Karazhan Preview

[Trouble]

Some intrepid beta explorers have been making progress in Karazhan already on the beta servers and a video was made that shows some of the encounters.

Thread with info: http://www.worldofraids.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1538
Video (like over 500 megs): http://files.filefront.com/KharazanPreviewwmv/;6211159;;/fileinfo.html

The four encounters are:

1.) Opera Hall - Wizard of Oz encounter
In this encounter they fight four NPCs who are supposed to be the characters from the Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and the Scare Crow. Dorothy also summons her dog. The encounter takes place on a stage in front of a filled audience, styled after an Opera House. Looks like a really cool encounter. There's various tactics for dealing with each of the NPCs although I can't derive all the strategy from the video. The Cowardly Lion can be feared, The Tin Man is slowed (not sure how, maybe piercing howl or hamstring or something I missed) and kited. Dorothy is a mage that casts water bolts and I think you just heal through her damage. Looks like they tank and kill the scarecrow first. After all of them are killed the Wicked Witch spawns. She does tornadoes that fling you up in the air like the spells in Warcraft 3, pretty cool. She also casts chain lightning so you have to be careful of clumping. The cool part of this encounter is that it's 5 NPCs versus 10 players. I think they caught onto the fact that people like multi-mob boss encounters.

2.) Shade of Aran (father of Medivh)
This guy is a mage through and through. He does no melee attacks which is unique compared to all current raid encounters (except caster twin emp I think, maybe forgetting another). He blinks, he fireballs, he frostbolts, he blizzards, he summons water elementals, he does some other stuff I can't tell. Looks like his fireballs have a really nasty ignite that lasts for a while. There seems to be something to the positioning that I'm not getting from the video, sometimes they all cluster on top of him and sometimes they all go to the edge of the room. Looks like his blizzard goes around the rim of the room and not the inside sometimes and it looks like he does a big ass arcane explosion that has a few second casting time so I guess that's why they're doing the positioning. A lot of stuff going on in this encounter,  a lot of AoE damage and he's not 100% tankable (think he drops agro on blink like Noth and he also seems to random target a lot). Looks like when he hits a certain percent health he summons about 5 water elementals.

3.) Netherspite
This guy is a big Spirit of Azuregos looking guy located in the observatory. I can't really tell everything that's going on in this encounter, very confusing. There's three beams of light (red, green, blue, look like mind flay) coming out of the walls that aim for the center of the dragon. They appear to be trying to stand between the dragon and the beams and the beams stop at them if they're relatively close to the path. I assume the beams heal him or give him special powers or something. They also do damage if you're absorbing them, looks like they apply a stacking debuff so you need to constantly trade off who is absorbing the beam. On the scrolling combat text is shows up as "Nether Portal - Serenity". They wipe to this guy a couple minutes in, seemingly having done no damage to him or he was getting too much healing. The blocking of the beams is a really cool concept. Adds some complexity as you have to keep trading off who takes the beam.

4.) Prince Malchezaar
Supposedly the last guy in the instance I think? I can't figure out much of what's going on in this encounter. He does a debuff that knocks a bunch of peoples' hitpoints down to 1 for a few seconds and they run away from him whenever it happens. I can't see the mechanics of how it works. There also seems to be some sort of infernals that spawn and stand there doing hellfire off in the distance. They never go near them so I don't know what affect they have on the fight, if any. They wipe to this guy about 5 minutes in, having brought his hitpoints down to MAYBE 75%. I don't know if they did it wrong or if this is just the longest boss fight ever.


Overall, I'm guessing this was a semi-pug. I've been told that no one has been able to beat on bosses in Karazhan on hard mode yet but I don't know if this is true. I wasn't aware that raid instances had hard mode and easy mode, this might be misinformation, but cool if it's true. Anyway, they seem to be doing these encounters without voice communication which usually helps quite a bit. I'm also not really impressed with the skills of the priest who's making the video. Just a presumptuous asshole guess but it seems like the encounters really aren't that hard overall, but very cool. I would be disappointed if there was no hard mode based on this video, but then again maybe Karazhan is supposed to be relatively easy.\

Edit: actually read that thread. Here's some good quotes from it that explain some things:

Netherspite is basically a shadow version of Sapphiron with a twist. When you engage him, 3 orbs in this room (that are positioned in a triangle fashion around the room), activate a beam to shoot at Netherspite. When any given beam is active on Netherspite, it gives him a different stacking buff (which is bad). To block the beam, you have a raid member stand between the beam and Netherspite and, in return, the beam provides the person with 2 beneficial effects, and 1 negative effect.

