10 most difficult bosses in TBC Options

[Sword_of_Doom]

Thought it would be fun again to rate the bosses in TBC now that i have had the priviledge of finishing all current content. Just to give a little hope for those that think only 5 day guilds complete all current content. My little guild has 30 high attendance raiders. We raid Tuesday 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM, Thursday 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM and Sunday 2:30 PM to 9:30 PM. On 12 to 14 hours a week we have cleared all the raid zones the game has to offer. It can be done if you have very similar like minded people (we even have a Vivendi Universal dev who raids with us that will remain nameless )

1. Kael'thas--Pre pre nerf Kael'thas was undoubtedly for me the most difficult complex boss in the game. There are 5 phases to this one and each phase offers its own challenges and obstacles. It took us 5 weeks to learn each of the phases and eventually put it all together to down this boss. This boss really taught my guild how to raid so there was some incredible lessons learned.

2. Lady Vashj--Another very difficult raid boss that took our guild 5 solid weeks to learn. Lots of things can go wrong on this fight and unfortunately there seems to be some randomness to this fight. The kiting aspect of the fight in phase 2 seems to be the main obstacle and took us a while to figure out a good strategy that was repeatable and worked. Once we got that down we consistently got into phase 3 and had to work on our dps because it wasn't enough for phase 3.

3. Illidan--Easily the most epic fight of the game. But in terms of difficulty it only took us 2 weeks to down the consumate end game boss in the game. Its a very complex difficult fight but by the time you have reached him you should have a very experienced polished raid force. Its a heavy movement fight which may challenge people who like to remain stationary but easily one of the most thrilling fights i have ever been involved in.

4. Archimonde--A very interesting fight with a lot of tricky random elements to deal with. Personally i didn't find this fight difficult as our raid leader came up with a strategy that made it retard proof and took out a lot of the random elements. This again is a very heavy movement fight and relies on the individual to play their part to perfection. Each death makes it harder to beat this boss but is doable with one or two deaths. Essentially if a person dies the raid force takes damage and if you have 2 together at the same time its a wipe.

5. Teron Gorefiend--A very creative fight that i love. But if you have people who don't know how to operate the ghost to kill the constructs it can make for a long night. We still wipe a lot to this guy because of who gets selected to play the ghost. People are getting better but it can be frustrating

6. Gurtogg Bloodboil--I would say this is the most healing intensive fight in the game. For a small guild like ours with only 30 active raiders its the only fight we stack healers for this fight. We bring 8 healers for this and usually get one of our Shadow Priests to respecc Holy for this fight. There is constant raid damage through the duration of the fight and is stressful for healers. Its a doable one shot fight but never seems to happen for us.

7. Illidari Council--Similar concept to the 4 Horseman. A fight i love because i get to tank Zerevor with my Mage and i can get to 14k hp. Took us a bit to figure out how best to handle the 4 council members but afer a few days of attempts managed the kill. We still wipe to these guys as people seem to not be able to avoid Blizzards and Flamestrikes.

8. Magtheridon--pre pre nerf (nerfed trash and cubes now). For some reason as a guild we have never one shot this boss. Granted we have not done Magtheridon since May but it was a boss we immensely struggled on. First difficulty was getting the dps to get the channellers down. Second difficulty was the cube clicking. People constantly panicked or forgot it was their turn and wouldn't click. Easily the most frustrating boss i have faced in the game. Relying on others to get it right can be a painful process.

9. Prince--Yes i hate this boss to this day. The random infernal placements can drive you mad. Everyone seems to have the ultimate strat for this fight but it is by far the most random in the game.

10. Hydross--We never attempted this boss until well into SSC. This was tank learning fight as it took a while for the tanks to get used to the transitions. Once they figured it out the fight got easier.

[Skandranon]

Thought it would be fun again to rate the bosses in TBC now that i have had the priviledge of finishing all current content. Just to give a little hope for those that think only 5 day guilds complete all current content. My little guild has 30 high attendance raiders. We raid Tuesday 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM, Thursday 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM and Sunday 2:30 PM to 9:30 PM. On 12 to 14 hours a week we have cleared all the raid zones the game has to offer. It can be done if you have very similar like minded people (we even have a Vivendi Universal dev who raids with us that will remain nameless )

1. Kael'thas--Pre pre nerf Kael'thas was undoubtedly for me the most difficult complex boss in the game. There are 5 phases to this one and each phase offers its own challenges and obstacles. It took us 5 weeks to learn each of the phases and eventually put it all together to down this boss. This boss really taught my guild how to raid so there was some incredible lessons learned.

I'm not sure how meaningful this list is if you include past versions of bosses. At first, I was going to just reply with my own list, but all ten places on the list wound up being pre-nerf boss versions (all but one from the horror that was 2.0 raiding).

A list composed of boss encounters that no one can fight any more has a certain academic interest to it, but probably not relevant to most people who never saw all the prior versions and never will.

Anyway, I'll do a list of current version difficulty later, but here, in brief, is my list for top ten hardest boss fights, all versions.

1. Kael'thas 2.0.
2. Vashj 2.0.
3. Al'ar 2.0.
4. Mother Shahraz 2.1.
5. Leotheras 2.0.
6. Magtheridon 2.0, pre-hotfix.
7. Gruul 2.0, pre-hotfixes.
8. Hydross 2.0.
9. Lurker 2.0.
10. Nightbane 2.0, presuming the Blessing of Protection exploit is not used.

[Sword_of_Doom]

I'm not sure how meaningful this list is if you include past versions of bosses. At first, I was going to just reply with my own list, but all ten places on the list wound up being pre-nerf boss versions (all but one from the horror that was 2.0 raiding).

A list composed of boss encounters that no one can fight any more has a certain academic interest to it, but probably not relevant to most people who never saw all the prior versions and never will.

Anyway, I'll do a list of current version difficulty later, but here, in brief, is my list for top ten hardest boss fights, all versions.

1. Kael'thas 2.0.
2. Vashj 2.0.
3. Al'ar 2.0.
4. Mother Shahraz 2.1.
5. Leotheras 2.0.
6. Magtheridon 2.0, pre-hotfix.
7. Gruul 2.0, pre-hotfixes.
8. Hydross 2.0.
9. Lurker 2.0.
10. Nightbane 2.0, presuming the Blessing of Protection exploit is not used.

Ya i guess its true that its hard to evalute past and present changes. Its just that Blizzard constantly nerfs bosses so its hard to evaluate anything anymore in its context. But your list is somewhat similar to mine.

Just curious, what did you find difficult about Mother Shahraz? When we attempted her it took 3 tries and literally 20 minutes. But i am certain there were changes made to that encounter that made it quite trivial for us. We went in to that encounter with 325+ SR every member of the raid so we were well prepared.

This post has been edited by Sword_of_Doom: Jan 10 2008, 09:22 AM

[Lissa]

Just curious, what did you find difficult about Mother Shahraz? When we attempted her it took 3 tries and literally 20 minutes. But i am certain there were changes made to that encounter that made it quite trivial for us. We went in to that encounter with 325+ SR every member of the raid so we were well prepared.

This one I can answer as I talked with Skan quite a bit about it. There were a number of things that were at issue here, Saber Lash being one, teleports into objects so you couldn't move away from the raid when getting the fatal attraction debuff (or whatever the exact name was), and their was one other that is escaping me right now, but there were 3 that were at issue.