The alchemy lab is the last boss in Wing 2. The boss himself is a little gnome, riding around on a mechanized abomination, a la 'MASTER BLASTER' in Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome. It's a fight that gets the work floor messy as it wears on, and deals with some fairly intricate buffs and debuffs being thrown around. This is not a decurse heavy fight, however, but there will be some light decursing required to avoid certain situations (or to recover from player mistakes).Setting:
The Alchemy Lab shape itself has very little influence on the fight mechanics, but the size of the work floor is crucial (more on that in a bit). The room has a circular layout, with pipes and tubes running all over the place, and draping down from the ceiling. We approach the boss while he's hunched over a workbench built into one wall, and has him subsequently running up a stepladder to mount his contraption when engaged.
When we first engage him, the door slams shut behind us, red sirens mounted over the door begin spinning, and a robotic voice drones over a PA system about a security breach in the Alchemy Lab, and that quarantine will commence in 5 minutes. This is our "wipe timer". He's a crazy little bastard, and mumbles to himself about being annoyed by the intrusion. He refers to his robot as Lucy and is constantly talking to 'her' throughout the encounter:
Engage: "Quarantine?! What's this? I don't have time for such nonsense! I'm very busy working on a cure for the Master! Lucy, let's tend to this nuisance quickly so we can resume with our work..."
Pummel (see below): "This is ridiculous! Lucy, put an end this here and now! My work cannot wait!"
The Mech itself is an overly large robot contraption, with the gnome riding him perched in the cockpit. The existing assets for Capaticitus in The Mechanar could be reused with a few minor tweaks to its geometry. In addition to having a basic set of steering controls (which he doesn't really use, the robot tends to have a mind of its own), there are all sorts of tubes and vials arranged around the head area as well. The gnome uses this robot in his research; it's more of a traveling workbench than an actual combat mech, but that isn't to say it can't hit like a stack of bricks. Think of Sigourney Weaver battling the mother alien in Aliens using the 'forklift robot', but with a gnomish twist.
The Encounter:
The quarantine countdown begins (and is constantly droning on in the background), and the gnome runs up the stepladder to mount the Mech. A single tank encounter, the tank grabs him and DPS begins. Every 10 seconds or so, the gnome throws a flask down upon the raid, and it breaks on the ground. This can be a permanent thing, or the potion could leave a color coded gas cloud that expands and eventually dissipates.
There are 6 different kinds of potions, and they offer various buffs/debuffs. Pay attention, this is the fight's main mechanic! I've color coded the potions to "make sense" for the most part (red = HP, blue = mana/frost)... just look:
Red - doubles your HP pool, but inflicts a Mortal Strike debuff on the imbiber.
Blue - Doubles mana regen, but reduces movement speed.
Yellow - doubles energy/rage regen (runic whatever regen, too? I honestly don't know how DKs work yet), but reduces your chance to hit by 20%
Green - Poison DoT. Makes you barf, and spreads to any others that you happen to barf on (also incapacitated while barfing). How awesome would it be to start puking, and have to spin your character away from others to avoid puking on them? No positive side effect. If you die while under the effects of poison, you leave a large poison cloud on your corpse that inflicts the same effect on anyone coming into contact with it. Cleansing this is in the raid's best interest.
Orange - Disease that slowly builds up over time (+X%/sec) slowing walking/casting/swing speed. If you die under the effects of the disease, your corpse explodes, and spreads the disease. No positive side effect. Cleansing this is in the raid's best interest.
Purple - Curse of Doom or some other curse that inflicts a Remote Toy like debuff that either MCs or stuns/disorients (similar to a mob's conflag). No positive side effect. If you die while cursed, you spawn a shade add to be dealt with. Cleansing this is in the raid's best interest.I'd be happy, too, if the affected players actually turned red and green and yellow. Like, gave off a smoky aura or actually just changed colors, so you'd know without having to look at your buff icons if you 'got it' or not. This wouldn't be anything new to implement in the engine, I get a green debuff taking out my Disgusting Oozeling, and hunters turn red when they pop Bestial Wrath.
Decursing is a touchy subject, because people hate doing it, but it's an integral part of the game. The spells obviously exist to be used. For this fight, the decursing is reduced to only a few raid members at a time, and only those that weren't able to avoid the crap on the floor. It's not like Lucifron or whatever where every raid member gets popped and needs to be cleansed or anything ridiculous.
