Hardest, Most Notorious 5man instances in WOW

[Seramore]

If we were to rank the most brutal instance that ever appeared in the game, I would argue that week one Heroic Stonecore is up there: there were mechanics that would one shot you if you fucked up, specifically on the worm boss and Ozruk. Blizzard had to nerf that instance (as well as Heroics in general) at least a week into the expansion due to the difficulty. The second highest for me would either be Shadow Labs or MgT (especially when it first opened), Shattered Halls was hard but it definitely wasn't the hardest in that expansion.

[Wondercrab]

Magister's Terrace stands out to me as the most notable one, mainly because of how difficult the third boss was without a CC heavy party composition. It's the only time I recall having to "bring the class, not the player" for a 5-man. Shattered Halls was somewhat similar early on, but gear mitigated that significantly since the CC requirements were mainly just to ease pressure on the tank rather than to prevent potentially group-wiping abilities from going off.

Oh, and the Arcatraz gets a special mention for having a (thankfully skippable) boss that was incredibly hard without shadow resistance gear. Also those felguards that could silence the healer and then kill the tank before it ended. Overall the instance wasn't as hard as some of the others, but it had a couple of notably punishing gimmicks.

[merlin2oo2]

Heroic Shadow Labyrinth and early Grim Batol immediately come to mind.

[Kardagh]

Vanilla - Scholomance. Stratholme comes a close second but Scholomance was pretty hellish before they changed the mob respawn rates and just toned the sheer number down, it was practically a raid like UBRS was.

BC - Magister's Terrace hands down was horrific, even on NORMAL mode. Blizzard really knew how to make it sound like it was JUST A SETBACK when you wiped on trash packs, not to mention the bosses.

WoTLK - It's a toss up between Occulus and Utgarde Pinnacle for me, one because of its very awkward gimmicks and the other because it simply took SO LONG to run back if you died.

Cata - Grim Batol was unforgiving in trash mechanics and boss mechanics, not going to list the Troll ones simply because they were mechanically simpler than Grim Batol, and I can only think of the snake priest in ZG causing so much trouble for people.

MoP - This starts getting harder to say what the "Hard" dungeons were because dungeon philosophy changed radically in MoP. I'd have to say probably Nizauo Temple or the new Scholomance, at least on higher difficulties. Shado-Pan Monastery gets a lot of flack but it's more just a time consuming dungeon than difficult.

WoD - Going to have to go with a mix of Grimrail and Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, Grimrail because of its narrow space and LOTS OF AOE, and Shadowmoon Burial Ground more on the traditional sense of "difficulty", all of the bosses (baring Nhallish) had a big "DONT MESS THIS UP" mechanic that would make it very difficult to survive if you messed up.

Legion - Halls of Valor, it's a horrible place, poorly designed and mobs seem strangely overtuned there than any other instance. Black Rook Hold gets honourable mention for it's irksome length too.

These dungeons are of course based on when they were not being outgeared.

[TS26]

Halls of reflection. The one with the waves of adds.

[Rehija]

The only thing that comes to mind in regards of "hard" is more hilarous. TIME FOR FUN !

Until WoD i always ran hc dungeons with a pool of ppl. who play(ed) since the very early days, so HC Dungeons in general were more of a walk throu than an actual challenge. Imagine BC Kharazan during BC with a funny crowd of ppl. and following rules; every death one Beer, every Death during a Boss fight, one shot

[Sett]

Vanilla - 45 min baron run.

BC - MT but pretty much everything before Sunwell patch.

WOTLK - OCCULUSSSSS DJDFSJSDBJGJKGJBFDBGJFJKBDGDJFKBG. Never HATED an instance loading screen more than that place.

Cata - A few parts in ZG 2.0.

MoP - Shado-Pan Monastery and Mogu'shan Palace CMs give me nightmares.

WoD - Grimrail and UBRS.

Legion - Eye of Azshara due to length followed by Halls of Valor.

[nekobaka]

They're all easy once you learn them. When I think of "hardest", I mostly think of how challenging it was to pug them, which includes what % of groups could do the fights. All of them got easier with gear and practice. As for tanking Ozruk (I mostly tank), it was all about learning the dance. He telegraphs his moves with what he says; you just have to remember which quote means run through his legs and which one means run out.

I mentioned earlier I solo queued. Heroic VC was the one that gave me most issues. From a vehicle mechanic that many struggled with, the obstacle course for the last boss, and the hallway of mobs that did not care if you had three hard CC classes as it was still going to wipe the floor with you. Was rare to have someone not drop group upon zoning in to that dungeon just like Occulous and HoR. I rarely saw someone drop group from SC and GB. VC was hell even with a preformed group.

I do feel sorry for those who had high latency that was left still eating mechanics post nerf.

[Deleted]

Really? Halls of Reflection? I'm surprised to see so many mentioning it. I honestly don't think it was that hard, but maybe that's because I never pugged it and mostly played with good geared guildies. I remember having bigger problems with Halls of Lightning in early WotLK, the first boss could cause many wipes if you didn't handle his empowering correctly or if you managed to pull mobs around him. Also I remember a lot of wiping when you run through the fire adds after the first boss, often 1 or 2 dying there.

[nekobaka]

Really? Halls of Reflection? I'm surprised to see so many mentioning it. I honestly don't think it was that hard, but maybe that's because I never pugged it and mostly played with good geared guildies. I remember having bigger problems with Halls of Lightning in early WotLK, the first boss could cause many wipes if you didn't handle his empowering correctly or if you managed to pull mobs around him. Also I remember a lot of wiping when you run through the fire adds after the first boss, often 1 or 2 dying there.

A chunk of the flack was over the hide in the corner mechanic for HoL.

