Hexos: The Worst Brawler's Guild Foe in World of Warcraft

The Brawler's Guild in World of Warcraft has a wide variety of foes, from easy to difficult, from straightforward to complex, but few are as unnecessarily frustrating as Hexos is.

An Introduction to The Brawler's Guild

The Brawler's Guild is an arena where players can fight alone against various opponents. If the player wins, they will return to the waiting area and will move on to the next opponent on their next fight, but if they lose, they will die and have to run back from the graveyard. Those fights have a two-minute time limit, and if the time expires, flames will race across the arena, killing the player instantly.

The fights can be simple tests of gear/DPS, complex encounters, or relatively gimmicky fights, and Hexos falls into the latter category.

Hexos Explained.

Hexos's mechanics are primarily based off the game Super Hexagon, and it would be best to start by explaining that game.

The player controls a triangle, and by pressing left or right, revolves around the hexagon at the center of the arena. Walls will close in on the center of the arena, in varying formations, such as a ring with a single safe spot, or a spiral of walls that forces the player to quickly move in one direction- and the game ends when the player touches a single wall. As simple as it sounds, the game is rather difficult, so much so that you technically win if you survive for a mere 60 seconds.

Now for Hexos. The player stands in the center of the arena and is unable to move except for turning, which will result in Hexos revolving around them so that he is always in front of them(and thus able to be attacked). The walls, or "Death Planes" will close in on the player, much like the walls in Hexagon, and if one touches the player while they are facing it, the player will receive a lethal amount of arcane damage- no amount of health or damage mitigation will realistically save them.

Avoiding the Death Planes is simple enough, but the problem is that this is not enough; the player must not only survive, but kill Hexos within two minutes. Hexos has a lot of health, and the player's rotation- a specific sequence of abilities required to attain optimal DPS- requires a non-trivial amount of effort to execute correctly. Essentially, it's entirely likely that players will get distracted by their rotation and die, or spend so much time and energy avoiding Hexos' Death Planes that they fail to execute their rotations well enough to kill him in time.

It's not an easy fight, and few of the Brawler's Guild battles are. After all, it wouldn't be much fun if you could defeat every opponent on your first attempt. However, while Hexagon often kills players within seconds, you can start within a moment of your last death, with a single button press. In the Brawler's Guild, you have to wait at least two minutes, or as much as half an hour between attempts, and can be killed with a single mistake. As a result, learning the fight becomes a rather tedious, time-consuming and expensive process.

Conclusion

The Brawler's Guild often provides fun, challenging and relatively unconventional solo encounters, but Hexos's fight is too focused on being a reference to a popular Flash game to provide an actually well-designed battle. It's better off being left as a optional Challenge Card fight for those who want something different, rather than being part of the main Brawler's Guild progression, as well as being a cautionary tale in how not to design Brawler's Guild opponents.

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