cinder says

~*~*~*~*~SPOILERS AHEAD!! This post contains images and discussion about bosses in the new Antorus raid. If you do not want to know anything about this raid, please turn back now. ~*~*~*~*~

Anyone who has been reading my blog for awhile that I love a new raid. There’s always something so exciting about it. There’s a buzz that you can feel in the days leading up to it. I’m no different. Whilst I’m not as tired of Tomb of Sargeras as other people are, I have been looking forward to seeing some new bosses.

So you can imagine my disappointment in missing the first night of the new raid. You’ll have noticed I’ve been quiet here again lately, and that’s because for the past few weeks I’ve been travelling for work. It’s been busy and extremely tiring (I’m not a good flyer, so the anxiety really makes it exhausting!). I was on a flight from Perth back to Melbourne when my guild walked in to Antorus for the first time on Wednesday night. It was an odd feeling. It was the first raid for the new guild (more things I haven’t talked about here…) and I was really looking forward to it. But it is what it is.

I was, however, fortunate enough to step into Antorus on Thursday night, when we started the Heroic run. We managed to clear 8 heroic bosses for the first time on Thursday night, which I was really excited about. I had been terrified for most of the night because, due to being so busy with work, I had only really had a very basic look at each of the fights. But I actually did ok. My healing was trash (also didn’t help that we were overhealing things by a bucketload!!) but I didn’t die to mechanics, so that’s good.

Anyway, we went back in last night for our alt run on normal. Except I took my shaman so she had a chance at some more gear. And more importantly, so she could take some screenshots.

When I say Antorus is epic, I genuinely mean it. This is a level of epic that I think most people haven’t really felt since Ulduar. The raid itself spans from Antorus into space and the twisting nether. It’s incredible. It’s done brilliantly, so it doesn’t feel like you’re running for a long time to get to bosses (ground mounts are allowed for a lot of the raid, which is so helpful!). Instead, you get to use the Vindicaar and the portals you see on Argus to get around.

And the scenary. Holy moly. When you go in there yourself, look up. It’s just… amazing.

The bosses themselves are a lot of fun. I really like all of them. I haven’t had a look at mythic mechanics yet (which I will need to do given we will start mythics next week!) so my thoughts are based on normal and heroic at this stage.

~*~*~*~*~SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!!!~*~*~*~*~

Yes, I’m going to talk about each of the bosses, INCLUDING ARGUS AND THE PHASES IN THE FIGHT AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS. You’ve been warned!!!

Garothi Worldbreaker

This is a great little fight, and I think a nice way to start the raid as a whole. The fight is straight forward, but ramps up in damage over time, which helps speed things up a bit. The way we do it has ranged and melee stacks, which means I always have somewhere to drop my healing rain, which I’m always excited about (this will be even more important when I get my 2 and 4 piece sets from this tier). It’s good fun, though! I like it a lot.

Felhounds

I LOVE how these guys look! And what’s even better- the firey hound drops as a mount from this fight. One of my guildies was extremely lucky and got it on the first night. I’m very jealous. It’s not usually a mount type that I would go for, but I love the glowing colours.

This fight is another one that is quite straight forward, however the difficulty comes in when the abilities overlap in weird ways. For example one mechanic requires you to all stack up together, but then a different mechanic needs you to all spread out. And sometimes, those two mechanics overlap. So it makes for a really interesting fight. I think this one will be quite chaotic in mythic- I can’t wait!

Antoran High Command

This fight actually consists of 3 bosses. Only 1 is active at a time, with the two hanging out in their little pods bombarding us with random abilities. Because the active boss has vacated their pod, one of us can pop in there and use it to our advantage. It’s a great concept. We move around the room and deal with all the abilities. This is another one that ramps up in damage to the raid. It also requires a good amount of dps so you don’t run out of “death-saving” abilities. I like it a lot. I have a feeling this one will be a bit bananas on mythic too, though!

Portal Keeper Hasabel

This is another awesome fight (I’m sensing a theme here…). It’s got some great mechanics- being a portal keeper, Hasabel has a bunch of portals that open up, so the group needs to be split up to help deal with what’s in them. It’s a little like the Dragons of Nightmare fight in that way. Inside the portals there are orbs and things that look like they’re going to play a big part in mythic… we’ll see how that pans out. Again, another great fight with some simple mechanics that are easily botched.

Essence of Eonar

It’s no surprise here that I have lots of pics for this fight…

Eonar is a life-binder, so of course wherever she is, it’s going to be beautiful. This fight is quite different- there’s no one boss. We just need to defend Eonar from the onslaught of demons coming in. Because the room is massive, the team needs to split up. There’s a great ability that you get when you run into the room, that gives you wings. When you use them, you get shot straight up into the air. You can then glide around with your beautiful green wings, or you can use the extra action button again to land somewhere specific. So it makes getting around a lot faster.

I will admit, that even though this is a stunning area for a fight, it’s my least favourite in the raid. There’s SO much running around, so I can’t drop my rain anywhere, and I always seem to get lost. The changes to the fight on mythic have the raid splitting even further, so it will be very interesting indeed. but for now, not my favourite (at least it’s pretty!)

