Comments on Life of a Nin: Placing the Lich King

:P, as I have said many times before, I am a raide...

2009-04-02T15:13:00.000Z

:P, as I have said many times before, I am a raider. There is a limit to what Blizzard can put into a single person encounter without losing the essence of you having any effect on it, a 5 man can emulate many of the aspects of 25 man raiding (see for example Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace, the fight had many of the same aspects as actually fighting Kael'thas himself [phases 4 and 5] but with a much reduced populace). 25 man offers a lot of options, but in many ways can be tuned less than a 10 man can be (see ZA vs BT, the only equivalent I can think of for messing up was Sunwell tuned to about the same as ZA[and was thus harder since (1-error)^25 is way less than (1-error)^10).

Questing is nice, they did a good job in that and this expansion plays a lot better in those terms than TBC did, it is more linked, more interesting and perhaps more fun, but then I levelled through the area on my Paladin in 3 days, and on my DK in about 6, my priest and lock will do similarly if I ever get around to them. The content is nice, but for a raiding player where you want epic fights that really test your skills and co-ordination, WoTLK is lacking in a way even Karazhan wasn't.

I would give Blizzard kudos for their questing and layout, but the game spends so little time in that stage that while it is an interesting point, and likely sets them apart from games like WAR (which while heavily linked held less interest than the "slay 6 koblds" quests in elwynn. In a game heavily focused around the endgame, to the extent of making 70 levels of content effectively useless (and I still run BT, Hyjal etc for the fun of it) then it cannot be considered to be their main focus. In terms of dungeons, yes they are pretty and ok, but the fact is with the associated difficulty of heroics, so many instances beyond Violet Hold got skipped (I know I saw UK, Nexus, and I think VH, then heroic versions of the rest). To interest an end-game player you need to have interesting end-game content, and lacking an SH or MGT dungeon to play with, all we have is raids.

When you say the Wrath content is of lower quality...

2009-04-02T14:57:00.000Z

When you say the Wrath content is of lower quality, I have to disagree.

Perhaps the -raid- content, but the overall content (i.e. quests) is thought to be much better in Wrath by many.

~Syrana

There is very little added to the fight, DPS basic...

2009-04-02T14:31:00.000Z

There is very little added to the fight, DPS basically stands in the area where Sartharion initially occupies meaning their objectives are:

Move slightly to avoid firewalls (about 5 yards).

Move slightly to avoid Void Zones (about 10 yards)

Void zones will typically have one of three spawning points, the healer group (4-5 healers + add tank), the ranged group, or the melee group + drake tank. There is very little situational awareness required because the threats are very well defined, the side of the area you stand on makes you safe from one lava wave, the other gives you a long time to know its coming (as add tank I rarely notice waves from the right). The void zones could actually be avoided by putting one person on follow.

The adds themselves, if they end up in the melee, they die with no major issues (the raw amount of AoE damage in a melee group doing single target dps is high), in the ranged they are taunted or pulled by the add tank, and on the healers they are auto-pulled by the aoe effects of the tank. Adds if handled correctly have almost no impact on the fight (and I have tanked 4 waves of Tenebron whelps).

The fight can either be classified as a raw dps race (which denies the fact Blizzard tried to add control elements), or its a badly implemented control fight because it relies on pretty specific raid setups to allow a tank to survive the killer breahts (which you cannot realistically kill the disciples to avoid as your DPS is too low if you treat this as a control fight).

This fight is far more like Thaddius than it pretends to be, it is a dps race pretending to be a control fight, but with elements that heavily punish "good" players who are not necessarily the best in terms of keeping up a full rotation while interrupted by elements or at noticing the simple positional requirements of the waves.

Perhaps it is more boring as a tank, but I know myself, our sarth tanks and drake tank all basically sit and watch tv while playing, by positioning the elements of the fight correctly we don't have much to do in terms of fun. I see a lot of DPS, Healers moving more than they need to, running around and reducing their dps and effectiveness beyond what they need to. I suppose part of that is that there is no real threat in 95% of the fight, the whelps and adds physically cannot kill me if my healer is alive, in contrast the adds on Akama basically demanded 1.5-2 healers and could push you. Having done the fight in a dps role, again it didn't occur to me that this fight is difficult or interesting because you don't need to pay attention to many of the things people do, by losing their focus on their role, they see it as far more difficult than it is.

I don't quite follow you here. I find the Sarth+3d...

2009-04-02T06:36:00.000Z

I don't quite follow you here. I find the Sarth+3d fight very much techincal, demanding a lot of moving, situational awareness and coordination to properly deal with waves, void zones, adds of all sorts and portals. And being technical isn't enough, you've got to do tons of raw dps as well. How could this be boring?
Or is it boring just from a tank's point of view? Perhaps it's more challenging and fun for a ranged dps?