Originally Posted by
Liebchen
Took longer to kill =! Harder
Nearly all Classic Bosses in this list took so long to kill because they were UNKILLABLE until Blizzard made some Bugfixes and then they fell after a few days or even hours.
There were no things like PTR or Feedback-Tools for Players at this time. Only the fights Naxx40 were killable from Day 1 though so this was the first properly tuned instance. Of course Sapphiron was kind of a contentblocker because you had to farm all the Frost Resistance Gear first. Still fights took a long time to kill because even Hardcore Guilds at that time werent THAT hardcore as they are today... even the best 40man Raids had lots of bad people in it, raiding schedules even for hardcore guilds were quite "normal" with raids only in the evening for 5-6 hours and people in general weren't that great at raiding at this time.
Same goes for a lot of the early TBC Bosses in TK and SSC... the Fights were buggy and overtuned like hell (and overtuned isnt hard, its just abilities that for example onehit someone and you cant do anything). The Bosses were either killed with exploits or shortly after being hotfixed. You have to know that in theory you could enter Black Temple and Mount Hyjal from Day 1 of TBC if you managed to kill Kaelthas and Vashj... of course the Instances weren't even finished at that time so Blizzard had to make the Bosses pretty much unkillable to later make them killable with a hotfix after finishing the Instances.
So the "real" Top 10 list would rather look like this: (again not the hardest but what fight took the longest to beat "legit")
#1 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 70 days from Stars' first pull. 7th July 2009
#2 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
#3 The Lich King (Heroic 25) - 42 Days from Heroic Putricide's death (first pull). March 26th 2010
#4 Heroic Al'Akir 25 - 36 days from Heroic Conclave of Wind's death. January 22nd 2011.
#5 Magtheridon - 29 days from the first level 70 25-man raid. 24th February 2007
#6 Loatheb - 14 days from Heigan's death. 17th July 2006
#6 tied Heigan the Unclean - 13 days from Noth the Plaguebringer's death. 3rd July 2006
#8 tied Hydross the Unstable <Duke of Currents> - 13 days from Gruul's death (Unlocking Serpentshrine). 16th February 2007
#9 tied Heroic Cho'gall - 13 days from Heroic Ascendant Council's death. 15th January 2011.
#9 tied Heroic Nefarian - 13 days from Heroic Atramedes' death. January 9th 2011.
(#11 Archimonde <The Defiler> - 10 days from Azgalor's death. 9th June 2007)
1.Yogg+0 surely was hard but lots of guilds didnt even bother to try him at first because everybody thought it was unkillable. Moreover you should rather count the time from Algalons death to Yogg+0 Death which would "only" be 1 month.
2. 4 Horsemen was kind of contentblocker because you had to bring 8 Warriors and most of them had to have T3 5pc (or was it 3pc?) to realistically kill him. Moreover Naxx40 didnt have a linear progressionpath, iirc pretty much all guilds went to kill Loatheb after killing Gothik. So you rather have to count the time from Loatheb to 4h which again would be much shorter.
3. LK HC definately is one of the hardest fights ever, but it only took so long because of the "Limited Trys" Mechanic. Otherwise he would have been killed much earlier.
4. Alakir same problem as a lot of other fights in contents without linear progression... people simply went on to clear BWD/BoT first after killing Conclave which was kinda freeloot. Alakir itself wasnt that hard.
5. I'm not sure about this boss anymore... maybe he was unkillable at first too, i dont remember.
6. Loatheb is legit, but Heigan only took so long because Noth was one of the first bosses you killed in Naxx40 and most guilds went to Kill Meaxxna and Thaddius first before returning to Plaguewing.
8. First Gruul kill was an exploit iirc so most guilds actually reached SSC much later. Boss wasnt hard as such.
9. Non-Linear progression!
11. Legit.
So in the end the bosses that took the longest actually would actually be: 4H, Yogg+0, LK HC, Loatheb, Archimonde.
On Topic: Hardest Fights:
1. Ragnaros HC
2. 4H (Classic)
3. LK HC
4. Yogg+0
5. Muru