[Pasucon]

With the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King looming over WoW's player base like a giant pink bat (if you catch that reference you're damn good), there's a lot of talk around here recently about "design philosophy" and class balance. A lot of the talk is not very constructive, but it does not have to be that way. With all of the encounters of TBC currently in-game and cleared, this is an excellent time for the tanking community to step back and evaluate each fight from the perspective of each of our current tanking classes. I suggest that we do this as an exercise to really get to the nitty gritty of what IS good design, and what ISN'T. Who knows? Perhaps Blizzard will take some cues as to what we find fun, and what we do not. In order to keep things organized, I will list all the bosses of TBC. If you wish to take part in this project

1) Choose a fight to analyze (one that you have completed)
2) List each phase and the bosses abilities
3) Evaluate the tactics you used in the encounter
4) Present your opinion of the fight from the perspectives you feel qualified to assess

As we manage to find definitive analyses of each fight from each perspective, we will be able to see where each class performed well, performed poorly, was worthless, was necessary, etc.

Bosses of TBC and the perspectives needed [P= Pally, W= Warrior, D= Druid]

Kara
-------
Attumen and Midnight (PWD)
Moroes (PWD)
Maiden (PWD)
Curator (PWD)
Shade of Aran (PWD)
Illhoof (PWD)
Netherspite (PWD)
Prince (PWD)
Nightbane (PWD)

Intermediates
--------------------
High King Maulgar (PWD)
Gruul (PWD)
Magtheridon (PWD)


Tempest Keep
---------------------
Void Reaver (PWD)
A'lar (PWD)
Solarian (PWD)
Kael'thas (PWD)


Serpentshrine Cavern
--------------------------------
Hydross (PWD)
Lurker (PWD)
Karathress (PWD)
Morogrim (PWD)
Leotheras (PWD)
Vashj (PWD)


Zul' Aman
---------------
Nalorakk (PWD)
Akil'Zon (PWD)
Jan'alai (PWD)
Halazzi (PWD)
Malacrass (PWD)
Zul'Jin (PWD)


Black Temple
--------------------
High Warlord Naj'entus (PWD)
Supremus (PWD)
Shade of Akama (PWD)
Teron Gorefiend (PWD)
Gurtogg Bloodboil (PWD)
Reliquary of Souls (PWD)
Mother Shahraz (PWD)
Illidari Council (PWD)
Illidan Stormrage (PWD)


Mount Hyjal
------------------
Rage Winterchill (PWD)
Anetheron (PWD)
Kaz'rogal (PWD)
Azgalor (PWD)
Archimonde (PWD)

Sunwell
-----------
Kalecgos (PWD)
Brutallus (PWD)
Felmyst (PWD)
Eredar Twins (PWD)
M'uru (PWD)
Kil'jaeden (PWD)


Notable Trash
--------------------
Feel free to comment on any trash of note.



WHEW. That's a lot of bosses. So, I know there are a lot of strong opinions out there; here is your chance to back them up. As a general rule of thumb, it's probably a good idea to start with your assessment of the highest content you've completed; if you've tanked Kil'jaeden, please tell us your thoughts on him rather than Attumen . If we're going to debate which class is best / which class is getting the least love / which fights are best for all tanks, let's do it right! Perhaps in so doing we will expose which game mechanics work best, and which should be examined.

[Pasucon]

Reserved one, just in case.

[Pasucon]

...well, one more. In case the idea proves worthwhile.

[protonly]

A bad design exmple would be pre-nerf Nightbane. It wasn't any of the phases or skeletons that was the problem: it was the fear mechanic. This was back when if the tank got feared then Nightbane would attack the raid randomly until the tank got his attention again (usually a wipe).

He was for all intents and purposes untankable by anyone but a warrior. For druids/pallys to tank him, you had to stack your raid for it: dwarf only priests for fear ward, shammys for tremor totem, pvp trinket, pally-bubble-macro, etc. A warrior could easily stance-dance it whereas a non-warrior required a lot more hand holding and even then it wasn't reliable. And a warrior with fear ward could be really lazy while horde warriors had to work a little harder.

For most guilds, you just left him alive if you coudn't find a warrior to tank him because of that one ability. They might as well have designed a fight where the tank would get polymorphed every 45 seconds.

[Horacio]

Magtheridon.....good/bad for the same reason. Good it forced everyone to participate and perform thier job in order for the raid to succeed. A single mistake meant a wipe. But if you have 23-24 people playing at the top of thier game and busting thier balls to win and one nimrod screws up, on person's internet connection dies, etc. Its over.