1 beam buffs defense/damage taken, but reduces max hp.
1 beam buffs healing/threat reduction, but reduces max mana.
1 beam buffs damage dealt/threat reduction, but increases damage taken.

The last beam is a threat because instead of a 600 damage frost aura like Sapphiron has, Netherspite has a 1200 damage shadow aura. It's not THAT hard of a fight, but requires some thinking and planning obviously. Oh, also when you interrupt any beam from hitting Netherspite, everyone in the raid gets a -19,500 armor debuff.

We believe Nightbane (a big skeletal dragon) is the final boss. It's believed he lands on the mountainside where you fight the Prince after the Prince is defeated.

As far as the instance goes, the first few bosses are simply gear checks to see if your group has the endurance to last a few long fights. The later bosses are skill checks to make sure your group has the coordination and expertise to earn the "uber" loot of the instance. I would say mc-geared/experienced people would have no chance past the initial bosses, as some of the trash mobs alone later hit for over 8k non-crushing.

Many of the encounters are gimmick fights, and many just require precise coordination, it's the best instance Blizzard has created to date and I fully see why they took so long to release it now. The attention to detail there is incredible.

These are only some of the boss fights. There's tons of trash and 90% of the bosses in Karazhan are optional (altough the fights shown are 4 of the last 5 fights presumably). Prince Malchezaar is supposedly the 2nd to last fight, with Nightbane being last. However, between the instance resetting every time it's soft reset, not many groups are willing to clear the entire thing to reach the final bosses again, considering Karazhan is about the size of 3 aq40's put together.

In short, there are about 12-13 boss encounters and we did all of them except Nightbane (who is assumed to spawn after defeating Malchezaar) and maybe the chess encounter.

The raid makeup was:
1 prot war
1 fury war
1 afflic warlock
2 holy/disc priests
1 combat dagger rogue
1 fire mage
1 feral druid
1 resto druid
1 holy paladin

[Ironwood]

1.) Opera Hall - Wizard of Oz encounter
In this encounter they fight four NPCs who are supposed to be the characters from the Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and the Scare Crow. Dorothy also summons her dog. The encounter takes place on a stage in front of a filled audience, styled after an Opera House. Looks like a really cool encounter. There's various tactics for dealing with each of the NPCs although I can't derive all the strategy from the video. The Cowardly Lion can be feared, The Tin Man is slowed (not sure how, maybe piercing howl or hamstring or something I missed) and kited. Dorothy is a mage that casts water bolts and I think you just heal through her damage. Looks like they tank and kill the scarecrow first. After all of them are killed the Wicked Witch spawns. She does tornadoes that fling you up in the air like the spells in Warcraft 3, pretty cool. She also casts chain lightning so you have to be careful of clumping. The cool part of this encounter is that it's 5 NPCs versus 10 players. I think they caught onto the fact that people like multi-mob boss encounters.

That sounds enormously Gay.  Really, really, really bad.

[lamaros]

1.) Opera Hall - Wizard of Oz encounter
In this encounter they fight four NPCs who are supposed to be the characters from the Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and the Scare Crow. Dorothy also summons her dog. The encounter takes place on a stage in front of a filled audience, styled after an Opera House. Looks like a really cool encounter. There's various tactics for dealing with each of the NPCs although I can't derive all the strategy from the video. The Cowardly Lion can be feared, The Tin Man is slowed (not sure how, maybe piercing howl or hamstring or something I missed) and kited. Dorothy is a mage that casts water bolts and I think you just heal through her damage. Looks like they tank and kill the scarecrow first. After all of them are killed the Wicked Witch spawns. She does tornadoes that fling you up in the air like the spells in Warcraft 3, pretty cool. She also casts chain lightning so you have to be careful of clumping. The cool part of this encounter is that it's 5 NPCs versus 10 players. I think they caught onto the fact that people like multi-mob boss encounters.

That sounds enormously Gay.  Really, really, really bad.

Concur.

[SurfD]

From what i understand, the Opera house is actually semi random.  Different raid groups have reported getting different opera Events.

current ones i know of are:
Wizard of Oz
Romeo and Juliette
Little Red Riding Hood.

Who knows how many different ones there are?
It also seems that each encounter "should" be fairly decently scripted, so you can make guesses as to what is effective ways to deal with each encounter after a few shots.

[Ironwood]

Jack from 'Will & Grace' Gay.

[lamaros]

Nice vid, hard to judge the encounters and skill level on display though.

[Xanthippe]

Didn't even skim thread, just jumped down here to say --

Doesn't this spoil your virgin experience to read all this stuff, or see all this stuff?

I'm purposely trying to stay away from TBC other than finding out what activities I can do now that will be a waste of time vs which I can do now that will not be a waste of time, because I want it to be like "wowzers!" when I actually play it for real.  The scenery, plots, quests I don't want to know about now.

[Furiously]

1.) Opera Hall - Wizard of Oz encounter
In this encounter they fight four NPCs who are supposed to be the characters from the Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and the Scare Crow. Dorothy also summons her dog. The encounter takes place on a stage in front of a filled audience, styled after an Opera House. Looks like a really cool encounter. There's various tactics for dealing with each of the NPCs although I can't derive all the strategy from the video. The Cowardly Lion can be feared, The Tin Man is slowed (not sure how, maybe piercing howl or hamstring or something I missed) and kited. Dorothy is a mage that casts water bolts and I think you just heal through her damage. Looks like they tank and kill the scarecrow first. After all of them are killed the Wicked Witch spawns. She does tornadoes that fling you up in the air like the spells in Warcraft 3, pretty cool. She also casts chain lightning so you have to be careful of clumping. The cool part of this encounter is that it's 5 NPCs versus 10 players. I think they caught onto the fact that people like multi-mob boss encounters.

That sounds enormously Gay.  Really, really, really bad.

No winged monkeys...                   That's unattractive lesbian. (Sorry the whole - that's gay thing just seems so...Jr. High)

[Zane0]

It'll be great!

EDIT: I hear you can stun tin man with icebolts or something, because they are um, sorta wet.  You get the idea!

[Trouble]

It's in my nature to do as much research about something as possible, even if some of the surprise is lost. It's always still like "wow" when I get there because being there is different from reading and watching movies.

[Merusk]

It's in my nature to do as much research about something as possible, even if some of the surprise is lost. It's always still like "wow" when I get there because being there is different from reading and watching movies.

Yeah.  Despite being able to get on the beta server I've tried limiting myself on how much I see.  I keep hearing about places, but I don't want to see them until I'm there with friends/ guildies.   I will say that first trip through the Dark Portal is DAMNED impressive, however.

[SurfD]

It's in my nature to do as much research about something as possible, even if some of the surprise is lost. It's always still like "wow" when I get there because being there is different from reading and watching movies.

Exactly.  I had seen a number of different videos on the C'Thun fight.  They were neat.  Did they in any way detract from the actual coolness of my first C'Thun encoutner in person? Hell no.  The fight is still crazy fun the first time you do it, even if you sort of know what to expect.

[Fabricated]

Sounds like awesome fun to be outside of the mountain of trash that I excepted to be there. That instance is so huge you just gotta stuff it with trash to keep it from being kicked over in a single sitting by 10 poopsockers who live and breathe the game.

[bhodi]

man, fuck trash. It's a waste of time roadblock. There's nothing more frustrating than the tunnel leading up to c'thun/ouro... until now. Trash is not fun. It's not fun at all.

[Fabricated]

man, fuck trash. It's a waste of time roadblock. There's nothing more frustrating than the tunnel leading up to c'thun/ouro... until now. Trash is not fun. It's not fun at all.

From the looks of that thread, it looks like even the trash in there drop epics.

[Paelos]

man, fuck trash. It's a waste of time roadblock. There's nothing more frustrating than the tunnel leading up to c'thun/ouro... until now. Trash is not fun. It's not fun at all.

I disagree slightly, trash mobs add something to a game when done correctly. Straight shots at bosses offer nothing more than a loot pinata to hit at, and that's not really a good way to run a fully functional immersive dungeon. There has to be some forms of minions for the accomplisment effect in my book. They are not a waste of time if they add value to the instance in terms of loot and time.

The problem is that Blizzard has done so very many things wrong with trash mobs before.

1 - MC respawns: They were too fast, they were too often, and they kept coming even after you'd cleared out that part of the instance including the bosses. The tried to fix that aspect with BWL by taking out most of the respawn factors.

2 - BWL cockblocks: This time they cut down on the trash mobs involved, but they added two big timewasting features. The damn "suppression room" which is synonymous with wasting time, and the hourglass sand cockblock on Chrommaggus that drops off trash. Here's a hint, having a finite resource that is invaluable to a boss fight drop off a smaller number of trash mobs is a terrible terrible idea for learning any encounter.

3 - The AQ tunnel: Just when you think they've solved most of the problems with trash issues, they put in the tunnel of hate where you have to take 1-2 hours just getting to the top of the food chain. What they should have learned from that is trash mobs can't be concentrated heavily in one area of the instance. They should be spread semi-equally between boss encounters.

4 - Naxx: I've just started doing it, so I don't really have enough of an exploratory view to critique it, but the place is freaking huge. I seriously wonder how any guild could get the whole place done without taking at least 2 or 3 days to pull it off, which doesn't leave a lot of time for much else.

[Teleku]

Most people in our guild actually liked the supression room.  It was a running battle with constant action and pretty entertaining, so it seemed to go by pretty fast anyways.  As far as Chromag sand, we actually had mountains of it saved up by the time we started making it to Chromag.

MC respawns suck ass.

[Righ]

From what i understand, the Opera house is actually semi random.  Different raid groups have reported getting different opera Events.

current ones i know of are:
Wizard of Oz
Romeo and Juliette
Little Red Riding Hood.

Who knows how many different ones there are?
It also seems that each encounter "should" be fairly decently scripted, so you can make guesses as to what is effective ways to deal with each encounter after a few shots.

There's also "Der Ring des Nibelungen" which takes fifteen hours to complete.

[bhodi]

you just *had* to work a theater joke in there, didn't you? :)

[Merusk]

As far as Chromag sand, we actually had mountains of it saved up by the time we started making it to Chromag.

We spent a good chunk of the guild bank to buy hourglass sands from people, because it only took us 3 weeks of seriously working in BWL to get to Chromag.  Thus, all our sand was used up on the first night we tried him.     It's a horrible, horrible cockblock.

I agree that supression room is fun.  However, when people have the kinds of connection issues they do in BWL, the zone server better be tight if you're doing this kind of stuff.  (Not to mention for some reason BWL still has that "reset nVidia drivers" bug that was in Burning Steppes.)

MCtrash spawns need to be about doubled.  We get Magmadar down in about 45mins these days and then we have to wait around, because the first few dogs will still respawn.  Finding that out the hard way as 2 of them respawn on top of you sucks.

[bhodi]

Only use sand on the last 25% of his life, that saves a lot. Only give sand to healers (duh.). Good luck :)

[Merusk]

Healers & 3 Hunters were the only ones who got it. Hunters only got 3 with instructions to only use it just before their turn at tranq shot was up.  We still blew through 85 sand like it was nothing the first night  :-D

[Trouble]

Yeah I've been hearing the same thing about the trash. It's hard to tell how bad it really is though, some people are terminally against trash after the hell that is AQ40 grinded their brains to dust. I have to say though that I think Blizzard is learning. I mean they've made enough key mistakes, and there's been enough bitching about those mistakes that they should know by now. My experience is that the trash in Naxx is just about right. It's enough to make it take a non-trivial amount of time, it's interesting and unique enough to make it at least baseline enjoyable, and it's just enough that when you're at the "I want to kill a boss now" point, suddenly there's a boss for you to kill. There's also a healthy amount of very good epics that drop off trash at a decent enough rate that the lottery feeling gives you a bit of a boost. Hopefully they don't backtrack from what they've learned and add another pre/post Twin emps trash or 400 lava packs ever again.

[Scadente]

85 sands!?

We got Timelapse on first try aswell, and only ever gave sand to tank healer squad, who had a rotation, MT and two hunters who also had a rotation. Used about 25 on four tries. Are people spamming that sand button? Even as MT I only used one in case of emergency (while running chrom back into position after TL or when I was stunned and low on health.

I saw a video from Kharzan (with no mobs), the area itself looks very.... big, with some bland design. Might have been a early design tho.

Trash isnt really all that bad. I love cruising through ZG chainpulling trash. And the "bloodpacks" leading up to Hakkar rape you the first few times, until you learn them. Trash is very often a skillcheck, while bosses are a cockblocking gearcheck (certain encounters). But moving from MC to BWL was really nice. I guess did it so because most BWL bosses arent just plain tank and spank like MC is. You move in, look at the boss, chuckle. Then get a nice kick in the balls, Razorgore is a really nice wake up call indeed :) And one could say that the respawning mobs are his trash. The MC trash isnt all that bad, once we got going, we could do Domo, and get no trash upto Ragnaros, Ill admit it was a pain when learning MC.

Bad trash can be somewhat terrible. Ive heard stories of AQ40, and it really put me off.

what a pointless rant...

[Merusk]

Note I said first /night/ not attempt.   There were 4 attempts in total.

We haven't had time lapse yet, but that bronze affliction can really screw you if the stun comes at the wrong point, so we weren't as thrifty with the sands as we perhaps should have been.   (5 per healer + 3 per hunter + 4 for MT = 63 handed out at the start.)

[Fabricated]

I actually enjoy the trash in ZG a lot, but that's mostly because it's insanely easy even in PUGs. Last ZG PUG I hit didn't wipe once on any of the trash leading to Hakkar. Of course, we wiped 4 tmes on Hakkar despite his fight being largely easy because people just can't get it in their fucking heads to get poisoned.

AQ20's trash however I hate with a fiery passion. There's a lot of "Whoops! You're dead!" instakill shit there and I HATE that. I hate tanking on my main there since I never seem to have attentive healers and the stupid Gladiators at the beginning always kill me at least once.

[Righ]

Note I said first /night/ not attempt.   There were 4 attempts in total.

We haven't had time lapse yet, but that bronze affliction can really screw you if the stun comes at the wrong point, so we weren't as thrifty with the sands as we perhaps should have been.   (5 per healer + 3 per hunter + 4 for MT = 63 handed out at the start.)

Wait... 8 hunters?!

[Merusk]

No, they gave 'em to druids & priests both.  So 50 to Healers, 9 to Hunters 4 for the MT.

[SurfD]

AQ20's trash however I hate with a fiery passion. There's a lot of "Whoops! You're dead!" instakill shit there and I HATE that. I hate tanking on my main there since I never seem to have attentive healers and the stupid Gladiators at the beginning always kill me at least once.

Hehe, ahh yes, the AQ 20 Gladiators.  Nearly EVERY SINGLE run i do in that place (even with my guild) we almost always lose 3 or 4 people on the first gladiator pull.  I think the gladiators are there as something of a "pull head out of ass" check to make sure everyone in the raid is awake and paying attention.  Other then the gladiators, all the rest of the trash in AQ 20 is pretty meh, with the exception of the Anubisath's in Ossirian's room.  But even the Anubisaths are easy if you pay proper attention to what abilities it has when you pull it and are watching for its low health action.  Heck, more people in the groups i run with die to the adds they spawn then to the Anubistath's themselves.