So we did some PTR raid testing yesterday, the first four bosses of Eternal Palace on normal with item level scaled to 405. This scaling made the raid a bit of a challenge actually, along with the tuning otherwise probably being completely out of wack on account of it being the PTR where that tuning is being done. Sometimes the raid test are also intentionally overtuned to allow people to properly test the mechanics and not just steamroll them—was probably also the reason for the item level scaling. Of course, none of us knowing any of the mechanics along with playing two healers for 15 raiders also contributed though I think having a third healer would just have made it boring—it was still normal after all. But my point is, people on live realms will probably have better gear and more of an idea when going in so it will be easier.

Another slightly annoying thing was, while we did have the Heart of Azeroth scaled to level 60 theoretically unlocking a major and minor essence slot, only the major one was available since we would have needed to visit the heart forge in order to unlock the minor essence slot. Now why we didn’t do this, well that scaling was only enabled inside the raid, so once we would have been at the forge we would no longer have had the neck at level 60 and as such the slot would not have been available to unlock. To be fair, I’m somewhat doubtful that most normal raiders will have that slot unlocked when they start with the raid anyway though that will depend on how much easier it becomes to get levels in the Heart of Azeroth with the next patch and how much time we have until the raid is released but it would still have been nice to be able to test a minor essence in addition to the major one.

Abyssal Commander Sivara

The first boss was pretty trivial and I think we ended up killing it on our first try. The boss basically had the mechanic from Guarm, where everyone gets a color and you shouldn’t run into people with another color. In addition to this the boss occasionally shoots out arrows in all directions that also have a color and you should be especially careful not to get hit by the ones that have another colour though even getting hit by your colour is bad since it is also a debuff with a small ticking damage effect and a secondary negative effect. These secondary effects seemed to a bit buggy, for example one of them was reduced healing but it reduced healing by 0% in other words not at all.

The last mechanic that was enabled on normal was a random player getting targeted by a spear of another colour that a player with the colour matching the spear needs to soak. Soaking this spear stuns you until someone removes the spear, which then of course also needs to be done by a player with the same colour as the spear.

All in all rather simple but it was also the first boss on normal. It could get somewhat interesting on mythic depending on tuning, but being the first boss the tuning probably won’t be that hard. Still, the boss at least had mechanics you couldn’t ignore unlike the first boss of Battle of Dazar’alor so that is a plus.

Blackwater Behemoth

The second boss we did was the Blackwater Behemoth, Blizzards new attempt to make an underwater boss. Or to be more exact, a boss with a third dimensions since the previous attempts weren’t really underwater but rather floating in the air—those bosses being Kael’thas as well Al’akir.

This seemed like it could potentially be the hardest early boss though again will depend on tuning. One of the big problems with this boss is being under water, which means that your movement speed is heavily reduced. Along with this, spells that you cast on the ground don’t necessarily hit you while you are swimming above the bottom of the cave, this was a big problem for me in the beginning since I tend to use Angelic Feathers as my movement speed ability and those are put down on the ground—later on I started swapping my weapons for the Underlight Angler, the artifact fishing pole from Legion. I would definitely recommend getting it if Blizzard does not nerf it before release since it’s a huge movement speed increase while swimming and actually allows you to swim against the pushback the boss does.

The other difficulty with this boss is the primary mechanic: everyone except for the main tank is heal immune—absorb shields worked while we were testing, which will probably mean that discipline priests will be rather strong here early on. To remove this immunity, you need to kill the pufferfish that are on the platforms around the boss but with the correct timing since you only have two of these per platform and the boss switches platform on a timer not dependant on health. This means the boss is also something of a damage check, since you need to be done with the boss before you run out of the fish and your raid is heal immune and slowly gets killed by the damage from the boss. The boss rather constantly does a chain lightning type cast on several players that increases in damage the more it jumps so the raid needs to be spread out—rather difficult for melees as well as while one is getting the pufferfish buff. The pushback which is a channeled casts also does a decent amount of damage so having players healable and topped up before it comes will probably be rather important—on our kill try we ended up focusing the pufferfish before the boss on the second platform for example. It will also be interesting to see how some tanks deal with this since the boss deals a large amount of damage to the whole raid if no tank is in melee range and it is of course hard to be in melee after the pushback.

