Each an’ every place I’ve been to has it’s own unique flavor. Some seem harder for me tae do, some harder for mah friends. It’s all aboot what skills ye can utilise at the time, ‘ken? Some o’ us are blessed wi’ sneakery and skills which are useful - others bring a solid, big lump o’ ‘presence’ tae any adventurin’ party and yet others, well, they bring ways tae benefit the group. Now, in mah mind, ah’d rather go wi’ someone ah knew and trust than just someone wi’ a trick up their sleeve but maybe that’s jist me.

This is not a whine, nor a ’screw you instance designers’ post - it is simply a look at how Blizzard have been moving forward with their instance design, how that can affect which instances are ‘unfair’ given certain class combinations and what ways there are to get around this. Initially this was, as you might suspect, a post I had started thinking about when Magister’s Terrace first came out but I believe it is, has been and will continue to be relevant for The Burning Crusade and Wrath expansions.

First of all, we have to look at what instances are for. They are there to give us a challenge, to go beyond the level of the world quests and grind and, with a group, have some fun or at least experience something different.

So, what’s the ‘problem’? Well, first of all a group comprises of five people. Out of 9 (soon 10) classes you can only have a small selection - which means lacking the key abilities of any classes you do not bring with you. This, to get rid of the big loomy thing, includes, but is not limited to, crowd control (including off-tanking) as well as AoE (tanking and damage), anti-crowd control (fear ward, tremor totem), HoTs, specific damage reduction (heavy melee dmg versus heavy magic encounters) and debuffs (wounding poison, mortal strike abilities).

Some examples where class-specific abilites are extremely beneficial:

• Shattered Halls - Paladin AoE tanking.
• Mana Tombs - Tremor totems / grounding totem.
• Steam Vaults - Multiple crowd control.
• Magister’s Terrace - Multiple crowd control.
• Slave Pens / Underbog - Nature resist + anti-poison abilities.
• Botanica - Fire resistance auras / totems + cleansing totems.

These are mostly what I can remember off the top of my head and kind of focussed around the classes I personally play (druid, shaman, rogue) as they’re, obviously, easier to remember for me but there are plenty more instances of certain utility spells, abilities or class mechanics making certain instance runs easier.

Now, you might be thinking: I totally don’t need that stuff, it’s easy to do it without! Think back to when you weren’t overgeared, or when you run a harder heroic etc. i.e. Where you’ll be when you first hit those Wrath instances on your way to 80. Heroic Underbog, way back then when it used to be a pain - I remember just standing back and abolishing / throwing hots as my feral druid as it made the fight far easier than me clawing at the arse end of Hungarfen. Utility over raw dps!

In fact, the five man setting is really quite different to that of the raid setting. Ten or twenty-five man bosses are supposed to take a long time, test your healers mana pool, your tanks avoidance / stamina and your dps’s pewpew. But, in a five man, the fights have to be a lot shorter and a little simpler. Why? Because you can’t be guaranteed some things which you might get in a raid - synergy in raids is what makes them able to last much longer than five groups of five would if all were split into the same structures as a five man.

As an example… in a raid my shaman might be in a group with other healers and a shadow priest. He’d get the benefit of paladins blessing, druid buffs, and mana regen from the priest, whilst giving his own totem buffs to them. In an instance he may get these but often he won’t. His mana totem has no use for the tank and the LotP aura does little for him as he’s not doing damage (ok, so it might make his work easier but you should get my point). Synergy is not guaranteed in five mans.

So here comes the rub. Blizzard wants to make encounters more challenging but are faced with the decision or trying to make it so that everyone can be useful. This is, obviously, entirely possible but the problem comes where there is a mechanic which makes one class far more preferable to another. People are fickle and will try to maximise their groups so as to take the least time and to run the most smoothly.

Magister’s Terrace was a big example of this. I’m glad I’ve waited some time to come around to this article as things have settled down enough to see how it’s panned out. From what I’m seeing in LFG and in guild normal MgT has become a little looser - people are willing to take fewer crowd control classes if the class in question has some other utility (i.e. shamans). I still see dps warriors and crittycats/boomkins being snubbed as they’re not seen as being useful enough to warrant one less cc. I have actually seen groups break up because there was no cc available even when there were plenty of non-cc available. Multiple melee are also still seen as a disadvantage as they make the healer’s job much more difficult. The third boss is easy if you can control all of the adds and burst them down in turn, for instance. If you don’t you can expect a dead healer most of the time. Crowd control is simply what makes this instance harder for it’s level than most other instances in TBC.

Heroic is even worse - one of our enhancement shamans ended up respeccing to resto just so he could have a shot at gear from MgT.

The thing is… this is probably one of the few instances I’d say is really nice and challenging now. Even on normal if you’re not paying attention a slip can cause a wipe. Good gear really doesn’t help much if you miss-pull or don’t kill the orbs or get charged by the warrior-mob etc. It is, in my mind, a sort of five person raid instance.

In vanilla wow, half of the ‘challenge’ was in the length, interesting pulls, big pulls, special debuffs etc. They’ve already said they’re intending non-heroic’s in Wrath to take around an hour or less - no more long slogs! However, this increases the need for more gimmicks to make the places challenging. If you can ‘breeze through’ it in 45 mins to one hour then are you really going to feel like it was a challenge? Now, MgT feels like a challenge even if you do complete it in one hour so I can see the designers plotting things with more intrinsic difficulty but how are they going to do it without over-reliance on one set of class abilities?

• Some mention has been made of using flying mounts within the instances - a gimmick (and not I do not use the word entirely negatively) which will, at least, make the place more interesting. How they implement it will very much depend on how much people end up feeling about it - too complex and people will dislike it, too simple and it will just be plain gimmicky (in the bad sense). Changing controls is not a thing a lot of people like to or are able to do quickly (i.e. Construct handling on Teron). If they ‘teach’ people how to handle it outside the instance, with quests, as seems likely given the interviews then we might see it working better. Of course, this is all speculative until we see what they do with it.
• Time trials are another thing which makes an instance more challenging. We’ve seen it in Zul’Aman and with some quests within five mans but it would be another way to make things more interesting or challenging. Of course, it’s a way to make it more frustrating, too, but it gives the place more replayability and that’s a big plus in my eyes. If the ‘time trial’ is limited to extra loot or extra benefits then I’d say it’d be a good mechanic to add to more instances.
• Wave instances - that is, where you are swamped by wave after wave of mobs and then get to a boss monster. Hate them or love them they certainly make an instance challenging. Think of the first few times you ran BM? It’s another way to keep the instance short too.

I’d certainly like to see them expand upon what they have as well as innovating something that I probably wouldn’t have even dreamed of. Utilising methods such as the time trials and wave instances make things more challenging without making it imperative to have one class type. More instance design like this will help work towards ‘fairer’ five mans and is something I certainly hope to see in Wrath.

Now I’m going back to shiny spam posts for a while… /ded