There needs to be a story hook in place as to why, when we fight this guy, the day and night cycle is in flux (as shown below). The day and night cycles are intertwined in the fight, and basically signal the phase shifts. At first I had imagined him giving a speech, and then setting a sundial type apparatus (with each half indicating night and day) above his throne into motion, but I think now the idea that this is something we do --perhaps even against his own will-- makes for a more compelling and 'hands on' approach to the fight setup.
The idea now is that his room is a large observatory, and there's an apparatus dominating the upper area of the room. This planetarium type object tracks the moons and stars, and we are given an item right before entering the chamber from Chromie (of the bronze dragonflight) that will speed up night and day cycles, and put the device into overdrive. Understand that it isn't the device itself we're speeding up, but the entire flow of time. The device is just a fancy clock, basically, and spins faster to reflect the speed of time around it. She explains why altering time in this fashion is necessary:
"Just ahead is the chamber of the Baron. He is a man eternally at odds with the two forces struggling inside of him; forces which are at war one with one another, but both of which equally desire to devour his soul entirely.Room Layout:
Although once a great man, he has now sunk to such levels of depravity that ending his existence is the only option left. Do not pity the Baron, for he brought this upon himself; his lust for power driving him to tinker with powers beyond his understanding, or ability to contain. For now, he waits. Searching for a cure, or means to harness this energy, enlisting those harbingers of such knowledge to his task force. Those you have vanquished on the path to this final confrontation.
Take this rod. Nozdormu has gifted it with the power to unravel time for a short time, and only for an area with a limited radius of its activation point. Perhaps by turning the powers within the Baron against him in such quick succession, we can wear him down and triumph.
What powers are those, you ask? You shall see very soon, my friends. I can see already in the future that you have triumphed, but perhaps that is only the *final* result I'm seeing..."
The fight has the raid entering into a large circular room with a domed ceiling dominated by planetarium device hanging from the center, planets and stars twirling about on central axes, similar to those found in the game on the roofs of the Sanctum of the Sun in Shadowmoon Valley. A large telescope looks out through a slot in the ceiling. There is also a large crank in the center of the floor.The floor itself is made of smooth and uniform tiles, but has one wedge 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's initial time can reflect the real time of "server time" to begin the encounter, similar to how Brill's town hall clock tower works, or can be stopped altogether. The starting time isn't important. When the raid activates the rod given to them by Chromie, the dial twirls forward to 12 exactly, ready to begin the first full 'day' cycle.As mentioned, the roof is domed, and has a large slit cut into the radius, similar to a telescope observatory.
A basic mockup in 3d Studio Max. I've made the roof partially transparent to show the underlying throne, crank, and "missing wedge" of the floor. The roof itself has another wedge cut out of it, to allow the telescope (not pictured) to look out, and allow for sun and moonlight to shine in. Click for larger version.The Encounter:
The DAY phase
The boss is engaged, and he stands up and gives his monologue:
"Your coming was foretold by the stars, and the story of your demise begins here and now. You cannot hope to think you can win, when the powers within me are great beyond your wildest imaginings. I will enlist you in my army, one by one, until none are left to oppose me. You have fought valiantly to make it this far, and will make worthy replacements for those who have failed me today. Prepare yourselves, the sun is sets now on your lives as you know them. When it rises again tomorrow, it will be on the the first day of an eternity of servitude in my army."
The raid uses the rod given to them by Chromie, and sets the time unraveling mechanic into motion. 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 teleports or flies around the room to various locations, casting various 'vampirey' spells:
- Minor life drains
- Enfeebling stat reductions
...any other 'normal' attacks for flavor (vamp-o-riffic laser beam eyes?)
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, and resume control of your toon, 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 appear as a red beam from him to the raid member, and tick for a flat percentage of his health on raid members (2 in 10 man, 5 in 25). These raid members also need to run and stand in the sunbeam to nullify the effect of said drain. Again, he isn't tanked in this phase, he moves freely, and ranged DPS do their thing.
During this phase, he also summons bat adds (of two types) that need to be handled by the tanks and melee DPS. Normal Bats are just to be off tanked to the side, similar to the phoenixes in the Alar encounter of TK. Visibly larger and uglier 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 (the second day phase) 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 themselves, 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; beating on clothies and generally being a nuisance. Various forms crowd control could apply to simplify the management of these.
The NIGHT Phase
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. Afterward, the crank in the center of the room should be positioned so that the moonbeam falls 'off the floor' (the missing section of flooring), eliminating random enrages due to moonbeam contact, 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 their toon again and are used to tank the Werewolf, keeping vampiric auras up to help the healers fill their huge health pools, and weakening the boss with new debuffs they've gained as a result of being bitten. 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, and all forms of DPS (ranged, melee) can basically go nuts.
