Monday night my raid team ventured forth to do battle with Malygos (again) and then to the only raid instance I'd yet to see in Phase One of Wrath Classic, The Obsidian Sanctum.
Once again, I hunted around for a quest --any quest-- that pointed people in the direction of the seedy underbelly of Wyrmrest Temple, but I rolled a "1" on my Intelligence check.
"Is the redone Onyxia [raid] out yet?" I asked in voice.
"No, it still says L60 if you go visit her," our Warlock replied. "I think the redone Ony dropped around the time of Trials of the Crusader."
"Then I'm trying to figure out why we're here. I couldn't decide if Blizz decided to redo Ony after it created Obsidian Sanctum, or before. It feels like this raid [Obsidian Sanctum] came first, then Onyxia's revamp, but unlike Ony there's absolutely no reason for us to know this raid exists in game."
"Oh, this definitely came first," the Raid Leader replied.
"Yeah, but unlike Eye of Eternity and Malygos, there's no quests at all for the reason why we're here. At least the Nexus War had a big long thingie for it."
"Thingie?"
"Whatever it is. Brain fried from the time change."
But that's the point, really: there is no reason why we're at The Obsidian Sanctum. If it weren't for Blizz saying "Hey, this is a new raid," you'd have no reason other than pure curiosity as to whether there's something underneath Wyrmrest Temple.
***
Blizz has mentioned in the past that they're already looking, storywise, a couple of expacs ahead. I've always thought that was something they did later in WoW's lifetime, but I suspect it was happening even back in the "ancient days of WoW", pre-Cataclysm.
After all, the evidence is right in front of you when you walk into The Obsidian Sanctum: Three Twilight Drakes.
Years before we got to know them well in Cataclysm, there they were beneath Wyrmrest Temple. No explanation, no nothing. Just... there. Arrogant as hell, even as drakes they feel superior to Sartharion, and their presence there make the raid totally chaotic.
So I'll give kudos to Blizz thinking ahead, but without any in-game reason why the raid is there, it's just, well... disjointed.
***
Oh, the fight itself?
Uh... I died. A lot.
I'd never been in the raid before, so of course they wanted to try killing Sartharion with two drakes up.
I very quickly became acquainted with what "two drakes up" meant: you can kill Sartharion with anywhere from zero to all three drakes alive when you first attack Sartharion, but the more drakes you leave alive before you start the fight the better the loot that will drop.
And the more chaotic the fight gets, too.
The basics of the fight are simple: kill Sartharion. However, Sarth summons fire elementals to pester you and whelps to hound you. Oh, and there's this thing called a Lava Wave (or something to that effect) where walls of lava come rushing at you like you were out surfing in Hawaii, with a gap that you can stand in if you're fast enough.
I was frequently not fast enough.
Oh, it's not that I couldn't see the gap, or that I dropped casting (I did), it's that I often chose a gap too far away from me to try to make. And with my Blink ability frequently on cooldown because I constantly had to move to avoid mobs/AOE/whatever, I had to hoof it a lot.
That's a type of mistake that I'll fix the longer I'm exposed to this fight.
Yeah, starting out on the second highest difficulty setting for 10 person Obsidian Sanctum wasn't the best introduction to the fight. The Raid Leaders finally decided to dial it back a bit and take down Satharion with only one drake alive before the boss fight began, which made things much easier to process for me. Whereas before I saw only chaos, I was able to understand the mechanics of the fight better because I wasn't constantly running for my life.
As is what I've discovered in the Phase One raids, I do better when I can stand and cast. Fire Mages' abilities don't lend themselves well to fights where you have to be on the move: our instant casts are pretty piss poor, damage wise, and even if a Fire Mage was standing, my damage output is definitely inferior to an Arcane Mage.* However, I can do better --and have more of an impact-- with AOE damage for all of the adds that spawn. Get them down, and the fight is much easier.
***
Like the Onyxia fight back in Vanilla/Vanilla Classic, The Obsidian Sanctum is organized chaos. It is also the most difficult fight in the Phase One raids for 10 people. Yet despite that, it is the one raid that has the largest disconnect from the entire expansion. Kind of like how Blizz shoehorned in a Troll Raid (Zul'Aman) into a Burning Crusade expansion that had nothing to do with Trolls at all.
*More on that for another post.
People were talking a lot about how fire mages are going to be worse than arcane in this phase, but I saw a video yesterday where they pointed out that the stats actually proved that wrong - according to the logs, fire and arcane are pretty much equal right now. 🙂
ReplyDeleteYes, and I know why: Arcane is better in single target, and Fire is better in AoE target. If the fight is a strictly burn 'em down boss fight, then Arcane will outduel Fire, but in fights where adds show up and you have to wipe 'em out, then Fire can catch up with Arcane on the meters. Both Mage types do fall down a bit in DPS when you have to constantly move, however, which is why melee is so important, but once you get a chance to stand and fire Mage output goes up a lot.
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