I like the Ordos fight because it is simple. I dislike it sometimes because that simplicity makes people take the fight less seriously, which in turn make the encounter difficult. Essentially if Ordos’s mechanics were added into a traditional raid instance I think the fight would be considered easy.
Ordos requires one of your characters to have gained the Legendary cloak, run your way past a few fire creatures, and then dps him quickly, while moving the boss away from the huge pools of fire he drops, and having the Living Bombs applied to your raid members moved away from the rest of the people.
It is in concept exceedingly simple. It is made difficult by being a primarily PuG fight where the quality of players is determined randomly. The fact that getting that Legendary cloak is required is not at all an indication that the player knows anything about what they are doing, and/or might be using a totally different character.
Last night for example I took my Druid as Boomkin to the Ordos fight. Now as a Death Knight in melee I know this fight is terrible because the Tanks don’t move and generally the living bombs go off amid the raid group. It is a cluster of fail. But hey, apparently we just run back and repeat wipe until it dies. That is PuG open world raiding (apparently).
As a Boomkin I was able to stand well back, stay away from everyone else, and dps. Twice I was selected as the bomb, but healed my way through the damage so I could keep fighting. It was easy.
It was so much easier as range dps that I cannot think why (if given a choice) anyone would do anything except stay back as range. That is what is so “funny” – the encounter is a repeated death run for melee but range get to sit back and ping and only stress about a single fight mechanic? Funny. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there wasn’t that post from Blizzard about melee friendly stuff. Or maybe they were not at all talking about Ordos. The kill grants huge ilevel gear (thunderforged 559!) so every PvE person will be trying to do this, and that the barrier to entry is so blistering low that we can expect all sorts of casual attitudes.
Good. Funny. I’m going to be a slacker now in Ordos too. The game wants a slack approach, then by golly I’ll live up to that challenge. Bring on the Alt Army of Noob.
I’ve parked that Druid right at the top of the stairs in front of Ordos, so I can switch, tag, kill, and loot whenever it pops each week. I’m going to park my noobie Warrior there soon too, and perhaps get a small bit of Thunderforged gear which will be great for transmog.
Grumble. Funny.
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 
Honestly, it sounds like you were dying in melee because people aren’t doing the fight correctly. He does an ability that is split damage, if everyone in the group isn’t stacked on his butt, the people who are there will take more damage and die.
I always just tell the group before we pull what to do: EVERYONE stack on the bosses butt, ranged and healers included. Run out if you have the bomb. As long as people do that, it’s never a wipe and it’s not (usually) a corpse run.
Yep, if it was a premade group or even LFR where you could identify and remove those who can’t follow instructions, “stack on the butt and run out if you get bomb” would be the perfect way to do that fight. Hell, don’t even have to move otherwise, the puddles do a ridiculously small amount of damage. Unfortunately, it isn’t an organized run… and if someone with the bomb stays in the melee group even once, you’re probably going to wipe.
The main issue I have is that in almost every group I’ve been in lately, ranged stay at range and there simply aren’t enough melee to soak the damage enough for my lesser geared toons (all i500+ so not undergeared) to actually survive the blast. Usually by the time we run back a few more melee have shown up and the second attempt goes much better.
When I’m on a ranged toon I stand about 10yds from the boss, nobody really stands in that area so I’m close enough to help soak but far enough from everyone else that I can get bombed without impacting anyone else. That doesn’t stop them from running to me when they get a bomb, though. Sigh. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I survive, I die there from the blast as well which means we REALLY didn’t have enough melee soaking.
I’m assuming the fight is working as intended for Blizzard or they’d make a simple change – just make the shared damage blast a 35yd or 40yd radius. Get everyone but have it hit twice as hard. I’d also delay the first one by about 10 seconds so the tanks get insta-gibbed a bit less than happens now if they move before anyone’s ready. And yeah, “melee-friendly”… screw you, Blizz, you owe me thousands in repair bills that I generally don’t get on my ranged toons due to mechanics I CAN’T DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT. I use cooldowns when they’re available but they aren’t always up and ready to go and they often aren’t enough to keep me alive anyway. If you have 15 melee sharing a blast, 3 will die on the first blast and 5 more will die on the second blast before the first 3 have enough time to run back (if they even run back). Yeah, chain bombs suck as ranged but I can actually see when someone has it on them near me, I can move… and do generally move. As melee, it’s a mechanic I can’t avoid and it pulses a LOT over the course of a fight.
I’d also like every single person who shows up late and runs other mobs into the Ordos fight to die in a fire, THOSE mobs need to have the charge-stun mechanic to keep people away who aggro them, not the guys on the bridge who just annoy the hell out of me. I run 10+ toons a week to Ordos without aggroing anything even when they’re all up and alert. It’s not that damned hard. This issue only became worse when they decided to leave the door open, as much as the closed door annoyed me when I was late (yes, I’m aware there are ways through it), at least it kept some of the scrubs from scrubbing.
Grumble indeed.
Every time I’ve done this fight we just have everyone, and I mean everyone, stack on the boss, don’t move, and burn him down. Ideally people run out if they get the bomb but even one or two going off isn’t a big deal.
“And yeah, “melee-friendly”… screw you, Blizz, you owe me thousands in repair bills that I generally don’t get on my ranged toons due to mechanics I CAN’T DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT”
If we’re talking about Magma crush, you dying to it is the fault of the ranged characters who aren’t standing in melee. So saying you avoid dying on your ranged characters sounds to me like you’re to blame for the deaths of the melee!
@ Balkoth – Exactly! The range pooch the strat when I’m on my DK and won’t adjust, so when I’m in range I’ll do the same thing. Trying to do it properly just gets me a repair bill and frustration, so I’ll herp-a-derp at range. 🙂
The melee-friendly thing is for that and other things that I mentioned in response to an earlier post, not JUST the crush. As I said, when I’m on my ranged toons, I stand at max range of the crush and share damage with melee while being far enough away to not nail anyone if I get hit with the bomb. My point is that the ranged mechanic to worry about, bomb, can be avoided even if it lands on someone else who doesn’t move… I can move away from that person while dpsing. What can a melee with less than 700K health do about crush if only 8 people are standing within range?
I wish the stack up on the ass technique worked better but my experiences with it have been worse… people just don’t generally move out with the bombs and then we lose a bunch of melee and ranged instead of just melee. I’d prefer to see the mechanic tweaked along the lines of what I mentioned so that melee didn’t account for 80% of the deaths on that fight… when the best recommendation I’m hearing from others is for ranged to stack in melee and introduce ANOTHER mechanic into melee, one that isn’t even supposed to be an issue for them, the fight just wasn’t well designed. And as world bosses go, I LIKE it, aside from the current crush mechanic.