Sanctum of Domination: A Peep into The Reckoning

The Reckoning is the final chapter in Blizzard’s Warcraft trilogy and has been developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Players enter a world where they must face their greatest fears, as Thrall leads his army of heroes on an apocalyptic journey to save Azeroth from Garrosh Hellscream, who seeks its destruction.

I ran a few alts through LFR after the last Sanctum of Domination wing became online, so I’m ready to offer my thoughts.

To begin with, it’s jam-packed with lore action sequences and conversations. I enjoyed a lot of what was happening on in the battle; it’s a well-executed transition from Torghast’s top to Oribos’ last confrontation. Sylvanas succeeds to portray the impression of a strong lieutenant, using all of her abilities to delay attackers and protect her comrades’ retreat, similar to Jaina in the fight of Dazar’alor. Sylvanas as a monster is well-designed; they successfully tapped into her ranger, banshee, and Jailer’s minion fantasies, as she uses abilities from all three of her personas – arrows, daggers, power of dominance, screams, flying, and so on – and every iconic move and ability made it into the fight.

Although the encounter seems to be straightforward, it has many difficult chokepoints that, if not handled properly, may cause the raid to wipe. It is divided into three stages, with the following strategic considerations for LFR players to consider:

Phase 1: provides no difficulty and is completely safe if you aren’t AFK. It’s easy to avoid anything on such a large battlefield, and arrows (“adds”) die quickly. The only thing that matters is that Hero/Lust/Warp is popped on pull. And when she gets a 99 percent shield at the conclusion of the phase and begins teleporting, it’s best to be calm, not pursue her, and just wait for her rushes out till the cutscene.

Phase 2 is the raid killer, and it is during this phase that most LFR raids wipe and lose members. First and foremost, there are bridges. There’s no need to hurry; all players need to do is walk cautiously so they don’t fall into holes. Thrall and Jaina are the world’s worst bridge builders, and we lost up to 6-7 guys to the holes (usually 1-3), including two tanks in one run who quit the group soon after collapsing for no apparent reason. Druids should avoid using the roar speed boost since it causes you to run much quicker, resulting in a free fall.

While the bulk of the raid survives the bridges, Sylvanas’ Ruin spell, which insta-wipes the raid if not stopped, is the greatest blunder. The key to victory is to concentrate on the large elite add (one per platform) – once it dies, Jaina and Thrall may construct the next bridge, allowing you to reach Sylvanas on the next level and break the cast. At least 1-3 experienced players, ideally with ranged interrupts or quick classes like warriors, DH, or shaman, should be at the approaching bridge location by the time the large add dies, run over the bridge, and interrupt the spell. The final one is the most difficult – even if add dies quickly, getting to her typically requires an incredible effort.

Phase 3 is very straightforward and serves as a little DPS check. Platforms are the main mechanic – just step over the edge to leap to the next one. Only use this if you have an arrow aimed at you (purple arrow marking on your head) and you want to escape out of the raid’s AoE. But everyone in the raid needs to keep an eye on the Raze cast – if it doesn’t end soon, you should all transfer to the next platform or die, which means you’ll lose DPS (we lost all 5 healers to this in a flash) and won’t meet the DPS requirements, because once all four platforms are Razed, there’s nowhere to run and die quickly. When your initial Hero/Lust cooldown expires, you may activate it again when you’re ready.

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Unlike wing 3, I’m happy to report that the encounter is not at all overtuned – my greatest experience was a kill from the first draw (yours truly explained the encounter strategy before pull, so this helped, I guess). So it doesn’t need a lot of willpower – just a lot of execution, which isn’t difficult to perfect if you know your way around and the flow of the encounter. It’s great that there’s a lot of personal responsibility for your own survival, which I really enjoy, and that a single inexperienced player’s mistake won’t wipe the raid. It’s also forgiving if you’re not very quick with WASD – you may fall behind on bridges without incurring a penalty, and you don’t have to watch your step as long as there’s at least one swift and talented player to break the cast.

Still, understanding your drill is required, thus at least a few wipes are usually required for individuals to master the encounter and how it works. If I could change anything about the battle, it would be to fine-tune the final Ruin cast, since the timing is very tight and punishing, even if you cross all of the earlier bridges and kill the necessary large elite add flawlessly.

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Overall, the encounter is rich in mythology, dramatic, climactic, and not very difficult, but it does require knowledge, study, and execution. To put it another way, he’s the ideal end boss for one of the greatest raids the WoW team has ever created.

P.S. Adding a slight sliding effect to Jaina’s bridges would be cruel xDDD

“The Sanctum of Domination: A Peep into The Reckoning” is a book that was released in 2016. It’s about the Sylvanus raid from World of Warcraft. Reference: sylvanus raid.