Project Lore

I'm not much of a PvPer. Sure, I play on a PvP realm. I hate the Horde (or Alliance, depending on which character I'm playing). I dabbled in battlegrounds. But in MMOs in general, I have never really gotten into the Player vs Player aspects of the game as much as I have the PvE ones. Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the chance to step into the arena for a few games each week and I can confirm that I am not an elite player in those situations. Both in the 2v2 bracket and the 5v5 bracket, my teams have lost more games than we've won. So we need to get some more practice. That is beside the point, however. The past few weeks have given me a lot of useful experience as a healer (my chosen arena spec) as well as a lot of good times. The times we have won, though, have been a lot of fun. Even some of the losses were entertaining. And ultimately that's the point of WoW - to have fun. After participating in a few arena matches, I feel like I've been missing out on a huge opportunity for fun in World of Warcraft just because I was afraid I might be bad. Well, I am bad. At least, I'm not as good as I wish I was. That's OK though, because with each match, I feel like I am getting better. I find problems with my game like focusing too much on what opponents are doing and not being aware of my teammates enough. That's a lot different from DPSing in most boss fights where maximizing DPS and staying out of fire/void zones/clouds is all I need to worry about. Of course, I have spent a lot more time facing bosses than I have in arenas, so it all feels like second nature now. I used to avoid world events. Now I go out of my way to complete them. I used to rarely raid. Now I love fighting those skull level enemies. I was wary of stepping foot into arenas. Now I look forward to the virtual beat downs. Of course, all of those achievement points waiting for me to earn don't hurt. I wonder what other fun activities I've been missing out on in Azeroth. Any tips on where I should look next?

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It pains me to say it, but after several months of dutifully raiding Ulduar, one of the coolest aspects of the dungeon just isn't the bee's knees anymore. I'm talking about the Iron Concourse, that long stretch of dark iron dwarf-infested land that sits between your raid and Flame Leviathan each and every time you start a new lockout period. In the previews leading up to the dungeon's release, nothing could've sounded more epic: you and your buddies jump into some high-powered engines of destruction as your tear across the map, laying waste to the gate-keepers of Ulduar and anything else that might be unlucky enough to sit in your path. And it was fun... the first few times. The scale was huge, the concept above and beyond what you'd normally find in a dungeon, and the on-going narration from Brann Bronzebeard was a real atmospheric treat. Blizzard could do with fixing the ramp bugs while they're at it! But now, just as soon as I first jump into a vehicle at the start of the event, I can't help but count down the time until the whole affair is over. Once the majesty fades, the Iron Concourse is nothing more than a terribly easy, drawn-out trash-clearing exercise of the worst kind. Ten to fifteen minutes of demolishing towers is enough to kill my raiding buzz. I've rallied against nerfs to Ulduar in the past, but now I'm putting out the call: nerf the Iron Concourse! Despite the negative connotations the word has come to be associated with over the years, it's not always such a bad thing. The way I see it, there are two ways to "nerf" something: to make it easier or to make it more convenient. Blizzard's been doing a lot of both lately, and while I'm not a fan of the changes they've made to a lot of the bosses in Ulduar, I would welcome just about any remedy to ease the pain of having to clear this area. What can they do? They can't very well make the vehicles any stronger or faster without having to retune the Flame Leviathan encounter, and it may just make clearing more of an ordeal to make it any more difficult. Likely, the easiest thing to do is simply make the enemies weaker (and get rid of those damnable helicopters!). As it is right now, the iron dwarf gnats that stream out of the storm towers right now can be easily dealt with, but the bigger mobs act as nothing more than huge damage sponges. Unless you're running into the dungeon with a bunch of people who have sub-200 item level gear, the Iron Concourse just doesn't pose much of a challenge. And if you're doing that, you probably just shouldn't be in Ulduar anyway. What do you think, guys and gals? Has the Iron Concourse event become as rote and annoying for you as it has for me? I'm always hesitant to suggest things that make the game too convenient for players (let's face it, you've got to put some effort in), but when you're forced to engage in an encounter like this with no tangible rewards for doing so, maybe it would be better to just get it over with as soon as possible. Hey, we've all dealt with worse trash, but at least you might get some gold or the occasional drop out of it. Are there any other parts of Ulduar you feel the same way about?