Hydross : here, go get blacksmithing to max level, burn a ton of primals and some nethers and get your resistance up. FOR ONE FIGHT IN THE GAME....the FIRST BOSS IN T5 content. Oh wait....you need TWO tanks with different resists.

[Tatt]

I always despised the HKM fight...unless you could get 25 people to understand the positioning, timing, and assignments of that fight, it made it ridiculously hard for T4. WTB pocket mage tank

[kolben]

Worst:
I have to agree with Horacio, Hydross. The fight is fun, it's a neat encounter. But, it completely boggles the mind why they created a super heavy resist gear requirement for one fight, and two different types. To even make that crap you need to a) get exalted rep with two factions to have access to the patterns (came naturally but still...) b) gather shloads of stupid mats wasting time that could be spent with the g/f or training the dogs for duck season c) it's useless anywhere but that one fight and d) you need crap from a jewel crafter too.

Best/Favorite:
Al'ar

This is a personal choice. I just love a good smooth Al'ar fight. No deaths, perfect tank movements, minimal flame buffets, smooth transitions on melt armor etc. Nobody noob dying in the fire, it just feels good. Easily my favorite fight in T5, and a throwback to the great multi-tank boss fights of pre-TBC.


Magtheridon gets my vote as the easiest to screw up even for veterans.
Nightbane is my favorite in KZ, dragon fights ftw!
Tidewalker is neat and strangely funny, must be the murlocs
Rage Winterchill is that "hey i've done this before in AQ20" boss

Zul'Aman is cool, I like it there. I view most of the fights as a healing/dps output test though, it's not like you can't brute force several of the boss fights.

I have not gotten very far into T6, so I can't comment on the BT stuff. I can tell you that pre-TBC encounters were just more interesting to me. Just take a look at some bosses like Razorgore, Vael, Maexxna, Prophet, C'Thun, the Twin Emperors, Patchwerk, Osirian, Hakkar, Jin'Do. Fecking Buru! You can't top that, exploding bug brains... awesome. I was disappointed they never upgraded some of that content so you can still raid it for reasons other than nostalgia.

[jtgrosskopf]

I'm going to take Archimonde. This fight pretty much sucks for everyone, especially in the learning stages. For melee dps, you need split second reactions or an ability that can take doomfire off yourself (rogue) or you need to be able to heal yourself (druids/shaman/paladins). So, this fight looks simple enough...you stand there and dps the boss.

Don't die, don't get the doomfire debuff, don't crater...doesn't sound that hard does it... What they don't tell you is that doomfire used to be ridiculously unpredictable (i.e...it would drop behind melee and run into the melee immediately), there are spots on the map where your Tears of the Goddess just decided not to work (ranged always had trouble near the fake "walls"), and sometimes, Archimonde would just decide to be a giant jerk and 1 shot your tank. And if people died in the learning stage...you were pretty much out of luck. Even now, with everyone in t6 gear and above, it takes a good amount of coordination to not wipe when more than 2 or 3 people die. Oh yeah...don't forget the fears...the only advantage I really had on this fight as a dps warrior.

I'm sure there have been some guilds that went in there and wiped it out, but for most semi casual guilds...this fight straight up blows. I know, in my experience, I was always the only melee who didn't have some way to get out of the doomfire debuff. As a dps warrior...you just can't really do it.

All in all, this fight did not have a teririble design. I thought the fight was fairly innovative. I think the execution behind the doomfire and knock up abilities was not that great, but blizzard did fix these well and made them work consistently.

My favorite fight - Teron Gorefiend - I could play the construct minigame all day! I was the first person in the guild to get the debuff on our first attempt, and I nailed it. I always hope i get it in the fight. Plus, if I'm dead...I can go make a sammich.

[Worldie]

I'll give my 2 cents on one of the most boring fights ever

Illidari Council

Not sure what they had in mind when making this fight... the idea is fine, loads of AoE to move out of, but it's just repeating the last crap for 10+ mins...
On tank side, it's basically a snoorefest unless you tank the paladin.
Specifically:
1) Paladin add: mainly supposed to be tanked by a warrior (spellreflect) and not inteded to be tanked by a paladin (consecration overlap = mad melees hehe). Aggro him and drag him around the room for 10 mins.
2) Priest add: if you are a warrior, maybe this could be interesting to do, since you can actually make urself useful by interrupting. For a druid or paladin, generate aggro for 60-70 seconds, then go afk.
3) Rogue-add: probably inteded to be tanked by a druid or a paladin due to the bubbles (paladins and druids got a way to pick him whenever he's bubbled, warriors have troubles if he gets BoP), it's like, hit him, afk 60 seconds, hit him, afk 60 seconds, repeat...


