Testing for Nerub-ar Palace (Normal) begins today at 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST) and continues throughout the weekend.
Please use this thread for feedback and bug reports regarding the raid or related issues. Noting the nature of your group (Mythic guild premade, PUG, etc.) is helpful, as are any logs. Thank you to everyone who has come out to help test!
Do we know how long the server shutdown will be for?
kyâveza lacks a boss frame
This feedback is based on my experience with normal mode difficulty, approaching each encounter blind. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the raidâs atmosphere. The visual indicators on the bosses were excellent, and each encounter provided a fun and engaging experience. It took me about 2 hours to clear normal mode up to the last boss which we obviously couldnât test. I was really impressed by the quality of each raid encounter and faced almost no game breaking bugs.
Ulthrax:
Ulthrax was my least favorite encounter in the dungeon. The webs creating area denial and using digestive acid to clear them were interesting mechanics. However, the intermission phase with the extra action button was tedious and annoying. It seemed unfair for smaller groups because feeding the boss bugs to gain energy took longer when they spawned on the opposite side of the room. Increasing the energy gained per bug for smaller groups could help. Also, making the boss move faster during the intermission phase would add some challenge. The visuals were good, showing clearly where the boss was facing and safe spots. Overall, the fight felt balanced in terms of raid damage and boss health, but a bit more raid damage could make it more engaging on normal mode.
Bloodbound Horror:
I enjoyed the Bloodbound Horror fight on normal mode, but it felt a bit simple due to few mechanics. The raid damage and boss health were balanced well. However, the tentacle mechanic was too slow and easy to dodge. It should move faster to add more challenge, even on normal mode⌠Upstairs, avoiding tentacles was easy, but downstairs was more interesting. It would be helpful to better visually explain what each type of add does; smaller ones can be stopped/ccd, but larger ones werenât clear until reading the dungeon journal. Adding more blood horrors closer together could make AoE more fun. Overall, while the fight was repetitive on normal mode, speeding up tentacles and adjusting downstairs adds would make it more engaging.
Sikran:
Sikran was straightforward and easy to understand even on normal mode. The damage output could be increased significantly, as it felt too lowâwe 12-manned it without much challenge. Adding more varied patterns for the puddles in Rain of Arrows could make dodging more engaging. For Phase Blades, spawning more shades per player and changing the Decimate mechanic to be a chain between the affected players instead of a straight shot could add complexity and coordination to the encounter. Overall, itâs a good fight, but ramping up the damage would make it more exciting.
Rashaânan:
I enjoyed the randomness of the bossâs movement in this fight; it added freshness to each attempt. Like Sikran, the raid damage felt a bit low for normal mode, but the bossâs health was appropriate. I encountered a bug where dropping webs against the back of the roomâs web wall caused me to fall through the floor and instantly die, which needs fixing. Thereâs a delay after the rolling acid animation disappears which tricked me into thinking I could move out to avoid the stun, but even though the animation disappears at the end for a split second, it actually follows you and you canât avoid the stun. Allowing a brief window to react after the animation ends to avoid the stun would be nice. I was watching the vod back and had a cool thoughtâŚmaybe on higher difficulties, having the individual green puddles grow and shrink randomly throughout the fight could create a tighter, more dynamic space for a more challenging encounter. I like the idea of the acid providing area denial; during the bossâs flying intermission, having existing acid puddles expand and contract could add challenge and make movement more interesting.
Nexus-Princess Kyâveza:
Nexus-Princess Kyâveza was my favorite fight in the raid. I loved everything about itâthe visuals, the clearly indicated mechanics, everything was exceptionally well done. It reminded me of Phase 3 Sylvanas and Phase 1 Fyrakk, but even better and cooler. I hope the difficulty scales appropriately in heroic and mythic modes to create a truly epic and challenging encounter. It feels like this boss has the potential to be a standout end-wing encounter.