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Patches mean different things to different players. For some, it is looking forward to more adventure and exciting things to do. Others might be anticipating changes to their class or getting their hands on a new vanity pet. As GM of a raiding guild, I find it necessary to scrutinize patch notes in search of changes that may impact the way my guild operates. For example, in patch 3.1, they introduced dual specialization. This had an immediate impact in our raids. If we're facing a boss that only requires one tank, then we'll have the other tanks swap to their DPS specs. If we're short a healer, one of our DPS can swap over. Having raid members with well-geared secondary specs became important. In order to encourage our raid members to have well geared offsets, we changed our loot policies to offer gear for offsets at a discount DKP price, assuming no one needed the item for their main spec. Another smaller change in 3.1 was the duration change on flasks from two hours to one. As a result, we now make sure everyone is using their flasks in unison so we can time our breaks for when the flasks run out. As I peruse the patch notes for patch 3.2, there are a few line items that could impact the logistics of raiding. It will be interesting to see how guild officers respond to these changes. One of the first decisions guilds need to make is how will the new raid instance, Crusader's Coliseum, fit into their raiding schedule. While the new dungeon is technically a new tier of raiding, guilds may not remove Ulduar off their schedules immediately, like they did to Naxxramas when 3.1 hit. While the details aren't solid at the moment, it has been posted that the encounters in the Coliseum will be unlocked one at a time at the rate of one per week. Many guilds will still spend a lot of time in Ulduar while the bosses are slowly introduced in the Coliseum. Once all of the tier 9 encounters are open, there are more scheduling decisions to make. The Crusader's Coliseum (aka The Argent Coliseum) has both a normal and heroic version for both 10 and 25 players. The heroic versions of the instance limit players to a number of attempts each week, but open up greater rewards for those who succeed. With that in mind, do you try and take out Ulduar quickly and then spend the remaining time working on the normal version of the new instance? Or do you skip the gobs of easy loot from Ulduar in favor of the new content? How do you balance time spent in normal vs. heroic Coliseum? Interesting questions, indeed. Perhaps the biggest raiding change to be introduced in 3.2 is the extend raid lockout feature. When 3.2 hits, guilds will be able to decide if they want to prevent a raid instance from resetting on a weekly basis. Raid lockouts can be extended for up to an additional week to allow players more time to work on and clear boss encounters. With instances as big as Ulduar, many guilds begin to struggle towards the end of the instance because they run out of time to work on bosses like General Vezax and Yogg-Saron. How will your guild use this exciting feature? Players in 3.2 will have the ability to trade soulbound items with other raid members that are eligible for the loot. This feature grants you a two-hour grace period before the item is permanently bound and will save Blizzard GMs from throngs of in-game tickets from items that are distributed incorrectly. Guilds may decide, however, to use this feature as a time saver during raids. Instead of spending precious flask time distributing loot after each boss kill, the master looter can grab everything and hand it out at specified break periods. Obviously, this is more beneficial when you're clearing a lot of bosses in a night and can get complicated if you frequently have raid members leaving and joining throughout the night, but it is still a nice option to explore. The Call of the Crusade patch will change the way a lot of guild approach raiding. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Which raiding features are you most excited about in 3.2? How is your guild going to approach some of these changes? Share your thoughts and ideas with us.

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I'm always on the look out for new tools to use to keep track of trends in WoW. And it looks like a favorite of mine, what used to be called TalentChic, recently updated to allow users to find the most popular gear, enchants and gems, depending on a number of filters. I wrote a post a while back about how to use the same site to find talent builds and appropriate glyphs for those filters, so I'll skip over that information this time around. Now, the site is renamed WoW Popular, and has several other useful tools. Here's a refresher on how it works:

"To find the most popular talent builds, the (WoW Popular) system scans both the US and EU WoW armory sites to find the talent points, glyphs, gear, enchants, and gems chosen by characters. It then sorts those according class, spec and playstyle and collates the results."

Now I'm sure this is a debatable point, but the site asserts that the results of this search show the most accessible gear for a class.

