Original Naxx 4 Horsemen hardest encounter ever?

[MAGAmobile]

This guy knows his stuff.

I'm just going to throw my vote in for Firefighter, because Ensidia said it was impossible until it was bugfixed or they'd collected another week's worth of gear.

Kill dates have not and should never be used as an estimation for how difficult a fight is.

[iggie]

I refuse to call anything in Casualclysm/pandaland hard. Encounters before those expansions were interesting, unique, fun, and didn't need crazy hard tuning like some bosses (looking at you H rag).

[Karreck]

No. In fact, it was mentioned quite a few times in this thread.
What actually made the fights hard was, among other things, the bad understanding of WoW's mechanics - this is why I said that fights like Heroic Lei'Shen etc. would have been completely impossible back then; while fights like C'Thun etc. wouldn't be too much of a problem for most (top) guilds nowadays (if tuned correctly, of course).

And I get that. I suppose it comes down to the definition of hard. Are we rating the fights in respects to the timeframe they were progression content? Are we considering the "variables" that come with those periods of WoW's history? Or are we just looking at the fight mechanics and applying them to how we think about WoW today? You're absolutely right, Lei'Shen would be impossible if done during Vanilla, while C'thun would be a joke if done today. But C'thun was an absolute pain the ass back in the day, and Lei'Shen, while rough, is doable today. Guess it's just perspective. Honestly, I gave up on progression raiding before Firelands, so I have no room to talk about HM content after Cata release stuff. But I do remember the pain and hell that was Four Horsemen, C'thun, HM Lich King, Firefighter, and Alone in the Darkness Yogg.

[GrieverXIII]

I refuse to call anything in Casualclysm/pandaland hard. Encounters before those expansions were interesting, unique, fun, and didn't need crazy hard tuning like some bosses (looking at you H rag).

Stop making actual raiders look bad.

[brunnor]

It was all finding the right people with the right gear. It's more or less the same as now. The only exception for 4h to now is a lot less was known about 4h going in to it due to limited ptr testing and videos and such back then. That is the same of almost all old bosses up until I'd say Ulduar area. There was such little testing and PTR done on most of them, that they were much "harder" when you first saw them because you had no idea at all what they did. While the mechanics and such were much more simple, the encounters were harder due to their mystery.

[Duronos]

Wasn't Heroic Lich King not killed until an actual nerf and then months down the road Paragon eventually got the first no-buff kill on Lich King. I'd have to say that would be the hardest encounter to date.

- - - Updated - - -

With how most players back then played their chars, most modern bosses would be completely impossible to beat.

Also, like so many people already said, the hardest part about the fight (or most of Vanilla Naxx in general) was to get enough people with enough dedication and gear to clear it.

I think you're really giving the average raider to much credit nowadays. It doesn't take long to figure out things regarding raid mechanics in WoW and at worst it takes 6 months tops and even then most can figure things out faster. Fights back then were hard, just like some are nowadays, I'd say Heroic Lich King pre-nerf was hard, I've also heard Twins in AQ40 were hard and most have said nowadays they would be considered a unique fight, granted I've never done AQ40.

[Austilias]

Certainly more satisfying than today's bosses; both in terms of difficulty and lore. Truth be told, MoP has had some of the most forgettable enemies/bad guys i've ever seen.

[daehin]

Indeed it was 8 tanks ... even worse 8 WARRIOR tanks with 4 set bonus so the taunt won't miss ... so the hardest part of the encoutner was getting enough geared warriors. But that just made the encounter easier i think we managed with 6 or 7 ... from whom several were dpsers

Oh completely forgot the invisible voids in the stairs

So fun days

But yes i have to agree it was a stopper ... i think i was there wiping for a couple of months iirc ... Still the hardest encounter ever was Muru pre nerf. And the most fun Cthun or Kael thas pre FIX

[Deleted]

Patchwerk 40 man


Killed like 10 Tops guilds on our server


"£@$:"£%ing ENRAGE !!!!

