How many bosses should a raid tier have?

[Hastag Help]

I like where we are, but pulling it back a little would allow for one night clears without trying to approach mach III.

[judgementofantonidas]

I thought all of the encounters in Firelands were great (but a tad to easy), the mechanics were unique and enjoyable.

I enjoyed being able to pick and choose what boss you were going after during initial progression.

[Outofmana]

4 instances released at the same time: 1x 10 Bosses, 2x 2 boss-instances and 1x 1-boss instance would be perfect imo.

[HeedmySpeed]

Shannox was a one phase encounter on hc. No mechanics to worry about for 70% of the raid besides staying out of traps (that's on 10 man, on 25 man it was even worse).
Rhyolith was memorable, but only for the RNG(y) fail he was. An absolute nightmare of a fight with simple mechanics, that would wipe you endlessly because of dumb gimmics. Was a lot better once they nerfed the stacking.
Baleroc again was without mechanics for most of the raid, most of the time. I admit it was a lot better on hc though.

That's more than 42% of the raid. I really don't know why everyone seems to like FL that much; the same 7 bosses got very boring for 7 months. Perhaps I'm the odd one out.

But wouldn't Beth'tilac also be considered a one phase encounter? You mentioned no gripes with her.
And Shannox, admittedly, was more interesting from a melee point of view since traps were harder to spot and you had to pay close attention to the kiting since Arcing Slash could gib you (25m POV).

And while Rhyolith steering was horribly implemented (the 25 man killer for my guild) it was still an interesting mechanic which is getting harder for Blizzard to keep up with. To my knowledge, Rhyolith can't really be compared to most raid bosses as easily as the rest.

And yeah, I got sick to death with Firelands but that's what happens when your guild refuses to save lockouts to scrape every last piece of gear.

[ihatepeople]

10 is the perfect number IMO. With 10 bosses i feel like every boss is an important step and not just a fodder boss to gear up off of. I also feel like the loot tables would be varied enough with 10 bosses. I personally can't stand raids with more than 10 bosses.

[Warak]

I like 10-12 +1 for HM as a reward.

[Akraen]

I like 14-20 bosses. But not in the same instance.

I like when we have 2 or 3 raids in the tier, splits it up, changes up the environments and keeps it fresh for longer. Also lets you make good leadership calls when you're missing X, Y, or Z player and you can go progress on a different boss that week. Leaves more creativity and tailored guild progression.

[Verain]

I'm about to extend our siege lockout to get down normal garrosh. Every time we get to him we are missing people, and not much time remains, and so he remains unkilled, despite being 1000% within our capabilities. This extension will make some raiders sad, and I don't like doing that.

Here's the issue: These instances are fucking linear as shit. If you wanted to press Yogg, you could meaningfully skip three bosses (four if you didn't mind dodging the cat lady, five counting Alg). Many tiers, the bosses are just kind of in place, and you don't need to go in a fucking line.

So here's Garrosh, and you have to kill the entire rest of the instance before getting to him. Absolutely awful. Been like this for expacs, tired of it. Also bad in heroics- you can't be like "that guy is hard in heroic but we don't have to kill him- lets leave him for now and see who shows up Sunday". No, you have to reg him out, or beat head NOW.

Fucking bullshit.

[Akraen]

I loved in Ulduar that we could really choose whichever hard mode we wanted to work on. We did an odd order, Thorim -> Hodir -> Firefighter -> Freya because of the types of players we had.

And sometimes we didn't have the right comp on a Tuesday so we'd work on one and go back to the other on Friday.

It was just a huge quality of life boost as a raid leader to have options.

[smokii]

i like variety in raid size and different environments and non-linearity, but i also like plenty of bosses in a raid tier. 10-16 bosses is probably around the sweet spot.

[Orcindauh]

I'm about to extend our siege lockout to get down normal garrosh. Every time we get to him we are missing people, and not much time remains, and so he remains unkilled, despite being 1000% within our capabilities. This extension will make some raiders sad, and I don't like doing that.

Here's the issue: These instances are fucking linear as shit. If you wanted to press Yogg, you could meaningfully skip three bosses (four if you didn't mind dodging the cat lady, five counting Alg). Many tiers, the bosses are just kind of in place, and you don't need to go in a fucking line.

So here's Garrosh, and you have to kill the entire rest of the instance before getting to him. Absolutely awful. Been like this for expacs, tired of it. Also bad in heroics- you can't be like "that guy is hard in heroic but we don't have to kill him- lets leave him for now and see who shows up Sunday". No, you have to reg him out, or beat head NOW.

Fucking bullshit.

Here's the flaw. It doesn't matter how non linear it is. Progression raids always go for the easiest bosses first. If you had the option to skip bosses in SoO, no one progressing would go directly to Garrosh first. Just like no one progressing in Ulduar would go straight to Yogg before they cleared the rest of the raid.

