I'm interested to hear what type of bosses people would like to see. If you were a Blizzard encounter designer what kind of mechanics would you introduce. Literally, design a boss, the playing field where the encounter takes place, what the boss looks like, what features or uniqueness does it offer that separates it from other bosses, what mechanics would your boss encounter have, what would the phase transitions have, and why in your opinion would you like to see this boss?
Use previous bosses to compare a certain mechanic to expand on if you want.
Here's mine:
In burning crusade players, or raiders were challenged as content was defeated by specifically being able to adhere to a specific enrage timer, on top of a few varying boss mechanics. Later in the content these mechanics would diversify into phases. For instance Supremus phase 1 tank and spank deal with fire trails on people and kite them in a direction that wouldn't affect phase 2; the kite phase. Phase 2 would introduce volcanoes spewing fire making players have to target it and kill them, this took damage off the boss while being kited slowly reducing the progress to beat the enrage timer. Resulted in players better gearing their overall raid to make that enraged not so determinate. Illidan is also THE prime example of a phase based boss encounter which really set a legacy for future encounters. Sunwell embraced ALL of these aspects while adding individual player performance, introducing a strict CC pattern, assigned interrupts, etc. Especially on the adds. And as we know, when in a raid the add mechanics leading to a boss typically lead to a mechanics the boss will have. As we see in siege of org and other raids. What really set Sunwell up was not just ANY guild could defeat sunwell even under perfect conditions. Brutallus required almost ALL dps to have a minimum of 3k dps or else it was impossible to not be overwhelmed by the fire debuff and hit enrage timer. So positions, assignments, reactions, while maintaining best possible dps output resulted in a kill. Felmyst introduced the same thing while also giving a "luck of the draw" aspect which was her phase transitions when she would fly in the air and the raid would have a difficult time to assume where the raid needed to move due to her mind control breath. Twins, 3rd to last boss in sunwell had a multi boss HP reset mechanic. Similar to Klaxxi, and other bosses. It doesn't matter how much damage you do in cleave, because when you kill one boss, the other boss' health just resets. While each boss requires different mechanics, while their both up the raid has to deal with both, so having to quickly kill one would result in 50% loss in mechanics, for instance.. 2 bosses up = conflagerate and un-avoidable tank stun making the untauntable boss going tothe next highest threat, while whoever had conflagerate could potentially wipe the raid. So you kill the first boss, removes the tank stun mechanic, yet now conflagerate is an issue and a DoT more rapidly builds to players. All of these where "revolutionary" in my opinion to what set the legacy of present day boss mechanics.
Garrosh as though it is easy, introduces ALOT of mechanics, the reason it is easy is because if the raid damage and performance (interupts) are spot on, they never overlap. So you deal with one, dps boss, deal with next, dps boss, phase, dps boss, deal with one quickly, the you could assign people to be on the boss 100% while the rest deal with the mechanics and dps boss after the mechanics are finished.
To me an amazing mechanic boss encounter would have multiple overlapping mechanics that not only relied on the raid reaction to counter, but also on the individual player. Where at any point in time if 1 player messed up their individual responses it was an instant wipe, all while dpsing the boss, reaction to their individual responsibility, and also dealing with a group responsibility, and dealing with overlapping phase transitions. This would make people freeze due to being overwhelmed. Regardless of their dps.
Like have a 3 boss encounter. One applies to tanks, a stacking debuff causing 2 of the 3 adds to have to be tank swapped, each of the 2 would have a unique mechanic the tank would respond to. While avoiding the third boss's affect on the raid. Mellee would have a debuff where the only way to remove would be to dps/ cleave adds a boss would constantly spawn making the debuff be removed "forces dps to not tunnel on bosses" if their debuff reached a certain point it would cause them to radiate raid damage, eventually but quickly wiping a raid if the dps tunneled. The ranged dps would have to CC specific adds that would be called into a fight and would cause those adds to fixate the first person that would engage them resulting in them having to be kited, slowed/CCd, and also having a debuff that could only be removed by killing one of their adds, resulting in a priority add killing in a specific to character class. While healers had to not only heal a tank that was always taking high damage, which the other had to have a specific ability dispelled while having to heal mellee and the raid as the mellee stacks build and the ranged would be receiving the class ability uniqueness. Like a hunter has to let a add hit them once to get a debuff to counter a different debuff, causing a priest to life grip them before the add can attack for a second time. And a phase transition would be no healing and dps focus "frozen time" aspect.. It all sounds like alot at once, which is the point. But if every player had a personal add priority in kill order, cc order, survival order (causing a killed add to remove a debuff in a particular order, or else they couldn't advance to the phase 2) this would show the raid all of their weakest links in their particular responsibility. An encounter would be fun as hell if something like this happened. If 1 person at any point didn't utilize ALL of their class abilities for 100% of the encounter the raid would just stop. This to me would be a guild killer. new and exciting shiny boss mechanics are always fun, but once you beat them, it's like riding a bike. Yet anytime you guys have to come across this encounter, you know it's always up in the air regardless of your gear. Keeping everyone on their toes at all times. I like bosses where you hear people freaking out all at once even if the raid seems to be responding perfectly. After it's done and if your group succeeds it's a HUGE accomplishment, always.
