Grrr .. a rant on bad design

This afternoon we formed a pug with scrubs from /2 and headed into Ulduar to try Freya hard-mode.

It's a big indoor garden room, with lots of packs of trash between the boss and the entrance. We clear all that.

The boss fight goes something like this:

• Phase 1 has six waves of adds which must be eliminated before the boss can be harmed. There are three types of waves, each with their own abilities. Some do a massive AoE explosion on death, some do knock-backs, one wave is just a big tree elemental and some mushrooms the raid need to hide under.

• Phase 2 is less hectic, it's mostly a tank and spank but with the boss throwing seed bombs periodically.

So here's the rant: nowhere before the boss fight do we get a preview of any of the mechanics of all those adds. Not at all. Remember all that trash before the boss ... they don't do anything remotely similar. They even have some mechanics unique to themselves.

The only possible way to learn how to handle the adds in the boss fight is to do the boss fight. And probably wipe, multiple times. And all that trash before? A pointless waste of time.

It would have been better if players would be exposed to each of the mechanics in separate trash packs, where they can learn the signs and the effects and teach any newbs in the raid what the heck happens. Then the boss fight packs them all together in one big encounter in combination.