The final mechanic are the intermissions, now these aren’t really anything more than swimming from one platform to the next however there is a small catch: if you are healable a fish from the depths will come and eat you while you are moving in between the platforms instantly killing you. This is also true outside of the intermissions so players need to stay on the platforms though there is a few second grace period so you can see you are in danger. During the intermission you also need to be careful not to swim into the jellyfish that are on the way since they also give you the healable buff.

All in all, it was actually a surprisingly complex boss for normal and I will be very interested to see how the tuning ends up being on live—this boss could pose some real problems for some guilds. Also, only the first four bosses being available I’m not actually sure if you can just skip it, we could definitely have done the bosses in another order so maybe that will be the solution for some.

Radiance of Azshara

This boss also surprised me a bit and was probably the second hardest one for us. It was basically a more complex version of the Wrath of Azshara from Eye of Azshara in Legion. So the mechanics that were the same: the boss is in the middle of a ring and you play around the boss—also, don’t use Shadow Step if you are a rogue—as well as the Arcane Bomb: players get debuffed with a bomb that explodes after a while stunning players in an area, dispelling the debuff allows the debuffed player to also avoid this explosion since the bomb is then left on the spot the player was standing when they got dispelled. The boss also spawns arcane tornades you need to dodge that knock you back and damage you when you get hit by them—with how much stuff is going on in this encounter this can easily lead to your death through a chain reaction.

Now the primary new mechanics—on normal at least—were the intermission in which adds spawn in one of four places that you have to get to since the rest of the room gets heavy ticking damage and the boss is taking reduced damage. Killing these adds allows you to damage the boss again as well as removing the ticking damage from the rest of the room. These adds consist of one big add that does a knockback with heavy damage which was the really dangerous part since getting kicked back outside the safe zone could easily lead to death. There were also smaller adds that need to be controlled and damaged down to prevent them from casting chain lightnig on the group.

The second new mechanic were lines of mines that spawned making moving between the different parts of the room rather difficult especially when one was trying to reach the adds. There were at times small gaps between the mines but we primarily worked around this by having one of the tanks soak one of the mines allowing the rest of the raid to get through—soaking a mine does spawn a new tornado though so need to stay careful.

All in all, mechanically the boss seems rather simple but like Wrath of Azshara back in Legion it’s just rather easy to be overwhelmed by all that is going on at the same time as well as the rather heavy movement requirement. We also tended to have a bad habit of spreading out a bit too much meaning it was at times difficult to keep players within range which was especially bad when they needed to be dispelled. Will be interesting to see how the boss plays on mythic—I’m expecting it to be interesting.

Lady Ashvane

The last boss we did was Lady Ashvane and she was rather trivial for us especially compared to the two previous bosses, we killed her on the first try. The boss starts with a big absorb shield that needs to be damaged down so that the boss actually takes damage and after a while she will recast her absorb—apparently this shield will keep getting bigger with each cast so it will be something of a damage check.

Corals also spawn periodically that then spawn orbs that move to the boss increasing her absorb shield. These orbs can be soaked by players but doing so triggers an explosion damaging the whole raid—this means that the longer the fight goes on the more damage will come in. Now these corals can be removed through an additional mechanic: several players get marked with a colour in pairs. After the debuff expires damage will be dealt between these pairs and can be used to remove the corals. We managed to keep the corals quite well in check though I imagine this will not be as easy on mythic. I think this will heavily influence the difficulty of the fight as well as how big the damage check will be.

Another mechanic that could make these marks more difficult to play are the stuns: for us three players got put into a water bubble and stunned within. To remove the stun the bubble needed to be destroyed. Now we did get some warning before this happened though we didn’t really use this to stack up which we should probably do on mythic. However, depending on the timings on mythic these bubbles might come inconveniently timed along with for example the marks which might make the positioning for those much more difficult.

Finally, the tank debuff or hit the boss does leaves a damaging spot on the ground so the boss needs to be moved around the room. I guess the room filling up will be the soft enrage, though I’m guessing the healers will be out of mana and the raid will have exploded to the orbs before that happens.

Now the tuning for Lady Ashenvale seemed rather easy and we got her down on the first try. But there were some interesting mechanics in there that could prove problematic on mythic and I’m hoping the boss will be more interesting to play there.

Conclusion

The testing was actually surprisingly fun and I’m looking forward to doing more in the future. Us being almost a full guild group with one external player probably helped, but still being able to do even normal bosses in a version where they can present some level of challenge was fun. It was also a great opportunity to get something of a sneak peek on the bosses that will probably be more valuable than our first clear on heroic since with the smaller raid size along with only two healers means there was more to do as well as more responsibility placed upon us two. In the heroic week we generally have enough healers that I don’t tend to have to do much and as a consequence don’t really learn what is dangerous on the different bosses. Now this can of course change between difficulties as abilities get added to the boss but still it gave some idea how the bosses actually work.