HoL did have a large amount of complaints though including calls for nerfs due to multi hour clears with preformed groups and yet once Cata launch its pains was all of a sudden forgotten with rose tinted glasses over how WotLK was facerole for everyone from the beginning along with raiding from players who never cleared ICC while current *cough* Injin*cough*

[Eazy]

Heroic Shattered Halls or Shadow Labs, that mindcontrol boss in SLABS was brutal lol.

That was a PUG-breaker on my realm.

[D3athsting]

Scholomance pre-nerf was teeming²

[Viktoree]

I completely agree with your list.

[Deleted]

Vanilla - N/A, wasn't there
BC - Shattered Halls
WotLK - Occulus (not hard per say but ooooh god people unable to understand how to deal with their dragon....)
Cata - Grim Batol (Halls of Ori juuust behind)
MoP - Panda Monastery (but really because we need to give one, none seemed hard to me....)
WoD - Grimrail / Skyreach, both equal pains in the ass.
Legion - Kara if counts, otherwise I'd go with Wardens.

[Thelxi]

My vote goes to the t11 dungeons, but specifically Grim Batol. I have never wiped as much in a dungeon as I did there. For example the fire boss that changed weapons was a super predictable guaranteed first attempt wipe.

The ilvl power creep was very limited back then and the struggle remained well in place for months. The mechanics were also very punishing while not being obvious or always logical. Even if you knew the mechanics you had to give up a big chunk of dps to do them. Ugh it was terrible to pug.

[Deleted]

What was the most notorious 5 man instances in wow?

What i mean by notorious i mean by hard, buggy, broken, unfair mechanics and class stacking etc?

Now if i had to make a list from each xpac i would say

1. Vanilla - Stratholme
2. BC - Shattered halls
3. Wrath - Halls of Lightening
4. Cata - Grim Batol
5. Mop - Shado Pan Monastery
6. WoD - Grimrail Depot

Oh god, Shattered halls ... stop ... with no LFD you spend an hour forming a group brave enough to go into the dungeon. First wipe on trash and everyone left, back to scratsch haha ... but yeh back than was so much better! (sarcasm)

[Heathy]

i would have to say BC heroics were tuned to the max i mostly remember the first heroic i did which was ramparts and the patrolling mobs at first before gearing and nerfs could annihilate tanks in a couple of seconds because they could stun.

magisters terrace was pretty much a joke at first aswell when ppl weren't exactly sure what to do, the mini council fight was a clusterfuck occasionally where the mobs could all just randomly focus on one guy.

its totally different now though, because the 5 mans just scale to the point where it becomes impossible. all of the bc heroics had their moments though where things could go south very quickly if ppl weren't on the ball. each of them had certain trash packs that were unforgiving.

[Jyggalag]

1. Vanilla - Stratholme

Didn't play, can't comment.

2. BC - Shattered halls

Agree with this from a notoriety perspective. Hardest? Depends on your gear I guess. Not a whole lot of difficult mechanics, just knowing what to pull and how. Shadow labs definitely up there. I personally hated Mana Tombs in the early game due to the ridiculous lack of fear DR from the Nexus Terrors. Not a problem for experienced groups though.

3. Wrath - Halls of Lightening

Definitely not. Was routinely pulling all trash to first boss and AoEing through his wank mechanic quite early in the expac. Only problem was in pugs that didn't know what they were doing. I'd have to say Halls of Reflection because of numbers tuning alone. WotLK dungeons were all pretty easy in the grand scheme of things IMO which is where the demand for harder heroics in Cata came from.

4. Cata - Grim Batol

Have to disagree with this also. Do drakes right at the start and you end up with very little in the way of the first two bosses and all bosses were pretty faceroll. I'd argue Stonecore was the hardest due to a few factors like how close packs were, how deadly the flayers were to undergeared tanks pre nerf & you'd usually end up tanking several at once. Bosses with mechanics that would rek your group if they didn't know how to handle them.

5. Mop - Shado Pan Monastery

Did over 900 CM carries in MoP and I never looked forward to Shadow-Pan. One of the tightest timers of the lot for Gold. As for regular NM or HC dungeon difficulty it's definitely up there and IMO on par with Mogu'shan in early gear. Last boss Mogu'shan was very unforgiving and mistakes in pugs would quickly result in a wipe. Trash leading up to it with bleeds would also rip a crap tank a new ass fairly quickly.

6. WoD - Grimrail Depot

Grimrail IMO was one of the easiest. Very hard to get wrong. Plenty of cheese mechanics too. IMO UBRS was the hardest. First boss was cancer. One of the worst designed dungeon bosses I've ever encountered. Getting that first CM gold was also a pain due to the length of the dungeon, 3rd boss fire breath would bug at one side of the bridge (you'd still get hit and without a defensive you'd die no matter what) and last boss was cancer for melee.

What about Legion? Not played the new ones in 7.1.5 but IMO Blackrook hold was the hardest. Still a fun dungeon just very punishing coupled with quite a few of the mythic+ modifiers.

Really enjoyed this topic. Had to think quite hard about dungeons I've not had the pleasure of enjoying while relevant for years. That nostalgia trip though.

[Seditian]

People that say this I always automatically assume either didn't play TBC or were just flat out bad in TBC.

TBC HEROICS WEREN'T HARD. Hell in KARA Gear we were already at the point where my MT used a 2h weapon and I was a Ret Paladin off healer with no actual healer.

though by pure annoyance my list would go like this.

Vanilla - Dire Maul
TBC - Magisters Terrace
Wrath - ToC
Cata - Grim Batol
MoP - Setting Sun
WoD - Grim rail

This sums it up really. Except WoD, I'd put Burial Grounds in there.

[Honik]

In MoP it was Siege of niuzao for us in challenge mode..Damn we had so many wipes there trying to get gold