Friday, June 22, 2007

Rating Karazhan, Part III

(See Part I, Part II.)

Ahh, Nightbane. Hmm, I thought Blizzard said that Fear was going to be less important in TBC. Quite honestly, I don't really understand Blizzard and Fear. As far as I know, you need a warrior tank, or a dwarf/draenai priest, or two shaman to even have a reasonable chance of beating this fight. I just don't understand that logic. Sometimes I wonder if there's some other way of dealing with Fear that Blizzard thinks we should use.

Personally, I think boss Fears should work more like Intimidation: everyone except the main tank gets feared. That would make Fear-based fights much easier to deal with without raid-stacking, and make non-warrior tanks/non-dwarf priests more viable.

Aside from that, Nightbane is an okay fight. There's nothing really interesting in the fight, it's all about the tank breaking Fears, picking up Nightbane when he lands, and being topped off before Fear. In many ways, it's a very tank-healer-centric, old-school fight.

Final Grade - Nightbane: C+

In general, Karazhan is a pretty good instance, with a nice mixture of fights and bosses, along with some superb voice-acting. I'd say that it was better than Molten Core or AQ20, on par with Zul'Gurub, but worse than Blackwing Lair. (This being the extent of my pre-TBC raid experience.) However, it does suffer from three significant flaws.

First off, the instance is rather large, and thus the trash is excessive. Just running from the side door to Aran's room takes forever, and that's after you've killed all the trash. The entire instance pretty much needs to be thinned out.

Second, a lot of the fights are very biased toward ranged groups. Maiden, Curator, Prince, and Nightbane for example. In particular, I really wish that Blizzard would stop using chaining spells that do more damage to people near each other. Those alone make melee even more difficult than it already is.

Would Curator really be that much harder if the Astral Flares did a straight lightning bolt instead of a chain lightning? The melee dps already have to chase them down, and this would make having an extra rogue/shaman/paladin/warrior much less hurtful.

Third, the instance really lacks a solid epic capstone fight. MC was a very weak instance, but the presentation of Ragnaros was superb. Summoning him for the first time was awesome, and truly felt epic. Ossiran the Unscarred, Hakkar the Soulflayer, and Nefarian were all awesome end boss fights that finished off the instance with a bang.

I don't even know who the end boss of Karazhan is. It's possibly Prince Malchezzar, even though I have no idea what he's doing in Kara. Maybe it's Nightbane, given that it is a dragon fight, which is only accessible after a questline. Compounding the issue is that my guild beat Prince first, then Nightbane, and finally Netherspite.

Karazhan starts out really strong, but it ends in a whimper. However, overall it is a decent raid instance, and the individual boss fights are fairly strong. It's more the connections between bosses which are missing. Regardless, I'm really looking forward to the next raid instance.

Final Grade - Karazhan: B

Ranking of Boss Fights (best to worst):

A+: Moroes
A: Shade of Aran, Chess Event
B+: Curator, Prince Malchezzar
B: Attumen the Huntsman, Opera, Netherspite
B-: Terestian Illhoof
C+: Nightbane
C: Maiden of Virtue

7 comments:

  1. Yes, Nightbane's fear is about the only thing wrong with him. Having everyone but the tank get feared is one way, but not the best I'd say. I'd have him pick a random person, turn to them, then do a cone-based fear, then switch back to the tank without doing anything else while turned (so he doesn't turn and have a chance to cleave or something). Now positioning is more important, as are people's quick reflexes (if he turns to someone near you, can you quickly dart out of the cone before the fear goes off?).

    Fear ward and tremor totem would then be nice, but not must-haves (and usually reserved for healers). As would a DPS warriors berserker rage. This would make a DPS warrior highly valued on that fight (as they aren't currently), since they can dps full time, through fears.

    Overall, Kara is mostly good. A bit too annoying here and there, but overall doable by most of the WoW population.

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  2. i think they want the tank to stance dance .

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  3. "i think they want the tank to stance dance ."

    That doesn't work very well for Bears. Although, I could use my /dance emote and hope for the best. :P

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  4. and Karazhan isn't liner instance , so Blizzard can claim they have some mobs to certian classes

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  5. My guild just did Moroes, who is more or less a pretty easy fight. I have to agree that the trash respawns are really annoying. If you do a perfect clear, it means that you have about 3-4 attempts before you have to redo trash.

    Attumen is like...wtf. His trash is harder than him. I'd put him on a C due to how tank'n'spank he is.

    Moroes is interesting, its kinda silly that stacking priests/tanks into the raid makes this fight easy mode. We did it with 1Holy priest, 1 mana battery and 1 holy paladin and got him on the 2nd try. This guy is really a push over. Its on ok fight, I wouldn't rate it as an A+. Really it all comes down to whether your priests can spam a shackle macro.

    Maiden...what about this chick. Definetly an interesting fight, in my opinion very cool. The imagery on this boss is very nice, reminds one of Uldaman (which I thought was amazing and is really misunderstood) and has A LOT of factors going into it. I do agree that the holy wrath is a little silly, but my biggest grudge is on Holy Fire. So, the tank is getting hit for 2500, crushed because she attacks every 1.8 seconds, holy wrath'd and consecrated, the raid is getting repentanced for 3k and this thing can 1shot somebody? Im alright with a heavy hit component, but the DoT is ridiculous, it shouldn't 1shot somebody in 4 seconds if not dispelled. Not to mention that an unlucky Holy Fire+Repentance=gg to a raid member.

    Overall, I'm liking Karazhan very much at this point, except for 2 factors. 1. I hate you mr. respawn and 2. Too much pressure on healers, they still dont get to see the fights but 10 little green bars. I just think that the burst damage output in KZ is a little over the top, no wonder healers are quitting left and right.

    PS. Spectral Valets? WTF? Ok, the super-enrage at 50% + disarm is a cool mechanic, but a stun? Every once in a while they stun our tank and then proceed to 1shot him, thats just stupid.

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  6. I'm surprised the Opera fights didn't score higher - of all the bosses so far, those have been the biggest hit with my guildies. We're still giggling over the pervy "Run away little girl!" voice. ;)

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  7. Heh, it would behoove me to read down to where you actually graded the Opera in your previous post. :-P Comment rescinded!

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