Raid design lessons for Blizzard from mythic Azshara

[Gaidax]

Good thing you dont know anything about the game.... Like I have no idea why people that barely play the game talk. When they are so fucking clueless. if 50%+ of tanks are monks, you're saying they arent stacked. Depsite being over 50% of all classes for X role

5 dps is generally 33% of the dps roster.

So 1 tank being monk pretty much always is 50% thus its stacked. So you're unable to do math, and unable to play the game. GL

You can hallucinate all you want, but class stacking != 2 of a single class in the raid regardless of the job.

Sheesh.

[Kuruption]

The only thing I hate about this fight so far (almost at the 2nd intermission) is the LoS mechanic. If they didn't have that, I'd probably enjoy it quite a bit more.

[BrioWoW]

You can hallucinate all you want, but class stacking != 2 of a single class in the raid regardless of the job.

Sheesh.

You're obviously being pedantic and know what they're talking about but for some reason just want to call them wrong for using terminology you don't like them using.

[jayheals]

drained soul was the biggest mistake of the fight, and easily could've been remedied 1st week to be a stacking DoT instead of HP reduction. It would've helped allow more varied healing comps by not being so heavily reliant on DR effects to survive spears/console releases. The LoS is frustrating on prog but if your raid is moving properly it gradually becomes a little less tilting

[Zyky]

Feel free to post your own thoughts about the Azshara encounter!

Mythic Azshara is a terrible encounter, similarly to KJ from last expansion. But the reality is they don't care, they don't want to improve. Ion has been doing Raid Encounters since Wrath, if he hasn't learned by now, he never will.

[Yunaqt]

That is entirely on you and/or your raid.

Outside of circumstances where someone will need to, for some reason run further LoS than normal, it's entirely possible to position your raid so that healers are able to always heal every single player when they are line of sighting Arcane Missiles. The only frustration I would imagine is potentially as a Disc Priest since your healing is part reliant on DPSing a target, I guess currently Paladin falls in to that category too.

In terms of being able to cast on friendly targets though it's entirely possible to have positions co-ordinated as a healer that you're in line of sight of all players when they're in line of sight of the boss or not.

nah it's fine as a Disc as you're los of the boss but you generally always have LOS on the Myrmidons / 3 adds which you should really be helping with anyway so I never found this being an issue.


Personally didn't mind the boss, felt fucking great when it died.

[rogoth]

General structure of the encounter
-It feels bad when half of the encounter is spent fighting adds instead of the boss. Madness of Deathwing was poorly received because of it. Azshara is not much better with the entirety of P1 and P3 (that's half the fight) being spent fighting adds. P2 is not much better with the only real threat being the race to bring Azshara into P3 before the indomitable spawns. Azshara herself only ever feels like a threat in P4. Lore-heavy bosses should have their encounters be all about themselves rather than no-name adds.

-If you insist on having adds, at least make them stand out in some way. Both Aethanel and Cyranus feel like generic mobs you would fight during a quest in Arathi Highlands rather than a part of a lore-heavy end boss.

-The fight is too long and exhausting. And the difficult part doesn't even start until you're halfway into P3. Either spread out the difficulty more evenly over the phases or condense the fight so that it's not a marathon. Having to reprogress through the snoozefest that P1 and P2 are in order to reach the hard part feels bad.

-Stop designing mechanics that are trivialized by WeakAuras. It feels like the difficult part was supposed to be decree and ward management but instead it's entirely trivial and you made all the difficulty come from bad RNG-y spear / beckon / burst overlaps in P3.

-Stop including forced movement mechanics until you fix pathing AI. Or better yet, stop including forced movement mechanics entirely. Period. It's atrocious when your character starts moving in weird, unpredictable ways and running into death zones.

-Stop including mechanics that everyone wants to skip. If a mechanic is so bad that not meeting the dps check to skip it is considered a wipe, you know you've got yourself a bad mechanic that should be removed.

-Mechanics that decrease your HP by a large % for the duration of the fight are shit, especially in tiers where you don't have a lot of stamina because of Benthic trash.

P1
-To reiterate my previous point: give us someone notable to fight. Maybe Nar'jira. Anyone is better than some edgy no-names.

