Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Baron Von Lupus, the Final Version

I posted a "create a raid encounter" challenge a few posts back, and came up with an idea of my own. It evolved and changed through the various comments that were left, and I figured it would be good to consolidate the final culmination here in one simple post, rather than having to sort through the loose comments in the end... although, to me, that's a better look at how the final encounter was formed. Nothing comes crapped out of someone's mind in the 'release copy' version. For those that read that one, this is the same content, in one easy to read format.



Baron Von Lupus (a.k.a The Vampire Werewolf Guy)


The Setting


The fight has the raid entering into a large circular room with a domed ceiling, dominated by a large crank in the center... kinda one of those things that they used to have on old pirate ships to pull the anchor up. It's got five 'poles'.


The floor itself is smooth and uniform tiles, but has one wedge missing. Imagine a pizza sliced into 8 slices, with one piece missing. The door leading into the encounter is right next to the edge of the pit, with the bosses throne being at the opposite end of the room.
Above his throne is a large sundial type clock thing. From 12-6 is day, and 6-12 (up the other side) is night. The dial is at 12 exactly (and unmoving), ready to begin the first 'day' cycle.


The roof is domed, and has a large slit cut into the radius, similar to a telescope observatory.



The Encounter

The boss is engaged, and he stands up and give some "FOOLS! DID YOU THINK YOU COULD BLAH BLAH BLAH ME?" spiel. He sets the clock into motion, and this begins Phase 1 (a.k.a The Day Phase, a.k.a The Vampire Phase). During this phase, the room is brightly lit to indicate it's daytime, and sunlight shines through the open slit in the ceiling. The boss is untankable in this phase, and instead levitates/flies around the room to various locations, casting various 'vampirey' spells (life drains, enfeebling stat reductions, at this point his 'normal' attacks are just flavor).

The crank in the center of the room rotates the ceiling, to 'aim' the sunbeam. It acts as a 'vehicle' mechanic. Manning the crank will put your toon 'leaning into a pole', while moving formward or backward will then turn the crank clock- or counter-clockwise. To 'abandon' the crank, click the 'eject from vehicle' button. The boss is immune to all damage except when the sunbeam is on him (which weakens him). He also casts undispellable 'uber life drains' that tick for a flat percentage of his health on 3 raid members. These raid members also need to run and stand in the sun to nullify the effect of said drain.

During this phase, he also summons bat adds (of two types) that need to be handled. Normal Bats are just to be offtanked off to the side, similar to the phoenixes in the Alar encounter of TK. Vampire Bat adds do massive damage (through stacking bleed effects), and need to be tanked and destroyed as soon as possible. Killing ANY type of bat enrages the boss, transforming him into a large bat himself, whereupon he bites a raid member, turning them into a vampire themselves. Phase 1 will have one Vampire Bat spawn. Phase 3 (day phase two) will have two, etc. Since killing any bat will turn a raid member into a vampire, it's in the raids best interest to choose the Vamipre Bat as their target to kill (more on this mechanic in a sec).

A bitten raid member becomes a vampire themself, with a new action bar and various 'vampirey' abilities (including a taunt?), and a greatly increased health pool. During the day phase in which they are bitten, they have no control over themselves, and they run rampant in the raid (CC by Turn Evil or Shackle Undead could apply).


The dial in the room eventually makes it to 6 o'clock, and this begins Phase 2 (a.k.a the Night Phase, a.k.a the Werewolf Phase). The lighting in the area changes dramatically as the day phase goes on towards dusk, so no one is forced to 'watch the clock' to know when night is coming.


The boss has a short animation of transforming from a vampire to a werewolf. Upon transforming, he immediately charges the offtanked 'normal bats' and destroys them (werewolves hate vampires, duh). Anyone standing in range takes huge cleaves. The sunlight streaming through the roof is now moonlight, and if the boss comes into contact with the moonlight, he enrages, whirlwinding in a typical 'Bladestorm' fashion for 4 seconds. That's not good. The raid needs to be aware that he's going to charge the bats straight off the bat (lol, straight off the BAT, oh god, I kill me), and try and position the sunbeam so that it's not between the boss and the bats when the phase is getting ready to shift. Afterwards, the crank in the center of the room should be positioned so that the moonbeam falls 'off the floor' (the missing slice of pizza), eliminating random enrages due to moonbeam contanct, and freeing up the raid members manning the crank to engage the boss for this phase.

During the Night Phase, the vampire raid member(s) that were bitten in phase 1 gain control of thier toon again, and are used to tank the Werewolf. This is the phase where the majority of damage is done, since you aren't messing around with the crank, or dealing with loose adds to pick up.

When the clock reaches 12 again, the wolf goes back to vampire phase, and the raid member(s) that were bitten die. The Vampire boss now summons more bats, and TWO vampire bats that need to be destroyed to create two tanks for phase 4. The Werewolf boss has a cleave that splits damage among tanks in front of him, but phase 2 is solo-tankable (i.e. healable). Phases 4, 6, 8 (etc) see his damage output doubling and tripling, so two and three tanks are needed after phase 2.

This creates a spiraling effect in that you need to kill off more raid members in order for the wolf phase to be tankable, and yet, with three bitten members runing rampant in the third day phase (plus having to man the crank again), everything gets more hectic the longer the fight goes on.



10 man variations could include one tank being sufficient for the first TWO night phases (two tanks for the next two), and having the crank only require 2 or 3 people to operate.



3 comments:

James Warne said...

One idea regarding the crank: If 5 people are "pulling" in the same direction, the crank moves at 100%. If you only have 4 people manning it, it moves at 80% (duh), same with 4 people "pulling" and one idiot "pushing".

I love leaving a certain amount of choice up to a raid, so there isn't one and only one way to accomplish the encounter. Leave it up to the raid whether they want 5 people moving the beam quickly, or if they want more DPS burning the bats and only 4 or even 3 on crank duty(or if the group rides the short bus and they can't get 5 people to either "push" or "pull" at the same time). I think it should be do-able either way.

Sine Nomine said...

I see it as just a TINY bit too complicated, so a simple suggestion that loses a bit of flavor but makes things run smoother:

Instead of the death of the vampire add turning the boss into a bat that bites someone and turns them into a vampire, the killing blow on the vampire bat just puts a debuff on the raid member that turns them into a vampire when night phase occurs.

Also, instead of making the encounter spiraling (Which is VICIOUS to new guilds, since they are already in a tight spot, making it harder as time goes on and very frustrating since you can start good but just fall apart) you could simply have the limiting of only needing 1 vampire each moon phase to tank. You are still losing one raid member each phase, but combined with the previous suggestion for the crank moving faster with more people and slower with less, it adds a hecticness to the fight since you have to decide if you keep a small amount of people cranking for possibly disastrous effect (Not fast enough) or using more at the detriment of the raid as a whole to keep it up.

Hatch said...

I am really impressed, Ixo.


I'll say more once I've responded to your challenge to build my own encounter. :)