I don’t get to play my druid as much as I would like. Jumped in to help a guild blood dk get his IO up a bit. NO 9 was BRUTAL on the first boss trash, but then it was pretty easy from then on out. Is this a me problem? Something specific to the affixes this week? Or has this trash always been this hard? People were getting chunked for >50% of their hp constantly and trying to catch up, if I stayed still for even a moment, I was dead to archers and spears in 1-3 seconds.
First bosses trash can be a mess for every healer; its just alot of mechanics thrown onto every mob on the pack.
Enrage needs to be interrupted or soothed. Birds need to be stunned when they fixated or burned down. Multishot can chunk on fort or if theyre bolstered. Floor Arrows need to be dodged but blend into the grass. Theres a charge that stacks a bleed on the farthest person so ranged need to rotate out. And a melee slam around the big add that stuns and does chunk damage. All ontop of normal damage to the tank and the occasional cleave.
Best you can do is rotate cooldowns on the big 7 pack and hope your dps dodge/stun everything needed to avoid excess damage. Maybe mark the archers and bird so dps can keep an easier eye on them if they start to fixate you.
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- Tell DPS to prioritise the longbows and the bird(s).
- Stun the horn blower mob when it starts casting.
- Interrupt the big centaur’s shout.
- Tell melee not to stand in front of the big centaur because it cleaves.
Arrow volley swirlies chunk people super hard and can be subtle. Those one shot like 15+ keys
Lancemaster/shout boys cleave with every auto, tanks and melee both tend to screw this up and get mdps smacked a lot. Their disrupting shout hits like a truck and will usually wipe the group if it’s not interrupted.
Hornblowers buff everyone by 50% dmg
Hawks fixate marked targets and generally one shot if not cc’d or kited.
Warspears charge furthest player and do a massive bleed.
People at low keys tend to not know all this and get hit by every thing.
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This was a big one for me. On higher keys, especially fortified, this got to be a big problem if anybody got more than two stacks. I usually tell everybody to stack up around melee (carefully because there’s a cleave) and have one range stand out. Then I stand either behind or in front of them, and move as appropriate when the charge happens. You can use Vortex (if spec’d for it) to mitigate this a bit and your group can use stuns.
Sometimes though these will just line up so both charges are happening at the same time and you can’t prevent it. In this case you’ll still need to rotate, but mostly for personal defensive CD management. If someone gets 2 bleeds and doesn’t use a personal, you’re going to have a hard time keeping them alive.
I’ve found the rest of NO to be a lot less intense.
Do people generally enjoy things being this complicated for a mere trash pack? I know I don’t.
I want most of the complexity to reside in mastering my class rather than crazy mechanics.
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I consider it part of mastering the class. Sitting in front of a target dummy doesn’t prove anything besides being a robot.
Being able to react to what’s going on around you and act accordingly and still do well. That’s mastery.
YMMV
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I see your point and some mob complexity is needed but this…
…seems a bit much for a trash pack
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Makes it a lot more interesting than just a tank and spank trash pack though. Vortex, typhoon, skull bash, and mighty bash are on constant CD. And I love it
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You love it and I dislike it. Both are valid opinions. I’m more curious what the broader player base thinks. More like you or more like me? I don’t expect a resolution on the forums, I’m more thinking out loud.
My experience is that WoW should play to its strengths as a casual MMORPG and leave the heavy complexity to other games or genres more suited to them, like Elden Ring. In that game, someone screwing up only affects them. It’s not fun to feel like 30 minutes of my time was wasted because I don’t have the peer group to make my own groups and I lost the PUG lottery.
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I do actually. However when you throw annoying crap like thundering quaking explosive on top then it just becomes frustrating.
Blizz needs to figure it out.
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I enjoy a trash pull being its own little boss fight. But blizz needs to choose between the dungeon itself being mechanically dense AND having added mechanics through affixes. It’s too much.
Oh also the fact that learning the intricacies of trash is too subtle and unintuitive. At least a boss you can read up on in the journal.
I would also say, certain attacks should be turned into % current health dmg to prevent one shotting no matter the key level. Like the tiny arrow swirlies from volley should never be a one shot mechanic in my opinion.
It ends up requiring too much perfectionism to fight one trash pull sometimes.
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Well said. I agree with all of this for what that’s worth. A good middle ground between @Grizzle and me.
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The only other issue ive had is dps not priortize killing totems on the way to 2nd boss. That can lead to a wipe.
This week (much like other weeks), affixes only seem to penalize healers. Grievous is awful. I have to keep the entire party above 90% the entire time or get penalized with a dot that continues killing everyone at an accelerated pace. This compounds with a trash pack that does constant damage to most of the group, causing Grievous to continue to stack. For any dps thinking “this week is easy”, think of your suffering healer and please hit your self heal once or twice.