To the World Class Guilds: Is Ragnaros HC the hardest encounter thus far?

[Deleted]

To Cerax:

That is not rng...second seeds are always followed by hamer, so you should stack under boss for them...

[Tapzer]

Come on guys, we all know the gunship battle in ICC was the hardest fight ever. Discussion over.

[Deleted]

To Cerax:

That is not rng...second seeds are always followed by hamer, so you should stack under boss for them...

I am not talking about that. Although sometimes that is what s!@ts most.
RGNs are a big part of rag fight plus the gear issue Nitro14 pointed out earlier. You cannot say that a boss killed on the 4th week of release is the hardest, when you have bosses that were alive for months before guilds even reached them! Wiping 200 times on a boss on the third week doesn't say he is hard, says YOU ARE NOT PREPAIRED for it.

[wenslydale]

Come on guys, we all know the gunship battle in ICC was the hardest fight ever. Discussion over.

agree man we wiped on this for months years even this is a hard fight

[Deleted]

^this was the most fun encounter!
ICC had some pretty awesome mechanics.
Gunship, Valithria, Profesor, Blood Queen, the vampires it was pretty nice

[tennesseej]

Right but if they let guilds go crazy against Heroic Lich King on week one with only heroic Trial gear and one week of heroic Icecrown and just die to him endlessly the wipe counter would go way way up and we'd all be in here talking about how Ragnaros can't even compare to Heroic Lich King.

You are right, but that didn't happen, we are here talking about historically, which boss was hardest, not which boss would have been the hardest with this other bosses conditions.

---------- Post added 2011-08-02 at 11:08 AM ----------

Come on guys, we all know the gunship battle in ICC was the hardest fight ever. Discussion over.

I think the Gunship battle was a really cool idea that was kinda poorly executed, I would like to see a similar encounter in the future that is more meaningful

[Gnomerterp]

The difficulty of a boss should only be gauged by the gear the players are in when they reach him. Heroic Lich king is a cake walk in 391 gear... does that mean he was easy when he came out? Gear is always changing, but "difficulty" of an encounter is a snapshot in time. Heroic Lich King was tuned around folks having a particular ilvl. Rag was tuned for folks having a particular ilvl. The ilvl doesn't matter at all though. What matters is how hard the fight is in the ilvl you reach them at.

[Arrowstormen]

The difficulty of a boss should only be gauged by the gear the players are in when they reach him. Heroic Lich king is a cake walk in 391 gear... does that mean he was easy when he came out? Gear is always changing, but "difficulty" of an encounter is a snapshot in time. Heroic Lich King was tuned around folks having a particular ilvl. Rag was tuned for folks having a particular ilvl. The ilvl doesn't matter at all though. What matters is how hard the fight is in the ilvl you reach them at.

And the guilds have said that Ragnaros was the hardest.

I don't see what there is to discuss on the topic.

[Hermanni]

The urge to compare bosses from different eras is confusing. Comparing mechanics is asinine. It'll never be the same.

You're right, this is starting to feel like comparing art of the stone age to that of renaissaince. Bosses were difficult back then, more or less, but for very different reasons.

[LordBalkoth]

I can compete with Paragon if;

1. I had a guild full of 25 players who have 10 alts each and are skilled with every class.
2. People with perfect internet
3. I and my guild had 18 hours a day to raid with 25 players whilst the rest of the guild are spending time theorycrafting
4. Had 25 players with an IQ of over 140 who are capable of excecuting a perfect strategy

I am sure there are 25 unknown players who are just as skilled as Paragon and with a bit of organizing can compete with them.

What makes paragon successful is not what most people think it is. It is not because they have inhuman reflexes or are geniuses(this is not the nobel prize in physicis afterall, just wow). What makes paragon more successful vis-a-vis its competitors is better planning/theorycrafting a.k.a finding gimmicks and optimal raid composition/strategy. Many people simply smash their heads against bosses without taking the time to think about the various synergies different classes bring. A lot can be done with a pen and paper well before any pull starts. Paragon has been good at this. Look at the method video and the way they dealt with spores or whatever, it was chaotic vs the way paragon dealt with them by clustering players in one location and running away before they spawn and conveniently mowing them down afterwards. Leadership/planning/organization is the difference. I seriously doubt a hunter(or any other class) in paragon pulls more dps or is "better" in any meaningful way than a hunter in method, ensidia or vodka. I wish the "groupie" mentality of some folks on these forums would stop. There is a big difference between raiding wow at a high level vs top world athletes. If an average person had a 1000 years to practice basketball he/she would still not be like Michael Jordan or swim as well as Michael Phelps or play golf like Tiger Woods in his prime, etc. whereas you could rise to the top in raiding if you put your mind to it and found 9/24 other people who felt the same way.