Broodtwister Oviânax:
Broodtwister Oviânax was a standout fight, a huge improvement over Broodkeeper Diurna in Vault of the Incarnates. It was engaging and fun to figure out. We focused on breaking eggs from the inside out to avoid them being hit by the growing void zone, which worked well. However, once we cleared the eggs in one section, there wasnât a strong incentive to move to the next section. This may have been due to normal mode scaling, but it led to us holding the boss in one area while the void zone expanded, which felt a bit static. Introducing a mechanic where breaking eggs increases the bossâs energy, forcing strategic decisions on which eggs to break first, could add depth and challenge. Overall, this fight was EGGcellent offering a significant improvement over previous encounters.
The Silken Court:
As the penultimate fight of the raid, The Silken Court hit the mark for me. It was innovative and enjoyable to figure out. However, we encountered a bug where the boss would charge through our spread-out webs without breaking them, only to break another pair further down the line. This seemed like a glitch that needs to be investigated. Our DPS was low, causing the fight to extend beyond 10 minutes. We expected to see an enrage mechanic after this time, but it may not have been implemented in the beta. Despite these issues, the fight itself was excellent. The intermissions were engaging, and the web mechanics were well-executed, requiring coordination between partners. Iâm eagerly anticipating how this fight will scale from normal to heroic and mythic, hoping for tight tuning that provides a challenging experience akin to Tindral level difficulty.
Trash mobs:
The trash mobs between bosses in the raid felt excessive and tedious. Players have long expressed a desire for Blizzard to reduce the amount of trash in raids. While there were shortcuts and flight paths to navigate the dungeon, the RP flying to each platform after defeating Bloodbound Horror felt particularly tedious. If Blizzard intends for players to utilize these flight paths/taxi services, they should at least speed up the flight time.
In future raids, focusing on minimizing trash would enhance the overall experience. It really serves little purpose and does not contribute significantly to immersion or gameplay enjoyment. Streamlining this aspect would be widely welcomed by the player base.
Summary:
In conclusion, my experience with this normal mode raid was incredibly enjoyable. The developers have done an excellent job crafting engaging encounters with clear visual indicators, which greatly enhance the overall experience. Each boss fight presented unique challenges and mechanics that were both fun to learn and visually impressive. While there were some minor issues like low damage output and occasional bugs, these did not overshadow the raidâs quality.
Looking forward, I encourage the developers to continue refining raid mechanics and not shy away from increasing difficulty where appropriate. Players appreciate challenges that push coordination and skill. Additionally, enhancing visual indicators for mechanics, as seen in this raid, contributes significantly to clarity and player satisfaction. Overall, this raid has set a high standard, and I eagerly await future updates and expansions that build upon this foundation of excellence.
We tested this as a mostly guild group. We were testing in a small raid size.
Our guild is not WF, but definitely mythic raiders. We didnât achieve CE during dragon flight but have during previous expansions.
Our Logs: I cant include links t you are going to have too go t warcraftlogs with the following:
/reports/Z4zT8GkfAYBVPRKr
Ulgrax:
Feed Mechanic - Terrible, maybe we did it wrong but it didnt feel good. I suggest a crazy MS buff while you are holding food to encourage more people to feed him/reward those that do.
Tug of War Mechanic - Very Cool.
Bloodbound Horror:
This fight feels very stripped down for normal, I havent been following any other testing. Assuming more things going on this will be a cool fight.
âadds downstairsâ mechanic seems cool. Needs something else going on but I like having to soak a frontal to clear adds.
Gore splatter mechanic isnt very well communicated. We full wiped when we first saw this. But we also didnt read the dungeon journal.
Silkran:
This fight has very simple mechanics and executes them in very cool ways. I dont have really any feedback to this fight except the healing requirement of it caused us to shift to 3 healers in a 10 man raid. Maybe thats a tuning thing, but the damage was abnormally high for a 3rd boss. I absolutely adored the bossfight and it felt like a complete bossfight, wereas the last two felt like they were missing an entire mechanic.
Rashaânan:
I like moving around on this boss, the rolling acid is a cool way to do mechanics. Feels like there should be a mechanic after we move becuase there is a lull in the fight but maybe that would be too much for normal. A kind of Mid fight located in the middle of the raid seems appropriate.
