Let's talk instant kill mechanics in raiding Normal mode

Community General Discussion
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First off, I have so much respect for you Heroic and Mythic Raiders. I haven’t raided seriously since I was in a ICC progression Guild, and in my humble opinion, the number of Mechanics you have to deal with on each Boss now has gotten way, way, way, out of hand. Blizzards’ “Arms Race” against World First Guilds like “Liquid” has made Boss fights entirely too complicated!

That being said, I cleared Normal Nathria last night with PuGs (you’re probably saying big deal, well bite me if you are) and I am wondering why there is instant kill mechanics in Normal mode? By locking Slimecat behind Normal and above, isn’t this Blizzard trying to force the LFR crowd to do Normals? As such, wouldn’t it stand to reason that players coming from LFR (yes, like me) need room to make errors without instant kill mechanics? It’s not Heroic or Mythic. There are some fights with Mechanics that have 0 room for error;

Sire Denathrius. Ok, during the fight you have those 4 stacks of “Burdens of Sin” on you that you have to get cleared by standing in his cleave attack (that’s just stupid btw, isn’t the point of Raiding to not take damage whenever possible, especially as a DPS so the Healers can focus on keeping the tanks up??). Fine, bad design of that aside, then he spreads the red (I’m assuming blood) all over the floor and flings you away from the center circle. At this point if you have done your role and ate 3 cleave attacks, you should be good for the drop. But NOPE. If you cant run back to the center fast enough, the “Burdens” suddenly build back up on you and you instantly die in the drop.

Seriously, Blizzard, WTH??!! It’s Normal mode! Why are you putting in such a punishing mechanic?? A player can do everything right up until that point, but you add in an instant kill mechanic with 0 chance to recover if you don’t nail it perfectly!!

Let’s talk the Sludgefist fight and those wonderful Chains! Ok, it’s a PuG. Isn’t it fair to assume not everyone is going to be on a single Discord? So if you have two people chained who can’t communicate via voice chat, you’re relying on one person to be able to know to follow the other. You have to move together, without voice chat, through mechanics like the stomp and staying out of the path of the reckless charge!! Again, if you get separated, instant kill!!! Who thought mechanics designed to instant kill you in PuGs without voice chat, and ones with no room for error like Sire, are a great idea on Normals??!!

Honestly, not having done the next middle raid, and only 2 bosses in Sepulcher, I’m more than worried that those are going to be even more hard to clear with more instant kill mechanics! I’m going to have to go over to YouTube and watch videos on how to do the fights before next reset!

Blizzard, of you want players from LFR to move up to Normals, you have to assume it will be a pug and Nerf the heck out of instant kill mechanics! If not, players will either get frustrated and bail, (which happens every single time after every single wipe, 4-6 players leave) or their raid leader could be a total butt head, and boot them for not being perfect!!

You created this mess, Blizzard, now freaking fix it!

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Beat me to that typo. Now I’m just standing here like dumb-dumb.

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Boy that is a lot to unpack…but you are fundamentally wrong on a few key areas.

Raiding is and always have been about mechanical execution and sometimes that means splitting/sharing/controlling damage. It limits raid design by quite a bit if everything was always about avoiding damage.

I 100% agree nothing in normal should be 1 shotting even an appropriately geared person for a mistake or mechanic, but it is absolutely fine for encounters to force people to take damage in controlled/planned ways and to even push people to have to consider well timed defensives and healing CDs in response to mechanics/mistakes.

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Fair enough. I can see that side of the argument. Maybe it’s just a point of view thing. Seems silly to me to plan on taking damage, but I 100% get your point of view on the opposite end. If you enjoy it, my hat is off to you, sir.

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It’s OK for instant kill mechanics in Normal Mode.

Where I draw the line (and Blizzard blunders over it constantly like a drunk after a night down frat row) is combining Instant Kill Mechanics with rather demanding DPS checks (like Phase 3 Sire and Sledgefist with his environment enrage). Because now that Instant Kill isn’t just death to you: it’s pretty much a wipe, since you won’t have enough DPS at the end.

I’m sorry, but no… Normal and even Heroic raiding shouldn’t be a wipe if a small handful of players mess up 1 thing. Hell, Preach has even gone on about how bad Mythic raids are that are “perfection checks”… to see that nonsense bleeding more and more into lower difficulties is really bad.

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I’ve discussed this in much much more detail in other threads. But it’s OK to have one shot mechanics if and only if they are telegraphed correctly. The Denathrius soaks fall into the non-obvious category for me. As does the fact you want to keep the group with different stack amounts. I also agree it’s OK to have mandatory damage, but again… with appropriate telegraphs.

Players should never wonder what they did wrong when they die, if they do that’s bad encounter design IMO.

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bliz is trying to impress the 1% instead of making the game FOR the 99% who pay the bills around here.

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Most new bosses are so mechanics heavy because of addons making it easier imho. Part of me wishes Blizzard would ban gameplay add ons like DBM and maybe they will see boss fights are too complicated.

