It's poorly designed I'll say it. I've played every raid since D1 and have never seen so many mechanics randomly shoved into 1 encounter before. I think 4th encounter is fine but 2nd encounter is so silly. I feel like the devs got together and drew a bunch of mechanics out of a hat then put them into the same encounter. Also what is up with the whole plate mechanic being the main focus and then disappearing halfway through the raid? The -5 trade for surges is also whack feel like I don't need to explain why.
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Every raid has some kind of theme for its mechanics. In Kings Fall it were auras, in RoN it was dark and light, in Garden it were confluxes and now its about the 3 shapes. I think it's important to have a theme but also that there's variety in how it's used. The first 3 encounters use the shapes as pick ups for the resonance, Encounter 4 has the shape puzzles and Witness has the 3 different arms. Imo it would have been really boring if all 5 encounters were centered around those plates and pillars.