"Because there are a limited number of choices, the collective mind of all players usually migrates to the best, most accessible option for players. What’s ‘best’ (top tier raid gear, or top arena gear) is not attainable for most players so it is usually shown a little further down the list."

Time for a little fun. Let's test out the system by taking a look at the most popular gear items among players of ALL classes. Here's the top 5, as of my writing this post!

1. Sundial of the Exiled
2. Band of Channeled Magic
3. Ward of the Violet Citadel
4. Tabard of the Kirin Tor (I guess we have a lot of raiders looking for Kirin Tor rep rewards out there!)
5. Shroud of Luminosity

Now, how about a look at the most popular main-hand weapon, again among all classes:

1. Hammer of the Astral Plane
2. The Turning Tide
3. Wraith Strike
4. Torch of Holy Fire
5. The Impossible Dream

Let's narrow it down a bit - Now a look at the most popular main-hand weapon for a fury-specced warrior:

1. The Jawbone
2. Betrayer of Humanity (I'm envious of that DPS)
3. Titansteel Destroyer
4. Armageddon (You will destroy the world with this weapon)
5. Ironsoul

As you can see, you can narrow down or broaden your search depending on what you're looking for. The search works for each armor slot, and you also can add in another search requirement based on one of five playstyles: crafted, mob, PvP, quest and raid. If it's not gear you're looking for, you can search for glyphs, gems or enchants, too. It's pretty handy and can simplify the dilemma in choosing gear - if you have faith in what other players are using. For the skeptics out there, try it out and let us know what you think. Are the results surprising? About what you expected? ...Laughable?

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Blizzard recently developed a new feature on their website that allows players to see maps and read background information on raid bosses: The Bosstiary. Currently only Ulduar is available, but I imagine they will add all future raids as they are released and add the missing ones that were introduced in Wrath. I really like the Bosstiary. One of the things that got me to abandon Final Fantasy XI for WoW back in the day was the feeling WoW gave me of an intentional path for my character. I felt like there was a reason I had to kill 50 raptors to level up: they stole our silver! Even with examples of terribly justified quests like the raptors stealing our precious silver for no reason, I felt like I was part of a story or at least a world. I kind of lost that feeling when I hit level 60. I didn't really know why I was killing random fire lords in Molten Core that I had never heard of, and even with the questline to get the Aqual Quintessence, I was very unmotivated. Blizzard has improved on this over the years, and I think the content patch trailers really add to the role of the raids in the world from a lore perspective. However, there is still a lot of explaining to do on why we are killing bosses that are introduced to the lore for the first time in a patch without much background (who are Emalon and Archavon anyway?). Enter The Bosstiary! While there is only a sentence or two about each boss, it does add insight that we might not otherwise have. For example, Auriaya is Ulduar's archivist. While some things are heavily implied, like Razorscale actually being Veranus, its nice to see Blizzard filling out the lore as they go. What do you think? Is the Bosstiary worthwhile?

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My guild took down Mimiron last week, knocking off the last of the Keepers of Ulduar. It was an exciting kill that took a fair amount of coordination and strategy adjustment. Touted as one of the most challenging bosses in the instance, Mimiron is a complicated encounter, but it shouldn't roadblock a well-prepared guild. When bosses have multiple distinct phases, like Mimiron, they tend to develop a reputation for being extremely difficult. Images of Kael'thas or Illidan begin to cross players' minds. Sometimes players can build these bosses up and place them on pedestals to the point that it actually makes them harder. Is this a tough fight? Yes, I would agree that Mimiron is probably more complex than almost anything we've seen in WotLK up until this point. (I haven't had the pleasure to attempt Yogg-Saron, yet.) However, my "medium-core" guild bested the clockwork gnome and his inventions on the third night of attempts and claimed his incredibly yummy trinket, Pandora's Plea. As a raid leader, I have found the best way to combat encounters like this is to treat each phase as a separate mini-boss. Explain the first phase of the fight to the raid, give out assignments and then go. It's better to get an attempt under your belt before you lose your audience to napping and afk runs for Pop Tarts. While running back after a wipe, go over what you observed and tweak your strategy. The more familiar your raid is with the fight, the better you will do, so make sure you are spending more time fighting the boss, than talking about it. When you make it to phase 2, or know you are close, then go over the basic strategy for the next phase. Rinse and repeat. Make sure your raid members have all read the boss strategies and watched movies of the boss in advance of the attempts. Do not underestimate the importance of having a well-prepared raid. Sure you're going to go over the fight, but it's better to have 25 people with ideas, than relying on one raid leader. On the other hand, written strategies and movies are only going to get you so far. On complex encounters it's the adjustments you make to the basic strategy that will determine your success. Every raid is different and will have different strengths and weaknesses that you must cater to in order to succeed. Here are some of the adjustments and tweaks my guild had to make in order to get this boss down. As I mentioned, every raid is different and some suggestions may have value to you and some may not. These are some of the things that worked for us and perhaps they can help you too. If you don't know the basic strategy for this fight, please click here first, as these tips assume you already know the basic strategy. Phase 1: Leviathan MKII

