Dragons Rated For Your Convenience Part II

After yesterday, today is frivolity, frivolity, nothing but frivolity.

First off: Snottydin’s sterling work in convincing the Internet she is NOT A WORK OF PARODY (god help us all) continues; today’s horrors come courtesy of Slik.

But now to the subject at hand. In case you missed, or care, Part I is here.

And let’s just remind ourselves of the dragon-rating criteria:

Grand Entrance
Breath Attack
Context
Taunts and Voice Acting
Dragon Testicle Du Jour

Today we’re going to be looking at Sartharion, Felmyst and Alexstrasza.

SARTHARION

Grand Entrance: Well, he’s just kinda sitting there, sulking at the bottom of Wyrmrest Temple, like a big, black pinata. What’s particularly amusing about this is that he continues to sit there while you do an entire circuit of his lair, killing his minions and destroying the eggs he’s allegedly there to protect. Fail. For shame, Sartharion.

D

Breath Attack He doesn’t really have a breath attack. What he has are really slow moving walls of lava that come in from the sides of the helpfully marked floor. These are about as threatening as the volcano in Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs. Fail. For shame, Sartharion.

D

Context Sarth apparently has quite an interesting set of lore associated with him but since this is described in a book I have not read and of which I cannot remember the name and it is not mentioned (as far as I know) anywhere in the game itself … fail! For shame, Sartharion.

F

Taunts and Voice Acting Sartharion’s taunts are different depending on whether you fight him with or without the drake. In both cases, they suck. Without the drakes, his aggro warning is “It is my charge to watch over these eggs. I will see you burn before any harm comes to them!”You mean those eggs we’ve already smashed? Fail. For shame, Sartharion. If you engage him with the drakes, then he gets dissed by his own adds. Shall I say that again? He gets dissed by his own adds. Altogether now: Fail. For shame, Sartharion.

U (I could not find a rating low enough, so I have gone with Unclassified, which, for the record, is also what I got for my GCSE in home economics).

Dragon Testicle Du Jour Appropriately enough, Sartharipn has no testicles.

D

Additional Comments: I almost like the fact that Sarth is this colossal loser slumped at the bottom of the Wyrmest Temple, sitting on a bunch of eggs his singularly fails to protect. You kind of want to have a whip round to send him to Remedial Dragon School and help him get over his clearly pretty serious Daddy issues. Because of some sense of kindred (and also because, in spite of anything, he still kicked my arse fairly recently), I’m not going to mark him as harshly for being unutterably pathetic as he perhaps deserves.

Finale Mark: D.

FELMYST

Grand Entrance I’ve only seen this once, but basically there’s an awesome scene in the middle of Sunwell Plateau which involves an epic fight between Madrigosa and Brutallus. It ends with Brutallus smashing her to pieces, alongside the ice-wall she threw up to protect the raid, leaving all 25 of you standing there, staring at Brutallus, blinking a bit awkwardly and mumbling about how you’ve left your off-hand item in your other trousers and need to go back home for it. When you finally finish give Brutallus a good seeing to (in the violent, rather than sexual sense), his blood corrupts the remains of Madrigosa, resurrecting her as a big, green skeleton thingy. Now that’s what we call an entrance (I hope you’re taking notes, Sarth, they’ll be a test later) and it has that lovely air of “oh fuck, what did we just do?!”

A

Breath Attack Holy fuck. I still have nightmares. Felmyst’s Fog Of Corruption covers a random third of the fighting area, with very little by way of helpful visual clears, and turns everyone foolish enough to be standing in green into a zombie mind slaves with go-faster stripes. This is a really serious problem at the best times and really really really serious if it hits everybody except you. I think this must be the most unforgiving breath attack I have yet to encounter, to say nothing of its effect on the sanity and morale of the raid as a whole as your friends turn against you and have to be speedily massacred.

