So, recently my friends and I have enjoyed going back to old raids for fun. I have really enjoyed this and it has been alot of fun, therefor I want to share some tips with you guys and hopefully get some tips back. I would really suggest doing this for everyone.

So basically, we have been trying to down old content with as few people as possible. Both to just hang out with friends, but also for the challanges. Some bosses are made extremely trivial while done with e.g. 4 people, but when done with 3 people it is a real challange and provides alot of fun. So therefore, we have been pushing ourselves to get bosses down with as few people as possible.

An example of this would be lady vashj, completely trivial with 5 people, 4 people is easy, but 3 people is a nightmare, we spent an evening wiping on her with 3 people before we got her down.

But, I will try to sum up what we have done so far, give some pointers, how fun and challenging we considered it and then challange you to do the same and even outprogress us! This thread is meant for inspiriation and tips.

I encourage everyone to share there experiences from going back and killing old bosses with few players. I had alot more fun doing this then actual 25 man raiding. And this has been alot more challenging aswell.

Note: ALOT OF THESE ENCOUNTERS ARE ONE MANNABLE, BUT THIS PROJECT OF OURS HAS BEEN DONE WITH FRIENDSHIP IN MIND, HENCE I SUGGEST TO ATLEAST 2 MAN.

The level 60 raids are good warmup.



--LEVEL 60 CONTENT --

Zul'Gurub: This is extremely simple and straight forward. 2 man ( 1 mannable ), not really any challange but good warmup if your not used to 2 manning.

Raid drops: Well, drops a bit of gold, if you vendor the other drops it is quite decent. Mount and pet drop chance. Bijous can sell for a bit of money on some realms.



Molten Core: 2 manned ( 1 mannable ). This raid can be really easy depending on your class, but can also be hard with a bad setup.

Raid drops: A few gold. Nice money from vendor stuff. BoEs can sell for 50-100g. Chance to drop bindings for thunderfury and the eye for sulfaras. Blood of the Mountain and Sulfuron Ingot sells for alot of gold ( Atleast on my realm ).



Blackwing lair: 2 manned. This is in my eyes, the most fun level 60 raid, it provides some challange. And the first raid worth notes of the bosses.

Raid drops: Really nice gold. Whole raid drops about 1300 gold ( Divide by amount of people ). Vendor stuff is another 200g. Drops about 1-4 elementium ingots per run, sells for 1k gold each on my realm.

Boss:Razorgore the Untamed
Information: 2 manned, quite fun fight. Work out a working tactic for mcing and kill the adds of as quick as possible.

Boss: Vaelastrasz the Corrupt
Information: 2 manned, this fight turns out to some laughs in the end when people dies from the debuff, some serious nuke needed.

Boss: Broodlord Lashlayer
Information: 2 manned, tank against a corner due to pushback, really simple.

Boss: Firemaw
Information: 2 manned, nothing worth noting

Boss: Ebonroc
Information: 2 manned, quite interesting fight, need to get a working tactic to counter the life drain. We used a taunt rotation. MS-effect is nice to have.

Boss: Flamegor
Information: 2 manned, not really an interesting fight, just kill him.

Boss: Chromaggus
Information: 2 manned, quite a long and interesting fight. Best done with 1 healer that can dispell and 1 damage dealer.

Boss: Nefarian
Information: 2 manned, end boss fights are always funny, give you a sense of completion. Was a pain in the ass for us, 2 manned with 2 retribution paladins, he steals blessing of protection from paladins, so he was basically immune to physical for the duration of the fight. You need to find a good way to deal with the massive amount of skeletons that come in the end of the fight.



Raid: Ruins of AQ.
Work in progress - Haven't even tried yet, will do it later this week, shouldnt be much of a hazzle.




Raid: Temple of AQ
Work in progress - We only downed the first 2 bosses, then it was getting late so we stopped. Will try to complete the rest later.


Boss: The Prophet Skeram
Information: 1 manned. Did not enjoy this fight. We started to 2 man it, but it ended up with one of us getting MCed and hitting 50k on a the other player, oneshotting him. So, we had to one man it. Quite challenging as one manning goes, but did not enjoy having to sit one of us out.

Boss: Battleguard Sartura
Information: 2 manned. Pretty straight forward. Kill it.



-- LEVEL 70 CONTENT --

Gruul's lair:
Raid drops: 500g + an additional 50g-ish in vendor stuff. Divide by amount of players.

Boss: High King Maulgar
Information: 2 manned. Really annoying... really annoying...

Boss: Gruul the Dragonkiller
Information: 2 manned. Pretty straight forward, can easily be done as 2 DD, with one having some heals ( e.g. shadowpriest, retri pally, ele shammy, boomkin ). Free gold.



Magtheridon's Lair
Raid drops: 500g and vendor items. Divide by amount of people.

Trash: Really annoying, clear everything. They are warlocks so they do death coil and rain of fire.