So, hopefully there are more raid tests soon!

I have been playing one of my favourite games again recently, Arcanum. It’s a CRPG released 2001 that unlike many popular ones released around that time is not based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset¹. I think this is what gives me so fond memories of the game, since while I do enjoy Dungeons & Dragons and think it’s a good ruleset for Pen & Paper it always felt somewhat lacking while playing it as a CRPG. Especially the whole “casts per day” mechanic I felt really did not fit in with CRPG’s that tend to be somewhat monster filled. It made casters really frustrating to play especially at low levels since you either did very little or ended up resting every couple fights. But this was about Arcanum, not Dungeons & Dragons.

Playing the game has been a somewhat strange experience, since I have really fond memories of playing it a ton as a kid and those memories seem to be very strong since I can still memeber the early levels really well and know almost exactly what I need to do, what quests are available where and how to complete them as well as how I want to level my character even though it has been several years since I last played the game—though I’m not quite sure how long exactly, I think I did another playthrough of the game ten years ago or so?

Still, I find the game excellent but this strange feeling of knowing exactly how everything will play out all the time is keeping me from playing the game a bit. I mean, I still enjoy what I am doing but it feels somewhat routine which is strange since it has been so long since last. The feeling will also probably dissipate a bit the further in I get since I actually haven’t played the whole game through that many times, only the early levels and maybe the first half or so?

I think I’m actually so slowly at my usuall stopping point back in the day, before going and visiting the Black Mountain Clan. For some reason this first proper dungeon used to intimidate me, I believe partially due to the Rock Golems there which can actually make your weapon break when you attack them.² Since I’m playing a melee character again this will be something I have to take into account before going in there—perhaps I should get some “expendable” weapon I can use to kill the golems? It’s actually really unfortunate, just got nice magical weapons for the whole party after clearing out P. Schuyler and Sons but I guess I need to use the other weapons for only one or two fights in there.

I think I’ll start enjoying the game even more once I get over that hurdle, and now with Uu’nat down we should probably be raiding less again which means I have more time for other games. Though maybe I’ll just spend that time boosting more instead. I just hope this game doesn’t end up the way Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey where I don’t end up finishing this run—haven’t really played Assassin’s Creed since that post, there as well I would need to get over the level grinding hurdle.

With that all said, the game is still probably my all-time favourite CRPG and if you haven’t already played it and like CRPGs I would definitely recommend you do so. But do read the manual, some of the things—like skills training—really aren’t explained at all in game. As a kid I had no idea what it did, just that you could pay a trainer to get some text to stand next to the name of the skill. But the training is actually really good, and among other things is what is required in order to be able to try to repair completely broken equipment.

If you do end up playing the game, I would recommend getting some of the community patches for it as well as the widescreen patch which is available and works well for the most part though it does have a funky effect on some screens. For example the character sheet and inventory are fixed size, so you end up being able to see some of the world while you have them open which is not the case in the original resolution. Also, depending on whether you like experimentation or just want to see the story, it might be worth looking into some good builds. There is a lot of freedom to the character creation, but there are very much “cookie cutter” backgrounds and skills you can choose to get a easier experience. In my opinion, there are also some somewhat misleading spells, that seem like they could be strong based on the description but end up being somewhat weak in actual usage. One example of this are the different elemental forms you can learn in the elemental spell paths—it seems really cool to be able to turn into an earth elemental or the like, but in my experience the damage and survivability wasn’t that great compared to some other choices. On the other hand, being able to turn into an earth elemental is really cool, so maybe that is enough reason to go that path—I know I made an elemental mage at some point that focused on the different transformations and had fun with it.

Now I’m actually getting the feeling of maybe wanting to remake my character and going for a more magic build again since those tend to be more interesting even if the melee builds can be really strong as well. Maybe I just need to get those first points in earth magic to get the extra strength and that would make my meleeing more efficient. I guess I have a plan for tomorrow then.

So I’ve actually joined a boosting community recently and have been on a couple of boost runs. It seems like an appropriate way to get some extra gold to cover raiding costs as well as maybe eventually be able to afford the much sought after longboi. Now that latter is more of a long term goal since I don’t know if I will be boosting that often and while the payout is good you do need to boost frequently if you want to make a lot of gold in a short period of time. It also depends on the amount of buyers per run, more buyers of course means more effective use of one’s time.

