The hardest final expansion encounter so far?

[Deathsknight]

Of the final bosses I would say arthas, of any boss it would probably M'uru the guild breaker.

[OrcsRLame]

Keep in mind I'm talking about actual attempts and not weeks to kill. I realize some of the old content took "longer" in terms of time due to skill level and artificial bullshit gating. While it wouldn't be perfect you could take the number of wipes and number of mechanics and still compare them accordingly. Example: Lets say the top 10 Guilds in WoD on average killed Mythic archimonde out after 400 wipes and Top 10 guilds in Wrath killed lich king on average in 250 wipes, then one could argue that Archimonde is harder due to the sheer number of average attempts the best guilds in the world took to kill each end boss.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm saying that's an incredibly flawed way to look at it, because skill-wise top guilds in Vanilla sucked ass compared to top guilds of today.

For argument's sake, say KT took 1000 attempts, while Archimonde only took 500. All that means is that Archimonde was beaten in less attempts than KT. That does not mean that KT was a harder boss. The Method/Serenity of today, if they took a time machine back to 2004, they would have killed KT like 4-5 hours after Naxx came out, guaranteed. There's probably a larger skill gap between the Serenity of today and the Nihilum of Naxx 40 than there is between your average LFR player of today and your average mythic raider that's cleared 13/13.

[Moggie]

Probably LK 25 HC pre-nerf. That said, sadly the hardest mechanic was the shadow trap for some people -,-

Madness was boring.

Garrosh and Archimonde were cool fights, but nothing "hard". Tbh no "final expansion encounter" had hard mechanics.

Halion 25 hc or Ragnaros hc pre-nerf were hard, imo.

H Halion 25 definitely wasn't that hard. Ragnaros was, but he wasn't a final boss.

[Zakaryy]

Yes, but he wasn't the end boss of an expansion (nor vanilla). Then you get the 50/50 arguments of bugs versus difficulty and whatnot.

Kel'Thuzad wasn't an end boss, yet it's in the list.

Edit: turns out he was, but I bet a single person in this thread never fought him.

[OrcsRLame]

Kel'Thuzad wasn't an end boss, yet it's in the list.

Edit: turns out he was, but I bet a single person in this thread never fought him.

You're probably right, I didn't. I'm also willing to bet though that not a single person in this thread fought mythic Archimonde without at least 1 person in their raid having legendary ring. That doesn't stop people from giving their opinions on the fights, or trying to evaluate all the relevant data.

[Zeth Hawkins]

To everyone who voted for Arthas: You're wrong.

He was NOT the final boss of WotLK

[Relapses]

To everyone who voted for Arthas: You're wrong.

He was NOT the final boss of WotLK

Ruby Sanctum was a filler boss by the developer's definition. For all intents and purposes, LK was the final boss of the expansion.

[Nitros14]

Kel'Thuzad wasn't an end boss, yet it's in the list.

Edit: turns out he was, but I bet a single person in this thread never fought him.

I have Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian actually

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Speaking of M'uru, thinking back on it it seems like in most of the final raids, the hardest boss wasn't the last one. Naxxramas had Four Horsemen. Sunwell had M'uru. Dragon Soul had Spine of Deathwing. The Lich King was appropriately the hardest fight in Icecrown Citadel, but I feel like something other than Garrosh was the hardest boss in Siege of Orgrimmar. I haven't kept up on Hellfire Citadel, but does the same hold true there, too? Is another boss harder than Archimonde?

End bosses are never tested on the hardest difficulty putside blizzards in house team, meaning Blizzard doesn't know if something is over/under tuned. Blizzard also miss out on seeing what "obscene" strats or class stacking/setup guilds may take.
I wouldn't be too surprised if stacking DK / DH tanks (more than 2) will be a thing for some encounters. AoE grips limited on 2 specs doesn't diminish the power of them, some tanks even do respectable dps. Then you also have the potential of guilds downhealing fights but have a Balance Druid with Restoration Affinity for harder to heal phases, not to forget about innervate being very useful!

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Archimonde wasn't hard at all when you consider the WA and addons for the fight...

[Supercool]

Lich King world first took under 200 attempts. People really think that's harder than a 600-700 attempt fight like Archimonde?

[Hctaz]

Speaking of M'uru, thinking back on it it seems like in most of the final raids, the hardest boss wasn't the last one. Naxxramas had Four Horsemen. Sunwell had M'uru. Dragon Soul had Spine of Deathwing. The Lich King was appropriately the hardest fight in Icecrown Citadel, but I feel like something other than Garrosh was the hardest boss in Siege of Orgrimmar. I haven't kept up on Hellfire Citadel, but does the same hold true there, too? Is another boss harder than Archimonde?

Hardest boss of Siege was Blackfuse heroic. My guild took nearly 300 attempts before we downed it and we killed Garrosh around 150ish.