Boss: Magtheridon
Information: 2 manned. There are 2 tactics for this. One is just to tank everything and soak the damage and wait for Maggy to come out, then just kill him.
The tactic we used was simple, one of us pick up all the adds. Then one of us taunt one add, kite it away from the others and kill it.
This is due to they heal eachother, ALOT. So that is why we had one DD kite one of them away and nuke it down. Easier to interrupt 1 then 5.
Repeat until all are dead ( Boss should come out at roughly the point the last time dies. ). Then kill the boss.



Black temple, tempest keep:
Information: Haven't tried any of these yet.



Karazhan
Information: 2 manned ( 1 manned aswell ). I really love this instance and is really fun to go through, but not really that much of a challange. A bit of challange to one man though.
Raid drops: The gold is not that impressive really. Small chance of mount. Mongoose reciepe for enchanters.



Serpentshrine caverns
Raid drops: 1550 gold + vendor items. Divide by amount of people.

Boss: Hydross the Unstable
Information: 2 manned. I absolutely loved SSC, almost all of the bosses was really interesting and fun. I absolutely loved this boss and will definately go back more times here.
We used a setup of 1 tank and 1 healer for this boss. The tank simply tanked it in the "poison phase" as much as possible ( due to the stun in ice phase ). We switched to the ice phase when we got a 250% debuff and then back to poison as soon as the debuff cleared.


Boss: The Lurker Below
Information: 2 manned. Who doesn't love fishies . Did this with a setup of 1 dd and 1 tank. During the dive phase, the DD killed 2 platforms and the tank picked up all the melee adds, kited them to the platform the DD didn't take and killed them. Avoid the 100 yard pushback mouth spray ( He got some serious bad breath ). This fight is quite enjoyable tactic wise, even though it isn't that hard. Fun fight! Do it!


Boss: Leotheras the Blind
Information: 2 manned... This is a bitch. We one shotted it, but I guess it was ALOT of luck involved. Really tough fight, and I can't really give any pointers, since I am not really sure how we managed not to wipe. The demon phase is really hard and needs some serious healing in it. Really tough fight.


Boss: Fathom-Lord Karathress
Information: 2 manned. Spent half an evening here. So much RNG involved. I would advice to take a third player since you will need 3 for Vashj anyway.
We ended up killing the healer first as we had hard time interrupting him. Then we went for the shammy and last the hunter. Avoid everything you can if possible.



Boss: Morogrim Tidewalker
Information: 2 manned. Pretty straight forward, and easy. A nice relax and free kill before Vashj.




Boss: Lady Vashj
Information: 3 manned. I loved this fight. This is the first really, really, extremely hard fight. This this with a setup of 1 ranged, 1 melee and 1 tank.
P1 and P3 is straight forward. The issue is P2. We ended up having the ranged standing in the middle, killing all the small elementals.
We then had the melee and the tank run around kill all the elites and the corrupted elementals. You will quickly get overrun here.
The key to the fight is to get your tank and melee to learn how to pass the cores from the corrupted elementals up to vashj quickly. Once you got that
the fight will go alot smoother. If you miss 1 or 2 corrupted elementals you are pretty screwed and will get overrun quickly. You need to kill the lurkers INSTANTLY.
Their fear is a pain in the ass. We had tremor totem.



Mount Hyjal
Raid drops: 250g from each drops and nice money from trash aswell.


Rage Winterchill
Information: 2 manned - Just keep yourself alive, don't stand close to eachother and get out of the DnD asap. Shouldn't be to much of a problem. Kite into the camp to get help from NPCs.


Anetheron
Information: 2 manned - Kite into the camp. This will make him target the NPCs with his carrion swarm. Making it less likely to hit you. ( If you phase away from the NPCs ).
We used 1 dd and 1 tank. The DD picked up the adds and zerged them down. If you don't kill the adds quick you will die.


Kaz'rogal
Information: 2 manned - Easy. Kite to thrall to get some bonus damage from his guards. Just kill him.


We stopped here. We will try to continue later.




--LEVEL 80 CONTENT--
All raids in this section is referring to 10 man normal mode if not otherwisely stated.

We really enjoyed the level 80 raids, since they were "current expansion", and going back with less people gives the fight a new dimension and nice challanges.


Eye of Eternity
Raid drops: Chance of mount. Some gold.
Setup: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer ( doing dps when not needed to heal ).
P3 Setup: We used 2 healers and 2 dps. The dps rolled 3-5 combo points flames all the time, so they wouldn't drop the stacks if they needed to use shields. I would not use the standard 2 combo point tactic since if you get targeted 2 or 3 times in a row ( This can easily happen with only 4 people ) you will die/lose stacks.

