onotob

Boss Fights

Wired has an article about video game bosses, and why they are so satisfying to defeat. This is a subject very close to my heart, as many of you know (all too well). Boss fights in single-player games are fun and challenging, but for me they do not compare to the feeling I get when I defeat a boss for the first time in World of Warcraft. As I’ve said before, these bosses require 40 people working together to kill, and you must defeat an entire dungeon of other bosses just for the privilige of attempting to kill the final boss. The cost of failure is relatively high (in-game monetary costs for repairing equipment and buy materials, and real-life time). The so-called “hardcore” raiding guilds will come back night after night to work on the encounter until they beat it, which is why they are the ones to kill bosses first. My guild is more casual, so if we cannot defeat a boss in about 5 tries, it means another week and another run through the entire dungeon before we can try again (all of the big dungeons in WoW reset every seven days).

My guild first set foot in Blackwing Lair (BWL) December 1, 2005. We had been running the previous dungeon, Molten Core (MC), for the past 6 months and felt we were ready for the next challenge. We did not defeat the first boss in BWL until January 11, 2006. It took us over a month and in the range of 30 attempts to defeat this boss, and we still had to face six bosses before we could even attempt to kill Nefarian, the final boss of the dungeon. It would be another three months before we beat that encounter.

Finally defeating these bosses can be very emotional. If you skip to the last 5 minutes of my Nefarian kill video you can hear the excitement and down-right joy of my raidmates at the moment of victory. All the struggle and frustration gives way to a strong feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment as four months of effort finally pays off.

And then, of course, there’s the loot.

Nefarian is Slain!

I realize the title won't mean a lot to most people, but here is a video of my guild killing Nefarian, lord of the Black Dragon Flight and the final boss in Blackwing Lair.

Once Again, I Am Not Dead, But Ragnaros Is!

Soon, these posts that reassure my friends and family that I am not slumped in my computer chair, bloated and putrid, will make up 60% of the total volume of this site.

So, I have not died, again.

What’s been going on? Lots and lots of World of Warcraft, that’s what! Yes, nothing new there, but we finally defeated the Firelord Ragnaros. Beware, this post is about to get super-nerdy.

So, the thing that really intrigues me about the raid bosses in World of Warcraft is that they are like big puzzles that can only be solved with 35-40 people working together in a synchronized fashion. Ragnaros is a particularly difficult puzzle. The details:

Ragnaros has something like 1.1 million hit points. You can’t see his health total, but you can keep track of how much damage you do to him over the course of the battle, which is where that figure comes from. He stands immobile in a pool of lava surrounded by a spiral of rock upon which the puzzle solvers can stand. (Overhead view of the staging area. Ragnaros stands right in the middle, where the silver arrow is.)

Ragnaros has a number of attacks. First and foremost, he has a giant hammer, which he is more than happy to show you if you happen to get his attention. Next there’s the damage over time attack called Elemental Fire, which does a few thousand fire damage over the course of 15 seconds or so. Every 30 seconds he attempts to throw back anyone in melee range with an attack called the Wrath of Ragnaros, causing 1000 damage plus any damage taken from the fall (you fly very high and very far). If you think you can avoid that by just hitting him from a distance (because he can’t move around), well he’ll just hit everyone in the entire zone for about 6000 damage (Magma Blast) until someone snuggles up close to him. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more fun, he randomly turns around and blasts anyone with a mana pool (magic users, basically), throwing them and anyone near them up in the air and potentially into the surrounding lava.

It gets better.

After 3 minutes, Ragnaros submerges into the lava (well, he’s supposed to submerge, but due to a bug he submerges and then pops right back up, albeit without attacking anyone) and calls forth the Sons of Flame. The Sons are 8 little fire elementals that spawn in the lava. They are physically pretty weak, but have some nasty abilities. They have a directed attack which does about 500 fire damage to whichever person they happen to be attacking, and a mana-burning aura. That means that any magic user that remains close to a Son for too long will find all of their power drained. That’s not a good thing.

Ragnaros will reemerge from the lava in 1 minute 30 seconds, or when the last Son is killed, whichever comes first. Then you repeat the first part over again.

The Sons phase is very chaotic and can leave the group crippled if not handled correctly. If you don’t kill Ragnaros in the 3 minutes after the Sons are dispatched, he will submerge again and 8 more Sons will come out to kill you. If this happens, you are basically toast. The only way to survive a second Sons spawn and defeat Ragnaros is if he has very little health left (1%), and you can manage to keep everyone who is still alive in that state for a minute and a half and then finish Ragnaros off with Sons running around. This is very unlikely.