Some of the debuffs have positive side effects, as well. With the energy regen one, you can spam instant attacks, but your chance to hit is affected. This isn't a huge deal, since the yellow swings will still be hitting, just your white damage ones will miss. Wowwiki says: A "soft" cap is the point at which your yellow attacks will always hit and more hit rating has no affect on them. A "hard" cap is the point at which your autoattacks will always hit and more hit rating does absolutely nothing for you. The yellow debuff, then, just needs to find that middle ground... enough to screw up white attacks, but since your energy regen is thru the roof it doesn't matter, since you're spam, spam, spamming instant yellow attacks anyway. Mana regen from the blue pots is doubled, but your walking speed is reduced. For casters, walk isn't really a huge problem anyway, but if a rogue runs through it on accident it's an annoyance. The red buff specifically plays a vital role...After a certain amount of time (and we guarantee the red buff has been dropped somewhere in the room; it's up to the tank to grab it, though) the boss grabs the tank and immobilizes him, then begins to wind up a huge flurry of hits. Since the tank has a double health pool, he can survive this flurry, but the MS debuff makes it hard to refill the damage (but casters have huge mana incoming, so mana isn't an issue). The reason it isn't a single huge hit is so priests can't just pop Guardian Spirit on the tank and trivialize this portion of the encounter.
He channels this power punch for 3 sec, then slams the tank in the face a few times for 50k, or whatever a realistic "even with double HP pool it's still gonna hurt" value would be. The windup is the healer's chance to spam the hell out of heals to top him off. He gets plowed, then there's a quick 2 sec pause (to bring the tank back up from 5% or whatever) before resuming regular attacks. The two second pause can be integrated into the fight, and has the gnome flipping a switch on Lucy that vents built up exhaust out of her rear vents to cool her back off after popping her into overdrive (look out rogues and kitty DPS!).
Lucy also charges random raid members and cleaves them, hitting them and anyone standing near them. This charge can knock them back into another potion cloud on the ground if they aren't careful about positioning. If that's too random, then make her discharge a powerful chain lightning from time to time. It would have the same effect (hitting people too clumped), without having the knockback involved. This is the dangerous "I can be killed at any moment if not topped off" moment that is what would trigger the "if killed under the effects of potion X, then Y occurs".
The fight itself is a mess since the gnome is flinging pots around, and the area is becoming quickly covered in crap all over the ground... but even with the enrage timer, everyone feels pretty ridiculously overpowered with huge health pools on the tank (maybe the red pot adds threat generation too, if needed), and tons of mana/energy/rage regen. It's a bit like Vaelestraz in Blackwing Lair or something; where everyone just goes balls out, but not a tunnel-vision Patchwerk-style fight where DPS can just focus on their GCDs. You still need to be aware of the pots being flung around, and picking up your class specific positive one while avoiding the negative ones.
For the most part, there are no phase shifts... it's just a flat out burn race, with the occasional hiccup for the tank getting his teeth kicked in.
When downed, the boss drops a keycard that must be quickly looted and used on a control panel to deactivate the quarantine countdown.
Fine Tuning / Encounter problems:
I don't really see any glaring issues with this fight.
The one issue might be that everyone jumps in the red cloud to get huge heathpools. The MS debuff wouldn't be a huge deal, since the tank is the only one it will really affect (recieving spam heals). It would also give everyone in the raid a huge cushion for incoming damage, which should be a conscious choice made, instead of everyone just going 'woohoo, double HP for this encounter with no real drawbacks'. For this reason, the three "good potions" could be mutually exclusive. You can't have the blue and red and yellow all up at the same time. Stepping into a red cloud will overwrite your yellow buff, and rogues would prefer to have the yellow one over the red one any day. That would also force the tank to be especially aware of his surroundings, so he doesn't accidentally step into the yellow buff right before a flurry from Lucy.
As pictured above, the pots can either permanently stain the ground for the entire duration of the fight (and have a texture that looks like someone spilled a paint can on the floor), or they can be gaseous clouds similar to Grobbulous' clouds that start small and slowly expand to a predetermined "maximum radius" (and either stay there, or fade away). Given a 5 minute wipe timer, pots being thrown down every ten seconds, and actual layout size of the room, I'm sure we could figure out the maximum radius of a potion cloud versus total square footage of the room, and decide on a good balance while still giving the raid room to maneuver.
The coloring of the individual stepping in potions is crucial, I think. There will be lots of running around, so being able to see 'you got your buff' without needing to look for its ICON (especially with raid buffs up) will help people to keep their eyes on the action, and not on their buff bars. Perhaps the three 'good' potions could color the individual himself, while the three 'bad' potions could give off a misty aura. So for example, on a warrior with the red potion and poison up, he would be red with a green cloud about him. Then again, the bad potions aren't mutually exclusive of one another, so maybe only the three positive effects (red, blue, yellow) need to be accounted for visually.
(link to original post on my blog)
