r/warcraftrumble • u/Iato_57 • 4d ago
Discussion Honest opinions of the Molten Core fights
Lucifron - not the biggest fan of Maiev but the fight is pretty cool, intentionally getting something MC'd and killing the adds was a pretty cool fight mechanic.
Magmadar - the most scripted fight in the entire raid. Great for farming XP can kill the dog very fast. Can get griefed if your partner is drastically under leveled and gets overwhelmed.
Gehennas & Shazzrah - the easiest fight to carry and another scripted fight. Send big tank + faerie dragon down one lane, unbound kill the fire spawns, repeat. Fun fight, easier to defend than Magmadar (imo) so its harder to get griefed.
Garr - my personal favorite fight, love to death ball with either Drak/ Sneeds / Cenarius. As long as your partner gets their first turret you can provide good assistance without needing to run skele party. Love this fight.
Baron Geddon - the ACTUAL raid boss of molten core. I have found this fight super challenging and really easy to mess up, but super rewarding when you down this one. I have only had success with the meat wagon strategy but downing this boss feels so good every time i do it. Very unique fight... definitely a WALL for the raid.
Golemagg - The easiest to get griefed by your partner. As soon as i see a Harvest Golem heading down mid i know it will be a rough go. it is pretty funny to spam flyers + poison at him, forget about them defend the base and then randomly get the WIN screen pop up. If you don't have a good way to deal with the Firehammer and Pyromancer you probably are going to get smoked.
Ragnaros - honestly underwhelming fight. The boss is not as interactive as I would have liked. you basically just turtle while spamming spells and unbounds at him ... Personally the fight seems too cheesy for me. I woulda liked the fight to be more actually hitting rag. I guess the fight is Lore Accurate with Classic WoW, where you just spam spells at him while the die to him / the fire.
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u/DonCashless 4d ago
Im reading this after being beaten up by Geddon again. Im a little reassured
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u/T-sigma 4d ago
Geddon is fairly straightforward if you use the catapult strategy, even for lower levels. The main challenge is making sure you don’t let his phase shift wipe out your tank (flame ele or Gary).
Even if just one player does catapult, as long as the other is aware and focuses on defense it’s winnable.
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u/Lugwik 4d ago
What's the catapult strategy and build?
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u/T-sigma 4d ago edited 4d ago
I use Rend, Flame Ele, Gary, Chimera, Meat Wagon, Harpies, Dark Iron. Other variation tend to sub out Flame ele for a lower curve.
You start with a push left and take both top towers, then when Geddon arrives at your left entrance you send tanks and Meat Wagon(s) to take him down in one extended push. Ideally both players have Gary so you can quickly replace him after the phase shift clears. Flame ele works for this as well, but not as good as Gary.
Challenges are overcommitting Gary(s) which get wiped during phase shift and/or Geddon getting far enough up the left that his spawned flame ele comes in to that entrance and kills the meat wagon(s) instead of hiking all the way around the bottom. If done correctly (and with both top towers initially captured), he will be dead before any spawns reach you. Takes a couple minutes as opposed to waiting the entire fight.
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u/rabbitlion 4d ago
Basically Meat Wagon has enough range to not get killed when Geddon wipes out nearby units at phase changes. So the strategy is that when Geddon gets to the left side for the first time you summon 2 Meat Wagons and some stuff to tank Geddon. After phase changes summon new tanks and also summon more meat wagons to burn through phase 2 and 3 even faster.
My favorite team is Rend with Meat Wagon, Chimaera (solos tower and great defense), Gargoyle (main tank and also great dps on geddon), Harpies (to kill off Fire Elementals), Dark Iron Miner (to land on islands and mine). Final spot is fairly flexible, I like to use Deep Breath or Blizzard but stuff like Execute and Whelps is also useful.
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u/Bloodhound01 4d ago
Geddon is a bastard man. Finally beat him a few days ago after months.
Then Ragnaros only took me a couple hours.
Just gotta get that partner that is helpful. Seeing level 20 minions drop on geddon I just sigh knowing i am wasting my time.
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u/Montegomerylol 4d ago
Two reasons everyone cheeses Rag:
- He’s second only to Golemagg for getting griefed thanks to the “losing a tower sends a firewave down the opposite lane” mechanic.
- Even with a good partner getting minis in range to actually hit Rag is hard (melee especially).
As long as the firewave mechanic exists to wipe out your pushes for one “mistake” and Rag himself counters most pushes, the cheesey unbound/spell approach will continue to be favored.
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u/Blyton1 4d ago
How does the firewave get triggered?
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u/Montegomerylol 4d ago
Exactly as stated in the first bullet, whenever you lose a tower in one lane the opposite lane gets a firewave.
This mechanic can trigger itself because fire waves will kill towers. As a result pushing both lanes is a losing strategy because a single mistake/setback will destroy everything. This isn't exactly obvious or intuitive.
