. Ulduar
2. ICC
3. Black Temple
4. Firelands
5. Kara