Taken from the front page:
Prior to my time in WoW, I spent a lot of time in EQ raiding (8 Years worth). There are various boss mechanics I've seen some of which were good, others bad. Some have been modified and added to WoW as time has gone on. These are some interesting Mechanics I've come across that I don't recall seeing in WoW, but I haven't done most of the TBC raids, so I may be off base.Solution 3: Surprise
More encounters need more surprises more often. The best recent example of an encounter that utilized good surprises was Twin Valkyrs, though this can be pushed much further without making raiding unenjoyable. Another good example of Surprise in raiding are the Anubisaths in the caverns between Princess Huhuran and Twin Emperors, which would randomly use two ultimate abilities that necessitated entirely different strategies be coordinated on the fly.
A poor example of Surprise came in the hallways immediately after Twin Emperors with the random groups of trash mobs. Pulling too many of the mind-controlling mobs made pulls extremely frustrating. Surprises should not offer significant differences in difficulty, only significantly different requirements in approach.
Various NPC abilities:
Flurry: Boss gets an additional attack randomly. In EQ this was 2 Attacks, but bosses would hit 2-4 times per combat round.
Mana Drain: A Common effect which limited encounter duration due to a persistent / uncurable mana drain effect. This was sometimes varied as to be avoidable, and if the casters did not move in time they'd lose a sizable chunk of their mana pool. This is different then General V in Ulduar which negated regen, but didn't actually drain it.
Banishment: The current tank (or a random player) would randomly be banished to a different part of the instance. Sometimes they were able to fight back to the main raid group, sometimes not. As I understand it a mechanic similar to this has been included in the Lich King encounter.
Death Touch: A Fairly lame ability which allows a given NPC to instantly kill someone regardless of Hitpoints or Resists. This was added to adds whcih required kitting or to some of the older God encounters which would instantly kill the tank every 30 seconds of combat.
Infuriate: Randomly fires at a given health percentage, hitting everyone in melee range for huge damage.
Weapon Immunity: Another unpopular mechanic which only weapons which contained a given Bane: Mobtype could actually damage the boss.
The Are you paying attention Mechanic: There said mob would alternate between being dealing massive damage to anyone in melee, allowing only spell damage, to reflecting all spells, and allowing only melee damage. People who did not move and attack as appropriate died quickly.
The subgroup doing something special while the main raid kills the mob mechanic: Requires the raid divided and doing two totally different things, which must be done to kill the boss. Similar to the Thorim encounter, except combat may not be required, and they may not even be in similar parts of the instance.
The lame zone wide AE instances: Zone Wide AE punishes everyone, lowering spell damage, stats, defensive skills and attack power. Various conjured items (which disappear on death no less) provide immunity to the effect. Raid is under a timer to disable the effect by meeting some pre-defined standard, or effect becomes permanent during the raid ID.
The Are you dead yet mechanic: Boss or Adds put out excessively high raid damage on a consistent basis making healing exceptionally difficult.
The Hah! I am immune to X skill mechanic: NPC randomly becomes immune to various melee skills and spell schools changing every X seconds. IE: Daggers deal 10% damage, next change swords drop and so on. Magic Schools get full resists for the duration requiring casters to pay attention to what they cast.
The You need to offtank me mechanic: Because the NPC instantly respawns at full health if it's killed.
Often encounters would mix and match several of these abilities, the hardest of which comes to mind as the following.
Boss AEs every 20 seconds for a significant amount of damage which also applies a curable mana drain.
Boss is immune to all damage
NPCs in room spawn adds which can be charmed to hurt boss. (Like Instructor in Naxx)
Boss Randomly banishes primary aggro target to different location in instance.
Primary Aggro target has 10 seconds to move from landing location or instantly dies.
Locked Doors between Banished Player and Main Raid Force
Various NPCs in the room instantly respawn if killed.
In Closing:
Surprise is good, and important and there is certainly more the WoW team can do. Additionally, it's very easy to go overboard like in my example above.
All good examples of how you can still be creative even with current mechanics. The banishment one sounds like fun. Ports one of the tanks to a random place in the instance, and he has to fight back to the main group on his own before the other tank gets to X debuffs or something. That'd be fun.
My name is Dread and I would happily support this effort were Blizzard to think of doing such things. I feel horrible in an endgame surrounded by people who's new gear allows them in, but their lack of skill, spatial awareness and general dedication to a cause causes others who put in work to get discouraged. I think re-introducing surprise and random effects as well as many of the mechanics mentioned in the OP would help weed out. I'm not saying don't let the wannabe's in, but maybe separate the content further than normal and hard mode. Maybe make the hard modes harder, and in turn add a bunny mode under normal which requires minimal movement or GTFOOF moments.
"There are no men like me...only me."
-Kingslayer
Like the Gandling encounter in Scholomance!Originally Posted by Reev
Be a Champion, not a hero.
Drae
Ha! I totally forgot about that encounter. Shows how long it's been since I've had a reason to run Scholo.
What about the Spanish Inquisition? No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Hi Lavache!
How's the Taco's?
Be a Champion, not a hero.
Drae
Scholo!!!
Love it! Though with mechanics like that, tank danage/DPS certainly *would* matter.
Last edited by Scotteq; 02-25-2010 at 07:16 AM. Reason: Smrtphon spelin iz bad... MmmmmKay?
delicious as always! although moving sucks...
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks