Alternate Title: How strafing runs are not enough and Shaman cannot tank vs. taunt
Quest-ionable Origins
Alex Afrasiabi: Yes, yes, come in to my office, Mr. Brazie.
Me: Hey dude, Scott said you needed me to make a quest boss for you?
Afrasiabi: A quest boss? No sir, what I need from you is excellence!!
Me: Uhm… okay?
Afrasiabi: This is no mere quest boss, this will be a secret, unlockable raid boss, the likes of which can only be obtained by the most powerful of heroic dungeon runners?
Me: Oh, alright, well, let me get…
Afrasiabi: No! There is no time for that. For not only will you need to make a raid boss, you will also need to script a bit of an event for my assistant, Luis.
Me: Right, so let me get Lui…
Afrasiabi: Yes, yes, you can figure that all out afterwards. But first let me make sure you understand – this boss must be TOUGH. I want the players hearts CRUSHED as they vie for the phat lewts contained within!
Me: I’ll make sure Travis puts some good stuff on there.
Afrasiabi: Excellent! Now, be gone! *dramatic swing of the cape*
Me: … all you did was turn around in your chair.
Afrasiabi: Scram.
I shrugged and wandered over to the quest pit. Luis Barriga, a warm and friendly, if heavily tattoo’d and ripped, vegan sat docilely behind his monitor.
Me: Heeeey, Luis! Alex said you needed a quest boss… but in a raid zone?
Luis: Oh hey, dude. Ya, let me walk you through the story.
Slowly rippling flashback blurs fill the room.
Luis: Once upon a time, a powerful man named Medivh explored the dark powers of the twisting nether from his grand tower, Karazhan.
Flashback rips.
Me: Yeah…. I know about Medivh.
Luis: Well, shush and I’ll tell you for a second what’s up.
 |
| A powerful man named Medivh. (http://www.facebook.com/GeekyRed.Cosplay) |
Clouds reform.
Luis: Medivh, possessed by Sargeras, began to tamper with the ancient layline magics, feeding additional power into Karazhan – so much that it drew the attention of the Blue Dragonflight. Charged with the eternal protection of magic on Azeroth, Malygos, leader of the blue flight, sent his second eldest son, Arcanagos, to draw Medivh from his tower and warn him of the impending danger!
Me: *yawns a bit*
Luis: Finding the tower impenetrable by normal means, Arcanagos set fire to the village outside of Karazhan, drawing the Guardian out of his tower. Arcanagos attempts to stop Medivh, but Sargeras corrupts the magic Arcangos flings at him, burning him from within.
Me: I’m still not hearing any gameplay here.
Luis: *exasperated* Fine. Look, the players recover Medivh’s journal, read it on the balcony of Karazhan and get an extra boss. If they beat him, they get access to Tempest Keep.
Me: Oh. Okay, so you basically need a gear check boss.
Luis: Yes.
Me: Got it.
I moved to leave the office.
Luis: He’s also a BONE dragon. Burning from the inside.
Me: Oooooooohhhh.
What were your favorite memories of Nightbane?
I’ll copy what I wrote at the time:
Ahh, Nightbane. Hmm, I thought Blizzard said that Fear was going to be less important in TBC. Quite honestly, I don’t really understand Blizzard and Fear. As far as I know, you need a warrior tank, or a dwarf/draenai priest, or two shaman to even have a reasonable chance of beating this fight. I just don’t understand that logic. Sometimes I wonder if there’s some other way of dealing with Fear that Blizzard thinks we should use.
Personally, I think boss Fears should work more like Intimidation: everyone except the main tank gets feared. That would make Fear-based fights much easier to deal with without raid-stacking, and make non-warrior tanks/non-dwarf priests more viable.
Aside from that, Nightbane is an okay fight. There’s nothing really interesting in the fight, it’s all about the tank breaking Fears, picking up Nightbane when he lands, and being topped off before Fear. In many ways, it’s a very tank-healer-centric, old-school fight.
Final Grade – Nightbane: C+
Ooh, this is going to be good. I tanked Nightbane in a horde guild without warrior tanks and with 1 unreliable shaman. I believe I did survive one of the fears with the old bubble-taunt-cancelaura trick and we got the kill. I always liked Nightbane because badass dragons with tons of tank damage just felt like ‘real raiding’.
Also, the “the players recover Medivh’s journal, read it on the balcony of Karazhan and get an extra boss. If they beat him, they get access to Tempest Keep” bit is so good. This is how the raid progression is supposed to be in the ideal world.
We didn’t have a dwarf priest, so we mostly skipped him. I only did this boss in PUGs near the end of the expansion that were lucky enough to have a dwarf priest in the raid.
My memories are honestly about the boss being annoying. Nothing hugely and exasperatingly annoying like Rhyolith, I didn’t _hate_ doing Nightbane, but certainly not something I enjoyed at all. I always voted to skip him. Sorry.