Ky’veza on NORMAL is harder than that. Dark Massacre is insane, it’s the most precise mechanic I’ve seen in WoW’s history. You have less than 0.5 seconds to react, and you even have the dark blue flashes to distract you, which I assume is where the shadows spawn, but since they don’t spawn in the same order as you are getting attacked (or maybe it does, but with all the other blue flashes, you they blend in with everything else, it doesn’t help at all.
Basically you have to look for the red cone (which itself is pretty dark, and there is always so much else on the screen) and immediately, very precisele turn exactly in its direction or it’s an instant hit. And you have to do it 3 times in a row in less than 2 second.
Like, seriously, what were they thinking with this? Not a single boss in WoW’s history required such a fast reaction time, in fact, I don’t think even Bloodborne did.
The shadows appear 1 by 1, in order, around 3 seconds before they attack
It’s one of the best solo bosses since the Mage Tower because it has raid mechanics while being a solo boss, instead of the usual “Dodge big circle / Avoid frontal / kick spell”, and because the challenge leans heavily towards mechanics rather than gear
Watch videos about people doing it online and learn from them
I’ll one-up you and say I can’t believe WoW players ever complain about any movement-related or executed-timing challenges in the game, and having to rely on add-ons to help them overcome what would otherwise be simple gameplay mechanics in any Super Mario game, Hollow Knight, or good ol’ Frogger for that matter.
I find that the most reasonable explanation is that WoW players are not gamers per se, they are for the most part just people who play WoW.
From what I see, the shadows appear in blue, but after the blue appearance effect they are gone until they attack with the red cone. It’s not even necessarily easy to judge the rhythm, like OK let’s say you face the first one and successfully dodge. You have less than half a second to face the second one, but it’s hard to even judge when the first attack has taken place. It’s just so dark. Would be nice to have a sound effect, but I guess the shadows are working with knives with silencers on them.
This is comically false. I 100%'d all the mainline Mario games, beat Radiance in Hollow Knight, and nothing in those games comes close to this.
Difference being that in those games you see the danger as you approach it before you begin attempting the challenge. In WoW there is no “learning” segment.
For example, when you see a lava lake, you will also see fireballs shooting up and down from it, which will give you the sense of timing required to pass it. But in WoW the gameplay is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLACy9aNBM8
No warnings, you learn the mechanic after it kills you at least 2 times.
NONE of the guides mentioned this, but apparently the key (or at least, what worked for me) is to keep backing off after the first one spawns, since the other two will generally also spawn not that far from it. This way you can usually have all three in the same general direction from you, which gives you
a better view of all three at the same time
an easier time to face them exactly since you’ll have to do a much smaller movement, none of these fancy and difficult 225 degree turns.
even if you miss seeing one spawn, you might end up facing it anyway
And the shadows’ spawns start happening right after the previous attack ends, BEFORE Dark Massacre is announced.
All guides simply had the top view with the player at the very middle between the shadows coming from various sides.
So yes, I did it. Around 30 tries total (none of which reached the second “Invoke the shadows”), but the second try after I started doing what I described above.
