WoW: A 17-year-old boss gets new skills in Dragonflight

Because the Callers are coming, World of Warcraft has to revamp an old boss. Nefarian in Blackwing Lair is learning again.

World of Warcraft is old now – quite old. With almost two decades under its belt, Azeroth has experienced numerous instances, raids and bosses that players have had to face. Some of them have been remembered forever and are even updated again and again to this day. Because the Dracthyr are a new race in Dragonflight, one of the earliest raid bosses from “Vanilla” is being reworked.

Which boss is it? It’s about Nefarian from Black Wing Lair (“Black Wing Lair”) – the raid may only have been remembered by many veterans as “business administration”. It was the second major raid of the classic World of Warcraft and led far into Blackrock to fight against the black dragons and ultimately even Nefarian, the son of Deathwing.

Nefarian has long been considered one of the toughest bosses, since almost the entire raid required a special cloak and the fight spanned several stages – something that was still rather unusual at the time.

Why is it being revised? The fact that Nefarian is getting an overhaul is due to the introduction of the Dracthyr, or rather the new Caller class. Because Nefarian has a very special ability, the so-called “class calls”. The black dragon always calls out a single class and then applies a negative effect to it. Mages, for example, start turning their allies into different animals using polymorph, while paladins strengthen the dragon boss with their blessings.

The Class Calls are therefore powerful “control effects” that have been individually tailored to each class.

What is Nefarian doing to Dracthyr? If Nefarian is in combat with a summoner, then that class can also be mentioned individually. Nefarian then speaks (translated):

“Caller, no more than pitiful pups. No wonder my father stopped your experiment.”

Callers will then be afflicted with the Pitiful Whelpling debuff for a few seconds. This reduces all damage done and healing done by 99.9%.

Does that even matter? Not really. Because Rufer start at a high level anyway, where the Nefarian could kill with a single ability. In the normal course of combat, a caller will never see this ability – so you have to aim to be hit by it.

Also historically, it makes little sense for Nefarian to refer to the Callers, since Nefarian was killed in the story long before the Callers were ever freed from their prison.

However, it is interesting that even after 17 years, Blizzard does not forget to adapt old bosses and their abilities so that all classes can be affected by them.

What do you think? A cool, detailed piece of nostalgia? Or wasted developer time?

In WoW, old content often changes – this is how the most popular raid became the least popular dungeon.