[Hooliganz]

Edit: Im retarded

its ok to feel that way nothing to be ashamed of

[Deleted]

I think you're really giving the average raider to much credit nowadays. It doesn't take long to figure out things regarding raid mechanics in WoW and at worst it takes 6 months tops and even then most can figure things out faster. Fights back then were hard, just like some are nowadays, I'd say Heroic Lich King pre-nerf was hard, I've also heard Twins in AQ40 were hard and most have said nowadays they would be considered a unique fight, granted I've never done AQ40.

Nah, I'm talking about todays Heroic raids. Or, about the hightest difficulty in general.

What also comes in play is the fact that with 40 people, there always was the possibility to at least carry a few of the DDs (except some fights like C'Thun etc.) - in a 10 man group, mistakes by a single player matter more.

[Redcinder]

Aside from overturned bosses that were all of impossible to kill due to bad design pre-nerf I think that the original iteration of the four horsemen was the hardest most complex fight in the history of World of Warcraft and I don't know if it will ever be beaten in that aspect. The encounter didn't have as many different mechanics compared to some of the modern day bosses whose raid info page is a mile long. But, the encounter had a full 40 man raid group broken up into many little groups that all had to rotate correctly or pretty much be killed instantly.

I read here that alot of guilds used 8 tanks for this.... If that isnt a Bad design I dont know what is. I wasnt one of the lucky people that got to raid naxx 40 when it was current but taking away 40 man raiding is the best thing that ever happened to wow. 8 Tanks on a fight..... 8...... Even then it wasnt just DPS that could just swap gear over, each of these tanks had to be appropriately geared aswell.....
Bad design imo.

[Deleted]

Nobody remember M´uru......

[Redmage]

I dunno, felt like my guild had way more trouble with AQ40 than Naxx, in general anyway.

[Tekkommo]

As has been stated many times, the hardest part of the fight was finding 8 geared tanks (mostly Warriors), which required a lot of farming and/or poaching.

Fight was pretty simple then.

It was much harder to get gear in vanilla, if it was still that hard to gear your raid up, you would find raids getting cleared much much slower these days.

It really all comes down to gear and it is simple to get geared these days.

Imagine doing 10 man raids and the boss only had a 50% chance to drop one piece of loot and we had no JP/VP gear, that is what it was like in vanilla. Imagine sometimes that the piece of loot that drops is for a class you can't even use.

Not sure if I made my point, but gear makes this game far easier.

Anyway if you think 4h man is the hardest fight of all time, I really doubt you raided back then and I doubt you raid heroics today.

[Jiigeri]

In a raid group unless you're in Paragon there's typically at least one tard that the rest of the raid is covering for

A bit of offtopic, but Sauna (Finnish guild on stormreaver-EU that later would be the other merging guild to form paragon) did have plenty of retards and they still killed four horsemen. There was a lot of bad players around at that time. A lot.

Back to topic: What does it matter which encounter would in theory be the hardest ever? I'm sure someone doesn't agree with four horsemen being hardest, since it'll always be a bit different experience for each raid group.

Not that four horsemen wouldn't be hard, but just pointing out that it's not that easy to rank the encouters up just like that.

[Floopa]

Think M'uru pre-pre-nerf is the hardest boss ever implemented.

[nocendi]

Definitely not, 4 Horsemen was just a logistics challenge. And with the low amount of gear drops, it just ended up taking forever; plus you had to poach tanks from other guilds...

Hardest fight ever... Yogg0 or Mimiron FF? Those fights were both damn hard when undergeared.

Lei Shen was a great fight, but certainly doesn't belong in this conversation.

(Ignoring bosses that were "hard" because of bugs or failed mechanics)

[hablix]

KT was harder according to D&T.

I recall Nihilum saying the same thing

[fangless]

So much misinformation in this thread from players that probably started within the last 2-3 years -_-;