What do you think the hardest encounter in game was (at its prime)?

[Lord Pebbleton]

I don't have a lot of experience. But i killed Deathwing with a pug, heroic Ragnaros on the 5th try, Garrosh on the 20th or so.
I'd say Garrosh.

[Deleted]

I would have expected more Lei Shen HM in this thread. Weren't there many people comparing him to Ragnaros HM?
I have done neither of them pre-nerf so I can't really compare them, it's really a genuine question.

Because blizzard has become better at tuning encounters to be actually killable when guilds first reach them. Also he was far from as bugged as other encounters, so obviously he was easier... right? I mean no one killed those encounters before they were fixed.

[brunnor]

H:Rag, H:LK, Yogg0, Muru, H:LeiShen...

Mentions - Empress, 4Horsemen and Ascendant Council.

All on max player level of course. AC, LK and Rag were pretty joke on 10s compared to their 25man counter parts.

[PrairieChicken]

Zorlok before enrf

[zoomgpally]

and when they released it not a single guild in the world could enter it, the comparison still makes no sense.

Yes it does, the next raid patch was finished and released before the previous was cleared.

[Khelek]

M'uru because...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66C7dMq7u30

[cherb]

wtf r u talking about?? killing kaelthas ( and vash) was a REQUIREMENT to even enter black temple, up until they removed the attunement many months later

Kael still didn't die on live servers until after the 2.1 BT patch.

[Senen]

I would have expected more Lei Shen HM in this thread. Weren't there many people comparing him to Ragnaros HM?
I have done neither of them pre-nerf so I can't really compare them, it's really a genuine question.

Another one that hasn't been mentionned but may deserve to is pre-nerf Al'Akir 25HM.
Most HM bosses are nerf before the first kill when they are stupidly tuned (Zor'lok HM comes to mind), but Al'Akir was actually killed by one guild before this deserved nerf.

[Noomz]

C'thun from Vanilla and Heroic Ragnaros from Cataclysm.

[klaps_05]

done every encounter in wow before any nerfs/fixes, tbh so far only rag 25 hc has come close to being really hard. mostly because the timers were extremely tight and you had to dodge couple oneshotable abilities.

[Mexa]

Mimiron HM

[Austilias]

1) Pre-Nerf C'thun (No one killed him)
2) 0% Buff LK Heroic (No one killed him)
3) 4 Horsemen Naxx 40 (Often argued to be harder than KT 40 was)
4) Yogg-Saron (Alone in the Dark)
5) Heroic Ragnaros
6) Heroic Garrosh

[Breccia]

I would have guessed Heroic Rag. A lot of people didn't get past that at level.

EDIT: Wait, hold on.

done every encounter in wow before any nerfs/fixes, tbh so far only rag 25 hc has come close to being really hard. mostly because the timers were extremely tight and you had to dodge couple oneshotable abilities.

1) Pre-Nerf C'thun (No one killed him)
2) 0% Buff LK Heroic (No one killed him)
3) 4 Horsemen Naxx 40 (Often argued to be harder than KT 40 was)
4) Yogg-Saron (Alone in the Dark)
5) Heroic Ragnaros
6) Heroic Garrosh

You can't possibly both be right.

[Snuzzfizzle]

Al'ar pre-nerf.
Soulstone everyone, bring at least 3 hunters for their snake traps and hope for the best.
Do neither and fail every time.

[Slagge]

Sunwell - M'uru, <The guild slayer>.

Haha have to agree. My guild at the time took a break at Muru as many wiped them tired of raiding there.

[Senen]

done every encounter in wow before any nerfs/fixes

No, you haven't. No one has, actually.
Even considering a close statement "done every encounter in wow before any nerf/fix has been applied to them after the wf kill", I'm pretty sure there doesn't exist a single person in the world who could claim such a thing.

[Raiju]

EDIT: Wait, hold on.

You can't possibly both be right.

Alenarien is correct on 1.

4. was also nerfed the evening before he got killed, although as I'm aware these nerfs weren't crucial for stars kill?

The other guy is BS'ing.

[Teebu]

Hilarious that people mention M'uru. The hardest part was convincing other guilds Shamans to join your guild and go resto.
Also of course all the bugged fights like Kael and C'thun. It is not difficult to do something that is impossible, it is simply impossible. If you cannot do it, then it's not a factor of difficulty. Remember, both of those bosses were killed rapidly after bugfixes.

I'm tthinking Ragnaros myself. Phase 3 with the insane DPS check and phase 4, I still don't feel like any boss has had such a big positioning emphasis as that.

[Larynx]

Hilarious that people mention M'uru. The hardest part was convincing other guilds Shamans to join your guild and go resto.
Also of course all the bugged fights like Kael and C'thun. It is not difficult to do something that is impossible, it is simply impossible. If you cannot do it, then it's not a factor of difficulty. Remember, both of those bosses were killed rapidly after bugfixes.

I'm tthinking Ragnaros myself. Phase 3 with the insane DPS check and phase 4, I still don't feel like any boss has had such a big positioning emphasis as that.

Also mandatory guild profession reroll to LW, and all the other mandatory class stacking.

TBC was not comparable to WOTLK and beyond. Muru mechanically was fucking simple as fuck, his health/damage were just massively overtuned and required preparations mentioned above that most guilds couldn't achieve. Thus, he killed guilds because they literally would be unable to progress if they couldn't find the bandaids to fix this encounter. Here's the fight breakdown for people:

Muru stands in the center of a boring room shooting lasers for raid damage every second throughout the fight at random people
Adds spawn
Get Muru low enough, and he pops out as Entropius, who has a stacking damage increase. So, it's a generic burn phase.

Not very complicated. It's a generic 2 phase add fight.

That's how most Pre-WOTLK (really comparable raiding only came about during TOC, even) raids worked. Most of the effort involved are before the raid even started, and you just did the raid for the cinematic "omfg this is so cool" from killing all your favorite villains.

[Deleted]

For me personally i would say the 3 hardest encounter i've come across was:

1. M'uru, Oh my god after the first 3 days of whipes i still saw no sign of improvment it was for good reason called "The guildslayer", so much frustration and anger over that fight feelt impossible although after a week or so we started to make some improvment but my god it was nothing i had encountered before! The feeling when he finally went down is one of my brightest memories i have from this game. I very much doubt i ever will come close to that feeling again. There was no different difficulties bullshit we have today either your good enough (atleast improve over time) to kill the boss or you're not simple as that.

2. LK heroic for me probably the most "epic" fight so to speak being the the Lich king and all took a good month from reaching him until downing him but oh man the feelings when i look back at it, you just dont get that today, unfortunately.

3. Kae'l Thas i know i expected him to be hard but as you could fairly easy roll over the first Fel reaver and that other geomancer guy i didnt expect him to be that fucking stronk, The bird took some time to down but Kael'Thas probably one of the most diverse raid encounters to the day, flyin weapons legendary shields and shit that was sick.