Sibling pack · Mechanic-derived · Naxx rest

Cheng Raid School — Naxx Rest

Grobbulus, Gothik the Harvester, and the Four Horsemen — lessons reverse-read from shipped Classic encounter design, plus seven complementary Rest rules and original dossiers. No invented Cheng dialogue.

Sourcing: Cheng claims design credit for these three but published no first-person shorts. Every fight lesson is labeled mechanic-derived (warcraft.wiki.gg / Classic–Wrath shipped design). Cheng Rules 1–10 are cross-cited only where mechanics rhyme — never as fabricated quotes.

01

Three lesson plates

Asymmetric layout on purpose — Construct kite vs Military split vs Military final. All stamps read mechanic-derived.

Grobbulus

Construct wing · after Patchwerk · floor economy

  • Poison Cloud under boss ~every 15s — expands, persists. Tank kites; floor is a shared depleting resource. Merge inject clouds into lanes to conserve space.
  • Slime Spray frontal cone → Fallout Slimes if hit (OT pickup). Never face the raid — facing is a tax.
  • Mutating Injection: after ~10s or if cleansed early → Mutagen Explosion + new cloud. Correct verb: run out, let expire in a planned lane. Wrong verb: cleanse into the stack.
  • Inject frequency ramps as HP drops — late space/melee pressure without identity puzzles. Berserk clock closes slow-forever.

Core: invert the habitual cleanse; spend floor like gold; kite as DPS economy. Rhymes Cheng Rules 1 · 7 · 8 · 10.

Gothik the Harvester

Military wing · Classic 40 · coupled feed

  • Room split living | undead. Gothik invuln in P1. Kill living → stronger undead counterpart. Rider → Spectral Rider + Horse (1→2).
  • Pace the feed: race living → undead floods; over-CC → living floods / timer fail. CC is a throttle valve.
  • Asymmetric kits: living wants casters+CC; undead (Classic magic-immune) wants melee.
  • P2 ~4:34 — lands, teleports, Harvest Soul stacks (−10% stats). Gate at 30%. Empty half dumps mobs onto the other.

Core: kill rate on A is spawn rate on B. Rhymes Cheng Rules 2 · 8 · 9.

The Four Horsemen

Military wing final · shared raid budget

  • Four corners (Classic: Blaumeux, Korth’azz, Mograine, Zeliek; Wrath: Rivendare). Unique stacking Marks; escalate hard; −50% threat on apply.
  • Empty range → room-wipe AoE. Someone must stay in each seat.
  • Asymmetric secondaries: Meteor split, Void Zone floor tax, Holy Wrath chains, Unholy Shadow/DoT…
  • Split raid; rotate/swap every ~3 marks. All four must die. Kill order is a meta-puzzle. Wrath: mark-count berserk.

Core: coverage + rotation under one roster’s budget. Rhymes Cheng Rules 1 · 8.

02

Naxx Rest rules (R1–R7)

Seven new rules. They complement — and deliberately do not restate — Cheng Rules 1–10 from the primary pack.

Rest R1

Invert the habitual healer verb

When cleanse would trivialize or wipe, make cleanse lethal and teach run-out / expire-in-lane. Tooltip pleas fail under panic.

Rest R2

Floor is a depleting raid resource

Persistent ground is not decoration. Design merge lanes, kite paths, and rate ramps so space conservation is a skill.

Rest R3

Couple subsystem A to spawn rate on B

Kill rate on living is undead spawn rate. Design the coupling — and expensive 1→2 conversions — explicitly.

Rest R4

CC as throttle valve

Soft control meters feed. “CC forever” and “DPS race” are both naive poles; the band is paced kill + selective CC.

Rest R5

Geometry spotlights asymmetric kits

Room halves and corners assign jobs to many kits — without a single-class hard require.

Rest R6

Empty seats wipe

Coverage is a hard verb. Soft “please hold the corner” dies under panic; empty-seat AoE forces presence.

Rest R7

Marks + threat tax + shared budget

N simultaneous threats; escalating proximity marks; −threat on apply; rotate every N stacks; kill order as meta-puzzle. Pile strats must be unstable.

03

Crosswalk to Cheng Rules

Where Rest rules rhyme with the primary ten — and why they are not duplicates.

