While first wing of Ny’alotha seemed hardest in terms of trash rather than bosses, the second wing kicks poor LFRaiders right into crotch!
Despite the two weeks of gearing up in 8.3., the second wing seems way overtuned – most notably, with Hivemind and Vexiona. I can’t possibly imagine how a group of 410 access item level could beat them! But not only that, boss mechanics are plenty, punishing, and leave little space for mistakes. Moreover, it’s the longest wing since Pandaria, and we have to beat 4 bosses.
Dark Inquisitor Xanesh is the most interesting – and questionable in terms of lore. As is a common cause during BfA, there are several unsolved riddles.
Question one: why does N’Zoth punish her? Surely she planned to stab him, but during the whole encounter in Eternal Palace she worked to release him from chains? Question two: why didn’t he take Xal’atath from her? Question three: why did we let her go now and not finish her? Of course she kinda helped and we have more pressing matters on our hands, but it’s unlikely that she left to help Alliance/Horde fishermen and did a heel-face turn. Oh well.
Xanesh in LFR offers three things to do: two of them are about not standing in the fire, and third one is infamous soccer. By gods, I hate this boss for that!
Even if soccer is easier in LFR – with skill you need only two bumps – it proved to be quite an obstacle. In every encounter that requires unusual tasks, like G’huun orb runs, operating cannons during Antorus’ High Command or whatever, I’ll be the first to volunteer. And I just… well, couldn’t.
I tried at least 6-7 times to operate a ball. The idea is super easy and understandable, but execution proved impossible for me. I can’t chase or outrun it, as it travels with the same speed. I’m unable to bump it, even if I’m right at its hitbox. If I occasionally did, it won’t travel in the direction where I look (as it should) and will change its trajectory in the most weird ways.
Long story short, I just gave up trying – as I was only making things worse. My best call is just doing my DPS and praying there will be experienced players in the group who know how to handle this. I repeat this again: fuck arcades in my MMO!
Other than that, the encounter is quite enjoyable and not very difficult.
Vexiona for some unknown reason is the second boss, although she well deserves to be the last due to multiple and cool mechanics. A little comfort that she doesn’t use her tail for decimating players like dragons do, yet her arsenal is sufficient even without that.
What I like about the encounter is personal player responsibility and interesting mechanics. You get to pick where to drop void pools, to avoid standing in the bad, to pick targets and to avoid the void fire lanes – what is important, you have time for making decisions.
Tanks’ execution is moderately important for success, although it’s quite forgiving too.
What I don’t like about the encounter is that it is way overtuned. I had two groups that just didn’t manage to handle adds and bring her below 60k (next phase starts at 45k in LFR).
Even if we did everything properly (almost no deaths, clever usage of annihilation thingies, focusing adds), it was nigh impossible, and we were chipping away about 10-12k per ground phases. So either you wipe and stack determination, or go try with a more geared group. I even quit a couple of times because of that. My last try was with geared dudes, and I finally felt that encounter rolls as it should. Most definitely Vexiona is not tuned for 410 access item level, or even 420-430.
The hardest part is bringing her down to 40% – with adds gone, it’s suddenly a yawn fiesta.
Hivemind is pushing the limits as well, although it is not that demanding. It is important that people learned to focus and kill adds (and preferably stack to collect them in one spot), and it won’t be impossible to win the encounter without wipes.
But yes, I’d tune add health pools (not the boss) down a bit.
Ra-Den is suprisingly the simplest boss in the batch. The only thing people need to learn is killing off one correct orb per time, left-right, left-right. It is pretty simple, easy and intuitive – once experienced players start to go for an orb, the flock just follows. By the middle of the fight Ra-Den stops even spawning orbs, and becomes a simple dummy to finish.
***
All in all the second wing impressions are mixed.
I like its lore and ambience, as we delve deeper into Ny’alotha, and the skies and environment are weirdly optimistic and beautiful, and pose a sharp contrast to the darker first wing. Also we start to execute our plan of defeating N’Zoth – placing beacons and acquiring Xal’atath.
I like the boss mechanics – quite different and complex to amuse during re-runs.
Thing I’d like to fix: tune down add health pools for Hivemind and especially Vexiona.
Thing I hate: Xanesh’ soccer, because arcade in my MMORPG!
Gnomecore 
I agree, it is a bit over-tuned. On the later bosses our normal team struggles and needs a third healer or we simply can not do it. And that is frustrating for normal (and the LFR).
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You don’t need to chase the ball. You need to stand in front of the ball and face the direction you want it to move into. This is why 3 people are performing the ritual.
The ball comes from the blue portal and heads to the center of the room. First ritual player stands on portal-to-center line and diverts the ball from center. The second player waits for the ball down the line and changes its direction to the the goal portal. As the distance to the goal is far, it’s very hard for second player to actually hit the goal. This is where player 3 comes into play. He waits for the ball near the goal and gives the ball the final change of direction to score.
If you play as mage, you can outrun the ball with blink, but it is not necessary because 2 other players are there (ritual players damage is reduced by 99% until ball is either scored or explodes, so there is no reason for them to ignore the ritual and dps the boss). You do need to coordinate who does each task before the pull. Groundmarking the positions for 3 players does help.
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Thanks! Worked like a charm yesterday :)
The strategy was perfectly clear before. I had problem with redirecting it, and the advice of just blocking its way rather than trying to chase and push it was all I needed.
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