So in a nut-shell. It would be a 3 boss fight, (not shared health pool) while 2 of the 3 bosses would constantly summons multiple adds that can't be tanked, while the other would summon a specific add set that would hit hard and be used to remove boss debuffs on the player. While transitions would occur, and the goal would be to go into each transition with NO debuffs by each player killing their adds because in the transitions there would be no healing, so if 1 person went in without killing their adds, they would be taking damage over time when they cant be healed and hopefully have the cooldowns to survive it but would be very un-likely. Making it so 1 person in the raid could potentially wipe the raid at any time.
I would make 2 of the bosses Gnomish shredders, but would be called (Blaster: mad max of thunder dome reference) both dealing heavy tank damage in the form of a DoT stack, and the other just high constant damage resulting in a tank swap, all the while they would have a rage pool that when reaching a certain point would cause a special debuff to hit random players (25 rage= healing reduction DoT, 30 rage= stacking magic damage DoT, 40 rage= Bleed damage which buffed a non boss add ability 50 rage= movement speed reduction stacking to 100%, 70 rage= would increase player damage done) that last dot would make it almost impossible due to the tanks having to swap (the boss's rage would reset every time the tanks swapped) Making for very unique strats.
And then the third boss that would be active with the 2 blasters would be the "master: also mad max reference" he would be a "smart add" and couldn't be tanked and would debuff players with the worst possible buff given their class. Healing reduction debuffs to closest proximity healers, if no healer was always close in proximity he would just continue to spawn more and more adds to deal with the melee and ranged. This would force your best healer to have to take more debuff of healing reduction to prevent the mellee from being overwhelmed. And depending on when a Melee kills their add (removing their debuffs) this would cause the ranged to have their adds spawned) so you would have to have melee kill adds in a specific order.
The transitional phases would be where the two blasters merge, into a huge blaster, while master hop on top of its "cock-pit" and ALL the debuffs merge into a raid wide effect (increase to damage taken, increase to player damage done, healing reduction, HIGH tank damage, tanks having to split a cleave, then quickly get out of a frontal cone stacking debuff; Bleed damage and armor reduction, stacking. Causing tank swaps. This would be the zerg phase. If players went into this phase with debuffs their debuff would "mutate" into a different effect. Like healing reduction debuff in phase 1= mutate into NO healing received when going back into phase 1 following the phase 2.. Damage increase if the bosses can get the Blasters to 70 rage when they push, that Debuff would result in a permanent damage done buff to all players when they go into the first phase following the phase 2.. Etc.
This boss would be an optional boss. Requiring all bosses to be killed in a raid, resulting in a certain atonement or rep each player needs to be eligible (consistent raid group) to fight the boss. Then after defeating the boss and the rep is exalted for everyone, a doorway unlocks. A new NPC would walk out and talk about a new world where a galactic mastermind was planning on assault on Azeroth, so if you chose to walk through the doorway you would go to a new would (like a outlands/twisting nether HUGE laboratory with the knowledge of the Titans, powered life blood from the universe.. basically if the Titans had an evil scientist, this would be his lab)
Reward: A specific separate tier token (If the raid that unlocked this boss could be like tier 20, this tier would be tier 21 and could be only obtained through defeating this boss) he would drop weapon augments (which would be similar effects to the encounter debuffs) and trinkets which would hold up to 2 augments, and the static stats would "mutate" base off the 2 selected augments that would be infused in them
Example: A trinket;
Equip: causes the player to deal 5% more damage from all abilities stacking to 5 for 10 seconds (25%)
Equip causes the enemy to have a stacking armor reduction debuff up to 10 stacks (50% armor reduction) lasting for 10 seconds
Use: when both effects are at full stacks, the player has a chance to activate "titanic evolution" resulting in 50% armor reduction and 25% damage done for 25 seconds,this effect can overlap with the equip effects.
+ 2,000 stamina
+ 5% stats
So basically the trinket would ramp up and have a 5 second window for the player to activate the trinket, keeping the activation stats active while overlapping the equip effects (100% armor reduction 50% damage done for 10 seconds) so by the time the trinket is done ramping up it can be activated again. So if the player managed this optimally he could keep the effect at 10 stacks 100% of the time and the "use" effect active for 50% of the time.
healers would have different augments, but would really make your raid group focus on optimizing this trinket 1 person at a time.
Once a player receives a empty trinket 1 week, an augment the next, a second augment the third week, they would have to infuse it during the 5th week fight during a phase transition. Once the quest is completed the player and raid would see a Lore/ RP cutscene of them stealing the power of the titans from the lap and once completed the sky in every zone of azeroth would show a translucent image of the player in game for 1 hour. Indication he saved the world and received the power of the titans. Kind of like when a player completes a legendary, like the turn in once defeating Algalon or the Dragonwrath staff from Firelands.
Just think about everything, and try to be the raid leader building a strat and assignments to your raid. To ME, this encounter would be so fun and keep everyone on your toes. Overlapping mechanics, individual player performance that affects the raids success. etc.
I know it's super over the top, but that's the fun of it!!
Sorry that's alot to read, I hope to read some in-depth ones from you!