• When the melee and tank run away from the boss to avoid shock blast, don't run too far. There are three stripes on the ground with circles in them, which divide the room. If the boss is positioned in the center of the room, you only need to run to the second circle on the ground. If the tank is running too far, the boss will get out of position and possibly lay a set of proximity mines too close to the casters and healers.
• The plasma blasts deal an insane amount of damage. Even with a proper cooldown rotation established, all of the healers need to be focused on keeping the tank alive. Every healer that is assigned to use cooldowns on the tank, such as pain suppression, guardian spirit or hand of sacrifice should have another healer near them in case they get hit with a napalm shell at an inopportune moment.
• Your raid members should know their jobs and what to do, however, having someone diligently calling out things over ventrilo can help your raid stay alive. Giving your group a few second warning on shock blast and plasma blast, can make a difference when you're learning the fight.

Phase 2: VX-001 Anti-personnel Assault Cannon

• We tried having the melee constantly rotating around the boss to avoid rapid bursts, but it didn't work well for us. So we assigned everyone a specific place to stand. The room has three stripes on the floor, which divide the rest of the room into wedges. The positioning we ended up with was dividing the ranged and healers into three groups and assigning each a wedge to stand in. The melee was also divided into three groups and each group was assigned a stripe to stand on. The rapid bursts would then have six distinct targets to choose from and each time the damage would only be hitting 3-4 raid members at a time.
• Have someone watch the back of the VX-001 and call out when they see the rockets launching, so the ranged classes can avoid them. They do five million damage to those that get hit! Fortunately, as of patch 3.1.3, the rockets don't seem to target the melee anymore. Someone should also call out when they see the boss casting spinning up, which will lead to laser barrage. Everyone needs to run around clockwise to avoid getting hit by this.

Phase 3: Aerial Command Unit (ACU)

• Everyone should group up on one side and be as close to the outer walls as possible. The ranged DPS tank for the Aerial Command Unit needs to make sure it is positioned well away from the raid, but it also cannot be directly in the center of the room. We found that the magnetic cores had trouble rooting the ACU when he was positioned in the center. If the ACU gets too close to the raid, it will drop bomb bots directly on top of them.
• The bomb bots can be dealt with by having one death knight using the following macro:

/target bomb bot /cast chains of ice

• When a bomb bot spawns, call for ranged DPS to kill it and the death knight can keep it place by hitting the macro. If a bomb ever gets to close to the raid, the death knight can Death Grip it away from them.
• The raids in our guild usually have a lot of melee DPS in them. We found that saving two magnetic cores and using them in immediate succession allowed for more DPS on the ACU and less running back and forth. You have to be cautious with this strategy, however. After you loot a magnetic core, it only lasts in your inventory for one minute. So I recommend leaving the cores on the assault bots' corpses until you are ready to root the ACU.

Phase 4: V-07-TR-0N

• Phase 4 can be a chaotic mess and all three parts of the gnomish Voltron need to be killed within 10 seconds of each other, otherwise they respawn. We had everyone go back to their assigned positions from phase 2. We asked all of our ranged DPS to focus on the ACU (head) and the melee DPS to focus on the Leviathan MKII (feet). We had them DPS those parts down to around 12% health and then focus on the VX-001 (middle). Once all three sections were around 12% health, we had folks assigned to DPS all three pieces and we coordinated their death over vent.
• The shock blast in phase 4 can be interrupted by the Laser Barrage spin. The shock blast graphic will flicker for a moment and then stop while the laser barrage spin is cast. Be careful! If this happens, as soon as the laser barrage is over, the shock blast will cast and blow up anyone in melee range. If you see this, call it out on vent and have your melee and tanks stay away until after the shock blast goes off.

