MoM Raid Review Part 1

Hey this is your (least)favorite Bahmi reporting for duty.
I've been playing Rift since T2 SL.
Before that I was playing WoW and other non MMO games.
Overall I think this current tier is the best I've seen in my time in Rift. As a result I feel motivated to write a review about what I like and dislike about the recently released bosses as well as what these bosses were missing.

I'll do 1 boss at a time whenever I feel like it. I think it can be a constructive form to spark conversation about what players value and what not. From my previous encounters with officials, I think discussing things publicly and gathering support is the form of feedback that's most likely to influence the future approach of those officials.
So it's probably in your best interest to keep convo in here civil and friendly if you guys are interested in quality raiding experience as much as I am. You don't have to agree with my standpoints and probably won't. Just focus on what's said, not who says what.

In general the quality I value most during raiding is engaging playstyle/content(Stacking on symbol for 10 minutes and only occasionally moving around isn't in my opinion) and open design that promotes individual solutions and both inventiveness and creativity connected to that. In order to be creative within your class, you need as many viable soul trees as possible. This is the biggest negative I currently feel about Rift. I think class balancing should be more dynamic and more promoted. It's the single biggest aspect that separates Rift from WoW and I'd love to see it more featured in the future.
(And my class probably still has the lowest amount of 'dead' souls currently)

I'm also a big supporter of at least 2 difficulty settings or at least multiple hardmodes from the get go. I've said that multiple times before and I hopefully won't address it in my reviews.

My opinion is obviously influenced by conversations I've had with multiple players about the bosses.
Originally I'd planned to write it together with Acuta and the piece on Pagura had been discussed in depth.
But unfortunately he doesn't have the time to get further involved at the moment. So in case I'll pick up discussions with him or someone else again about these bosses, these individuals will be credited as co-authors.

Following that introductory part, I'll start off with

Pagura

For an introductory boss I think the amount of mechanics that boss has is probably slightly too high. It's a legit challenge for guilds that have a more casual approach.
The damage requirement of it isn't very high, which I think is proper for a first boss(I think enrage is 10min? - I never saw it myself, so I may be wrong here)
It's about playing the mechanics as cleanly as possible and it requires a fair amount of coordination overall.

• Curse of X

I like the idea behind the mechanic, as it forces the raid to adjust positioning and have designated players take responsibility to each take one of the X cones.
One aspect that's been criticized before and I'll reiterate it here is that the check if you're solving the mechanic happens 1 sec before the cast is over. It takes away transparency.
If it triggers last second, you can say more safely, who has been late to their assignment and improve incrementally.
What I like in general about it is that it putts emphasis on understanding the cleave cone in front of the boss and raid positioning to solve the two cones right where the pincers of the alien crab are together with Leaping Contagion.
I would like it better if instead of adding the curse of 6 in the last phase, we'd consistently get a 2nd curse of x right before the Ice Golems become active. That way you'd have to rotate between two assignments for the same spot and still could play with backups in case you suffer casualties.

• Leaping Contagion

I think the mechanic is a proper check for a first boss, I'd like it more though if you could find out somehow how far you're supposed to spread(Maybe a buff on the boss that says: Pagura's next attack is gonna bounce over to a random player within 3n of the randomly targeted victim. Successive targets suffer increased damage)
I dislike the scripting that it occurs as the last mechanic before the golem phase. This seems non intuitive for me. The player's focus at that point should be to prepare the target swap and move towards the right golem.

• Ice Golems

I think it's a well designed mechanic to check a player's understanding of geometry connected to camera angles. It's not hard and I think the Ice shards below the wall once the cast has ended are a good idea as well to discourage lazy positioning strategies and bad reactions in case you're still choosing to position that way. No real complaints. The dps check is fine. Good guilds should be able to solve it without expending raid/personal cooldowns, others will probably have to put more emphasis on that aspect.
Can't say too many bad things about that mechanic. I think it could have been removed completely, as the extra dynamic in raid positioning and movement (or inventing strategies and tanks utilizing awareness to ignore that mechanic for the most part) isn't really needed. That way it would make a smoother progression for everyone, while taking away very little fun(I think for non endbosses, more than 4 weeks to overcome a challenge is too long. We got 19 kills listed on topofrift so far after 3 weeks)

• Transition Phase

Once Pagura reaches 40%, it will become inactive, and 2 smaller, previously frozen characters become active. I think the phase is alrite. I've seen 3 solutions in vids to play that phase, maybe there're even more?
1) Raid stays together, finishes 1 add before running to the 2nd, while utilizing all raid cooldowns from beastmaster etc...
2) Raid splits into 2 groups of 10 players, that swap sides periodically
3) Raid as a whole switches sides periodically despite not killing one of the adds.

That's the kind of open design I like. During that phase the adds will target 1 players who getts a damaging voidzone around them, that will kill either friendly players or spiders coming from the spider nests together with the nests. (Nests could have been a mechanic that's exclusive to this phase for example)

• Last Phase

Rinse and repeat like the first phase with 2 differences. Curse of 5 becomes Curse of 6 and Okadaic Poisoning.
I like the Poison mechanic, where you drop a void below your feet after 5 sec. Easily solvable with proper usage of kalert, but you can still screw up by dropping it outside below the golem that's your next intended hiding spot. Requires a mediocre amount of awareness.

Overall I like the boss as an introduction. It's well designed, it focuses on execution of mechanics, positioning and endurance(It can be pretty long, if you can't bring high dps or take risks to make it shorter overall)
The level of calls from your raid commentators that is required, is probably a little bit too high, as there's a lot of stuff that you can make fail proof that requires communication and pre-planning. That level should've been employed later in the raid IMO.
If I compare it to other first bosses of this expansion, it has more facets than Bulf and Murdantix.

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MoM Raid Review Part 1