Karazhan: The Good and the Bad

I wanted to just summarize what I think is awesome about Karazhan, and what I think is lacking.

Good stuff:

1. The Karazhan bosses are very intertaining. From Moroes, to Maiden, to the Opera events, to Netherspite, to Illhoof, everything is pretty fun. It's much better than the usual tank & spank. Having the need for crowd control, positioning, moving around for survival, it's really a nice change from the ordinary boss fights.

2. The loot ratio. 10 people. 11 bosses. At least 2 pieces of loot per boss (3 from Prince.) This means on average, everyone will be getting 2 items every week (not counting shards of course). Much better than 40 people, 10 bosses, 2 pieces of loot apiece. You're lucky if you get an item in a given week.

3. The ranges of difficulty. To down Attumen, you can handle it with blues from level 70 instances. But by the time you hit Prince and Nightbane, you'd best have an epicced main tank and some well geared healers, as well as having some serious DPS. It really helps people get better over time instead of just smashing heads against a wall.

4. The fights that teach you how to play. Some fights are long regen fights, like Nightbane. Others are "WTF DPS PWNAGE FASTER" like Curator and Moroes. Some are a combination of this, like Prince. Others require survivability and adaptability more than DPS, such as Netherspite and Shade. These are the fights that make you a better player.

The rotten icky bad stuff:

1. The randomness. Not knowing what you'll get for Opera makes preparing a group for it slightly difficult. At least we figured out that you send a naked person in, and once they die you can reset and explain much easier that way. But not only the randomness of the fight choice, but fights like Prince where no one knows if you're going to one shot him, or if you're going to wipe 5 times because the infernals landed on top of you right as you get hit with enfeeble.

2. The ability for a single person to wipe the raid. Obviously if someone dies, it will be tough for the raid to continue. But if someone moves one step to the left or to the right......very different story. Netherspite is like this....Shade is like this. Sometimes lag can mean you twitched your trigger finger, which means a wipe. This can be extremely frustrating.

3. Repeat drops. Seriously. Can someone fix this? Seeing the same stuff from a boss gets old, and it gets old fast.

4. Group makeup. Having a lot of fights where ranged DPS is encouraged gets frustrating, not only for the rogues in the group, but for the group leaders as well. Class balance is great, but not being able to do a fight because you don't have the right group makeup? I understand that you can't win a fight with 5 tanks and 5 healers. But sometimes I wish that the restrictions placed for certain fights (warlocks on Illhoof, warlocks/mages on Oz, paladins on Maiden) were somewhat reduced.

5. Running the same thing for no reward for 4 months. Now this isn't true. It has been very rewarding seeing everyone get their upgrades and usually turn themselves into fantastic players. I admit though, knowing that I won't be getting any loot myself can be frustrating when you're paying for repair bills. Fortunately, we're getting to the point of having plenty of people geared up and ready to take on 25 man content.

Looking forward to moving on beyond Karazhan. Because with a few exceptions, most of the good points of Karazhan apply to SSC. And new content is always more fun.