WoWGrrl's World

Tuesday Night Is A Raid Night Of Many Purples

Tonight's our guild's first official raid night of the week, just like many raiders.

During Tuesday's maintenance, Raid ID locks are reset. As a result, it's also a day of many raid-related sales in the Auction House during the day, and then continued sales for the next few days as players gem and enchant gear upgrades they got from the first day or two of the week's raiding.

But today's Raid ID reset day is a SPECIAL day, like have been a bunch of the weekly resets over the last while:

New Raid Bosses Are Coming Out

Yippee! New fights that none of us have tried before! New things to die to! New things to test our skill and our mettle!

Introducing Koralon the Flame Watcher

Koralon the Flame Watcher is one of the new bosses being introduced this week to the End Game raiding public.

He's the third boss in Vault of Archavon in the PvP zone of Wintergrasp, and therefore he's only a boss any guild can tackle when their own faction is controlling Wintergrasp itself after one of its regular battles.

This reason alone is the biggest reason why we might not see him tonight, even thought we'd really like to get in there and feel the brunt of his fire and kick his Flame Watching ass on 25 man.

Koralon Loots

So, what's this guy drop anyway? Aside from being a cool boss fight, which they all are (right? maybe not Oculus, I'll give you that)...

He drops PvP gear, of course, and also drops bits of Tier 9 PvE raiding gear. Just like his predecessors Emalon and Archavon dropped PvP gear and T8 and T7 respectively.

The Impact Of Koralon On VoA PUGs

Fortunately, I'm in a raiding guild that likes to take on new stuff and run it over and over on a weekly basis until loot is getting sharded more often than it's getting used, so my Discipline Priest will have guild runs taking me in to see and defeat Koralon.

But the rest of my characters will have to PUG the experience if they hope to get in... and my Mage just got to the point of being comfortable joining PUGs for Emalon!

I expect that the impact will be very similar to what it was whem Emalon was released into Vault of Archavon... all of a sudden, the raid that used to be a quick run that almost any 80 could do with minimal raiding gear, changed.

All of a sudden, there were DPS requirements for getting in, and the bar was set pretty high: On our realm, a minimum of 2.5k DPS on trash would let you stay in the party, but anything much below that got you a kick and replacement from the raid.

Why The Strict Requirements?

The reason why, of course, was because there were mobs that had to be downed in a "DPS race" type of fashion: If not downed quickly enough, these mobs would explode and decimate the entire raid in one shot. This dynamic is tested out first on Emalon's trash mobs, and then expanded in the Emalon battle itself.

Also, while a raider undergeared for Emalon might hope to still get a chance to battle against Archavon for some of the lower-tier loot that is still a big upgrade for them, the simple truth is this:

PUG Raiders don't want to be saved to a half-finished RaidID. Taking down Archavon but leaving up Emalon doesn't sound appealing because of the amount of potential loot left behind.

PUG Raiders hold the intention of completing a short instance like Vault of Archavon, not leaving it half undone.

So the short and long thing for undergeared DPS who'd like to get into VoA is this: Either go in with friends or with your guild, or gear up in other ways before you try to get into PUGs, because it's harsh these days.

Koralon's Impact On DPS Requirements

From the looks of the fight and by reading its description, I'm pretty confident that the DPS requirements for the fight will be increased, definitely, but not to the extreme that Emalon's addition to Vault of Archavon required.

But be warned, those with DPS below 3k in raid battles: The fight does STILL seem to still be a DPS race of sorts due to the dynamics of the Burning Fury debuff (which increases damage taken by the entire raid by 5% and stacks another stack every 20 seconds, serving as a "soft enrage" since Koralon does not have a "hard enrage") - he's got to be killed before the healers simply cannot keep the tank and rest of the raid team up any longer due to excessive healing requirements.

Good luck in the new WoTLK raid content, folks!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Related posts:

1. How To Destroy Koralon The Flame Watcher
2. Defeated: Emalon the Storm Watcher in Vault of Archavon
3. Emalon the Storm Watcher, Dual-spec'd Shaman, and Ulduar

Tagged as: archavon, emalon, koralon, koralon in voa, koralon the flame watcher, t9 bosses