It has actually been a somewhat strange experience so far even though I’ve only been on a couple of runs. For one, how fun it has actually been considering we are doing content that is trivial enough for us to be able to boost somewhere along half of the raid. I guess actually having to boost all of those people is what makes it fun, since it brings some level of challenge back to the content actually having to think a bit more what we are doing there.

Complete side rant, there was one rather frustrating experience during one of the boost runs in Crucible of Storms. We were taking on a couple of more boostees than in the earlier runs and there was some uncertainty around us being able to actually make it through with so many boostees. Now we had a try and a wipe because of failed kicks on Uu’nat—I play Discipline so I can’t really react to fails that well afterhand, I have to predict them, admittedly I could probably have reacted better and it would have been fine. However, after this a call is made by the co-leader to bring in one more damage dealer and one more healer. Now, in theory this is a fine call since it makes it more likely that we are able to manage the amount of boostees but my issue comes here: the additional damage dealer was not told to interrupt anything which was the whole reason for us just wiping and we were doing more than fine up until that point. The additional healer also just meant that there was less for us to heal per person just making it seem that the healers weren’t pulling their weight. We of course easily kill the boss after that but we would have done that anyway if the kicks had been done properly which they were the second time around. As a consequence, we also didn’t try taking more boostees in on consequent runs—though to be fair I’m not sure if there was enough interest anyway. All of that just annoyed me more than it probably should for some reason, the “lost” gold isn’t that important just the complete misidentification of the issue and the overbearing response as a consequence.

Another somewhat strange and unfortunate part of the experience has been the—I guess—culture some of the players there have. Very much “let’s go boys” and lots of e-peen measuring it feels like giving something of a “boys club” feel at times. Now admittedly I’m seeing this more subtly for the most part and it’s probably something that they are bringing over from other communities they participate in rather than something innate for this community but it still doesn’t make the envirnment feel the most welcoming to me. It also feels really strange since there is so much talk in the Code of Conduct and so on about showing a professional image to the buyers by being on time and keeping the in-game raid chat clean but I guess this same professionalism isn’t expected to be extended towards other bosters.

Now as noted these are initial vibes and I haven’t been on that many boost runs yet and it’s probably very dependant on the leader as well as one’s fellow bosters—in fact the second boost run was much better than the first though that was probably partially due to very low participation in voice chat from almost all boosters present, me included—but it still isn’t really motivating me to more actively look out for additional boosting opportunities. I guess I should probably be fine if I avoid the outwardly obvious incompatible groups.

I still think I want to be doing more boosting than I have been so far, and Uu’nat being down should provide more opportunities as well as more importantly more energy to be able to do boost runs—that has actually a really interesting side effect of this progress that I haven’t though much about, actually just feeling like the breaks from raiding on non-raid nights were really needed.

Speaking of progress, one unexpectedly annoying part of it has been preparing the “foosts” (feasts) for the raids. Now there is a special version of the feasts that instead of the rare fish take the crafting reagnents from Uldir however there is of course a slight problem with this: we aren’t raiding Uldir anymore. There is something of a way around this, in that you can convert the Battle of Dazar’alor crafting material into the Uldir one with several different crafting professions. The problem here becomes when you want to convert 1000+ of the things it takes a lot of time even with the crafting enchantment—I think I spent 10-15 minutes converting mine. Now this doesn’t need to be done that often and it has been a one time thing for me so far but it has still been something of an unexpected and quite frankly unecessary small annoyance with regards to progress. Luckily that shouldn’t be so necessary anymore since from what I hear we will be getting a new feast in the next patch anyway and I don’t have that many of the materials left since we haven’t been clearing Battle of Dazar’alor since we started Crucible progress. But it would just have been nice to either have the transform cast be shorter or have an option to transform several at the same time.

Well that was quick. The most satisfying kill in a while.

So as noted we have been progressing on Uu’nat for a bit. This is still ongoing and I think I’m starting to get a good feel for all phases of the fight, phase three included.

Now my observations on the second boss have changed somewhat. It seems that for melees the fight is mostly rather boring, since two of the primary mechanics of the fight—baiting the Oblivion Tears to the edges of the room so that people don’t run into them; not running into other players while Unstable Resonance is active thus creating an explosion instantly killing players nearby while reaching your relic before the debuff runs out—don’t target melee players unless there are too many of them or too many of the ranged and healers are dead.