Broodtwister:
The tuning on this boss felt really off. We killed it before having to go to the second section of the room.
if the blood spread faster, and there were fewer adds, but you were expected to clean the whole room before the end I guess?
Idk this boss looked cool on paper but felt bad in testing on normal.
Nexus-Princess:
Best fight in the raid. I think this was suppoosed to be the patchwerk fight but the visuals and everything compounded to making the best fight of the night. I peaked at the dungeon journal for mythic, and I can say that I am looking forward to this fight.
Silken Court:
Broodtwister had not enough health, this boss had tooo much. We didnât actually kill this because of how long the encounter was going too be.
Good encounter design I think. Lots of moving parts.
My only real complaint is how much damage the Web Bombs did. The encounter journal says they tick 2 times a second, but they seemed to be ticking 4. But the fight itself felt like sludgefist normal felt on release: giga over-tuned for normal.
Lower their health, reduce the damage of the web bombs (On normal especially).
Overall thoughts:
Raid looks great, solid work. Minor things to be fixed but I was surprised how playable everything is.
We had a bug where when you begin the approach to Sikran, after we killed the Ironweaver on the first platform, the rest of the adds didnât spawn and we had to run out and reset it and kill it again to make it spawn so that we could keep ascending. Not sure what caused that.
Complete pug, we cleared the raid with no wipes until Silken Court with only a few wipes to people understanding the tether and dispels. Most of the group hadnât tested any of the fights before.
Navigating the raid was a bit awkward at times. The trash itself was blessedly easy atleast, but definitely leaning a bit towards too much at times.
As a whole though, a good diverse set of fights. I wonât speak to their difficulty as it was normal so obviously very easy, but I think the fights do a great job of communicating what is happening for the most part.
Also, if you could add an immunity period before Roshannan becomes active (like how Bloodbound does so), thatâd be appreciated.
Ulgrax had way too little health, it was humorous. My group (Stankie viewer pug) killed it well before its first intermission. I donât know if thatâs a good thing or not.
Bloodbound Horrorâs nameplate didnât show up when the boss spawned. We saw its name, but no health indicator aside from the target frame.
This happened to my group as well.
Second this as well, or at least wait until we cleared the trash before spawning in the boss. We were killing trash still when the boss suddenly aggroed from behind us and made us wipe.
First impression of Broodtwister is miles ahead of Diurna from VOTI.
Nexus-Princess is also hands down the ace of the raid, and you know itâs true because of how she ends her fight. I look forward to our rematch in a future raid.
Silken Council was long, and we even encountered a bug at the end of the fight where they just stopped doing mechanics and both huddled together on the tanks and let us just dps them down. We also encountered a different bug thatâs serious, where Skeinspinner did not get all 3 stacks of the debuff, even though nobody else got any of the other stacks.
On the whole, this is gonna be a good raid. Once it gets tuned and refined, itâll be a great start to an expansion.
Ran through normal on beta yesterday with a small guild group of 10-11 (we 3 healed all the bosses). Most of us are longtime CE raiders, plus a few friends mixed in. A few of us had been watching heroic beta footage to get an idea of the mechanics but many were seeing everything for the first time. No logs to provide but wanted to give feedback on each boss plus the raid overall.
Overall
Aesthetically, Nerubar Palace is a real winner. It was refreshing to be in an immersive looking environment with a real sense of place/scale after the more linear/game-y feeling Dragonflight raids.
With the exception of maybe a boss or two, the tuning/mechanics felt satisfying overall for where a normal raid should be. Mechanics mostly had good visual clarity and it felt like there was ample time to make decisions without weakauras or addons.
Ulgrax
The main phase seems appropriately simple/straightforward for a 1st boss. We wanted to test if an immunity could solo the Brutal Lashings cast but didnât get the chance. In the intermission phase, we couldnât find a way to relocate the little adds reliably (seems like they mostly run aimlessly) so that they would be closer to where the boss ended up emerging. We also couldnât tell if there was a way to bait where the boss would emerge after his charges. The combo of not being able to control adds or bait the emerge meant the feeding portion took a pretty long time to do even with most everyone helping. A couple rounds is fun enough but after doing 3-4 long trips it felt a bit excessive.
