Do or Die (I Think I've Said This Before?)

There is mention that Cata raids are gimmicky and it’s true, but that’s also true of previous Wrath raids as well, they were just more simple or only required passive action to avoid (mostly). You also didn’t have a cap on the number of battle rezzes and most of the mechanics weren’t a matter of do or die.

Think back to the Naxx fights and you’ll see they had gimmicks too, they were just more forgiving for the most part or could be countered by anyone. Cata? Not so much. You need more specific roles to counter some of the gimmicks.

Think about it.

Spider Queen popped little spiders, webbed people to the web and had a phase where everyone was webbed.
Four Horsemen were spread out and you needed to ensure every one of them was engaged and in range of a target or they’d AOE the raid down.
The safety dance.
Spore management.
Dealing with zombies that could feed that big undead dog that did that rampage thing.
Thaddius with the whole positive/negative bit.
Splitting groups for the whole live side/dead side boss.
Charming the students and using them to tank the instructor.
Sapphiron with the ice blocks and ducking behind them, dodging ice storm.
Kel’Thuzzad with all the little things to worry about and adds.
Malygos wasn’t one big gimmick?
Sarth a little less so, short of the bouncing into the voids and back out for some of the drakes.

There were a lot of gimmicks in the previous expansion so what makes Cataclysm raids different?

They’re tight.

Most of those gimmicks I mentioned above could be healed through or survived without too much effort and if you did fail and die, there was usually a battle rez available. Not so much now with 10 mans only being allowed one battle rez and when the mess ups almost always mean you’re dead.

Mess up on getting Rageface off someone? They die. Mess up and kill the pooches before Shannox is at a low point and he becomes a little too much to handle. Mess up and get Shannox a little too low and the dogs start slaughtering the raid.

Beth’tilac? Mess up on a drone or spiderlings and you’ll get overwhelmed or Beth’tilac will heal up to full when she comes down. This puts you at a hefty disadvantage because now your tanks and healers are going to be stressed because if they have one slip up the raid likely dies.

Can’t steer Lord Ryolith well enough? He hits the lava and wipes the raid. Can’t handle the adds? Healing becomes too intense. Can’t get him to walk over the active volcanoes? The raid healing could become unmanageable. Miss moving out of the way of a magma line? Ouch. (Admittedly he’s way easier after they increased the stacks of his armor that falls off and when

Mess up on the shard of torment Baleroc pops and lose a DPS that is supposed to suck it up and you’re not likely to recover and deal with future shards and if you do, you might not have enough DPS to beat the enrage. Healers don’t get enough stacks to heal the tanks? Ouch, raid is done.

Alysrazor – leave your druids at home. I kid, we tend to always lose our druids around this time regardless of whether they’re feral, resto or balance. But seriously, they seem to eat tornadoes and die. That’s if we get to the tornadoes without also having a hatchling up. DPS distracted by adds, heals focused hard on tanks, and if anything screws up it could be a wipe especially if you lost a tank attached.

It’s like playing with dominoes or building a house of cards, one mistake and it all tumbles down around you.

We’ve actually been able to pull off some recoveries or victories but it wasn’t easy. Was it rewarding? Maybe a little more than some of the simple fights but there is something negative to always feeling stressed.

This post was inspired after some coffee and having contemplated a post from Spinksville which was further musings based on a post from Malchome’s Mind on Gaming.