Nighthold Launches!

Roughly 4 months after Emerald Nightmare and 2 months after Trial of Valor, Blizzard launches its first proper tier raid. Here's my experience with it so far.

Firstly, the minor guild drama. Starting off, the general impression was that we should start in Normal just to get a feel for the bosses themselves. It makes sense considering how overtuned ToV was when it launched. But then on the day of launch, the consensus in our guild discord had changed to "Well, let's just dive into heroic. We can handle it.". Then it was put to a vote, with the winning option being that we do Heroic and run an optional night for Normal. I wasn't too happy with this considering we're a two night guild and as much as I love WoW, I also want to do other things with my time. Stuff like playing other games or spending time with the wife. Being a bit down about the whole thing, I tried as hard as I could to remain as hyped up about the brand new raid as I could, even though I wasn't entirely happy with the situation. And then, an hour before the raid, it was announced that we were starting on Normal and that there would be no extra night. Bloody guilds.

So, onto the raid itself. The first thing I noticed was that Blizz didn't even bother composing new music for the place. Aside from the boss fights (and I'm pretty sure even some of these tracks have been reused), the music is all of the same stuff you've heard in Suramar City, CoS and Arcway. A bit disappointing, but I'll just be playing some T. Rex, Harry Nilsson or Moody Blues in the background next time anyways.

The environment itself looks gorgeous though, so it more than makes up for the fact that they didn't bother with new music. There's no mistaking that this is an extension of the already beautiful Suramar City. Compared to The Emerald Nightmare and Trial of Valor, it's a breath of fresh air. It reminded me a lot of Sunwell Plateau actually. Just in a shade of purple. And that's certainly not a bad thing.

For some reason I expected the difficulty of the bosses to be a bit higher than they were, even though we started on Normal. As mentioned earlier, I'd say this was because how overtuned ToV was when it launched. However, they were rather easy. Of course, we did outgear the raid by probably a good 10-15 ilvls, so maybe that had something to do with it. In the 3 hours that we raided, we got all of the way to Gul'dan. An extra 10-20 mins and we would've had him. Here's a quick run down of my experience with the bosses in the order that we tackled them:

Skorpyron

The room itself was pretty small, which was somewhat unsettling. Pretty much everyone in the guild was messing up and getting shockwaved into the edges of the room, causing numerous small scorpions to spawn. Still, it was extremely easy, and we had no trouble downing him. Should be a breeze on Heroic too.

Chromatic Anomaly

Again, pretty easy. Not a lot of people were too sure what was going on, so it was sort of a figure it out as we go situation. Pretty sure we popped hero at the wrong time. I do like the time flowing mechanic on this boss though. Might be a bit tricky on Heroic. We'll see.

Trillax

Fairly fun boss that, again, had some interesting new mechanics. Will definitely have to pay a bit more attention on Heroic. I got a 96 parse on WarcraftLogs on this fight! Was pretty happy with that. Not really sure how though, since it wasn't as add heavy as the others two fights.

Spellblade Aluriel

The next 5 bosses can be done in any order. Aluriel pats around, and naturally, we ended up accidentally pulling her. After a quick "Are we doing this?", we decided to just go for it and learnt it on the fly. Was a surprisingly easy and straight-forward fight. Take adds here, DPS them down, focus on the boss. Accidental pull one-shot. Can't see this one being too difficult on Heroic.

Krosus

Pretty much a Patchwerk DPS check with a mechanic that makes portions of the bridge collapse. Nothing to extravagant here, but it's nice to have at least one of these simple sorts of fights in a raid. Pretty sure we'll meet the DPS check on Heroic no problem.

Tichondrius

The first boss that we didn't one-shot. I can see this being really difficult on Heroic/Mythic, and will definitely act as a wall for some guilds. We actually ended up hitting the enrage timer on our first attempt. There's a ton of adds to deal with, designated areas to stand and it's difficult to keep DPS up on Tichondrius himself.

High Botanist Tel'arn

Another boss that took us two attempts. With this fight, the boss spawns adds, splits, makes orbs appear and other such mechanics. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on in this fight. All I know is that if you don't take care of the adds, prepare to be overwhelmed.

Star Augur Etraeus

The area in which you fight this boss is absolutely amazing. Probably one of the best, if not the best I have ever seen. I don't really want to spoil it too much, but it's sorta similar to the Algalon fight. As for the fight itself, this one gave us a couple of wipes because there was an add that needed to be split from the boss, and we didn't figure that out right away. Not too difficult once that was out of the way.

Grand Magistrix Elisande

The penultimate boss of the raid. Apparently she gets pretty difficult on Heroic, but this was really a push over on normal. Killing adds spawns bubbles and the pink ones give you a nice heroism buff. DPS her down and she reverses time to heal herself.

Gul'dan

We only had time for one attempt on this guy, but it seemed like an interesting fight. You get an extra action button that does something depending on your role. Mine was a heroism style buff. Healers seem to get some sort of healing bubble. Not sure about tanks. We'll get this guy in our next run and then move onto Heroic.

Trash

There's a bit more trash than EN and ToV, but that's to be expected as it's a bigger raid. The area right before Botanist had the most in the raid. Not too much of an issue, but I imagine it'll get a bit tiresome after the 30th time running the raid.

Based on my first impressions, I'd say Blizz has done a pretty good job with this raid. The environment and the bosses seem a lot more interested than anything up to this point in Legion. I'm keen to progress through on Heroic/Mythic. I'm confident it will be more of a challenge than EN was on Mythic, so it should keep 2 night guilds like mine occupied for a fair bit.

Next post: Gul'dan dies on Normal! Bring on Heroic!

#WorldofWoW #Nighthold #VGP