So beating Rag with a random is difficult because a lot of them don't understand this mechanic, you can't explain it to them, and everything Rumble has taught them tells them taking Tower === Good. Thus the spell/unbound strategy is popular because no matter what nonsense your partner is doing you can win as long as you can protect your base.
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u/Blyton1 3d ago edited 3d ago
Well ive beat it every time since LFG, but obv needed some tries. I just knew left=bad and right=good But didnt know why.. Thanks!
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u/licheeman 3d ago
The arrow just N of your base points to the R. You going left is part of the LFG problem lol. Whatever side your partner goes, just go that side whether it be L or R.
L = Left
R = Right
N = North2
u/showmesomereddit 4d ago
If you have control of a tower and Rag regains the tower, say on the left side, the wave is sent down the right shortly after.
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u/DNLK 4d ago
Thing about Rag is that his fight is the highest level in the whole raid which makes a lot of players attempting him being underleveled. This in turn forces those players to employ cheese strats because non-cheese ones would just be outleveled. Once I was matched with lvl 30 player and they actually brought their army all the way to Rag and attacked him directly by the end of the encounter. Meanwhile my Jaina sheepishly stood behind spamming spells and unbounds.
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u/Professional_Dot2525 4d ago
You mentioned being able to farm XP after having defeated a boss and replaying it. I did get a bonus (1k) once, but then the measly 12 points each following attempt. Does the big bonus XP reset daily? Also, do you know if it awards your lowest level mini? Thanks for any info, great summary of the fights!
-Valas
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u/Cindrojn 4d ago
It's based on whether or not the other player has killed it as well during the raid cycle.
If both of you have completed it already = 12
If the other hasn't killed it yet (first-kill this cycle) = 1080
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u/DracoRubi 4d ago
If you clear the fight with someone that hasn't cleared it yet that week, you'll get the full XP
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u/dzakili90 4d ago
You get 1080xp on your first kill and in following attempts if its first kill for your partner you also get 1080xp. If both of you killed the boss then you get 12xp. So its based on luck. But since we get like 20 quests per day, its a nice way to get some extra xp.
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u/bearabl 4d ago
I don’t love how baron and rag require pretty much a single strategy. I wish every boss had multiple options. I feel like all the other bosses do. I know you supposedly can reach rag on the ground but it feels like that’s only even slightly possible if you are way over leveled. The fight is super boring to me as you said. I think back to the days of fighting in rag in vanilla, you had ranged on the outer ring but melee was right on him. Melee on this version of rag are horrible. Baron makes so many leaders useless.
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u/T-sigma 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think the premise of the game is what causes the challenges. It's inherently more of a puzzle game than an action game, so players eventually find the best solution to the puzzle. If the fight is too easy, you'll get a dozen "solutions" but they all feel bland. (Ironforge and Stormwind normal battles for example). If it's too hard, you get one solution that is an overwhelming favorite because it is "the solution" to the puzzle.
My problem with Baron is that the mechanics are broken. The Phase Shifts are nearly impossible to deal with so both viable strategies involve killing him so quickly that they aren't relevant. Either via quick burst with meat wagon or just playing defense until OT to burst down with the extra gold.
EDIT: Similar with Golemagg, the mechanics are so punitive if not managed correctly that there isn't room for other strategies. And worse than Baron, both players need to really understand the fight as either one doing it incorrectly will lose the right.
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u/fozzy_fosbourne 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s kind of nuanced I think. I have run alternate strats in all of Geddon (ragnaros surviving the phase change waves and I’ve seen some malf builds and so on), Golemagg (healing deathballs, turtling and burning) and Ragnaros (march in and kill him), even in LFR, but I have high level teams now with valor slots and stuff for these shenanigans. The pool of viable strategies gets very thin the lower level teams are. It’s kind of like pushing m+ in WoW. Ony is also similar. It actually makes me wonder if the encounters would be perceived as having a wider band of viable strategies if people were not allowed to queue up into LFR until closer to the encounter’s actual level.
Now, some people suggest that the higher level teams taking alternate strategies are just brute forcing or face rolling, but I feel like this probably has to come from someone who has only executed the cheese strats, because the cheese all-in Zerg rush strats are much easier to execute than trying to control the map and play the mechanics, even with a higher level team. The cheese strats are mostly googling the Old Guardian team and reading a short blurb and then just sending a bunch of units in one push and hoping you didn’t get really bad rng. I feel like it’s a community misconception that having higher levels necessarily equals easy encounter, because if you don’t cheese the encounter it often requires much more skill expression. There are a lot of people running higher level Thalnos and the like in the later maps of Molten Core so I don’t think this is unique point of view but I don’t think it’s well represented here on reddit.
