Personally, I'm done with this raid and I want it to be over. Moreso than I was with ICC even 5 more months into the tier. I'm reading a lot of "meh" and "it was alright I guess" in the comments and I'm glad I'm not the only one. I generally found the raid pretty boring as a DPS all around and

Morchok - 5/10 - Boring. Stack up and pewpew. Even on heroic where the difference is "you guys stack up over there, we'll stack up over here. Now stack up and pewpew".

Yorsajh (or however the crap you spell it) - 7/10 - The different combinations of oozes and dealing with them on the fly was a cool idea. However the fact that, as a DPS, it comes down to "stack up and pewpew" or "spread out a little bit and pewpew" kind of killed it for me. This is one of those fights that I think should have brought all the heroic mode mechanics into normal mode.

Zon'nozz - 4/10 on normal, 8/10 on heroic - Again, stack up and pewpew. Heroic mode is how the fight should have been. It's far more interesting to chase down adds all over the room, multi dotting on the run under a time crunch than it is to just stack and pewpew repeatedly.

Hagara - 3/10 - Again, the Heroic version should have been the status quo rather than the bonus. The lightning phase is particularly boring for me as a DPS because, while the rogues and mages are chaining lightning around, the rest of the DPS without some form of movement speed boost are standing in the center staring at the boss soaking up AoE heals. If there's one thing Blizzard should take away from that fight, it's that there should ALWAYS be something to kill. More than anything, though, I just find her to be an annoying and pointless boss with little to no personality. Her dialogue is cliche and uninteresting, her voice work is "standard female orc" and her little quirk with calling you "pups" all the time is just bizarre and out of place. It's something that would have worked for Shannox since he had the two fire-dog adds . . . but the random orc chick with ice and lightning phases and no sign anywhere of any dog type adds in the fight or the trash before it? It makes no sense whatsoever. I know some people found the Plague wing of ICC to be an immature trek through a land of toilet humor, but at least the bosses had some personality. Hagara . . . bleh. I die a little bit every time we zone into her area.

Ultraxion - 6/10 - Yeah, boring gear check. And on heroic . . . boring gear check. I only gave it a 6/10 because it's a fairly well tuned gear check. Lose someone early on to a disconnect and you're screwed.

Blackhorn - 7/10 - Again, any time I'm standing around waiting for something to happen is a time when I, as a DPS, am bored. Heroic is a bit of a chaotic mess which makes it far more interesting, but there are still instances when you'll kill the adds fast enough to have time between waves to just stand around and wait. On heroic it's an extremely mobile fight with a lot of stuff going on but there are some mechanics that serve to annoy rather than challenge (Goriona is flying off the side of the ship and I'm supposed to be ranging her down, but the entire right side of the ship is covered in void zones so I cant even get in range of her). I agree with the article on it's placement in the raid, though. It doesn't really seem to fit where it is and would have made more sense to come before Ultraxion rather than after him.

Spine - 7/10 - We haven't pulled it on heroic yet so I can't comment on that, but on normal it suffers the same problem as Hagara and Blackhorn. Standing around waiting for stuff to spawn is boring and sucks. Cool concept, epic context, but sitting around waiting for enough bloods to spawn to stack the Amalg to 9 is just frustrating and boring. Another gripe I have is that the mechanic of Deathwing doing barrel rolls trying to throw you off his back never felt particularly well presented. There's no really visual key to show that you're going upside down rather than getting pushed off by a big gust of wind.

Madness - 7/10 - The scenery is awesome. Hopping platforms and getting crazy buffs from NPC's is cool. Like others have already said, the fight just feels -too- big. Guys like Ragnaros and Al'akir are big enough to feel epic in the "we're taking down this massive dude" kind of way, but when Deathwing's head drops down between platforms 2 and 3, it feels more like kicking the side of a building.


I said it a while back in the Queue and I still hold to it. Too much of DS boils down to "tank swap, stack up, swarm adds and pewpew". There are no Alysrazors with crazy mechanics or Rhyoliths with odd tanking procedures. There's little-to-no dispells to manage or positioning requirements. A grand total of 1 add needs to be CC'ed and that's not until the 6th heroic boss and ONLY if you can't just burn him down. Only one boss even has anything that can be interrupted and, again, that's only on heroic. There are no Mimirons where X has to die at the same time as Y or H-Baleroc's where communication is key. You never have to kite a boss or move him around to dodge mechanics like P3 Putricide. There's no range tanking or special mechanics where a single person is designated to do something out of the norm. Even the old Blizzard standby of "don't stand in this" is pretty much non-existant. It's all "Heal harder, tank harder, DPS harder".

Honestly, the more I think about this tier, the less I like it.

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