-Stop it with the visual clutter. Holy fuck. I don't have perfect sight but arcane orb / lightning orb overlaps make me feel visually impaired. Make abilities look distinct with clear demarcation lines so that you know when you're safe and when you're not. Same applies to Divide and Conquer beam spawn line being invisible when it's running through the ward in the middle.

-The phase should end when you bring a boss to a % percent or kill the adds. Wiping because you killed the adds too fast and got another set of orbs / another beckon is dumb.

P2
-Not much to say. This phase is completely unremarkable. Fighting Azshara shouldn't feel like you're hitting a target dummy for a solid two minutes.

P3
-Myrmidon's spear throw should project a straight line so that you can line it with the sirens. Wiping because you missed the throw by 1 degree is dumb.

P4
-This phase surprisingly feels like a good bursty finish to the encounter. Azshara actually becomes a real, tangible threat and there's a lot of mechanics going on to keep you on your toes. Unlike in P2, fighting Azshara won't make you fall asleep.

In general, end bosses should feel like you're fighting the boss rather than a bunch of adds and there should be a strong theme going on throughout the fight. The Lich King and Cata Ragnaros are both good examples of enjoyable end bosses. Azshara just feels like a cluttered mess of abilities and adds, none of which are memorable.

Feel free to post your own thoughts about the Azshara encounter!

your post is contradictory, you complain about the fight being too long and quote lich king/rag firelands as good examples of fights, they were both very long (longer than any fights recently) and more punishing at the time compared to what we have now and were hated as much due to this enforced fight length.

[Taeldorian]

I thought azshara was “okay” overall. I think any fight that has a reduced HP% mechanic like this is a bit stupid because it heavily favors 1 specific healing class. This entire tier already heavily favored 2 healing classes, so much so that you have more representation from Hpals and Discs than you do from the other 4 combined in mythic, now add the fact azshara has a mechanic that is made so much easier with 1-2 discs and it’s a bit of a shitty tier for healers. Healer balance is certainly garbage right now in general though.

Regardless, I didn’t hate the fight but I didn’t love it either. The LoS mechanic wasn’t horrible once your raid got situated but I still heavily disliked it as a healer. I enjoyed p4 a lot, I thought p2 was fine, p3 was kind of shitty with the overlaps but not terrible. The only phase that I hated was p1, they’ve done this pretty consistently now where they have this long p1 that could be removed and make no difference. It’s completely unimpactful outside of having 4 or so people soak. Same thing with Jaina, her p1 was completely unimpactful and felt like a waste of time mixed with some atrocious spell queuing.

Overall, i thought it was alright. Nothing special but nothing bad either.

[bullseyed]

Lich King's adds augment him as a threat instead of completely overriding him. On Azshara I forget that she even exists in P1 and P3. Terrible.

I don't think your lack of mental capacity is something Blizzard can address. They cannot make you remember things.

[Jastall]

Blackhand was one of my favorite endbosses that went against the grain. Adds were never the main focus of the fight (p1 and 3 and 0 adds, p2 had adds that were handled by a small portion of the raid), and it was around 6-7 minutes long, mostly non stop action, and lacked any boring "filler" phase.

You completely remove P1 of Azshara and IMO it becomes a much better fight while not losing anything and barely becoming easier.

- - - Updated - - -



Blizzard is currently in an arms race against addon developers. It is nearly impossible for them to come out with mechanics that aren't trivialized by weak auras, so they respond by stuffing an entire raid's worth of mechanics into one boss. They could break weak auras (and in turn break a ton of addons) but then fights would have to go back to WoTLK/Cata level difficulty or easier.

Yeah, I really do think they should have axed PH1 and made them trash or something. It's boring, stupid easy and outside of Mythic doesn't even affect the later phases anyway. Much like axing Gul'dan's phase 1 in Mythic made the fight much better overall.

Overall it's not my favorite fight and I despise line of sight mechanics most of the time, but it is hardly as bad as the OP says it is. Most of the mechanics they whine about can easily be countered by good play and proper timing.

[Izenhart]

"raid design lessons"


lessons by who?


who do you think you are?