[zYN]

You're right, this is starting to feel like comparing art of the stone age to that of renaissaince. Bosses were difficult back then, more or less, but for very different reasons.

Yes. Back then it felt like you were pulling a freight train with plenty of passengers on it just with your bare hands and some rope. Nowadays it's only a minivan with much nicer rope and occasionally the people in the van throw you a drink.

[Kickbuttmario]

"over buffed mechanics", err rather mechanics that are possible if done exactly correctly, but extremely unforgiving
"a ridiculous learning curve", you can't just stroll in watching one video and down the boss
"fight that takes over 15+ minutes", you have to keep up perfect play for a long time, you can't just get lucky during the 1 minute hard part and get a WF

So what is a difficult but rewarding fight in your opinion?

Pretty much all of the heroic t11 fights and since I only did icc during wrath, probably everything except heroic lich king, or probably deathwhisper.

Now I don't mean the fight is stupid but it completely contradicts everything Blizzard was hoping for when making boss fights.

Look at this, a 6 phased encounter each holding mechanics of some complexity. When Blizzard said, "where hoping to make boss fights that have a complex mechanic meter of 2.5 of a scale of 1 - 5.

And they even freaking said they were hoping to make fights that make guilds give less attempts, compared to the m'uru 490 attempts. Thats why most t11 fights needed 10 - 50 attempts before downing, which is a reasonable number considering its for progression and being a heroic fight.

And fights shouldn't take 15 minutes long, this just adds to the whole idea of only a few guilds (probably only 50 - 100) killing the boss (if not nerfed of course) before patch 3.5 (assuming thats if blizzard adds a new tier of content on that patch).

[Deleted]

Many people simply smash their heads against bosses without taking the time to think about the various synergies different classes bring. A lot can be done with a pen and paper well before any pull starts. Paragon has been good at this. Look at the method video and the way they dealt with spores or whatever, it was chaotic vs the way paragon dealt with them by clustering players in one location and running away before they spawn and conveniently mowing them down afterwards. Leadership/planning/organization is the difference. I seriously doubt a hunter(or any other class) in paragon pulls more dps or is "better" in any meaningful way than a hunter in method, ensidia or vodka.

I agree that paragon excel when it comes to strategic planning, development of tactics and the operationalization of these and this is most likely what gives them the edge in the race. You are however wrong when suggesting that our way of dealing with the molten elementals was chaotic. It was everything but chaotic. Using a our singletarget tactic requires healers to really play well and dps to not hug world in flames since the adds are still meleeing during that ability. What might appear random and chaotic in our video is carefullly orchestrated and takes more coordination than an aoe tactic.

With that being said I believe the simplest solution is always the best, leading me to think that paragons tactic is superior to ours. It is essentially what allows them to bring three healers instead of our five. We went for that exact aoe tactic early on, but dismissed it on grounds of being impossible with the classes we had available. All an aoe tactic takes to excecute is an addon with a proper timer and the classes neccessary to aoe. I dont intend in any way to diminish paragons achievement, I would also have chosen their tactic if I could, I merely assert what I stated above: A singletarget strategy is as far away from bruteforcing the encounter as you can get.

[Ferg]

Everyone saying C'thun and M'uru haven't ever really raided heroic encounters, C'thun wasn't even the hardest boss of his expansion and M'uru was downed pre-nerf in like 2 days.