Phase one

Now even as a range and healer, phases one and two are getting to be rather boring. Sure, there is a bit to watch out for with the marks¹ and how the Oblivion Tears have been baited so that you don’t run into other players as well as me having the extra duty in phase one of carrying the void relic² so I need to be positioned well before Unstable Resonance is cast so that other players can get to me easily as well as move around me easily. This is mostly difficult right at the end of phase one, since the room keeps getting smaller in phase one and before the intermission to phase two it tends to have gotten rather small indeed making the last Unstable Resonance somewhat tricky to play. Still, the incoming damage isn’t that great for the most part so you can stay almost completely concentrated on the mechanics and damaging the boss making phase one not overly interesting to play repeatedly—I think this is usually the main cause of some of our fails with Unstable Resonance in phase one, the mechanic still requires a certain amount of attention and people just get so into the flow of the fight that they let themselves get caught in a bad spot or actually just let the debuff run out.

The first intermission is also not overly complex, use the storm relic³ to kill the adds that have accrued during phase one and then use the void relic² and soak the Oblivion Tears—so we have more room to play in phase two—and then drop it on the correct mark by soaking the Unknowable Terror. The room also gets bigger again and doesn’t shrink regularly anymore making phase two somewhat easier to play.

Phase two

Here the fight gets slightly more interesting from a healer perspective, since there are actually some decent bursts of damage coming in when the storm relic³ gets used to clear the adds which at times comes in combination with Gift of N’Zoth: Hysteria which deals a decent amount of damage to the raid as well as healing the adds. This means there are actually a few decent chances to use cooldowns and actually heal people in phase two, which is made somewhat difficult by the necessity to bait and the largeness of the room—there is rarely a moment where I actually have everyone in range allowing me to properly prepare for incoming damage meaning I have to take positioning into account in order to be able to heal people properly. This adds a somewhat interesting layer to the fight from a healer perspective, though it only comes up once for me at least in the fight meaning it isn’t that much of an issue. Positioning in phase two is made even more important by the Unknowable Terror which spawns a large area effect on the floor which will most likely kill any non-tank players—this ability is especially dangerous in combination with the need to bait the Oblivion Tears, since you can’t necessarily just run through the middle which is usually the quickest way out.

Now for the damage dealers there is one extra bit to watch out for in phase two: more frequent adds as well as caster adds. This means that the adds actually need to be cleared during phase two like in the first intermission as well as interrupted—interrupt fails along with Unstable Resonance fails are also the most frequent wipe reason for us. All in all it’s not overly complicated, though the amount of damage on the adds needs to be rather precise since they need to be killed through the effect from the storm relic³ and not directly by the damage dealers which means they need to be brought low together.

Phase three

Now the intermission going into phase three is similar as described above, kill the adds then soak the tears² and drop the relic on the mark—though I still have cooldown on the relic, so this time someone else is the primary soaker. The rest however, is much more hectic than any of the earlier phases. Phase three is played in a room that is sligthly smaller than phase two, so baiting the tears correctly is more important. The beams from phase one also make a return, which means you have to be positioned properly in order to avoid getting two stacks but at the same time also baiting properly so that tears aren’t placed incorrectly—for this, we have set spots for the ranges to bait as a group, so that hopefully the baits land correctly. Now the marks still have to be played like before, but now baits at time come in very close proximity to the marks so you have to be on your toes and not stand incorrectly once you’ve gotten rid of your mark. During all of this the adds spawn like before and have to be interrupted and dealt with like before.

In addition, phase three also has a new mechanic: Insatiable Torment. This ability reduces the healing you receive by 100% making you almost heal immune, with two exceptions: absorbs still work, which is why for the marks we use Rapture and shield the tormented players to allow them to survive since they usually need to split from other players; the tormented players also damage players around them leeching health and this is the other way they can be kept alive.

So phase three all in all is mostly familiar to someone who has played the other phases just with much more tight timings and less tolerance for failure. This does present something of a learning curve since you have to get used to knowing where to go beforehand so you’ll be at the right place at the right time but I think we are slowly starting to get over this hurdle. I think our best try was 12% so far and we have had several phase three tries in the last few raid evenings so hopefully this means we can down the boss sometime this reset still—would actually mean we get a decent world ranking again as well, which would be nice. But I guess we’ll know how that went in a week or so.

Well, that didn’t last long. First kill was today.