Imonar the Soulhunter

Silly bugger wouldn’t turn around for me to take his picture! So here’s a pic of his butt 😉

This fight has bombs and sleeping and racing through mazes… it’s chaotic and awesome!! It’s going to be bananas on mythic. It requires some good coordination with the team to make sure that bombs are placed in suitable spots around the room, and to make sure we don’t accidentally put each other to sleep. The fight starts on one side of the room, then he will jump over to the other side. We have to run across a bridge that is full of bombs and rolling balls and lines of death… yep, bananas. But I’m a sucked for punishment, and actually really love this fight.

Kin’garoth

This guy is AWESOME! We smash his face for awhile, then go kill some adds that spawn. Any adds that we don’t kill do a whole bunch of mechanics in addition to the boss mechanics, so it’s really important to get them down. My only issue with this fight is that I find myself out of range of the tanks a lot. I think I need to get them to have markers on their heads so I know where they are. But yeah, another really interesting fight.

Varimathras

This fight is scary. It’s a tank and spank kind of fight, which is probably pretty boring for dps, but there’s a healer mechanic in this which is terrifying. You need to always be near someone, otherwise you get a debuff on you called Misery, which makes you take 200% extra damage, but worse than that, makes you unable to be healed for its duration. Misery lasts for 7 seconds, but I tell you what, it seems so much longer than that. Watching peoples’ health go down and not being able to do anything about is excruciating!! It means people need to be sensible when they’re going to take damage- anything to help reduce the amount of damage taken is going to be really helpful for healers, because otherwise we can’t do anything until the debuff is gone.

This fight has a quick enrage timer on it, and it’s really easy to mess up. I know some people don’t like it, but for me, it’s challenging and really intersting. And bloody terrifying.

Also, it’s nice to see a male character with barely any clothes on for a change!

Coven of Shivarra

I mean, there’s so much ass here…

I’ve only done this fight (and the following two) on normal so far. It’s chaos. I’m not usually a fan of council fights, but this one has some really interesting mechanics that mix things up a bit. There are titan abilities that come in to try and hurt us, and they rotate randomly, so we have to be able to react quickly. There’s also a debuff that needs to be healed off, because if it isn’t the person with it gets stunned. It’s an interesting fight. I’m concerned I’ll dislike it on mythic, but so far, I enjoy it!

Aggramar

So again, I’ve done this fight on normal. It’s damn good fun. This one, to me, feels like a dance, and I really like it. There’s fire and explosions and smashes and thankfully at least a bit of stacking for my healing rain to enjoy. I’m excited to see this fight on heroic tonight!

Argus the Unmaker

Oh Argus. You can’t help but feel sad about how this all came about. But oh boy it’s hard to be sad when you’re surrounded by the freaking AMAZING zone. We’re in space and it’s just incredible. And this fight… this is a damn good final boss for an end of expansion raid.

The fight has 4 phases. The first phase has cones of void that need to be placed properly, and blobs of void that need to be put in the right place as well. There are also orbs of awesome that spawn that give you some buffs, which is a really great.

Phase 2 opens with a giant storm that gets rid of the void zones. We just hang out in the middle avoiding the storm. Then there are junk-rat-style tyres of void doom that make lines of death across the platform that we have to dodge. There are also bombs that get put on people that need to be dealt with… of course they have really similar names so it’s quite confusing!

Phase 3 comes to us with a WHOLE bunch of adds around the room. They start out really pretty as stars, then turn into evil adds of mean that needs to be killed ASAP. There are lines that need to be avoided and casts that need to be interrupted and adds that get specific debuffs on them to make them easier to kill.

Once the adds are all killed, Argus pulls us all in together… and kills us. Dead. RIP

It’s amazing. There’s a bit before the image above where we are pulled together in space, and locked in this big chunk of ice-like stuff… then Argus gets all cranky and smashes us in one hit. What a jerk.

But all is not lost. Eonar is here to save the day!!!

Thanks for the res, Eonar!

I forgot to take a pic of what it looks like when we’re dead! (There will be plenty of time for pics of it in later attempts, though!). While we are dead, we need to avoid running in to some little adds that are out blocking our path, and run to a tree where we can res. That tree stays up for the whole fight, which is really interesting, because it means we can die quite a few times without wiping. Death becomes a resource in a way. And it’s needed, because there are abilities that go out that will just plan and simply kill people.

The last phase is quite chaotic, and is definitely a dps race, because you will eventually run out of rezzes.

But then Argus dies, and the end cinematic begins…

I had watched the end cinematic before I went in to Argus. I knew that it would get spoiled for me before I would have a chance to see it for myself, so I watched it in advance. But watching the cinematic again after having completed the fight was something else. I cried. I really did. It was pretty emotional. Thinking about everything that had happened to lead up to that point… the people who have died (RIP Varian), and all of the battles we have had to face to get to this point, where Sargeras is finally being captured and brought to justice… it’s a lot. It really does reiterate my last post, too, about just how epic this is, and how difficult anything that comes after it will be “disappointing” to a lot of people. This was fucking EPIC. And I’m really going to miss Illidan. What an amazingly deep and interesting character. This was a really nice send-off.

So that’s it! Antorus the Burning Throne. Freaking AMAZING. Here are a couple of more pictures from the raid itself.

Have you had a chance to experience Antorus yet? What did you think? I hope you had a great time 🙂

xo