Werewolf skills:
-Split Cleave (see below)
-Bleeds
-Flurry
-basically hits like a truck, but is tauntable (perhaps only by a given vampire taunt, though)
When the clock reaches 12 again, the wolf goes back to vampire phase, and the raid member(s) that were bitten die (vampires and the sun, you know). 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 the first night phase 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 for subsequent night phases.
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.
Achievements could include not using the rod given to the raid by Chromie at all, and 'riding out' one phase all the way to completion. An interesting twist to this achievement would be that the dial in the room would reflect actual server time, so in order to get both achivements ("Day Walker" and "Insomniac") you would need to schedule two separate day and night time raids.
Other possible achievements could include not using Vampire Tanks during the night phase, or ignoring the crank completely. The day phase has him weakened by the sunlight (and immune to damage completely unless in it), but the phase shifts aren't boss health percentage based, they're timed. You could just heal through day phases, and then do your damage at night time only. Or he could take 'normal' amounts of damage all the time, and 2 or 3 times the amount if weakened by the sun. There would need to be play testing done to see if the negligible amount of damage done during day phase isn't worth hassling with the crank in the first place. If that's the case, and people ignore the crank mechanic altogether, then the achievement could be "Tomorrow's Another Day - Defeat the Baron before the end of the first night cycle", requiring the damage multiplier of the sunbeam to achieve.
Alternatively, if people still continued to ignore the crank, even while not going for he achievement, then we could give him an enrage timer of 25 seconds. If he doesn't come into contact with the sun beam before then, then it's GG and a wipe.
Problems with the encounter:
The main issue I see with this fight is that it's the final showdown of the place, and yet -- tanks are totally worthless, except for handling bat adds. That's not going to go over well in the tanking community. By having the boss bite raid members, and having said members become super duper tanks in the next phase, it basically allows anyone to be the tank for this fight. Perhaps dual spec will alleviate this, and allow tanks to just DPS this phase? That's a pretty lame 'solution'.
A better way to handle this would be to have the tanks be the ones that get bitten, and have 'the tanks become the tanks' for the next phase. One thing I really like about the bite mechanic is that it's random, and allows a mage (for example) to be a tank for this encounter. Not just a 'mage tank' like they've done before for High King in Gruul's Lair, but a 'get in the mob's face, take huge hits, and hit your taunt button when you need to' tank.
If the randomness was taken out of the equation when a vampire bat was killed...
-the boss could enrage and bite highest on threat
-the boss could enrage and bite the player with the biggest health pool (yum! lots of blood!)
... then you could 'aim the bite' at various raid members, and it becomes a predictable and strategic element of the encounter. Or the boss could just be tauntable, and when he enrages, a tank needs to hit the taunt and take it for the team. That's very 'tanky' behavior, and would suit the role.
Another option would be a disease that a killed Vampire Bat leaves behind upon death, but I really like the idea that the boss gets pissed that we're killing his bat buddies, and turns into a bat himself, and bites someone. That seems way more dynamic and exciting than "and then the bat dies, and leaves a cloud of gas on the floor. oh gee, who will stand in the cloud? let's let it be frank, because he's our tank, zzzz". The point I'm trying to make is that there's about 50 different ways we could go about this, if one option or another needs to be tweaked.
Commenters on my blog mentioned how they wouldn't like being the bitten member, because 1) you lose control of your toon for the remainder of that day phase, and 2) you die automatically come the next day phase. I think this is balanced by playing a fun, crucial role during the encounter (tanking the night phase), and I really like the idea that it's a fight of attrition, where you need to sacrifice your own raid members in order to be able to tank the night phases.
If people cry too loudly about having to die on the next day phase, then that aspect could be nerfed. Make the 'deadly bite' a disease, and have someone dispell it right before it would kill them for the next phase (but not before they have a chance to tank night phase or you're screwed). There's already a transition between phases when the boss does his transformation animations; at that point he's done being tanked, but it's not the full day phase yet. Make that player begin to take damage from the sun, pop a dispell, and heal them up to be bitten for the incoming day phase again.
Alternatively, just make it a time based debuff. They get bitten, and are 'not normal' for 4 minutes (assuming 2 minute day/night cycles). This goes for the remainder of the day phase they get bit (running around out of control, needing to be stunned or CCed), the subsequent night phase (tanking), and then into the next day phase (running around again, but eventually wearing off). If they got bit right at the end of day phase 1, it would wear off right at the end of day phase 2.
The ramification here is that they lose control of their character for an entire day phase (in the example above, 30% of day one, and 70% of day two), but 'they live'.
(link to original posts on my blog: initial, revision)