[Emek]

So few people got to kelthuzad i can't really judge it. however, paragon was the only guild to kill lk without the buff so i'm gonna have to go with arthas

[Zyky]

Heroic Lich King 25 was pretty Nuckin Futs

This, not a single guild worldwide killed him before the first set of "buff" nerfs happened.

[anaxie]

Fuck deathwing probably falls as the weakest encounter for not only 19 raid tiers but probably the majority of bosses combined.

Also because of the structure of the story using raid tiers and not finale raid tiers is a better metric.

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This, not a single guild worldwide killed him before the first set of "buff" nerfs happened.

Because he was hotfix HP buffed the moment people got to him on heroic.

HP was why he was hard. Because with his HP hotfix buff the valks got it. Can't kill valks you lose someone so time to hit reset!

Good fight thou. Damn good

[Supercool]

This, not a single guild worldwide killed him before the first set of "buff" nerfs happened.

They were close the week before and the 5% pushed them over the edge around attempt 170.

Seriously, in terms of the actual number of pulls, Arthas is very low on this list. The limited attempts per week was the only thing holding guilds back.

After they got their world first Paragon then turned off the buff and got the kill again. Then they 24 manned it. Arthas's difficulty is way overblown.

[OrcsRLame]

End bosses are never tested on the hardest difficulty putside blizzards in house team, meaning Blizzard doesn't know if something is over/under tuned. Blizzard also miss out on seeing what "obscene" strats or class stacking/setup guilds may take.
I wouldn't be too surprised if stacking DK / DH tanks (more than 2) will be a thing for some encounters. AoE grips limited on 2 specs doesn't diminish the power of them, some tanks even do respectable dps. Then you also have the potential of guilds downhealing fights but have a Balance Druid with Restoration Affinity for harder to heal phases, not to forget about innervate being very useful!

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Archimonde wasn't hard at all when you consider the WA and addons for the fight...

You realize those addons were made by players, right? As if those same players wouldn't be able to make addons for older bosses to make the already pathetic mechanics auto pilot mode. Also, huge difference between doing Archimonde with no legendary rings, no valor upgrades and like 2 resets of gear compared to what Archimonde was like just before the pre patch. Especially when you consider that P3 is a ramping phase

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Hardest boss of Siege was Blackfuse heroic. My guild took nearly 300 attempts before we downed it and we killed Garrosh around 150ish.

Your guild is probably not a very good metric. How many months into the tier before you killed Garrosh?

[anaxie]

There's a huge factor that you're not considering. Player skill has increased astronomically since Vanilla.

If you took a boss like Mythic Mannoroth, tuned him for Naxx 40 gear and level 60 and slapped him into Vanilla, he would not have been killed by any guilds until TBC, maybe even WOTLK. The game is astronomically, ludicrously harder than it was in Vanilla; and that's because the players have gotten so efficient at digesting content. The game has had to evolve along with player skill. This is self evident when comparing footage from Vanilla to footage from WoD.

Raiding in its current incarnation started with Heroic Ragnaros.

player skill

I got a better factor

Loot acquisition rates

Vanilla - Very few items / Huge roster
TBC very few items / Smaller rosters
Wrath- Two loot locks to farm gear from and badges to get tier and gear WAY better then TBC badge items
Cata - Tremendous amounts of loot dropped from encounters
MoP - Coins added along with tremendous amounts of loot
WoD- I'm sure you are all aware
Legion - Even more loot aquisition rate than WoD

So Hardest?

Archimonde Mythic not only legendary ring and logistical nightmare early but between MULTIPLE difficutlies loot locks / Legendaries / Caches/ AND Coins.

Go ahead and take away the seperate loot locks and make it one and remove caches and coins.

Try hitting those Mannoroth and Archimonde checks.

[Hctaz]

You realize those addons were made by players, right? As if those same players wouldn't be able to make addons for older bosses to make the already pathetic mechanics auto pilot mode. Also, huge difference between doing Archimonde with no legendary rings, no valor upgrades and like 2 resets of gear compared to what Archimonde was like just before the pre patch. Especially when you consider that P3 is a ramping phase

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Your guild is probably not a very good metric. How many months into the tier before you killed Garrosh?

We had the US 121 kill on heroic 25 Garrosh on March 26th.

[Farath]

Probably Heroic LK. A lot of other expansions penultimate encounters were the more difficult ones. I.E. 4 Horsemen in 40 man Naxx required the tanks to all have a large amount of the Dreadnaught tier, Muru in Sunwell was more of a cockblock than Kil'Jaedan was etc.

[Nitros14]

We had the US 121 kill on heroic 25 Garrosh on March 26th.

That's a long way into the tier, about 6 months after Method cleared it.

My guild killed it April 9th. I felt on 25 Paragons was harder than Blackfuse. We got Blackfuse in 121 pulls.