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I really, really, disagree there, but I 100% see your point about combining it with DPS checks! I just think normal mode shouldn’t be 1 shotting players. Normal mode should allow for error and assume voice chat is not being used, and have the room to error and recover instead of 1 shotting a mistake.

Again, I am not calling for Heroic or Mythic Nerfs. Players who do those modes know what they’re walking into, and as such don’t really have room to complain. But this is normal, and it has a FOMO reward attached to it to get players out of LFR. That’s fine if that’s what their goal is, but leaving in instant kill mechanics never should have been on the table when those decisions were being made!

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Having been an ff14 player for awhile now, trust me… you can have one shots in queued normal content. It just needs to be designed so people understand that it will be a one shot and what killed them.

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I’d agree that it should hurt a lot but not one shot, or at least not the first time in Normal.

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I cant honestly remember what I was running. Its been in the last year, dont even remember what expansion.
But I do remember being rooted to the ground, then completely unable to get out of the kill mechanic because of the root. lmao.

Blizzard seems to get some kind of infantile twisted kick from doing that sort of thing and the overuse / abuse of that concept in SLs was enough to make me start hating the game again.

It literally isnt players fault when the game maker cant discern the difference between ‘FUN’ and ‘POINTLESSLY ANNOYING’, lmao

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You’re going to find a lot of fights even on normal have elements of this. There are things you definitely should be avoiding, but there are many others where you can’t and using your various defensives are appropriate. That’s why those buttons exist.

I’ve cleared all of the fated normal raids. While I can point at specific bosses and mechanics I think are a tad bit unfair, nothing jumped out at me as just downright bonkers broken. All of the raids I done were in a majority pug but in a group of 5-8 of us. All the groups have been pretty large and there were definite freeloaders/carries that were essentially just free scaling for the boss and most fights had quite a few number of corpses at the end so there is definite wiggle room.

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IMHO, that’s the role LFR currently fills - the error tolerant non-coordinated raid.

I’m OK with Normal Raiding being balanced to have folks on mics and actually feel like raiding, with mechanics that must be respected. But it should be content that a handful of good players can carry a raid through. I’m reminded of those old school WoW raids where most bosses would go down with half the raid dead - for like half the fight. That feels like the niche Normal raiding should own.

Funny enough, I think even LFR has instant kill effects. The balancing team has really gone downhill.

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If a root overlaps with a one shot then there should be some way for the root to be broken by the party without using special abilities IMO. Otherwise that’s just bad design because you can get killed by RNG (unless it’s bad positioning on you or the tank…).

Too many bosses, too many difficulties. Again… I’ve discussed this elsewhere but aught but normal and heroic need to die. Normal should be queued, heroic queued with a full premade group.

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Group soaks are a great mechanic. The more people who soak, the less damage each individual takes. Think, if your buddy is about to take damage, and you can help them take less damage, why wouldn’t you?

Sire phase 1 is basically just group soaks. The addition being that if you don’t do it Atleast 3 times then you are punished. This really slaps selfish players who don’t want to help the team.

If you want to help the team, you need to get in there and take some of the damage. Be a team player.

As far as sludgefist and chain/linking 2 player mechanics. That promotes awareness and responsibility. You need to stay near your buddy or your buddy will die. If your care about your team mates you won’t let them die.

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… I don’t understand why this mechanic is a problem. If you don’t know about it, you’ll die to it once, maybe twice. But then you learn the mechanic, and it’s incredibly easy to deal with. Learning mechanics is a part of raiding.

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LFR is literally meant for even the most left of bell curve types to do so they can finish questlines and see the encounters. Normal is literally meant to be the “beer pong” or “friends and family” mode where the expectation is mechanics are more or less followed and you can have some dead weight types who you want to tag along. This is the mode where it’s not a big deal if Jane forgot to buy flasks and enchant their gear and Jimmy is face tanking the floor 30 seconds into the fight and this rando mage we picked up is fighting with a fishing pole equipped and lawls all around

Heroic is where you’re meant to be taking things pretty serious and that would include everyone being in voice comms and being prepared and with their game faces on.

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So you think it’s not BS that you can do the Sire Phase perfectly, but then get 1 shorted for not being able to get back to the center fast enough?? Also you spoke of defensive CD’s; I raided as a Paladin, and would have bubble to survive the fall, but guess what, you can use any abilities on the fall. It’s absolutely unfair that you have no way to recover or mitigate any damage due to bad design!

Look man, I’m proud you have done it all already! Honestly I’m not trying to take anything away from your accomplishment, but there needs to be like others have said, clear telegraphing mechanics, and room to recover from an error on Normal mode. They know darn well that the Normal numbers would still be in the toilet if not for the Fomo reward,so why lock it behind normal, and leave in instant kill mechanics?? It’s not going to suddenly make everyone say “wow! I have been missing out! Let me sign up for the next Mythic!! I’m gonna be a world first raider, and buy $200 worth of WoW token each month!!!”

It’s going to sour the LFR crowd even more, and likely encourage quite a few who were already on the fence to give Blizzard the “finger” and unsub.

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That you Ion?

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