Tactics: P1 - Nuke as much as possible, try to burn this phase, stack sparks if possible.
P2 - We were suprised in this phase. Turns out the adds really does a shitload of arcane damage. So it is really advisable to stack under the shields, else those adds WILL own
you. Nuke them as fast as possible.
P3 - As said in P3 setup. We rolled 2 healers 2 dps. It is more important to not lose stacks then to stack up quickly. Move as a group.



Vault of Archavon
Raid drops: Decent amount of gold due to 4 bosses and nice chance of mount drop.


Boss: Archavon
Setup used: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer
Tactics: Really easy, just kill him.



Boss: Emalon
Setup used: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer
Tactics: We have tried it in 2 ways. But killing the adds, and to ignore them and just soak the explosions using cds. Both worked for us, so choose either depending on your setup. Pretty easy fight. Spread out and nuke.


Boss: Koralon
Setup used: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer
Tactics: Nuke fast, the metor fist is the issue here. Your tank must use his cooldowns wisely.


Boss: Toravon
Setup used: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer - We didn't have bloodlust, the would really have helped.
Tactics: We were unfortunate enough to have 2 ranged dps. So we couldn't have a plate dps to taunt of the boss to let tank reset debuffs. Instead we used a frost res geared tank, let him get about 9 stacks. 1 time he bubbled it. ( Paladin tank ). The other 2 times he needed to reset, we had our paladin healer taunt to boss and effectively tanking it. The paladin tank then helped out with protective cds on the paladin healer and also helped healing. Hard nuke boss.



Onyxia
Setup used: 4 manned - 1 tank 2 dps 1 healer
Tactics: There is really only two issues here.
1. Getting the whelps down
2. Getting the boss down clean.
You need to have 1 dps with god AoE that can AoE the whelps down, we then had a hunter pet + the tank on the big adds. When clear of whelps the ranged just focused the boss. We got boss down in 2 whelp phases. 10 seconds short of speed kill P1 and P3 is simple.



Naxxramas
Setup used: 4 manned - Used every possible setup for bosses. But basically we had tank/dps tank/dps healer/dps healer/dps
Alot of the bosses are definately 1,2,3 mannable but we used 4 for the entire full clear.

Boss fights worth noting - 4h, I will let you figure that out yourself. Thaddius, need a working plan for the 2 mini bosses. Gluth, the add kiting and add killing is the issue. Instructor, really annoying.


Obsidian Sanctum 2 DRAKES
Setup used: 4 manned - We tried both 1 tank 1 healer 2 dps and 1 tank 2 healer 1 dps. In the end, 1 tank 2 healer 1 dps served the mest control to the fight. We didn't have bloodlust.
Tactics: The 2 drakes left alive was Shadron and Vesperon. Your tank need to be alive while picking up the adds that spawn during the course of the fight. DO NOT GET THE BOSS DOWN LOW. That will just make the dragons enrage and also will spawn more fire adds. We nuked shadron asap, then killed vesperon off. After this 1 dps 1 healer entered portals to kill off the adds in there. Then we just finnished the boss of. The hard part is getting the shadron and vesperon down. Really fun fight.



Icecrown Citadel

We have only attempted one boss in here. And that was the lich king himself.


The Lich King
Setup used: 5 manned - 1 tank 3 dps 1 healer. Do not do the same mistake we did, and realise 1 - We couldn't dispell the horrors enrage and 2 - We didn't have any slows. Thank god we had stuns.

Tactics: P1 - Just stack all the adds on the tank. Drop plague and let it do its job. We only got 2-3 shamblers before we went into transition. Quite hard healing.
Dispell the horrors quickly. We had to use a stun rotation on the enrage as we didn't have dispell.

Transition - Hopefully you will have no/almost no adds up. If you do, make sure they die quickly from the plague. The spirits is not an issue. They die quickly. Our third spirit usually died at the same time the first valkyr appeared.

P2 - Pray to god the correct person gets picked up. If healer gets picked up tank need to blow all his cds. We had to rely on stun rotation due to no slows. This is the hard phase due to RNG.

Second Transition - Just kill the spirits, nothing more to add.

P3 - Hope to rng that the healer doesn't get shadowmourned, if he do, try to have a boomkin or something that can off heal. Try letting the tank soak as many of the vile spirits as possible, you can help him if you can. E.g. anti magic shell and bubble.

The kill felt very enjoyable due to it being an end game boss at the moment.




-----

This is how far we gotten so far. The goals this week will be:

Start and finnish AQ20 and AQ40 2 man.

Do as much TK and BT as possible with 2 man.

Continue Mount Hyjal 2 man.

5 man OS103D.

5 man more of ICC10

4 man Uld10 and ToC10, as much as possible.


If any of you have any experiences of these encounters please tell them. Keep in mind that most of the content gets completely trivial while using more people. Things like "We used 7 people for ToC10" is just as interesting as if you used 10 people.

If you have any questions about specific boss encounters please ask.

And share your experiences! Go out there and challange yourselves! Please, no trolling here. This is just for fun.