Comments on: Tonight’s Homework: Gruul pages 105-137

By: Oz

Oz — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:26:57 +0000

I’d love the idea of a random effect boss, although in a way that’s what KZ’s Moroes is, since he chooses 4 friends from a set of 6. Or Opera, since you have a choice of 3, athough one of them requires 2 specific classes to be sucessful. I agree that if you had a random set of powers from said boss you’d have to have his HP/DPS fairly low to keep it fair. Setting people up for failure is no fun.

And to my guildmates reading this, there’ll be a test on this tonight! (Smart alecs telling me they’ve finished their homework…)

By: Braack

Braack — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:48:58 +0000

Verilazic, I always loved that idea. I thought it would be great if there were 10 options in a boss fight, and it randomly chose them in X number of “phases”.

The only problem with that? EVERYONE would be forced to know all 10, perfectly, before going in. So in essence it means more reading, videos, explaining. BAH.

Option 2? Go truly random, no phases, and 100 different options (thereby making it near impossible to force people to know all of them). Dumb down damage done by the boss, and HP’s. In essence, you are substituting rediculous stats from the boss (which is really what tunes the difficulty) and replacing it with the unknown. Truly, then, you have an epic fight.

I personally hate the fight being the same, it isn’t how good of a player you are on your toes, it’s how good you are at memorizing sets of actions during set periods of time.

(Yet, I still raid twice a week. Shame on me.)

By: Verilazic

Verilazic — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:22:26 +0000

It’d be interesting to have some encounters where you CAN’T know what’s going to happen. Like PvP, only perhaps with a little predictability. Forcing people to improvise on the fly would be interesting at least, and a lot more fun at best.

By: BitterCupOJoe

BitterCupOJoe — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:40:18 +0000

I simply avoid raiding. I think a lot of the fun of the game can go out when there’s a huge amount of prep-work involved. If someone can’t, in 5 minutes go, “Hey, here’s the stuff you need to know in order for us to run this successfully,” then I tend to think of it as “not fun” content. And if that 5 minute explanation all but ensures success with a competent team, I think that’s kind of bad, too. My favorite example of (admittedly, group, not raid) content where everyone can know exactly what they’re supposed to do, but stuff can still go hideously wrong, is the CoH respec trial.

By: Changling bob

Changling bob — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 08:21:34 +0000

I would tend to have the strategy for the next boss up on my second monitor while clearing the trash on the way up to it. Only time this failed me was the phoenix boss in TK that I didn’t even know was there until they’d pulled ^^

By: Mythokia

Mythokia — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 01:26:33 +0000

Definitely would be researching and discussing with other’s who might have done the particular boss. However, there’s no need to over prepare by everyone rehearsing which pixel of the map they should be standing out, but a rough outline is sufficient (watch out for certain AEs, keep this buff up, etc).

By: Cyndre

Cyndre — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:43:20 +0000

Braack’s excellent strategy guide reminds me of a similar guide that was designed by a guild mate of mine a few months ago.

It is quite relevant to this discussion as it pertains to the Gruul fight.

By: Pvthudson

Pvthudson — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:03:03 +0000

Cliff Notes version posted in the officer forums is how I used to do it. Then jump in and see what happens