WoW Raid Review: Azshara’s Eternal Palace Normal/Heroic (Partial)

Hello fellow adventurers of Azeroth! I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying all of the things World of Warcraft Patch 8.2 has to offer! Today I’ll be going over the latest raid for Battle for Azeroth, Azshara’s Eternal Palace for Normal and some of Heroic.

Ten thousand years ago, as the seas engulfed Zin-Azshari, Queen Azshara forged a dark bargain with N’Zoth that transformed her loyal subjects into the sinister naga. Through millennia of brutal conquest, Azshara has built a new empire from the ruins of the oldand now holds dominion over the depths that once threatened to claim her. Ever the gracious host, she has invited the Allianceand Horde alike into her eternal palace to witness her glorious ascension… and their ultimate demise. – Wowpedia

My guild, Emerald Templars, got to duke it out with some gnarly, scaly, raid bosses this week and I’ve gotta say, I had a lot of fun so far! Azshara’s Eternal Palace has 8 bosses with unique abilities and range from being a push over to down right stressful.

If you are looking for guides on how to handle each boss, we highly recommend using Hazelnutty Game’s videos! While the theme of this raid is an underwater queendom there really are not too many areas that you are required to be underwater. Which is pretty normal for Naga raids/dungeons since underwater levels in games are always infamous for being the absolute worst.

The aesthetics in Azshara’s Eternal Palace dance between same ol same ol to down right breath taking. A lot of the raid has almost the exact same set up and design as many other Naga areas. Tridents, webbed spike things, the color blue, bubbles, etc. But then there are areas in this raid that caught me by surprise. The example that comes to mind is the actual background of the Queen Azshara fight where you are surrounded by walls of water as Naga watch you with hostile intent and you just can see tons of fish and other forms of life do their thing behind them.

As far as raiding goes itself, there are only a handful of bosses that were really difficult, including Orgozoa, Zar’qul, and Queen Azshara herself. They were difficult because they had unique phases that required you to completely shift your attention suddenly whether it be dodging stuff as you race to interrupt a raid killing cast or relied on communication by your team to move to an area that you could not see for yourself.

At this moment we have cleared Normal and have two bosses down in Heroic. There are a lot of factors that have contributed to this from the gear we have from our Heroic Crucible of Storms and Battle for Dazar’alor runs to the actual skill of our team but still it feels as though this raid is leaning on the easy side. As though the real raid are the three hard bosses and the others are just filler.

If I had to guess, we’d probably be full clearing Azshara’s Eternal Palace Heroic in a few weeks with our casual schedule of Thursday and Saturday 6pm-9pm raid times. Which is an odd feeling because we waited so long for 8.2 and now that it is here I actually want it to last but I have a feeling it’ll be fleeting. Especially since the end of the raid left us feeling like it was a shallow victory lore-wise. Not raid-wise though because we earned that god damned W.

SPOILERS!

The end cinematic for the raid does give us insight as to what is to come which may provide build up and even more satisfaction than we currently have!

As Queen Azshara is taken away by N’Zoth one can only imagine how it’ll impact our favorite Naga leader let alone all of her followers. I’ve personally enjoyed her comments while doing dailies and hope she has a larger role to play in the upcoming events rather than just a mid-tier raid boss.

Overall this is a solid raid for the time being but there isn’t anything truly memorable that’ll have me coming back if I don’t need to. Even the aesthetics for all their beauty just are not enough. It felt as they a lot of areas didn’t get the attention they deserved.