I hope some of this information proves useful to you and your guilds, as you attempt this unique encounter. Feel free to post your own suggestions for this encounter or ask any questions you may have as well. If these suggestions help you make progress, please come back and let us know!

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[caption id="attachment_3267" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Don't let those bars fool you! I only use like three or four of those buttons!"] [/caption] The Rogue is, by magnitudes, my favorite class. I've played one as my main (Amatera) for over 4 years now and enjoyed every second of it. Out of all my alts, not one has yet convinced me to give up on the master of melee combat. Or at least what should be, considering the lack of other roles for a Rogue to fill. No doubt that the class has seen its ups and downs. I was pretty excited by the new abilities and talents introduced with Wrath, but, like many others of my ilk, came away disappointed with a pretty significant (and unexpected) drop in playability caused by the new mechanics. Raid DPS went down the tubes and, on my server, level-capped Rogues were a scarce lot. Heck, I was (and still am) the only non-alt Rogue in my guild. And I'm surprised that I stuck through it, considering that towards the tail end of Burning Crusade I was regularly in the top 3 for damage and was now struggling to break 10. Things have taken a turn for the better since 3.1. I've reclaimed my position in the charts thanks to the modification of Hunger for Blood and a slight respec back into Improved Poisons. But it did something else that makes me wonder whether or not playing a Rogue is too easy -- it made my core rotation reductively simple again. Now, it takes skill and a keen reaction time to play any class well, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm tailing a boss spamming Mutilate and Envenom whilst our healers have their hands full playing whack-a-mole with raid frames. There is a certain sublimity, a zen-like state if you will, about punching only two or three keys and outputting the insane amount of damage that a Rogue can, but I think people get excited about simplicity until they start to feel the guilt of not putting in the same amount of effort as others. Or, at least I do. Maybe not all those chumps riding coattails for gear. Before 3.1, my rotation was a lot more complicated than it is now (or was when I was playing Combat in BC), but my damage clearly suffered. Having to maintain three stacks of Hunger for Blood and Slice and Dice was a pain, between expensive Mutilates and the occasional Rupture where I could fit it. The thing about Energy is that, even though you may never run out, your cap is always fixed. So when your pool of the good stuff is being sucked dry by a few expensive skills, it destroys your DPS. With a duration of only 30 seconds, Hunger for Blood was the main culprit: easy to let drop, and far too expensive to get running again. Considering I needed the skill's buff to even compete on the damage meters, leaving it out was not an option. Thus, it seems, that the smaller a Rogue's rotation ultimately is, the more efficiently they can utilize their Energy, and the changes made to the class reflect that. Hunger for Blood now lasts a full minute and need only be triggered by a Bleed effect. In a raid situation, those are going to be a dime a dozen, so unless you're off tussling with some off-tanked mob, you rarely have to worry about it (and it frees you from having to queue up Rupture, as well). Slice and Dice? Well, that's refreshed by Envenom, which an Assassination-specced Rogue should be dishing out relentlessly anyway. Like a Showtime Rotisserie, all you need to do is "set it and forget it!" Sure, I've found a few ways to improve my utility, even if only by a tad. I'll throw an Expose Armor up on a mob if there are no Sunders to be had, I'll use Feint to ignore some of the crazy Area of Effect damage most of the new Ulduar bosses dish out. Heck, Cloak of Shadows is as useful as ever, especially for those pesky light and gravity bombs XT-002 is fond of afflicting players with. These skills aren't ever in my regular rotation, but I'd be more than willing to take a slight hit to my DPS if it meant giving the class more raid-enhancing utility skills. Then again, that might go against the selfish, dirty-dealing, throat-slitting, gold-stealing spirit of a Rogue! Considering these dynamics, must we be crucified for sins we did not commit? My "Damage-Dealer's Burden" aside, is there some way to stop the general populace from slinging bawdy insults our way and sermonizing about how over-powered our class is? I don't know. Blizzard has stated that they, too, are unhappy with the ease with which a Rogue can obliterate their opponents (especially in PvP). The changes made to Hunger for Blood, after all, were a bit of a hot fix. It's a fundamentally broken skill, once detrimental to the Rogue itself and  now detrimental to everyone else (at least in their eyes). Makes you wonder why it was even incorporated as a new talent in the first place if it was going to cause so much trouble. For now, we wait impatiently for an answer. We have been told that it is not the right time for a total rehaul of the class and Blue posts concerning Rogues have dwindled since the raid damage output issue was finally "addressed." But there must be other Rogues out there reading this. Let me know what's on your mind! Does "easier-to-play" equal "overpowered?" Do you feel some deep sense of personal guilt when your healers and tanks are yelling at each other as your raid falls apart in front of you, wondering if there was anything you could've done to help? Or do you go stealth and wait in a corner until the smoke has cleared? Rogue or not, what are your feelings on the ethics of rotation complexity? Do you feel as if the game is at its best when it gives you a lot of skills to manage at once, or is a simple hotbar better and more fun? Does it make certain classes more "fair" to play than others?

