So that was fast. It seems the more hardcore players like to hit the raids as quick as they can, so I've generally had more luck hitting up the raids on Tuesday or Wednesday. This time, Terrace went very smoothly, and not coincidentally, I had to struggle on the dps meters, only hitting 6th place while last time I was hovering around 1st. This was good, because it meant we got the bosses and the adds down very quickly, making everyone's life easier. I did suffer some annoying lag (particularly on bosses one and two,) but overall the run was pretty smooth.
The Terrace is actually the kind of raid I wish they would make less often - basically it's one giant open-air room. You even fight the first two bosses in the exact same area. Just like Trial of the Crusader or to a lesser extent Blackwing Descent (despite the layout, I did like the aesthetic of that one,) it's a little small for a raid, but given that we've also been able to delve into Mogu'shan Vaults or fight our way up the Heart of Fear this tier (and the fact that they are really hyping 5.2's raid to be an enormous one like Ulduar or ICC,) I'm willing to forgive them this.
The other reason I'm willing to forgive them is that the bosses are pretty cool.
Protectors of the Endless is probably the least innovative of the fights. It functions somewhat like the Iron Council in Ulduar, growing more difficult depending on the order in which you kill the bosses. There's not a huge amount of very compelling stuff here, just some dispels, a bit of boss movement, and of course the challenge of keeping up the tank who's got to take two of the guys at once. The only mechanic that I felt I hadn't really seen before was Lighting Storm, which one of the bosses gains after the first goes down. Basically it is a progression of concentric rings that go outward, causing AoE damage where they are at the time. One interesting aspect of this fight is that, like another fight later in the raid, you have no incentive whatsoever to try to multi-dot or cleave or in any other way AoE. Once one boss is down, the other heals to full. This should be good news for those classes who fall behind in such situations, even if the damage meters will still reflect the advantages those cleave-happy specs enjoy. The point is, if your raid's dps is all single-target wonders, you'll be fine on this fight.
Tsulong is actually fought in exactly the same place as the Protectors, but it is a much cooler fight, and probably the most innovative of the instance, if not the tier (ok, to be fair, Elegon's giant disappearing floor of death is cool too.) Tsulong alternates between two radically different phases: Night and Day. At Night, there's only him there, and you'll need to dps him down while managing a stacking debuff that hits the whole raid as well as some AoE fears (that make managing said debuff trickier.) A lot of LFR raids will simply stack in the Sunbeam that gets rid of the debuff, but this means that everyone will get hit by those AoE fears, so I recommend only running into the Sunbeam when your stacks start to get high (eight or nine.) After a certain amount of time, things shift to Day and the fight becomes radically, radically different. Tsulong during the day is now friendly, and his health flips around, so if you had dps'd him down to 75%, he'll now be at 25%. During this phase, healers will need to heal Tsulong while tanks and dps get rid of adds that threaten him. It's not quite like Valithria Dreamwalker in ICC, but the principle is similar, even adding a mana-regen buff in the form of his breath attack. Tsulong will alternate between these two phases, getting the inverse of his previous health level on every phase switch.
With Tsulong down (or up?) you finally get to move on to a new location, which is another circular platform between the one you'd been in and the one with the Sha of Fear. Here, after defeating some trash, Lei Shi will spawn.
Lei Shi is a scared little (well, not little) water spirit who is terrified of all the heavily-armed men and women looking at her with loot-crazed eyes. The fight really only has four elements. She will cast Spray at the current target, putting a stacking debuff (or maybe it's a DoT) on them and anyone nearby (tanks should not stack up, and she should be faced away from the raid.) At certain health percentages, she'll summon three, or later four guardian elementals who give her a damage immunity shield. As soon as one of these guys is down, the others despawn and you'll be able to attack her again, so much like the Protectors, this is a place where cleave or incidental AoE is irrelevant. Lei Shi will also hide periodically, becoming both invisible and untargetable. At this point everyone should spam target-less AoE if you have it. If you are near her, you will see a little splash of water (and numbers when you damage her.) After she suffers a set number of attacks, she'll become visible again. Finally, she'll also sometime create a current pulling you away from her. If you do not fight this current, you take more damage, so you'll want to try to run toward her while she does this. Not a terribly difficult fight, the main challenge is in making sure that the tanks are able to make their swaps before the elementals show up, so that one is not stuck with a high stack while the other is working on adds.
Finally, a de-corrupted Lei Shi will open the way for you to confront the Sha of Fear, also known as "the Sha that has colors." Once again, this is a pretty cool, if not terribly complex fight. The tank stands at the center of the room on a bright spot. This creates a wedge-shaped area called "Wall of Light" that prevents the Sha's main powerful attack, Breath of Fear, from affecting anyone inside. Lest you think it was ok to just sit inside the Wall, adds pop up outside the safe zone to bombard you with attacks. These guys have a frontal deflector shield, so melee (or ranged, I suppose) will have to go out of the safe zone to kill them. Breath of Fear happens at regular intervals, so those who venture out of the safe zone will know when they've got to high-tail it back. If they do not, they take massive damage and get feared (or maybe just die, I don't know. I never got hit with it.) The extra wrinkle to the fight is that on occasion, five random raid members (presumably fewer in 10-man) will get sent to one of the three surrounding platforms (I got picked three times!) The group is always a 5-man team: tank, heals, and three dps. The group has to defeat a mini-boss. This fight is relatively easy, with a short-duration fear and a slight self-healing mechanic, but also globes you can pick up to help regenerate your primary resource quicker. Defeating the mini-bosses will allow you to go back to the main platform with a buff called "Fearless," which grants 20% crit and haste (and maybe damage as well) in addition to providing immunity to Breath of Fear. This, of course, helps gets the adds as well as the boss down. The buff is not permanent, though, so you will have to run back to the Wall of Light when it runs out.
So that's it, the final boss of tier 14. If Terrace had been one of only two raids, I'd have probably been disappointed, but I think 16 is a very healthy boss count for a raid tier (hell, it's twice what tier 13 was.)
Having now seen the whole raid tier (admittedly, in LFR,) I think they did a good job with it. Some mechanics work better than others (I'm sure there are some who love Devastating Combo on Will of the Emperor, but I am not one of those people.) Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the smaller, quicker raids, having cut my teeth on Karazhan and Naxxramas, and logging the most boss kills in ICC. However, tier 14 does this kind of raid tier right - having enough raids to actually provide serious variety and enough bosses for sufficient boss loot tables (cough, cough, Dragon Soul) as well as having a clear progression path.
If we get three or four tiers of this caliber in Mists, I think we can all consider the expansion's raiding design a success.
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