So, you essentially have 7 minutes and 30 seconds to do over 1.1 million points of damage to Ragnaros. So, how do you go about accomplishing this goal?

The holy triad of the Ragnaros encounter are fire resistance, positioning and damage output.

Two warriors play the role of main tank. The warrior class has a number of attacks which produce high levels of threat, causing whichever monster they are attacking to want to attack only them. Their job is to take all the damage while everyone else kills the monster. In the case of Ragnaros, the threat of being knocked back is ever present, so we have two warriors in front of him so if the main tank gets knocked back, the off tank steps right in and takes his or her place.

The main tanks must have at least 301 fire resistance, with 351 being the ideal. With 351 fire resistance a person will resist the knockback roughly 75% of the time. The melee which stand behind Ragnaros should have somewhere in the range of 151 fire resistance before buffs (magical spells which increase stats).

All of the ranged are then spread out on the outer wing of rock. They are assigned positions and must remember their spot and return to it exactly once the Sons are dispatched. They should be spaced very evenly, with enough distance between each other that only 1 or 2 people get thrown around when Ragnaros does his ranged attack.

The main tank will begin the encounter. As soon as Ragnaros begins to attack the tank, the melee jump across the lava and begin attacking. Once we see that the tank has put to Sunder Armors (a special ability), we begin using our high-damage attacks. The job of the melee is to do a lot of damage without doing too much damage. If you do, Ragnaros will turn around and give you a big kiss with his hammer.

So, everyone starts attacking. Every 30 seconds the call is given to step back. The melee and the off tank step out of melee range. Once the knockback attack occurs, everyone steps back in and resumes attacking. If the main tank was hit by the knockback, the everyone stops attacking for a moment to allow the off tank to get Ragnaros’ attention, and then we all resume attacks. Lather, rinse, repeat for 2 minutes 40 seconds.

When 20 seconds remain before Ragnaros submerges, everyone but the main tank collapse to a small area in the south in preparation for the Sons of Flame. The mana users stay in the back and the melee stand before them ready to attack. Ragnaros submerges, the Sons spawn and immediately begin running towards the group. Everyone runs around screaming, trying to kill Sons and keep them away from the mana users. We try to group them up, and everyone focuses on 1 Son at a time. We use the warlock ability Banish on one of the Sons, which removes it from combat. Once all the other sons are killed, everyone begins moving back into their positions. A couple of people remain to finish off the last Son when it comes out of the Banish. Ragnaros emerges and we start over again.

Hopefully, Ragnaros’ health was down to at least 40% before he submerged. There will probably have been a few deaths at this point, and the mana users will be low on power, so the less you have to do in the second phase the better. We’ve been getting him to around 32%, which gives us a lot of wiggle room in the second phase.

So, everyone keeps their heads about them and we keep the damage consistent and BAM, Ragnaros begins his death animation and the day is ours once again!

I captured video of our first Ragnaros kill, which went pretty smoothly. It’s shot from the perspective of the melee, so you can’t see what the ranged people have to deal with, but I think it gives you a sense for the whole situation. Also, you get to see the knockback in action!

Rogues Do It From Behind

To Whom It May Concern,

This post is to inform you that your attempts to contact the owner of this website may not be successful, as he as begun playing World of Warcraft, and is no longer in contact with the Actual World in any meaningful sense. He barely made it to work this morning.

His level 16 Night Elf rogue is doing great, though. He joined the guild called God Save the Queen and has been happily questing and grinding (gotta love the parlance) to his heart’s content. If you run across any decent enchanted leather armor let him know. Agility bonuses are preferred.

If you would like to get in touch with the proprietor, simply purchase a copy of World of Warcraft, create a character on the Hellscream shard and send a message to Botono. You can be sure he’ll be there, gathering Earthroot.

Update:

This will probably get me nominated for Geekiest Geek in the Geekdom, but I feel that I should update my server and guild information. See, my guild, God Save the Queen, let anyone in who wanted to join. Every fourteen year old with their thesaurus opened to “gay” started flooding in and the guild chat started to really grate. Around the same time I got the invite from a couple of coworkers to hop over to the Argent Dawn server and join their guild, Reverence.

What a difference! The guild is comprised primarily of people who’ve been gaming together for years, and many of the members are spouses that game together. An older, more mature crowd that makes for a much more satisfying experience.

If only I could transfer the gold I earned on Hellscream to the new server.

So, anyway, if you want to find me, look for Botono on Argent Dawn.