Rest Rhymes with Difference
R1 Invert healer verb Cheng 1 · 6 · 10 Specific cleanse-inversion; not Loatheb’s heal-cap ladder.
R2 Floor economy Cheng 7 · 8 Names space as the primary throttled resource.
R3 Coupled A↔B Cheng 2 · 7 Cross-room feed coupling, not % phase gates.
R4 CC throttle Cheng 1 · 10 CC’s job is metering feed, not stunning a spike.
R5 Geometry kits Cheng 9 · 4 · 5 Multi-kit via layout — not one-class MC spotlight or on-pull pairs.
R6 Empty-seat wipe Cheng 1 · 8 Presence-as-resource; absent from the five shorts.
R7 Marks + budget Cheng 8 · 2 Multi-boss shared budget + rotate-on-stacks vocabulary.
04

Three original dossiers

Each isolates one Rest lesson. Full cards, failed ladders, and tabletop rules live in three-encounters.md.

Slurry Warden Quill

Grobbulus-core · Rest R1 · R2

Catalog Clouds force kite; Living Pigment must expire in lane — cleanse triggers Pigment Burst + a new cloud on the stack. Quill Fan cone taxes facing with Bleed Blots. Inject ramps; Seal Alarm enrage; Clear Gutter pickups restore melee uptime when merges are clean.

Archivist Bifrost

Gothik-core · Rest R3 · R4 · R5

Index Gate splits Margin | Spine. Kill clerks → stronger shades; Courier converts 1→2. CC throttles feed. Casters on Margin, melee on script-immune Spine. P2 Indexed Soul stacks invoice dirty P1; empty-half dump punishes abandoned sides.

The Quartette of Ink

Horsemen-core · Rest R6 · R7

Sable, Cinnabar, Ivory, Viridian hold four corners. Escalating Final Marks with −50% threat; rotate every ~3. Empty seat → Voided Exam wipe. Kits: Ink Meteor soak, Blot Zone kite, Chain Gloss spread, Unfinished Margin DoT. All four must die; kill order is the meta-puzzle.

05

Triptych of the Rest

Combined mini-boss · floor + feed + coverage Rest R1–R7 · not a Proctor Vellum clone

Three panels of one living exam — Slurry, Index, Oratory — sharing one roster and one Triptych Bell. Verbs: expire-in-lane, pace the feed, hold the corner. No Inkstrip ledger, no Essay identity puzzle, no Illumination heal-cap.

Panel A · Rest R1 · R2

Slurry

Catalog Clouds persist for the whole fight. Living Pigment: run to Expire Lane; cleanse = Burst. Cone → Bleed Blots. Waste floor here and later panels suffer.

Panel B · Rest R3 · R4 · R5

Index

Margin→Spine coupled feed; Courier 1→2; CC throttle; asymmetric kits. Leftover Spine shades invoice into Panel C. Clouds still block pathing.

Panel C · Rest R6 · R7

Oratory

Four corners, escalating marks, −threat, rotate every ~3, empty-seat wipe. Clouded corners still require coverage. Rare pigment injects keep the cleanse inversion alive.

Seams

Why it’s one fight

Floor from A constrains B and C. Feed leftovers tax C’s budget. Single Triptych Bell enrage. Panel gates keep intensity readable — not all systems at full blast from pull.

Explicitly not Vellum

Different exam

Proctor Vellum stacks Cheng Rules via Inkstrip / Essay match / Illumination. Triptych stacks Rest rules via floor, feed, and coverage. Same academy fiction family; different verbs.

Failed prototype ladder (rejected)
  1. Three unrelated sequential bosses with full resets — seams are the point; rejected.
  2. All three systems at full intensity from pull — unreadable; use panel HP gates.
  3. Allow cleanse in Panel A “because C is hard enough” — reintroduces panic dispel; keep inversion.

5-player tabletop (summary)

Triptych 24 HP (31 with +30% pad). Panel A 24→16: kite tiles + Pigment merge-or-burst. Panel B 16→8: Margin kills feed Spine; Courier 1→2; ≥5 Spine wipe. Panel C 8→0: four corners, mark rotate at 3, empty seat wipe, leftover Spine pressure. Bell at round 15. Full round structure in three-encounters.md.

06

Attribution & pack map

Cheng claim (scope only): YouTube description note that he designed six Naxx bosses including Grobbulus, Gothik, and the Four Horsemen — used to justify coverage, not as design testimony.

Mechanic facts: Classic / Wrath Naxxramas encounter design as publicly documented (warcraft.wiki.gg and equivalent raid literature). All fight lessons are mechanic-derived.

Pack-authored: Naxx Rest rules R1–R7, imagined prototype graves (analogy to documented Cheng method), Slurry Warden Quill, Archivist Bifrost, Quartette of Ink, Triptych of the Rest.

Primary sibling: /workspace/cheng-raid-school/ — transcript-sourced shorts (Skeram, Razuvious, Anubisaths, Loatheb, Patchwerk) and Proctor Vellum.

README.md · lessons.md · failed-prototypes.md · three-encounters.md · index.html