Number of Week 9 Kills
All the following stats were taken from Raider.io. archiving each boss on the 9th week of the Mythic raid release. Of the 3 raids in Dragonflight, Amidrassil has the lowest number of Mythic Fyrakk kills so far at under 100. By this point in Aberrus, there were already over 300 kills of Sarkareth.
Dragonflight: Amidrassil
The current timeframe from launch to today is November 14th – January 10th. This is Week 9 of the patch on Wednesday. Here are the current kills as of 10:00 AM PT.
There is a MASSIVE drop off in kills between all these bosses:
- Around 47% of guilds who are 6/9 have killed Smolderon
- Only around 22% of guilds who have killed Smolderon have killed Tindral
- Around 46% of guilds who have killed Tindral have killed Fyrakk
Dragonflight: Aberrus
The timeframe of the 9th week on Wednesday is May 9th – July 5th at 10:00 AM PT.
You’ll notice that there’s a much gradual curve for the last couple bosses in Aberrus compared to Amirdrassil:
- Around 70% of guilds who were 4/9 killed Rashok
- Around 70% of guilds who killed Zskarn also killed Magmorax
- Around 65% of guilds who killed Magmorax also killed Neltharion
- Around 43% of guilds who killed Neltharion also killed Sarkareth
Compared to Amirdrassil, it’s clear that Aberrus had a much more smooth curve, each boss allowing a larger percentage of guilds to kill it. There’s also no massive wall like Tindral that is blocking around 80% of guilds who have killed Smolderon.
Dragonflight: Vault of the Incarnates
The timeframe of the 9th week on Wednesday is December 12th, 2022 – February 8th, 2023 at 10:00 AM PT.
Vault of the Incarnates had a relatively smooth curve until Raszageth, but overall a lot more guilds had killed Raszageth at this point on Week 9, then Fyrakk.
- Around 57% of guilds who killed Kurog killed Dathea
- Around 58% of guilds who killed Dathea killed Broodkeeper
- Around 24% of guilds who killed Broodkepeer killed Raszageth.
Shadowlands: Sepulcher
The timeframe of the 9th week on Wednesday is March 8th, 2022 – May 3rd, 2022.
This curve between bosses looks a lot more like Amirdrassils, although there were a lot more bosses:
- Around 73% of guilds who killed Lihuvim killed Halondrus
- Only around 28% of guilds who killed Halondrus killed Anduin
- Around 87% of guilds who killed Anduin killed Lords of Dread
- Around 79% of guilds who killed Lords of Dread killed Rygelon
- Around 48% of guilds who killed Rygelon killed Jailer
Anduin was the major wall of this tier with Lords of Dread and Rygelon essentially being victory laps once you defeated Anduin. The gap from Halondrus to Anduin seems to rival the gap from Smolderon to Tindral this tier!
Why is Mythic Amirdrassil So Hard?
The last three bosses of Mythic Amidrassil have shown that they are some of the hardest bosses in Mythic raids. Tindral seems to be the standout in that almost 80% of guilds who have killed Smolderon are stuck on Tindral, rather than a smooth curve that we see in Aberrus.
One Person’s Mistake is a Raid Wipe
I think the main cause of this is the number of one-shot raid mechanics there are, where if one person makes a mistake, the entire raid instantly dies. This was very similar to some bosses in the Sepulcher tier where one person can wipe your raid for a single mistake — Halondrus being the obvious one with bombs and Anduin with a large number of mechanics (grips, CC’s, soaks, kicks). The last three bosses of Amirdrassil are littered with these types of mechanics, where one person wipes your entire raid with a mistake.
Tindral – 4 Mechanics
Fyrakk – 4 Mechanics
It’s interesting though that these mechanics were brought back in, especially in such high frequency on back-to-back bosses. The biggest one is double soaking seeds on Tindral and probably represents why the clear count on this boss is so low. That’s a lot of pass/fail mechanics in a row, versus mecahnics that can have a gradient of success and failure.
