Fave Encounters? T11 v. T12

[Tassager]

Okay, the convo that Sin and Rhius are having in the shoutbox made me curious.

T11 v. T12... What have been your fave encounters? Why? Which tier did you like better?

I think for me in T11, my faves were H Halfus, Cho'gall, and Nef.

T12 would absolutely be Majordomo and Alysrazor.

I like active fights with more for me to do than just sit there and taunt swap.

[Sinpree]

I liked a ton of the encounters in T11. My favorite by far was Heroic Omnotron even though we never downed it. I love encounters that push my raid awareness to the max while still having to produce a lot of healing and cool down management. I also really like heroic Atramedes, heroic V&T, heroic Magmaw, and heroic Maloriak.

The encounters I didn't really care for in T11 where Nef, Chim, and Conclave (though some parts of conclave were interesting the healing requirement on the fight was so low). The only fight I actually really disliked though was Chim.

As for T12 not sure what encounters I actually like. From a healing side they are currently all rather uninteresting. Most of them require zero movement on the part of the healer and the only fight that requires some gives you a buff that lets you healing while moving. That fight would have been a lot more fun and challenging if you didn't have that buff. I think if I had to pick a fight that is my favorite probably be Domo just because that fight has a decent healing benchmarks, coordination with cooldowns, also is a nice mana management encounter as well.

I also wish this tier had some kind of dispeling as well, seems there is very little thinking on the side of healers other then managing our mana on various encounters because they are a bit longer then most typical encounters are. Seems like so many people complained about high dispels, interrupts, and movements fights from last tier they went to the total opposite extreme this time.

It is possible though that doing the fights in heroic might change my mind on a lot of the fights versus the normal mode encounters. This tier is decent fun but so far lack luster. At least the fights are polished unlike last tier, so its got that going for it.

[Rhius]

T11... I liked Atramedes quite a bit. The overall encounter design is really cool; a blind dragon that uses soundwaves to lock onto his prey before slaughtering them. I never thought it made any sense that a single person could hold a dragon's attention the way an MMO tank does by necessity; the sound mechanic was a neat way of showing the lethality of a theoretically disabled opponent.

Nefarian is pretty cool, though I do hope this is the very last time either he or his sister come back from death. Victor Nefarius has always been a fourth-wall breaking villain, too, and I get a lot of laughs from that.

There wasn't a whole lot that stood out to me in the Twilight Bastion; Halfus was cool enough and Cho'Gall was a nice AQ40 throwback.

I think Al'akir is pretty cool, if only for the Silly Hunter Tricks I can do there.

As far as T12 goes, I think Shannox is kind of simplistic, he could have more Hunter tricks to be more interesting. I look at that fight and apply my own perspective to it; why isn't he using Scatter Shot to force people to stumble into traps, why doesn't he have Beastial Wrath, etc etc.

Beth'tilac is a little underwhelming; feels like such a short and simple fight.

Rhyolith is very cool but I think that big platform should tilt as he walks around on it, that sort of thing. Most boss fights happen in very static surroundings; it'd be cool if his platform were twice the size but if you steer him near the edges that part of the platform dips down into the lava. That'd be cooler than him just de facto wiping the raid if he reaches the edge.

Alysrazor is very cool; tanks get to see HUGE NUMBARS and People Can Fly.

Baleroc is kind of straightfoward. It'd be neat if the crystals did something to the DPS soaking them other than plain damage; tanks get massive health buffs, healers get massive heal buffs to compensate, dps just get bent.

Staghelm is fun but he I feel like he's screaming for a third form. His Heroic mechanism is a poorly disguised gear check wall, too.

Ragnaros... I have no complaints. Different enough in each phase to keep things interesting, nostalgia factor enough to please an old-schooler like me. It's going to be so anticlimactic at 10% when he just submerges and drops loot, though.

[Millya]

I don't know; honestly there were encounters in each tier that I enjoyed. I think Alysrazor is a unique challenge, I quite like Staghelm, and didn't do original Ragnaros so it's new to me. I find the earlier Firelands bosses fairly forgettable. Rhyolith is a bit gimmicky but okay. Shannox I don't really like, Beth'tilac and Baelroc are fine but not "omg incredible!" or anything.

As far as T11, I liked H Maloriak, H Halfus, and H V&T. I liked fights where there are many things going on! (Naturally this is from a DPS perspective). I also enjoyed Cho'gall, Nef, even Magmaw. I disliked Chimaeron (somehow managed to be both stressful and boring at the same time) and Omnotron (both versions).

[Adgamorix]

It's funny that you mention the healing while moving (or casting while moving I suppose). I know it was really tough for me to get my head around when it first came out. I still had the thought that I'm moving - ergo I can't be casting.

For T11 I really liked Atramedes - that fight was 100% about individual responsiblity. No ammount of healing in the world can save someone with 85 sound when a shock goes off. H-Maloriak was fun. H-Chim just gave me hives.

For T12 I really hate Shannox, just because the dogs are so far away from the boss I can't run DoTs on all three at the same time. Alysrazor is pretty cool, just because it's different (same with Domo).

[Rhius]

Alysrazor is really weird for me because everyone else is saying "wow, I can cast while moving, this is an incredibly cool mechanic", but I can already do that. A buff that lets me cast while moving is simply a 2600 ranged attack power increase.

Also on the subject of things I hate; any fight that, by design, makes my pet and/or BM spec subpar. The worst offenders are Al'Akir, whose stage 3 simply freaking kills my pet, and Alysrazor, because pets cannot get the flight buff.

In the same vein, Staghelm is annoying because it is to the benefit of both myself and the raid entire if my pet is stacked up with us for Flame Scythes, but there's no pet AI setting to tell it to dps from the front of a boss. They always run to the back if possible, which is great coding most of the time and annoying at these sorts of times.

[Sinpree]

To be honest the more I think about it I would like to see them go back to more the Ulduar model of heroics. I think even though it felt sort of like a gimmick to activate the encounter it was at least sort of interesting. I also prefer the loot model for Ulduar more as well.

I am finding this while having to gear on normal mode and heroic version is pretty burdensome for most normal guilds. Where in Ulduar by doing a boss in hardmode you simply just got an extra piece of loot at a higher ilvl that was a completely new item. So you really were just looking for a few extra items off the harder bosses.

Doesn't yield as high of a return gear wise on doing the harder content but in the end really the reason most guilds do harder content is the challenge of doing it more then the reward of the loot. I think if they made the heroic version loot interesting, like trinkets, shields, weapons, and so on it would be fine that way, or even have more vanity items off them. I think this lets most guilds also not have to farm so much heroic gear to get further in heroics down, help a lot of guilds like our actually get all the heroics down since they will be turned for mostly the normal mode gear. Just requires that you play better, not be better geared.

Just haven't been a fan of having to double gear each tier then if you don't have good luck on the heroic bosses you kill you are then a lot more behind gear wise then other guilds for the new content. Which just slows you down for future tiers.

Edit: Also under the Ulduar model you didn't have to have every boss have a heroic version. I think 3 of the bosses didn't have any kind of a heroic version to them. If you think about last tier there were 25 progression encounters, that is kind of a lot. However, I doubt they will ever go back to that model as it is difficult for them to come up with gimmicks to active the hardmodes and keep them original.