Snorefeast, really.

[Karih]

The priest add for a warrior is only barely more exiciting, since you still spend time not attacking during Reflective shield and Melee immune shield.

Honestly that fight goes on about 5 minutes to long.

[Lieris]

The best: Kael'thas Sunstrider
After clearing some of the most annoying trash in the game you finally enter the room that is host to Kael and his advisors. He gives a long speech (which everyone who has done this boss knows off by heart :P) and sends out one by one his advisors to deal with you like a typical videogame last boss or Saturday morning cartoon villain. They are kind of laughable all by themselves but coordinating where they die takes some strategy and laughing at whoever died to Thaladred doesn't get old. Once they are dead Kael animates their weapons for you to AOE down and grab them before he resurrects his advisors who you have to fight all at once. The clock doesn't stop ticking because Kael will enter the fray after a certain amount of time, so you need to have killed 3 advisors or raid resources will be spread a bit too thin. The DPS check here was perfect, it forced people to play better and it was not super dependent on setup, you just had to take your best players.

Each weapon as well as having amazing stats also had special functions that were critical to combat Kael's abilities. A dagger to dispel mind controls, a staff to prevent disorientates, a mace that gives reduced fire damage, an axe that grants hasted attacks and movement and a shield that absorbs 100K damage on a 30 second cooldown. This was easily the best mechanic in all of TBC because it made everyone feel like a badass and contributed to the epic feel of the fight.

Kael's most notorious attack is the pyro blast, an interruptible fire spell with a 4 second cast time that hits the main tank for 50K (25K if the mace buff is up as it should be) that he will cast 3 times in succession or until one is interrupted. Problem is he has a shield that absorbs 100K damage that has to be DPSed down before a kick can get in. Using the legendary shield the tank can completely absorb the first cast after which it's up to the DPS to stop the next one. Some people cheese it by using fire protection potions, nightmare seeds, last stand or shield wall but really that's just compensating for lousy DPS! :P He can also periodically mind control 3 people which has to be dispelled quickly using the dagger (they can be sheeped too). Ret paladins and arms warriors can be deadly if not dealt with as they easily carve up several clothies in quick succession!

When Kael reaches 50% health he levitates and shatters the roof of Tempest Keep. This phase is all about staying calm and staying alive as the only DPS requirement is getting rid of the eggs so you don't get swamped by phoenixes. Like in his (lame) MrT appearance he turns the entire room into a swimming pool but unless you swim up his butt it's easy to stay alive. It's quite common here for people to get complacent or over excited and so make a mess of what is a fairly easy conclusion to the fight. The feeling our guild got when he killed him for the first time and entered Hyjal/BT together having earned our attunement was incredible, a truly magical evening.

Kael was a perfect fight because you got better in increments, constantly giving you a feeling of accomplishment on wipe nights and it's still my most memorable first kill. I am lucky to have experienced this fight both as MT and as retribution as I thoroughly enjoyed both. As a big Warcraft 3 fan my expectations were exceeded.

[Lieris]

The worst: M'uru
This fight is a compilation of bad ideas that was used to stall progress. It's Shade of Akama but with a DPS requirement that makes Brutallus look like Attumen, with complete intolerance of any sub-optimal setup so if one day only 2 warlocks are online or only 1 rogue, or only 2 shamans you should just call it (all situations my guild as experienced). During summer this is all the more difficult.

Phase 2 involves zerging the first boss from Arcatraz with the same dark puddles and this time with purple orbs that ping pong you around the place and make the MT lose aggro if effected. The lighting in the room is dark and most of the floor is black so good luck spotting them among the train of fire elementals and melee! If you get a chain of orbs spawning inside the boss then tough luck.

There is no lore either, no opening talky bit, no emotes, no voices, nothing. It makes it feel all the more unfinished and dreary.

The best bit? Well, there's only about 10 minutes of trash so re-clearing is kind of painless. It was nerfed recently but it's still every bit as tedious and depressing. So far two guilds on my realm have disbanded after reaching M'uru. :/