Tuesday, August 8, 2017

The Death of Kil'jaeden and The Endgame Begins

With Kil'jaeden available now on LFR, Blizzard has pulled the trigger and made the aftermath of the Tomb of Sargeras raid visible to everyone. Given that I've never been in a guild that downed raid end-bosses in a timely manner, I literally walked through Dalaran with my camera pointed down so that I wouldn't see the effect until I had finished the raid. It's not canon until I've done it! (For me, at least.)

Let's talk about the fight:

Kil'jaeden has a tank-swap mechanic, but it functions a little oddly. He gains a buff that causes his attacks to put a stacking debuff on the tank. It seemed to work fine to just let the other tank get up to five stacks, at which point the buff wears off but the tank is taking lots of extra damage. That's when you taunt. The trick, though, is that this debuff will hit anyone in front of the boss, so you'll want to get behind him when you're not tanking.

One of the real killers if not dealt with is Armageddon, where KJ will launch bursts of fire at the ground. This is something players will have to soak or the raid gets a long-lasting stack of raidwide damage. There are many little bursts that all need to be soaked (though on LFR there's no special tank one.)

There are transition phases where KJ flies to a corner of his ship and several raid members get debuffs. I believe the idea is to find the gaps between the circles of death they create, but this seemed like one of those abilities that was weakened enough in LFR to be more of a nuisance than a threat.

He'll also start creating rifts at the corners of his platform, which will try to suck you in but then eventually explode and knock you back - potentially off the ship. So you want to keep yourself right up next to the rift without getting sucked in.

The most interesting phase is when Kil'jaeden disappears and summons darkness that isolates you while shadow-entities teleport around the ship. At this point, you want to search until you can find Illidan, who lends everyone a spectral-sight-like ability, allowing you to find and kill the shadow creatures. This buff only lasts 20 seconds and does damage to you, but is needed to damage the monsters, so try to find Illidan quickly and then return to him to get the buff back when you need it.

Additionally, during the normal phases, certain players get big... for reasons that were not super clear to me as a tank. I think they either generate evil replicas of themselves or they need to be crowd-controlled, but I'll have to look more into that mechanic.

When Kil'jaeden is finally defeated, the cutscene pushes the story forward pretty dramatically.

Kil'jaeden bitterly tells your raid (plus Illidan, Khadgar, and Velen) that you're all going to crash and die on Argus, taking you with him. But Illidan still has his Sargerite Keystone and uses it to tear open a massive portal to Azeroth. Khadgar begins casting a mass teleportation spell while Velen goes to hear Kil'jaeden's last confession - that he had always envied Velen, and that he never believed Sargeras could be stopped, but that perhaps Velen would prove him wrong. Velen touches Kil'jaeden's forehead - perhaps even a gesture of forgiveness, or at the least an acknowledgement of their onetime friendship - and Kil'jaeden closes his eyes as the fel magic within him detonates, blowing up him and his ship as we teleport away.

But that's not the end. Velen and Khadgar look on in horror at the sky above Azsuna: Illidan did not just bring them home to Azeroth. He brought the entire planet of Argus with him. Argus now hangs in the sky above Azeroth, the home bases of both sides of this war now within striking distance of one another. Illidan is not willing to let this war end in a simple stalemate, like all previous conflicts with the Legion have done. Sometimes the hand of fate must be forced.

And now, all players, no matter where they are in Azeroth (I've checked Stormwind and Pandaria) will see Argus floating in the sky to the Southwest. Dalaran (the Legion version) now has Exodar representatives ministering to the panicked public while "Validated Doomsayers" hand out pamphlets about how they were right all this time.

The stage is set for 7.3. This war is coming to a head, whether we are prepared or not.

No comments:

Post a Comment