[Ailylia]

Here's the flaw. It doesn't matter how non linear it is. Progression raids always go for the easiest bosses first. If you had the option to skip bosses in SoO, no one progressing would go directly to Garrosh first. Just like no one progressing in Ulduar would go straight to Yogg before they cleared the rest of the raid.

You're not thinking outside of your own experience. A lot of raids like the flexibility of being able to skip bosses because it fits their schedule, they get to work on progression content without having to hold a lockout and lose loot on earlier bosses. Pretend you are a 6 hour a week raid and you only raid on Tuesday and Thursday but you know one of your best DPSers can't make thursday due to a real life conflict, wouldn't it be nice to work on your harder bosses on Tuesday and then clean up and farm Thursday with a pug DPS ?

Would have been nice this tier for example for the first 4 fights to be a separate instance, hell the instance entrance could even be close to alleviate the "travel woes" or even keep the portal at the end of Sha of Pride for your raid to continue, but you have the option of skipping the first four if you want and coming back to them later. Flexibility is a great thing for raids that have limited time/resources.

[Deleted]

I think the sweet spot is around 10. SoO suffers from filler bosses. At least on normal mode Protectors, Sha of Pride, Iron Juggernaut and Malkorok are pretty simple and boring fights without any interesting mechanics.

[JV Chequer]

12 It's a great spot.
14-16 if it's the final tier.

[Orcindauh]

You're not thinking outside of your own experience. A lot of raids like the flexibility of being able to skip bosses because it fits their schedule, they get to work on progression content without having to hold a lockout and lose loot on earlier bosses. Pretend you are a 6 hour a week raid and you only raid on Tuesday and Thursday but you know one of your best DPSers can't make thursday due to a real life conflict, wouldn't it be nice to work on your harder bosses on Tuesday and then clean up and farm Thursday with a pug DPS ?

Would have been nice this tier for example for the first 4 fights to be a separate instance, hell the instance entrance could even be close to alleviate the "travel woes" or even keep the portal at the end of Sha of Pride for your raid to continue, but you have the option of skipping the first four if you want and coming back to them later. Flexibility is a great thing for raids that have limited time/resources.

It's not just my own experience, it's just how heroic progression is. You don't skip progressing on the easier bosses and go to the harder bosses. Because if you do, you're missing out on so much gear opportunities.

Sure, when you're no longer progressing and have all the bosses on farm you might pick to do the harder bosses first but when it comes to progression, you don't skip the easier bosses.

Let's say SoO is not linear at all and you can go to any boss you want and you're just now starting heroic progression. No raid is going to going to skip the first 8 bosses and go directly to Blackfuse or any of the last 6. It's just not how the raiding environment operates. When it comes to raid progression, you always go to the easiest boss first because it offers a better chance and killing it and getting gear that will make the next boss easier.

[Deleted]

But wouldn't Beth'tilac also be considered a one phase encounter? You mentioned no gripes with her.
And Shannox, admittedly, was more interesting from a melee point of view since traps were harder to spot and you had to pay close attention to the kiting since Arcing Slash could gib you (25m POV).

And while Rhyolith steering was horribly implemented (the 25 man killer for my guild) it was still an interesting mechanic which is getting harder for Blizzard to keep up with. To my knowledge, Rhyolith can't really be compared to most raid bosses as easily as the rest.

And yeah, I got sick to death with Firelands but that's what happens when your guild refuses to save lockouts to scrape every last piece of gear.

I really, really enjoyed beth'tilac for some reason That would be why I didn't mention her. As for Shannox and Rhyolith I do agree with you. The guild I was in also fell apart at Rhylith (hc) because we couldn't rekill it, as our best dps had left. The guild was the opposite of yours with the gearing though... refusing to farm bosses beyond HC's.

[Aethilus]

I voted 13-14, I feel like the number of bosses in this tier is just about right. I do like when the total bosses in a raid tier are presented in a (more) non-linear fashion. Having 3 different raids with 4-6 bosses each (tier 14 but released concurrently) or a 1 raid model with a lot of branches (instead of just spoils/thok or siegecrafter) would be ideal.

[Raunchy]

Doesn't really matter to me, as long as they are of such quality that I do not even pay attention to which number boss we are on.

[mahananaka]

13-14 imo, but I'd be fine with as little as 10 depending on other content put into the raid patch.

[kaneem]

10 - 14 bosses is fine, 12 - 13 is probably the sweet spot. This way you can have some easy bosses, some harder bosses and some really hard bosses.

The problem with too many bosses is that a lot of them will be poorly designed and it's likely that none of them will be great (Tier 14).
The problem with too few bosses is there will be too many easy bosses (Dragon Soul, Firelands) and the tier won't last very long.

^Yep, 100% agree.
Another aspect that kind of affects how the tier feels during progression is how the bosses are mapped out in different raid instances. I really did like how M-Vaults, HoFear and ToES were one raid tier, but spread out in different instances. I actually prefer this to having a large raid instance, with multiple wings.