Reflecting on Vault of the Incarnates

Vault of the Incarnates was a fairly mediocre introduction to Dragonflight raiding. Beginning with Eranog as an unambitious opening boss, and proceeding with the paint-by-numbers lineup of the primal council bosses and the Terros patchwerk boss, the raid did not leave much of an impression. Rather, the more experimental encounters of Sennarth and Dathea the Ascended were memorable for exactly the wrong reasons: leaning much too heavily on frustrating movement mechanics involving ice and wind which constantly removed control from your character.

Fortunately, the raid managed to end on the high notes of Broodkeeper and Razageth, which doubled as the most challenging encounters. It was those two bosses that drew the lion’s share of our progression time and gave us our first opportunity to test the new potion cauldrons, as well as experiment with differing phial effects.

Ultimately, Razageth earned distinction as one of the few final bosses that leaned much more into survival than steep DPS checks. Although late-season gear boosts did help smooth over difficulties in the phase 2.5 transition, that only led into a very rude wipe on a magnetic charge/lightning breath combo in Phase 3. But after that, subsequent returns to the final phase resulted in a frantic, but still fairly controlled glide into a victorious landing.

Although her lesser minions proved worthy of only being forgotten, Heroic Razageth herself will likely stand as a masterpiece of raid boss design.

Ritavu