Goes Against Stated Encounter Goal
Before Dragonflight launched at the end of 2022, Ion Hazzikostas had an interview with Raider.io, where they talked about this type of mechanic and Sepulcher difficulty. Here’s a snippet of that interview, emphasis mine
In Sepulcher, there were multiple wall bosses as we all know, and the instance was also more difficult than intended on other difficulties. There were plenty of guilds that struggled on Heroic despite having a past history of comfortably getting Ahead of the Curve and heading into Mythic. We made a lot of nerfs, etc. But anyway, that led to a lot of conversations internally about not only our tuning goals, but also our philosophies. For example, when is it okay to wipe the raid instantly for a mistake? Honestly, the answer should be “almost never” — at least when it’s more like a single person’s twitch reaction mistake of, “you fail if you do this mechanic incorrectly” or whatever. It’s totally reasonable on Mythic to kill the player for doing that; but to say the entire raid is over because someone was one yard out of position is not our aim. Yes that’s difficult, yes that will get us three-digit wipe counts and get the boss on the MMO Champion’s list of hardest bosses, but that’s not actually our goal as encounter designers. Our goal is to make a fun, challenging experience, so I think the design of Vault of the Incarnates and our raids going forward should be very directly the product of those lessons. We still want a stern test for the best guilds in the world, and we still want nerd screams and a real sense of accomplishment when someone gets the world first title with two or three other guilds hot on their tail. But also, we’d rather not have to nerf things 20 times for the rank 100 / rank 1,000 / rank 5,000 guilds to be able to blaze that same trail afterwards.
From this, Ion Hazzikostas directly mentions that encounters should “almost never” wipe the raid instantly for a mistake. And yet, especially on Tindral and Fyrakk, these encounters are littered with these types of mechanics.
Looking at Tindral:
- Double Soaking seeds is fairly common giving the time constraint of 5 seconds and how fast mechanics are on this fight. This feels like one of the “twitch movements’ that Ion is talking about above. There should be no reason that this mechanic wipes the entire raid for one person accidently tripping on a seed, especially when it’s hard to see the seeds sometimes when they’re under the melee camp. Killing the player sure, killing the entire raid seems extremely punishing.
- Missing a Flare Bomb also seems overly punishing. You’re already missing out on the damage when the player lands on the roots, why does missing a Flare Bomb have to also instantly wipe the entire raid. If the Flare Bomb didn’t wipe the raid it would be possible to struggle through that section of the fight, rather than just instantly wiping.
Looking at Fyrakk:
- For how hard the Intermission assignments are, and how the community felt the need to solve it with a weakaura, there shouldn’t be as harsh of a punishment for missing a single Orb. Should it be harder, absolutely, but instantly wiping the raid is just overly punishing.
- The healer adds in Phase 2 are also so tightly tuned in the amount that you heal the tree that you really can’t afford to Blaze the healer adds at all. You already use Grips and Rescues to supplement minor healing losses but if even one add is transformed, it’s extremely punishing and almost certainly a wipe.
- The Shadow Cages on the Colossus adds are also extremely punishing. One person missing their break means that players are permanently stunned for an infinite duration. Why doesn’t this have a cap of say 10 seconds so you lose some throughput but don’t instantly wipe due to lack of healing / damage.
- And of course, the seeds in the final phase. If this was the only mechanic where one person messing up can wipe the raid, I think this mechanic would be okay for a final boss. But this mechanic alongside all the other ones in the earlier phases and earlier bosses just adds more difficulty in a frustrating way.
Conclusion
These mechanics can be fun, leading to tension and an exciting kill but their difficulty has to be balanced with the punishments for failure. If there’s already a punishment for failing (e.g. Missing a damage buff Orb on Smolderon, Missing Flare Bomb on Tindral), is there really a need to also double down and punish the raid even harder (e.g. Buffing Smolderon’s damage permanently, killing the raid). But ultimately, I don’t think there should be that this many of these types of mechanics condensed into two bosses. I think it’s fine for the Race to World First to create an interesting and difficult for bosses for them, but they should be quickly nerfed after the race completes for everyone else.
Ion mentioned that the goal is to make a “fun, challenging experience” and I think the majority of these mechanics remove a lot of fun from these challenging encounters this tier. Many players are expecting for some long awaited nerfs to be coming soon, and I hope that these nerfs address a lot of these pressure points from these encounters.
