Malygos, being a
Dragon Aspect, is a fight that I would expect to be quite epic. Not only in its general gameplay design, but its overall presentation. After running it for the first time last night, I can say that it largely lived up to my expectations. As soon as you zone into the Eye of Eternity the Lord of Magic begins taunting, teasing and harassing you for being one of the lesser beings. He also alludes to interference from the other flights, namely
Alexstraza and
her red brood , which comes into play later. My big knock against the presentation is his voice. The dialogue and taunts he tosses at us are well-written, but the vocals just aren't epic enough for me. They do not command my respect or grab my attention as other dragons have. In short, Malygos' voice makes me picture a nerd puffing out his chest in a vain attempt to look larger and more confident than he really is.
Visually, we are placed on what may be the least laggy battlefield in all of Azeroth, a platform with four pillars that looks out at the vastness of space and a collection of celestial bodies. Why Malygos would chose to live surrounded by heavenly objects I do not know - seems more like a
Nozdormu thing to me - but it looks freaking awesome. Though, I do love space, so I could be slightly biased in this department. Blizzard selected the final frontier to enable their designers to go nuts with spell effects and abilities during Malygos' three phases. And go nuts they did.
The humble casual guild I am a part of did not manage to get the Steward of Magic to drop any riches, but we did experience all three of his phases. The first phase is a glorified tank-n-spank battle with a small twist. Should one of the summoned sparks get to Malygos, they will grant him a debuff that is almost guaranteed to wipe the raid due to 50% more damage on the tank. The object is to pop the sparks where the DPS can sit in its debuff pool to receive their own damage increasing debuff. Like Onyxia, Malygos doesn't just let you smash his
face ass during this phase. Every so often he will rise up and flap his wings, causing a huge tornado which turns all players into a
flying cow, albeit one that takes a hefty amount of DoT damage. The effect is awesome, pushing your camera
way out so you can grasp the full size of the twister created by Malygos' wrath.
Once the raid burns the blue down to 50% he will lift off, sending a collection of adds on floating discs to destroy you. During this phase Malygos is untargetable, although he continues to rain destruction upon you.
The floating guys, and the vehicular combat they bring to the table are nice, but the combination of the anti-magic shells and the leviathan's (take that Knaak) Deep Breath collide for some awesome spell effects. Phase 2 is the coolest phase, but it ends quickly, thanks to the squishiness of the adds. Upon killing the final add, the floor gives way and the raid falls into the abyss. As alluded, each player is rescued by a minion of Alexstraza for a last bout of rather boring vehicular combat.
As far as raid encounters go, I very much enjoy the overall design and presentation of the Eye of Eternity. Although his character isn't given the epic treatment that I think he deserves, the encounter is well crafted and fine tuned overall. At the same time, the fight doesn't feel gimmicky or leave a class or role out of the equation. To me, the sign of good encounter design is when the success of the encounter hinges on the collective skill of the raid, not an overpowered member or two. Initially, we are hit with something akin to all the previous dragon battles, then we see Malygos' full magical wrath before being tossed into more mundane vehicular combat. Our night of attempts failed because of poor spark pool placement, 26% was our best attempt thanks to the enrage timer. I'll be happy to participate in this fun encounter again, even though there is no loot in it for Solidsamm.
With Malygos attempted, I only have a single Wrath boss left,
Sapphiron. How'd you like Malygos?
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