Bloodbound Horror
Love the design of this boss. The random nature of the add spawns creates some fun on-the-fly decision making about how to split players going âdownstairsâ so that no little adds reach the center of the room. The âupstairsâ team felt pretty chill by comparison, though I expect the addition of the rotating beams on heroic will help that feel more interesting. The bossâs big aoe cast does feel a little punishing to melee players given how far you have to run out and the visual could have been a bit clearer.
Sikran
The image mechanic and its interaction with the lines is interesting, but most of the enjoyment on this boss was simply the damage intake. I wouldnât have minded a little bit more in the way of ground mechanics to dodge to add a little more interest to those not targeted by charge/lines, but I get this is an early boss. We did notice that the pools that spawn from the images disappeared after some time - this feels reasonable for normal but on higher difficulties I hope they remain to encourage good placement + add pressure on the dps to kill boss faster. While we did not test it specifically, it doesnât seem there is anything preventing you from dropping images in the old pools which may let groups game the floor space.
Rashaânan
The Rolling Acid mechanic/visual is pretty neat; looking forward to seeing that type of directional line/wave mechanic used in the future. Besides the Rolling Acid, the boss felt a little underwhelming for something more towards the middle of the raid. The little adds that spawned died so fast that they hardly felt like a threat. Chasing the boss across the platform with time pressure could have been an exciting moment, but it felt like a pretty forgiving amount of time and only 1 person has to make it in order to interrupt. The webs/pools that get thrown out mostly didnât feel they added any challenge because you would leave the space before long anyway.
This boss was also had a bug where both adds and players could fall through the floor. The adds simply evaded for a few seconds, but the players who fell died.
Oviânax
Cool fight with a ton of potentially different strategies about where to start in the room and which eggs to break and when. It felt like each add type had a distinct identity which added variety to the different sets of egg breaks. With the tuning the boss died pretty shortly after opening the 2nd blood container - would have really liked if it lasted at least to the start of the final container to start feeling a squeeze on the play space.
While this was a solid fight for normal, I really hope on higher difficulties it isnât possible to pop every egg before the pool(s) reach them. This would add a ton of interesting strategy about which add(s) you want to empower and at what time in the fight. I also would like to see the black pools grow indefinitely so that it is possible for the 1st pool to break eggs in other 2 room sections later in the fight.
Kyâveza
Visually amazing fight; at least half my group spoke up about how awesome the mechanics looked. Having the assassinate/massacre mechanics determine the portal spawn locations is super cool design. While it felt manageable to resist the pull when we didnât spread them, it felt great when we did spread them well and got to stand in between them all without getting pulled. Great touch to make the line red when an image is going to charge you so that you can distinguish which one it is. If the tuning is right on this boss itâs going to be a huge success.
Silken Court
This fight was hectic and I loved it. While maybe a little unintuitive without prior knowledge, walking into the web with a partner to control web partners felt satisfying. Given it is a fairly unique mechanic, I expect a fair number of pugs/groups wonât know that they need to use the web to stop the boss charge - I could see real value in making some kind of pre-boss trash that works similar to help teach the mechanic. I suspect some will complain about Takazj always porting around because they want their full cleave uptime, but I liked how dynamic it made positioning feel.
While I was a big fan of this fight/current tuning as a mythic raider, this is probably a little overkill for normal. Having 2 different raid-wipe mechanics (charge hitting wall + not doing dispels correctly) that rely on individual play from a handful of people seems pretty punishing for normal. The fight was also pretty long for normal, I think we clocked in around 8 minutes. All this said, I hope this difficulty translates up to heroic/mythic so that it remains a proper challenge.
Queen Ansurek
Obviously boss wasnât up for testing but just wanted to add that her boss room looked really impressive. We are all hoping that the fight will make use of all the different platforms floating around and maybe even the big spiderweb below!