Watching the Alagon fight videos this week I was some what disheartened to see that after 5 years “Don’t stand in the fire”(DSITF) is still a core boss mechanic.
Just how prevalent is it and where did it begin though?
To being let me be clear in what I mean by DSITF. I’m referring to any boss encounter ability that causes damage to the player if they fail to move out of its area within a short period of time.
Ignoring the early leveling 5 mans where boss fights were trivial the 1st time players encounter this is in Upper Blackrock spire. General Drakkisath, the final boss in the zone has a Flame Strike ability similar to that of a mage.
This encounter was introduced to the game over 4 years ago! Even with the change to vehicles and “hard mode” encounters this basic game mechanic is still being used today.
Whilst initial versions of this mechanic simply involved the player taking a bit of extra damage, Blizzard have now changed it so that (in some fights) it is basically “you have 2 seconds to move or die”.
Although they do try and mix it up a little bit. In the Razorscale encounter they try and trick players with this effect. Not only does he have the classic version of this but he also has a similar ability which looks like DSITF but just does damage to the player (No on going effect). The result is players either move when they don’t have to, or get so used to being “hit” by the effect that when a real DSITF hits them they dont move. Sneaky!
So come on blizzard, how about some new mechanics? What about making healers have to “heal” the boss to do damage. “My rolling lifebloom did 600dps!” or making dps classes have to stand in the fire, i.e. if they stay at 100% health for more than a few seconds they explode (See what I did there?)
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