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The stats on Val'anyr, the new legenary healing mace that is obtainable in Ulduar, were revealed a little while ago, but the special proc that is on the mace has been a bit of a mystery since its tooltip was discovered. Ferraro over at Paladin Schmaladin has been posting over the past few weeks about the mace, and the discussion sparked a couple of developers - Bornakk and Ghostcrawler - to let the community know exactly how the proc works. The basics are these: There is a 10% chance on any heal for the weilder of Val'anyr to gain the blessing from the mace, as long as the heal is not completely overhealing (ie the target is not at full health when you heal them). It is a 15 second effect with a 45 second internal cooldown. For the next 15 seconds, all of your healing spells will create a shield on their target(s) for 15% of the heal. This includes overheal and spells that do no actual healing. The shield will stack with itself, and will max out at 20,000 damage absorbed. Bornakk gave a few examples of how it actually works and Ghostcrawler has answered many of the questions that have come up since then. Check out their posts on the official forums for the complete details. Unfortunately I won't be seeing one of these in my guild for a long time (and we haven't even seen a shard drop). Anyone out there close to collecting the 30 shards needed for it?

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One of the major pieces of content from the latest major content patch was Ulduar, the new raid instance. Many people are exploring the instance and killing the bosses inside. Many people are also dying inside Ulduar... a lot. Blizzard has decided that people are dying too much. This has caused the developers to make many of the bosses much easier so that those people who are having trouble can experience the content much quicker. This is quite in line with their determination to allow all players to see the encounters, but not necessarily defeat them in their most difficult incarnations. The guys are starting out with a few of the earlier bosses in order to hopefully have more players full clear the instance, or at least get a little bit further. I have yet to beat all of the bosses inside Ulduar, having only cleared up to Yogg Saron, and I know many others have also not cleared the instance. However, it is only the third week that the content has been available, so I'm ok with some of the encounters taking many tries to defeat. How do you guys feel about the nerfs? Here are some of them in detail, in case you're curious:

• The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
• The Assault Bots on the Mimiron encounter will now attack faster, in turn they will do less damage per hit.
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: The duration of Tympanic Trantrum has been reduced, the timer for XT-002 to hit berserk has been increased, the damage of Light Bomb has been reduced, the effect radius of Light Bomb has been reduced, and the health of XM-024 Pummeler has been reduced.
• The aggro radius for several trash mobs before General Vezax has been reduced and the health has been reduced on Void Beasts and Faceless Horrors.
• The Kologarn encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Stone Grip has been reduced, the amount of time to break someone out from the right hand has been increased, the radius and damage of Rumble has been reduced, and the damage of Focused Eyebeam has been reduced.
• The Assembly of Iron encounter has received the following changes: The damage of Rune of Death has been reduced, the damage of Chain Lightning has been reduced, and the damage of Lightning Whirl has been reduced.

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Wings.  What did you think I was getting at?

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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