A+

Context Felmyst, in life, was the blue dragon Madrigosa who came to the island seeking Kalecgos and, of course, works for the head of the blue dragon flight, Malygos. Like all female dragons she has a particularly shitty time of it, although she should not be confused with Keristrasza who, of course, works for Alexstraza, or with Cyanigosa, Sindragosa or Saragosa and seriously what the fuck is it with dragons and their names? They’re like the Vulcans, from back in the day when all their names began with S and ended with K, so you got Spock, son of Sarek, son of Samek, son of Spork, son of Spunk. I wouldn’t mind but half the fuckers (dragons, that is, not vulcans) spend their lives in human forms, supposedly undercover, so you think they’d at least drop the suffixes. (Dude when Chrommie is ahead of the game, you know you’re in trouble). Um, I’m getting a feeling I’ve maybe drifted from the point so whatever. We’ll give Fely a safe, comfortable B, which is probbaly the only safe, comfortable thing about her.

B

Taunts and Voice Acting She gets a whole scene with Brutallus which is cool but her actual taunts are a bit lack lustre. Also I found them hard to hear over my own terrified squealing.

C

Dragon Testicle Du Jour I haven’t actually managed to kill her so I don’t know but it doesn’t look like she drops one though. Alas. I guess it would probably be deadly anyway.

Final Comments: Post Wrath, going back and meeting the Blue Dragonflight in Sunwell Plateau is actually pretty weird. You’re just so used to seeing them as these cracked up psycho bastards who want to eat all the magic in the universe (nom nom nom) that helpful hotties with blue hair come genuinely out of left field. To be honest, Felmyst isn’t all that in terms of lore and what have you but, ye Gods, that breath attack alone is worth a decent enough final score.

Final Mark: B

ALEXSTRASZA

Grand Entrance:Alexstrasza, through the Red Dragonflight, makes several Grand Entrances in Wrath, most notably at the Wrathgate and in the fight against Malygos. Perhaps it’s the bitter Brit in me, and I say this with my tongue firmly planted in cheek, but Alexstrasza rather puts me in mind of America in the second world war, sitting around letting everybody else get the shit kicked out of them and then showing up at the last minute to take all the credit. In years to come, the Red Dragon equivalent of Hollywood will make a movie about the Wrathgate called Saving Private Bolvar in which an unlikely team of red dragonkin go to the Wrathgate in order to rescue Private Bolvarstraz at a battle in which the Alliance and Horde are conspicuously absent. Also, to put it in less Anglo-centric terms, she’s a kill-stealing biyatch.

D

Breath Attack: This is yet to be seen in game but she does have a deeply infuriating Sanctuary Aura which appears at the Wrathgate after the event has taken place and which one cannot help but feel would have been really fucking useful in the actual fucking fight, although it would have been a tad anticlimatic if Grand Apothecary Putress had stood up, shouted “Death to the scourge and death to the living, this is the hour of the forsaken” only to be met by floating red text saying “Cannot do that while pacified.”

C

Context I think the problem with Alexstrasza is that she’s one of those difficult NPCs who has no reason not to just sort everything out herself. But as that would make the game a little bit dull, all she does is show up late and stand at the top of Wrymest Temple talking to orphans and looking fit.

C

Taunts and Voice Acting She has no voice acting and taunts per se but she will play the Wrathgate cutscene at you ad infinitum if you ask her nicely. You’d think a dragon aspect would have better things to do with her time. Also it really makes me want to go up to her and say “great, now can you show me that cool dwarf with the bear.”

D

Dragon Testicle Du Jour You can get various souvenirs from the Wrymest Accord but, sadly, you don’t get your hands of any of Alexstrasza’s bits. More’s the pity.

D

Final Comments: I do have to respect the fact that she’s clearly a total player. She seems to have more than the average number of consorts, all of whom take the forms of dreamboaty belves, and who stand about atop her tower, basically looking shaggable. Fair play to you, Alexstrasza. For this alone, I willing to concede you a respectable final mark.

Final Mark: B

Edit – there’s a general feeling in comments that I have done poor ol’ Sarth a disservice as regards his breath weapon. I do see your points but who said this dragon rating was a democratic system, eh, eh? Rate your own damn dragons if you feel so strongly about it. Seriously though, the reason I am not going to credit him for having a marginally scary breath weapon is that for it to be something other than a mild inconvienence for the tank he has to have his three minions in play. The ones who diss him, remember those guys? So it blatantly doesn’t count. Also it doesn’t change the fact that’s he’s still an enormous nerdy loser, sitting around in Alexstrasza’s basement with his bloatee because he can’t get a proper dragon job..