[cleotaurus]

What makes paragon successful is not what most people think it is. It is not because they have inhuman reflexes or are geniuses(this is not the nobel prize in physicis afterall, just wow). What makes paragon more successful vis-a-vis its competitors is better planning/theorycrafting a.k.a finding gimmicks and optimal raid composition/strategy. Many people simply smash their heads against bosses without taking the time to think about the various synergies different classes bring. A lot can be done with a pen and paper well before any pull starts. Paragon has been good at this. Look at the method video and the way they dealt with spores or whatever, it was chaotic vs the way paragon dealt with them by clustering players in one location and running away before they spawn and conveniently mowing them down afterwards. Leadership/planning/organization is the difference. I seriously doubt a hunter(or any other class) in paragon pulls more dps or is "better" in any meaningful way than a hunter in method, ensidia or vodka. I wish the "groupie" mentality of some folks on these forums would stop. There is a big difference between raiding wow at a high level vs top world athletes. If an average person had a 1000 years to practice basketball he/she would still not be like Michael Jordan or swim as well as Michael Phelps or play golf like Tiger Woods in his prime, etc. whereas you could rise to the top in raiding if you put your mind to it and found 9/24 other people who felt the same way.

I disagree with this entirely. There have been many studies on the subjects of professional sports and what sets players apart and by far the defining factor that makes those who are legendary at their game is by far simply the amount of time they put in training their game, and other uncontrollable environmental factors that allowed them the opportunity to apply their skillset in a way that will earn them professional acclaim. What set Michael Jordan apart was that he wanted success and applied himself more than any other player in the game.

And in this case it is no different. Paragon simply wanted the world first more than any other group of players, and applied the tools available to do it.

[Izuria]

This discussion isn't really possible without defining what is hard.

In my opinion, Yogg-0 wasn't hard as such but you really had to be lucky and hope for a lot of dodging in the last phase. There was no fire, no meteors flying from heaven. All there was were some tentacles that required focused DPS and a lot of small mechanisms that all added up to a "hard" encounter in terms of damage and healing, but not in terms of actual skills such as movement, reflexes and stuff like that.

In my opinion it's either Ragnaros or Lich King, but I have only killed LK 25 HC with 30% buffs so I can't really give a valid opinion on it. I'm leaning towards Lich King simply because I think rotations in general was harder back then.

[WingsofLiberty]

Well, here's my humble opinion on it.

Yogg+0-was clearly overtuned especially in the 3rd phase with a very tight enrage timer. I doubt he would have been able to be killed even with ToC gear, hadn't it been for the nerfs.

LK HC-was CLEARLY overtuned and in my opinion, Blizzard made the fight with the buff in mind.

Rag HC-was overtuned health wise and required certain class stacking and only 3 healers due to the meteors(even more personal opinion:the fight itself was a clusterfuck in terms of mechanics. It really seemed to me like the designers added all the abilities they had thought about for one sole encounter: Ragnaros)

M'uru-required extreme coordination and I really liked how unlike the others didn't require extreme dps while everything else was negligible, overall it was appropiately intense for all the members so that is why I call it as the hardest fight from my pov.

Necro'ing a thread -Azshira

[hasslehoof]

pre-nerf 25hc, yes

was too easy after the nerfs.

[cyqu]

None of what you said just contradicted my point at all, YES it was progression, but it wasn't majorly important, Ensidia and a few other guilds after Stars had killed it said that they didn't try very hard to get the world first. and If they said it was mathematically impossible they were almost right with the amount of execution it needed and dps while kiting the immortal adds. So I'm not talking out of my ass.
Stars only just managed to do it even, with the warlock stacking etc.

it was only mathematically impossible because the math used was using tanks to taunt the adds out of the group rather then hunters.

Well, here's my humble opinion on it.

Yogg+0-was clearly overtuned especially in the 3rd phase with a very tight enrage timer. I doubt he would have been able to be killed even with ToC gear, hadn't it been for the nerfs.

LK HC-was CLEARLY overtuned and in my opinion, Blizzard made the fight with the buff in mind.

Rag HC-was overtuned health wise and required certain class stacking and only 3 healers due to the meteors(even more personal opinion:the fight itself was a clusterfuck in terms of mechanics. It really seemed to me like the designers added all the abilities they had thought about for one sole encounter: Ragnaros)

M'uru-required extreme coordination and I really liked how unlike the others didn't require extreme dps while everything else was negligible, overall it was appropiately intense for all the members so that is why I call it as the hardest fight from my pov.

wut

[Azshira]

This discussion had it's time and was necro'd, the poster received a large infraction for it. Closing.