Lessons to learn from Wrath's heroics, Part 2

Now that the Real ID fiasco is over, we can all breath a collective sigh of relief, and I can get this post out on time, rather than needing to delay it while I write another post about whether I will continue to play the game after the news of the Real ID change (the answer now is a resounding yes). A week ago, I went over lessons to learn from the various heroic dungeons of Wrath of the Lich King, and two things became clear to me: I noticed that everything I had written was negative and critical, and my commenters pointed out that the post was mostly me complaining about elements of heroics that I didn't like. Well, this week, I hope to change at least one of those, as I'll be going over more positive lessons to learn from Wrath's heroic dungeons, elements that Blizzard should emulate when they design Cataclysm's heroics. Whether this will be constructive positive criticism or just me gushing about game elements I like, you be the judge. (I would put a smiley face here if I didn't have the integrity to not use smiley faces in the main body of my posts.)

Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, and Utgarde Keep

As much as I criticized about the amount of trash in Pit of Saron, it contains what are without a doubt my favorite boss fights in Wrath of the Lich; a shorter version would have been my favorite heroic of the expansion, bar none. As I said in my post "My Warcraft Year in Review", I love the boss fights in Pit of Saron (and Forge of Souls, to a lesser extent) because they require proactive movement. I was pretty disappointed by the encounters in Trial of the Champion because they were just damage and healing races. In fact, they were pretty much tank-and-spanks. I enjoyed fighting Eardic the Pure the most out of all of the bosses in Trial of the Champion because you actually need to move in that fight. The FoS and PoS fights all involve movement, and if you move correctly, the fights are not all that difficult. Sure, they do require a pretty high level of gear, but then again, The Frozen halls is like the Ulduar of the 5-man world, in terms of skill and gear required.

Still, you may say, other fights in other heroics also require movement, so what makes Pit of Saron and Forge of Souls special? What makes them special is that the movement involved is proactive, not reactive. There's little satisfaction in moving out of an area spell when a boss casts it out of nowhere, such as the Maiden of Grief's Storm of Grief; it's more of a nuisance than anything, especially since those spells don't do much damage (they can't, since you need time to move out of them without dying instantly), and thus moving out of them doesn't seem so urgent. However, when a boss is about to cast a spell or use an ability, and you move to avoid it, or you just move to avoid something before it happens, rather than because of something that just happened, you avoided that damage outright. Your skill and foreknowledge just made the fight easier, and that makes it much more satisfying.

In a similar vein to the fights in Pit of Saron, Ingvar the Plunderer is probably one of my favorite bosses from the first ten heroics of Wrath because the fight necessitated hiding behind the columns when he used his Smash or Dark Smash ability (granted, few people seem to do that these days, but I still do it, if only for nostalgia's sake). This was fun for me for the same reasons the fights in Pit of Saron are fun; it was proactive movement that was satisfying, rather than reactive movement that was annoyance.

Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning

Remember when I said that grandiosity in 5-man design was to be avoided? I would like to clarify that when I said that, I only meant that grandiosity is to be avoided in the layout of the instance, in terms of the ground we need to walk on. When it comes to the art design, I love grandiosity, and the Halls of Ulduar are a great example of that grandiosity in action. I don't think any instances wowed me as much when I first stepped through their doors as these two. In fact, my first foray into the Halls of Stone was lamentably short because the tank was a speed runner, and while I did appreciate the fast emblems, I ended up walking through the now-cleared instance on my own, just to admire the artwork inside (I didn't do the same for Halls of Lightning because the my first run though that instance was slower and more methodical, giving me time to admire the artwork.) It's hard to say what made me like those two dungeons as much as I did, but the lines of un-animated earthen below your feet when you first enter Halls of Lightning and the paintings in Halls of Stone stand out in my memory.

The Violet Hold

I know we can't give The Violet Hold credit for this particular element which I am about to discuss--that credit goes to Black Morass was back in Burning Crusade--but we can give The Violet Hold credit for keeping the tradition of the gauntlet-type dungeon going. I enjoy the rush of needing to run from portal to portal as new enemies appear, of needing to know when to use Dash and when to save it, and of knowing where I'll have to go if I can't get there on time so I don't lose control of the mobs. I especially like the fact that even as our gear gets better, this particular element of the instance does not change or get any easier, keeping Violet Hold interesting.

Now, with all that said, I think it would have been a wise design choice for Blizzard to make the amount of time between when a portal appears and when the enemies spawn from it vary based on how far apart the last portal and the current portal are. When a portal spawns on the far right, I know that if another portal spawns on the upper left side, on the second level, I'll need to use Dash to get there in time without the monsters parting ways and mayhem ensuing. And if Dash is on its cooldown, then I have to hope I can get close enough before they spawn to use Feral Charge. Meanwhile, when two portals spawn close to each other, we rush to the second portal and twiddle our thumbs waiting for the monsters to come out. This inconsistency is a relatively minor flaw, but if it disappears in Cataclysm's equivalent to Violet Hold (which I hope they add), then I'll be a happy Druid.

What elements would you have added to this list? Were any of the elements I mentioned things you didn't like about Wrath's heroics.