The Like/Hate thread (WoW)

[Ashe]

QFT

I actually want to slightly disagree with the quoted comment, though not much. While there is technically one "right" way, if you run raids with different groups, there are many differences in how every guild might do an encounter. The general thought process tends to be similar, but there are still fairly strong differences in execution - with each group strongly defending the method that best fits their specific group.

Example - the Al'akir fight, where you fight what amounts to a gigantic tornado boss, has a phase three where he obliterates all of the platform that your team is standing on and you get caught by wind currents and fly in the air. He'll then, every few seconds or whatever, summon an electrical cloud where the group is that will quickly kill anyone still in the could while they fight him by hitting the people with a chain lightning (I might be getting specific details wrong as its been a while since I've played and as long as you avoid the clouds, its irrelevant what they do).

A lot of guides will say that as soon as the fight starts, get your entire raid to fly to the bottom of your movable space and wait for the lightning cloud, then press space and fly straight up an inch or two everytime a new cloud appears, which will let you keep the clouds below you until you reach the top, hopefully letting you win by then.

The guild I was instead insisted on flying to the very top and moving down, not too different (though frustrating to me because I didn't have "swim down" bound, but did have a "jump" key bound, so I had to angle down to fly and then straighten the camera back out to see the clouds when they appeared) but they strongly had their reasons for it (of which I don't even remember, but it was apparently very important. Didn't ultimately matter to me as long as we all did it together).

Other guilds found that you could fly to the bottom, wait for a cloud, fly up a bit, wait for another cloud, then fly all the way to the top, trigger that one, then down a bit, trigger it (D - C - A - B) then all the way back to the bottom (the lower ones had despawned by now or something). Not entirely certain if I explained that accurately.

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Quite a few of the current fights have multiple ways that the fights are done as long as your group can do it well. Some group makeups prefer to kite the skeletons in the Nefarion encounter the entire time, using zero slows or cc so that the kiter can keep the most control so a skelly doesn't lose aggro and go one shot people from the buffs, hopefully avoiding them getting flame buffs by kiting around fires and despawning them a bit. Other groups are so cc heavy that they prefer to focus heavily on chain ccing the skellies despite the fires constantly breaking it, which means that if they can't get a cc instantly (and I mean literally cast - break - cast - break - no pause in between, no "wait four seconds and cc again" but as soon as one goes up, it breaks, do again, staggered), the skellies have been standing in the flames that buff them since they haven't been moved, which leads to possibly one shotting people back to back if done wrong. I've also seen mage/warlock teams kite them around using frost nova and shadowfury and avoiding getting hit as opposed to a tank kiting them but taking the occasional hit for the sake of better control.

As long as the general strategy of "Don't let these skeletons hit your team" or "don't stay in the lightning cloud" is followed, you'll beat the encounter, but its up to your raid group to find the exact method of doing so that best fits them.

Actually, I've rarely seen two raid groups use the same style in every encounter (Atramedes the Blind Dragon can be tanked against the wall or as my last guild did it, tanked in the middle with everyone spread in specific positions with specific locations for the beam target to run - back in BC I was very thrown off when we did Netherspite with another group since they tanked the beams and positioned very differently from what I was accustomed to).