Are you enjoying 2.5? I’ve personally sadly haven’t had as much time to play as I had hoped over the last week and have yet to even start the main story or Hildibrand (even if I’ll probably save his stuff for after I’m done with the main quests). Because of that I have yet to experience Keeper of the Lake, the new hard modes or the new trials. I’ll really try to get some time in, because a lot of that sounds really promising – except for Urth’s Fount, which seems like it’s oddly placed when it comes to rewards. I’m keeping my eyes on any changes to that trial that are hopefully coming in the near future.
When I finally did get to sit down with the game, I rushed over to Mor Dhona to unlock World of Darkness. As I’ve said before, I wanted to get in on that action as soon as I possibly could, before everyone knew the place as the back of their hands. So far I’ve done it twice – once for the story clear and once for the weekly quest that’s introduced once you’ve finished it the first time.
I have to say that I’m not 100% sure on what I think yet. While it has some cool fights, I’m not enjoying it as much as I did Syrcus Tower. I’m glad to see that both Labyrinth of the Ancients and ST are included in the weekly quests, together with WoD, since it gives us a reason to run them again. I know many of you are probably fed up with both of them by now, but I’ll happily go through ST again a couple of times – some of the encounters in there are really nicely designed.
That said, I wanted to write down some of my feelings on the bosses in World of Darkness while they still feel new and fresh.
Angra is one of two bosses in World of Darkness that I’ve seen a wipe to. I’m not even sure what actually happened, but I know that I myself kept dying during the fight. There’s a lot of stuff going on at the same time, and I still don’t have the mechanics 100% down.
Most embarrassingly, I have a really stupid problem with the colored AOE that he drops. At certain points during the fight, Angra divides the playfield into two parts – one white and one red. They won’t hurt you, but give you a debuff. Enough of that debuff and you die. The way you counter it is by standing in alternating colors – if you stand in the white the first time, make sure you stand in the red the next time. Simple!
Yes, unless you’re as confused as me. At least twice I’ve forgotten which one I stood in last time. I can walk in a straight line and chew gum at the same time, no problem. Keeping a rotation up and remembering which color I stood in? Nope. You can check the debuff you have for a clue, but at the time I had forgotten which debuff was related to which color. Ooops! Dead. Also, the circles that clear you of the Doom-debuff, which spells certain… Well, doom if you don’t get rid of it, tends to go off just before I reach them.
Still, it’s a fun fight – there’s a lot happening at the same time, you need to keep track of various spawning adds and make sure you don’t end up in the spinning roulette AOE. Good introduction to the new raid.
This is, by far, the most boring boss in World of Darkness in my mind. Mostly it’s about not standing in AOEs and killing spawning adds as soon as possible. The mechanic of killing the dragon’s heads before they cast Discordance isn’t very exciting either. It’s not a very hard fight, it’s not very challenging and in general it feels quite uninspired.
I feel pretty bad for whatever groups I’ve been running with, but I really have no idea what’s happening during this fight. It’s not an actual boss, it’s not very hard, but I simply have no clue what’s going on. I also keep getting devoured. Sorry! I’ll do better, I swear.
Cerberus is, without a doubt, my favorite boss of World of Darkness. If you’ve ever been in the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj in World of Warcraft and faced off again C’Thun, you know there’s something special about being eaten by a raid boss and get to fight in their stomach. It’s gross, but fun.
Both the times I’ve been in World of Darkness, my party has been designated as the stomach party. Basically you make sure you get hit by the Gastric Orb’s (yum!) mini-spell, then stand in some purple goo in order to get Cerberus to eat you. If you’re not cursed with mini the boss will instantly kill you if you stand in the goo (yes, that’s happened to me as well), but if you are you’ll end up in his stomach and get to stab his stomach lining until he pukes you up again. Good times!
The stomach-mechanic changes things up a bit, at least for the designated party. I’ll probably make sure to offer my party up as soon as we reach him in the future, just for the fun of it. I do need to tweak my UI-settings for this fight though, since it can be easy to miss the Gastric Orb amongst all the player names – it’s not very big and doesn’t really stand out.
There’s also something about chains and stuff, but since I’ve always been inside of him when that happens I have no idea how it works.
I’m not a huge fan of Cloud of Darkness, the final boss of World of Darkness. While it does have a lot of things going on, compared to the fairly simplistic Xande-fight at the end of Syrcus Tower, there’s something about it that makes it feel disjointed to me. The mechanics all make sense, I guess, but they don’t really come together to make a satisfying whole.
Most of them are really simple too – the worms die straight away so ranged DPS don’t even really need to think about what they are doing, I’ve never seen any of the spawning clouds even get close to her. The only thing I’ve seen wipe the raid was the comets and that’s because people stopped paying any form of attention at that point. We quickly got into it again, got it right, and killed her quickly.
Aesthetically, the fight looks good – the Cloud herself looks really intimidating, no doubt about it. But as a boss fight, both Angra and Cerberus are more fun and offer more of a challenge. When we reached her during my second run, I just wanted the raid to be over instead of having to run around chasing storm clouds – a feeling I’ve never gotten from Xande, despite having fought him multiple times by now.
It’s not as formulaic as the Five-headed dragon, which is the low point of WoD, but it looks a lot more like a final boss than it feels like a final boss, if that makes sense.
In all, except for Angra and Cerberus, World of Darkness – when it comes to mechanics – feels uninspired. It’s not as big and epic of a finale of the Crystal Tower-story as I had hoped. The cut scenes are nice and all, but in general the buildup was more exciting than the ending. I’m not going to spoil what happens too much, some of you might have focused on other aspects of the patch after all, but I felt there was a lot more cool stuff going on earlier in the arc than what actually happened at the end – except the final, heartfelt moments, when we get to say good bye to one of the CT story’s main characters.
A Final Fantasy III fan might feel differently, especially during the Cloud of Darkness-fight. In all, it is a nice callback to that classic game and I really like how they’ve repurposed characters like Doga and Unei for it. Another character from Final Fantasy III makes an appearance in 2.5 as well, which was a nice touch.
There’s also that final hint that there are parts of the Crystal Tower that we have yet to see… It will be a while before we get to revisit this plot again, but I’m looking forward to coming back and see what treasures – and bosses – that still awaits us.
I’m not complaining too much though. It might be uninspired, and I might have been hoping for more, but it’s not a very long raid – it won’t be that painful to run once a week for the weekly quest. It’s also worth it for the overall rewards, at least for the time being.
If nothing else, it will be worth it just to get to stab a giant three-headed dog from inside his own stomach again.
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