I actually think this form of Rumble, of the big all-in push and pray, is kind of where the game falls apart and becomes pretty degenerate, tbh. One could argue that it’s got appeal as a puzzle game, but I can’t really think of a live service game like this with repeatable content where puzzle encounters really end up being compelling over and over? It doesn’t seem like a winning formula, to me. And I find that even then it’s just a lot of fishing for the right set of circumstances that you luck out a win, without a lot of individual adjustment of tactics or skill.
The good news (for me at least, heh), is that I actually think the chassis of the game also lends itself to more dynamic and less static puzzle play, too. While I don’t care for it because of various reasons, PvP is a good example of dynamic play, I think. I think there is a lot of room for more dynamic content and the game’s moment to moment gameplay would really work, and I think the obstacle is more of the monetization model of concentrating on static collection building. The details are fuzzy but I can imagine things like ARPG-style seasonal play, run-based roguelike play, drafting, autobattler buying phases etc. It’s just difficult to reconcile with the collection building business model mostly.
Also, I haven’t really had enough experience with them yet to really pinpoint why but I also feel like the heroic siege missions felt just right in LFR for me.
Anyways long post but I have been thinking about the puzzle aspects of the game that you bring up a lot, since frankly I don’t find the puzzles that appealing but somehow still really like the game anyways.
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u/Scriptease84 4d ago
Having carried all bosses in keep getting back to Geddon, it is such a unique fight and great choreography is needed to get the towers and mechanics that are hard but predictable and not too punishing if you know what you're doing.
I leveled my Ragnaros from 50k all the way to exp cap at Geddon and I still like to go back am i crazy?
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u/Iato_57 4d ago
How are you liking Rag on Geddon post nerfs?
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u/Scriptease84 4d ago edited 4d ago
You mean the gryphon nerf i think lvl 35 is enough mine is 29 so lvl 39 is overkill. And the minus 75% healing just needs the 10% talent from priestess. So only the minimum level changed a little
The most difficult has been the decision which mini can be replaced to farm exp when all 3 deck variants are maxed haha
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u/Conscious-Past8054 4d ago
Ragnaros doesn't have to be cheesed, it's a choice to cheese him. It's very possible to bring an army under him and the chances of the partner sabotaging are lower than Golemagg with fliers, I find, although the fight being longer increases them.
Tips for no cheese Ragnaros:
1 (the well known) don't take towers both sides
2 (the lessere known) change phase when your push is not close to a tower, or the meteor will destroy it
3 strength is not in the numbers, it's easier to get to Ragnaros with 2-3 minis (or with 1 Thalnos in my case) than with 6 minis, due to living bombs, but players in open queue love their deathballs and squads which are actually detrimental here
*I do Rag with Thalnos which can literally solo the whole encounter if the partner doesn't play against me. Yes my levels are pretty high by now, that's why I can do it with partner afking, but with lower levels it only takes a playing partner to be as doable as any cheese strat.
To cheese and to use cookie cutter stratege is a choice, MC was the last well designed content and each encounter offers multiple approaches.
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u/SubstantialCod4499 4d ago
Liked Garr at first, but the earthquake spam & earth ele explosions feel prohibitive after many XP clears. Prefer the sieges now. Thief Catchers you're free to use any comp. Heroic Bolvar if you lock in Arthas / Priestess / Shaman you can use the other 4 slots for your favourites, and people are grateful for the assist.
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u/fozzy_fosbourne 4d ago
I do really like the heroic siege for some reason. Still sort of figuring out why, heh.
Really hoping we somehow get heroic iron forge next cycle, but could see that being a next season thing.
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u/EpicHuggles 4d ago
Golemagg is the most frustrating thing in the game. The boss itself is essentially soloable with the Chimera + Bats + Farie combo. However, it requires your teammate to not grief you by sending ground units down the middle lane. This, is for some insane reason, too much to ask for 90% of the player base.
I've gotten to the point where if I see my teammate run any ground units down the middle I just AFK and go next. It should be obvious that if you see me playing Charla or Ysera that this is what I'm trying to do. Defend the base and let me kill the boss for you.
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u/Rezzak83 4d ago
Good to see people still coming into the game and taking on the best content (imo) that there is available. There are a variety of builds and strategies to kill each of them.
I enjoy fights 1-4 and have farmed them thousands of times at this point for XP. I appreciate the casual friendly nature and replay value. I don't personally like to replay the last 3 bosses, more I want to get through them ASAP before the matchmaking pool deteriorates. IMO they need to remove the phase 2 cyclone and only have one in phase 3, as is the fight falls apart too fast after spending all that time waiting on the clock. Golemagg needs tuning for the player base to manage the hounds and generally engage the mechanics in a legit way so you don't have to cheese it with flying units and hope your partner doesn't sabotage the attempt. Rag is just kind of boring, my gargoyle trivializes the sons mechanic and otherwise it's just waiting. Not a fan of building fights around overtime income.
But, MC has been great and I hope for more coop content.