This is the entrance fight to my dungeon. You zone in, and are immediately staring down this boss. I like the idea that if you can't kill this boss, then you come back when you can. With BWL's Razorgore, the first pull of two giants in MC, High King Mulgaur etc, there's no "let's go in the back door and kill that one easy boss this week". You have to be able to handle this or you're locked out of the whole place. There's no attunement chain to enter the place, and you can feel free to waltz on in, but you're getting nowhere without the gear to walk past this encounter. That said, it's a pretty straightforward fight.The gatekeepers (there's two of them) are twins who had a Priest for a daddy and a Warlock for a mommy, and let's just say they were raised amidst conflict. The girl is a priestly spirit of redemption, all white and flowy, and casting holy spells. Her brother is a warlock-y grim reaper incarnate with a huge scythe carved out of a blackened dragon's spine.
Setting:
The fight takes place in the Inner Ring area where you first zone in to the dungeon. It's a circular outdoor area, and looking up you can see the two main towers of the castle looming overhead. The Alchemy lab is protruding from the eastern tower, and hoses are pumping liquid to and fro along the outside of the lab, while steam shoots out of various vents. Green liquid flows out of another grate to soak into the ground below. The Baron's observatory is visible straight overhead, with light spilling out of the rotating telescope slit cut into the roof. The whole castle hanging overhead looks ready to collapse upon the raid at any second, and the structures creak and groan in the wind whistling between them. To the left of the raid is a wide, low structure (The Library, resting on top of the Hall of Arms). The windows are illuminated, but it's a weak, flickering light.
The center of the area is dominated by the Gatekeeper sister; a white, priestly apparition done up in the theme of the Spirit of Redemption. Long flowing robes billow slowly outward, and she gives off a shimmering blue radiance that pulses outward weakly. She's watching the raid, but quiet and unmoving for now. Everywhere you turn, her eyes are silently upon you, like those creepy paintings whose eyes follow you.
The ground is rough and cracked, with sparse grasses growing up from the cracks. The only other objects of note are two crystal structures, one to either side of her, and slightly behind her. For now they simply glow softly, pulsing gently every 20 seconds. This pulsing plays an important role in the fight itself, but before she's engaged, the pulsing is just barely visible.
She lies in wait, her brother unseen (and unknown to beginner raids).
The Fight:
She waits to be confronted by the raid, and there's a mechanic in place that helps if the raid spreads out first (more on that in a sec). The tank actually starts the fight by talking to her when everyone is good to go.
Raid: "We have come to put the Baron out of his misery. It would be an act of mercy, which is more than he rightfully deserves. We come on behalf of all of those whose lives he tramples on daily in an effort to wield powers which are beyond his ability to contain, much less manipulate. He has brought this on himself, now stand aside so that we may cleanse this land of his unearthly taint!"
Once engaged, she immediately casts a Power Word: Shield upon herself, and begins to draw power from the crystal structures to either side of her.
Gatekeeper: "You are not the first to venture here, nor do I imagine you will be the last. So be it. The Baron has empowered the last of my family to watch the entrance for such as you. We will not fail, or betray his faith in us."
Two powerful beams shoot forth from the crystals, and attach to her, landing squarely in each of her shoulder blades. She glows much brighter than before, and her shield is brightly lit as well. A normal priest's PW:S is fairly faint, but hers glows bright and powerfully.
Her number one annoying overpowered-boss-talent-that-looks-kinda-like-yours-but-works-WAY-better is her bubble. Her Power Word: Shield doesn't have a 'wear off timer' on it, and absorbs ridiculous amounts of damage. While it leaves her with a Weakened Soul debuff just like yours and mine, the debuff only lasts for 5 seconds, then she throws a brand new one up there and you're back to square one.
Mockups ftwThe point here is that she throws a new one up every 5 seconds, and that there's no way the little pew pew pew-ing of your raid is ever going to wear it down, and get to where you can actually hit the boss with anything. Like, ANYTHING. It's a huge mystery, until someone realizes that you can shoot one of the targetable crystals behind her; but that doesn't appear to do much either... in fact, it just absorbs the damage thrown at it, too. Then the crystal pulses, with an arcane explosion type blast, and she gets hit for the stored up amount of damage all at once. It still isn't enough to break through her shield, though.
Huh...
"Wait! I got an idea, guys...!"
The fight basically works like this: Tank goes in, and initiates the fight. The bubble goes up, and she begins attacking the tank and raid using Holy and Discipline Priest spells. Smites on the main tank, Penance on the offtank (2nd threat), Holy Fire on random raid members. She's a priest, but one of the white flowy ones... she's not casting Mind Sear or anything overtly Shadowy.
The DPS ignores the boss, gets into position, and waits for a crystal to pulse. After it does, they rip fucking tear into it with DPS, balls to the wall, healers are even spamming Smites or Wraths when they can afford spare GCDs. After 20 seconds, it pulses again, and ALL that damage that was stored in the crystal blows outward and hits the boss. While the plink plink plink-ing is enough to be ignored as a constant minimal stream, stored up like this it can't be out-regenned, and it removes the shield (plus inflicts a good chunk of collateral damage). The boss is left with a 5 second window of opportunity for the raid to chuck up dots (or just nuke), and then another shield is cast.
