One week and two days after mythic Ny’alotha opened up Complexity Limit downed N’Zoth and claimed the world first title. Although about a week is the norm for most raids, it is worth noting it took almost two weeks for Azshara to be killed on Mythic last tier (Mythic opened on 7/16 and Method beat her on 7/29). Although it might be tempting to say this means Ny’alotha is a simpler raid than Eternal Palace was, it’s not that straightforward.
Having done the fights in both raids, one thing I will say is it feels like Eternal Palace had more fights where ALL THE MECHANICS were thrown at players. What I like to classify as “kitchen Sink” fights. These are fights where the difficulty comes in chiefly through so many things happening all at once; it’s hard to keep track of it all. Azshara was one such fight, but I’d also say Radiance, Court, and Za’qul also fell into this category. That’s half of the bosses being very mechanics heavy fights. Za’qul even adds in the bonus of having a communication check as one of his mechanics.
)
Additionally, there were also two substantial DPS checks in the Sivara and Ashvane fights. In fact, when my raid group started doing Sivara on Heroic, we were surprised how much of a step up it was from Normal. Most of the time in raids, the first boss is a pushover, but Sivara was not. Which honestly was a nice change of pace. Instead of the standard gradual ramp up in difficulty, Sivara was there saying, “are you really sure you are ready for this?”
Another aspect which is interesting in this debate is the fact the Eternal Palace had eight bosses in it, whereas Ny’alotha has twelve. Despite this, it took less time to finish Ny’alotha which seems like pretty solid proof the new raid is easier. However, player power creep comes into play here a bit. Not only would everyone participating in the World First Race have all the best essences at this point, but also, some of the corruption on gear is extremely powerful. Since the cloak has a limit it can be leveled each week; the amount of corruption gear that can be safely used is also somewhat limited. Especially since some of the adverse corruption effects are particularly bad in a progression setting. Nonetheless, between essences and the new corruption effects, overall player power has taken a considerable leap in 8.3.
)
Overall though, it seems like the fights in Ny’alotha are a bit more straightforward than the Eternal Palace ones. None of the fights have made me feel like just keeping track of everything which was going on was impossible, though the last N’zoth fight comes close. From a tank perspective, a few of the fights are a bit boring, but that’s because there are significant mechanics the rest of the raid has to deal with. I mean, there’s a fight where the rest of the raid has to bounce a ball around to a specific spot and not hit anything along the way. That’s a fairly out-there mechanic, so while the tanking on that fight is easy the rest of the raid can have some trouble figuring out how to move the ball accurately.
While difficulty can be debated, I feel like Ny’alotha is overall a more enjoyable raid. So far, I don’t dread doing any of the bosses; in fact, the only thing I dread is that dang run back if we do wipe. Most of the fights are also interesting. I do, however, wonder about what doing the Skitra fight is like on LFR since communication matters in that particular fight. For the first time this expansion I have a hard time choosing my favorite fight in a raid, not because I dislike so many of them it’s hard to narrow it down, but because I enjoy so many of them. It’s possible I might feel differently on the far side of six months, or likely more since there’s still no Alpha for Shadowlands yet, but for now, I am enjoying this raid the most out of all the raids in BfA.
