I know I’m three months late, but in the last two weeks I finally took my first steps into the Firelands raid and killed my first few Tier 12 bosses. After hearing about the encounters from blogs, podcasts and former guildmates, and having been teased by the Molten Front dailies for those three months, I was itching to see what all the fuss was about.
So, was it worth the wait? Absolutely!
What I Love
The first thing I loved was zoning in and just panning across the wide open scene laid out in front of me; I was only a little disappointed that the view distance slider wouldn’t go that little bit further! This is a great way to imbue a raid with a real grandiosity and sense of size, and having hordes of trash as far as the eye can see, all standing between you and the Sulfuron Keep, sets the scene for a small band of intrepid adventurers faced with cutting their way through endless waves of enemies to reach the gates of the fortress. Of course, as efficiency-conscious raiders we immediately dispelled that particular epic feeling by proceeding to sneak around the edge, taking out the absolute bare minimum number of mobs necessary, but it looked great on zone-in, and that’s what counts, right?
Indoor raids can be fun too, but it’s tricky to give them a sense of real size. Tempest Keep, for example, felt pretty big, so bit that it had a giant phoenix flying around in the central atrium. The Bastion of Twilight, on the other hand, has a fairly similar layout but somehow never managed to feel properly spacious to me, Which is odd, because there are no fewer than three enormous flying things flapping around in there.
Personally I put it down to view distance: TK and SSC had good long lines of sight, you could look out across the water or down the long corridors; BoT on the other hand has a lot of short, narrow corridors with kinks in them that stop you from really getting a sense of size.
Enough about scenery! What about the bosses?
I really like Alysrazor as a fight. Like Nefarian from the last tier, I love it because it’s got a bit of everything thrown in: there’s tank-heavy phases when the Hatchlings are up, raid-heavy phases when she’s recharging and casting Blazing Buffet at the raid, and a nice awareness check in the middle with the tornadoes. The encounter is also pretty well-paced, so that I never feel that any one phase is dragging on or becoming repetitive, while never feeling like I’m being whisked along quicker than I can switch gears and adjust. Except maybe the first couple of pulls where I got roasted by a worm, clawed by Alysrazor and then seared by more than one tornado, but who can honestly say that wasn’t their experience too? As long as it becomes manageable once we’ve had a couple of pulls and worked out what’s going on, I’m fine with being a bit bewildered on the first try.
I’m also pleased to see a few more coordination checks being introduced in Majordomo Staghelm and Baleroc. I’m always drawn to these sorts of encounters, there’s something satisfying about a team working in harmony. I wouldn’t quite describe us as “balletic”, but it’s still a great feeling when it all comes together and we get that kill.
Overall, the Firelands bosses seem to me to do a decent job of checking the skills you’re going to need to combine to take on Ragnaros successfully: quickly reacting to Bad Stuff at your feet (Shannox), Bad Stuff coming at you (Rhyolith), dealing with incoming adds (Beth’tilac) and watching your debuffs (Majordomo Staghelm). It’s a key feature of the WoW encounter design for the trash to teach you about the tricks the bosses use, and the earlier bosses in turn teach you about the later bosses.
Oh yeah, and the bridge is amazing! Apologies if you’ve not got to Majordomo Staghelm yet, I know I should throw in a spoiler alert, but I’ll just say that SSC has been eclipsed in my eyes in this regard. If you’ve seen it you’ll know what I mean, and if you haven’t then you really need to give your guild a kick up the backside, because getting to 5/7 is worth it for this alone!
What I’m Less Keen On
I’m going to come right out and say it: loot. I mean, I understand why there’s little to no spirit cloth within the Firelands, I understand that I’m not supposed to be able to get spirit on absolutely everything and that I’ll end up with a mixed bag of drops, VP items, rep rewards and those oh-so-tasty crafted boots and do just fine, but the problem with offloading so much of the loot table to alternative sources is the feeling of wastefulness when, picking an example entirely at random (!), a cloak drops and no one wants it because everyone and their dog has already got the one from becoming friendly with the Avengers of Hyjal.
Thinking about it, I get that removing every slot with alternative gearing routes from the loot tables would leave them pretty sparse, and I can certainly see the advantage of giving people options, especially when a lucky drop could save you a couple of weeks of VP farming or a fortune on the AH, so I suppose my problem is really just with giving competitive gear for very low rep levels. I’d have preferred the friendly and honoured rep rewards to be 365, since you can reach honoured pretty quickly and without killing any bosses, and saved the 378 items for those who have spent a few weeks farming without getting the drop they were hoping for. Basically, give them a similar time to acquisition as the VP items.
I’ll throw in an honourable mention for another pet niggle of mine: invisible obstacles. It’s probably just me and my screen setup, but some of the terrain in the Firelands is very dark and there’s a couple of places, one of which is on the ramp down from the entrance, where there’s vertical spikes that I always seem to run into and end up feeling slightly silly while my mount gets in some treadmill time. I just can’t see them, the contrast isn’t high enough against the rest of the terrain.
The final thing I’m not thrilled with? I’m not that taken with Lord Rhyolith. I think it’s a combination of the fact that it’s more of a DPS-focused fight and that he’s apparently been nerfed a fair bit, but I just don’t find that much to hold my interest in the encounter. Healing throughout the first phase is extremely straightforward with little damage to worry about (and what there is is mostly people standing in the bad, which never feels great to heal) and the interesting final phase, where you might expect the opportunity to use personal cooldowns and throw up a Power Word: Barrier, is over so quickly and does so little actual damage that it leaves a really anticlimactic feeling behind.