Her basic cast routine is to refresh the shield every 5 seconds (when her Weakened Soul debuff wears off), so she would be refreshing the shield at 20 seconds, then the stored up charge hits, and she still has a 5 second debuff before she's able to put the shield back up again. It's completely pointless to attack her shield at all, since she's putting a brand new one up right before the blast. All DPS should focus on a crystal. This is the basic mechanic.
The other aspect of the fight concerns her brother, the Grim Reaper warlock guy. For the most part, he's pretty disinterested in the fight. He's mostly just a nuisance, and lets his sister do her thing. If, however, at any time there's two people standing within 3 feet of one another, he pops out of the nether so fast you think it's bugged, and slashes you with his scythe ("Grim Strike"). You're walking past another person, and suddenly the two of you are hit and stunned, and his apparition is already fading out from in front of you. The whole animation of the actual slice is about .25 seconds long, and the fadeout takes a second or two, and then you aren't stunned anymore and can spread out. Staying spread out in the first place totally negates this effect. It's completely avoidable if you know not to trigger it. This forces melee to be aware of each other and not step on toes for the crystal DPSing, but isn't 'random' at all. You LEARN to avoid it, and then it becomes a non-issue. This is also a reason to spread melee DPS out across the two crystals. They both pulse, and the damage done is the sum of both pulses. If you have a melee heavy raid composition, just put 4 on one and 4 on another.
As you fight the girl, and wear her down, the brother realizes she may actually be in danger and finally makes an appearance in earnest when she reaches 25% of her HP. At this point, he needs to be picked up and kept from interfering with the crystal DPS. When either dies, the other enrages and needs to be put down ASAP. It would be good to have a Romeo and Juliet timing thing going so that you can kill him and his sister at the same time, by timing a pulse to go off while she's at like 5%. They're both clothies, so from the time he appears (with 100% HP) while his sister is at 25%, you need to whittle them both down.
He takes damage normally (no PW:S of his own or anything), but you still need to do the crystal thing with his sister. He's a basic warlock, for the most part, and casts DoTs around the raid, as well as seeding and deathcoiling. While a raid member runs in fear from the deathcoil, his Grim Strike move still applies. People should run from those that are feared to avoid stacking up and giving him a chance to whack them. To lighten the load, and fit with the warlock theme, he's stunlockable. From a tactical standpoint, you just nuke up the crystal for one last good wallop to her, then stun lock him and let the blast finish off his sister. He enrages (stunlocked), and the raid finishes him off. Hooray, it's Miller time.
As mentioned on the Entrance page, she drops a key that allows the raid to progress to one of the lower wings of their choosing, along with gear perhaps tailored to Warlocks and Priests.
Loose ends and random thoughts:
Mainly, does the crystal's outward blast hurt us as well? There's a few ways of representing the animation of the explosion... since she's attached to the crystal by a beam, then I could see a surge traveling down the beam and affecting only her. If we instead go for some sort of arcane explosion type animation, then it would make sense that it affects us, too, though. That would be a pretty big problem, but not totally unavoidable. It would be pretty annoying for rogues to need to sprint away every twenty seconds then sprint back in, but meh... it would add a dynamic to tanking her, though, to make sure the tank is clear of the thing before it goes off. If needed, we could make her prone to Conc Blow or Bash or any other kind of stun, then we kick her in the nuts and run off while the thing blows up. Or a maybe the tank can just suck it up? 20 seconds of balls to the wall DPS isn't going to be able to be "Last Stand"-ed though, I imagine.
One thing I want is more mechanics of the two siblings interacting. I like the Grim Strike move, but there needs to be more moves where doing one thing to her affects him, etc etc. He should be popping out now and again to cast DoTs around the raid (dispellable or maybe throw a UA in there once in a while to mix it up). Both of their classes are capable of fearing, and the warlock is aready deathcoiling, as well. Perhaps from time to time he 'stays out' and channels a cast like Howl of Terror that would need to be kicked/silenced, or would create a chain of Grim Strikes in the raid whack-whack-whack. I like that they're two classes we're familiar with, so you don't need to necessarily learn the moves. You're fighting a warlock and a priest. When a spell is being cast, you know what it does.
The original idea I had for this fight was to have the boss be half Paladin / half DeathKnight, but the main problem is that Paladin Bubbles are completely immune to damage, and would negate the system in place for removing the shield through stored up damage. While standing in his bubble, though, he would occasionally cast a 20 second channel of "Hearthstone". At first the raid would be like "... wtf? LOL, HE'S HEARTHING!" But if they didn't get the bubble down and kick the cast, it would go off, and he whole raid would find themselves at their OWN hearth locations instead. Can you imagine raid chat after that hit the very first guild that attempted him? You all zone in and buff up, get your consumables set up, then he hearths the entire raid to wherever their hearths are set to. Eventually, newbie guilds trying to learn the fight would need to all set their hearth to the nearest town in case they couldn't get the bubble down in time to minimize run back downtime. That would RULE, although I suppose it's a bit impractical. : /
(link to original post on my blog)
