Two Bosses Enter: Twin Emperors vs. Chromaggus
Two bosses may enter... but only one will get to leave in WoW Insider's fantasy deathmatch series. Every week we pit two of Azeroth's raid bosses against one another in a battle that your votes get to decide. This week we have Ahn'Qiraj's Twin Emperors going up against Blackwing Lair's Chromaggus. Both present unique challenges to player raids, but would they be any harm to one another? Ultimately, that's for you to decide -- so read on!
The Twin Emperors, Vek'nilash and Vek'lor, reside in Ahn'Qiraj, and are the final hurdle before players reach C'thun. And they are quite the challenge, capable of dishing out large quantities of both physical and magical damage. The twins share a single health pool, so killing one kills both.
Before we get into their abilities, let's talk about two abilities that we aren't considering for this fight.
Usually, the twin's room is full of Qiraji scarabs and scorpions, which the twins can cause to attack, explode, or poison. Since these fights are on neutral ground, we're presuming there are no bugs. Our second consideration is healing. When close to each other, the twins will heal one another for 30,000 health a tick. Since Chromaggus would be unable to split the twins up (as player raids do) and this amount of health regeneration would make them virtually undefeatable, we're going to say no healing in this fight.
Both Emperors have the following abilities:
Twin Teleport: Every 30-40 seconds the twins switch places.
Berserk: After 15 minutes, the twins will berserk dramatically increasing their damage output.
Emperor Vek'nilash deals only physical damage and is immune to magical damage. He has the following unique abilities:
Uppercut: Knocks back random target in melee range.
Unbalancing Strike: Does high damage and reduces the target's defense for 6 seconds.
Emperor Vek'lor deals only magical damage and is immune to all physical damage. He has the following unique abilities:
Shadow Bolt: As expected, a single-target shadow damage attack.
Blizzard: A frost AoE with a slow effect.
Arcane Burst: An arcane AoE that knocks back and slows. Used whenever anyone is in melee range.
Chromaggus is the second to last boss in Blackwing Lair and he can be quite a challenge. First off, he does a not-to-laugh-at amount of melee damage, which is increased by occasional states of frenzy, spiking his damage up into the range of certain death for a player-based raid. (Players can counteract this with tranquilizing shot, but neither of the twins would appear to be hunters.) At 20% health, he'll enrage for the duration of the fight, doing even more damage.
However, physical damage is hardly Chromaggus' only source of power. He'll also hit anyone in line of sight (presumably, both of the twins will always be within line of sight, but you're welcome to develop your own theories on this subject!) with two of five breath attacks. The breath attacks are randomly chosen out of a possible five (for each instance reset, two unique breath attacks are chosen) and will rotate throughout the fight, with one being cast every 30 seconds. The possible breaths include:
up-front fire damage
nature damage over time as well as armor reduction
up-front frost damage as well as an 80% attack speed reduction
fire damage over time (can stack)
6-second stun
There are also five possible "afflictions" that Chromaggus will cast intermittently (and these will hit anyone in range, regardless of line of sight). Each affliction has its own debilitating effect, and if a player gets all five debuffs, game over -- they turn into an elite Drakonoids that, in my experience, are happy to wipe the floor with any raid group. I'm going to guess that the twins wouldn't be turned into Drakonoids, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't experience the affliction's negative effects, including:
fire damage over time, which heals Chromaggus if the target dies
nature damage over time as well as a reduction in healing
reduced movement and casting speed as well as a mana drain
fire damage increased by 100% (painful with the wrong combination of breaths)
an intermittent stun
And to top all of this off -- Chromaggus is highly resistant to magic. However, while Chromaggus is highly resistant to most schools of magic, he'll be highly vulnerable to one school. His resistances rotate throughout the fight, making it an interesting matchup for a caster like Vek'nilash, though Vek'lor would have no such trouble.
So there you have it -- we have two bosses who pose immense challenges player raids, but against one another may not pose such a threat. Who wins and who loses in this epic battle? It's nearly time for you to to tell us, but before that, a reminder: we're considering these two bosses with approximately equal health and approximately equal damage output capabilities. We aren't making this into a math equation of who's got more health than who, so when you cast your vote, cast it on fighting style, not highest level. You're welcome to factor the lore of each character into the equation, but don't presume that one would win out because they're in a higher level dungeon.
%Poll-8229%
