MoP Raid Bosses Listed Easiest to Hardest for 10m (11/01/12)

[apinksquash]

EDIT:
There is now a survey for you to rate the bosses' difficulty! You can see the results live.
Important: You do NOT need to have extensive experience to fill out the survey! Just fill in the bosses you've worked on and leave the ones you haven't gotten to yet blank! It's that simple! Anyone who's downed at least some of the normal mode bosses can participate.


Take the survey here:
http://tinyurl.com/aglsmeu

See the results here: (228 responses as of 11/07/12)
http://tinyurl.com/axlbe3z

Chart that should hopefully be updating dynamically:




Original Post:

[This is my personal opinion and for 10 man difficulty. Listed easiest to hardest. Different teams are different and this list will likely not look the same for you. I left off bosses we haven't at least pulled.]

1. (normal) Stoneguard
2. (normal) Feng
3. (normal) Gara'jal
4. (normal) Spirit Kings
5. (normal) Will or the Emperor
6. (normal) Elegon
7. (normal) Blade Lord Ta'yak
8. (normal) Imperial Vizier Zor'lok, (heroic) Stoneguard
9. (normal) Garalon [after enrage timer nerf]
10. (normal) Grand Empress Shek'zeer
11. (normal) Wind Lord Mel'jarak
12. (heroic) Feng
13. (normal) Amber-Shaper Un'sok
14. (heroic) Elegon
15. (heroic) Gara'jal
16. (heroic) Spirit Kings

Notes: Some of the bosses are very close in difficulty. Stoneguard has almost no dps check, but requires more awareness/coordination than Visier Zor'lok. Visier Zor'lok requires very little coordination, but has a higher dps and healing requirement than heroic stoneguard. Garalon with the enrage nerf should be pretty easy for most groups; it will just take some pulls to learn the fight. Teams without cleaves might have a harder time on him. Amber-Shaper might deserve to be above heroic Elegon, but I think my team might have been doing P3 wrong, so I'll keep it below for now - that Raxxed person who posts on here from the Blue Moon guild should give their opinion on him.

[Tasien]

From personal experience I would rank normal Elegon above normal Will. Elegon took my group 25 wipes to get right, Will took 3.

[apinksquash]

From personal experience I would rank normal Elegon above normal Will. Elegon took my group 25 wipes to get right, Will took 3.

You actually aren't the first person/guild to tell me this. I've updated the list to reflect that.

Our healers actually had more mana issues on Will the first week of release than Elegon, but that's probably just because we were being bad and taking unnecessary damage on it.


Also, did Empress tonight and once you figure out how to do Phase 2, Phase 3 is a pushover. We had two of our dps DC in phase 3, and one of them couldn't use any abilities when he got back - and we still easily killed her. Phase 2 is the only tricky part.

[PalawinFC]

Amber-Shaper might deserve to be above heroic Elegon, but I think my team might have been doing P3 wrong, so I'll keep it below for now - that Raxxed person who posts on here from the Blue Moon guild should give their opinion on him.

Amber shaper really isnt that hard, once you get the mechanics down there's no challenging dps or healing requirement and its just about execution of the constructs. Only explanation I can think of for your guild struggling is mismanaging the constructs, given your progression on other fights.

There are a few others I pretty strongly think are out of order but, as you said, its going to depend on composition and which elements of your raid group are strongest.

[apinksquash]

There are a few others I pretty strongly think are out of order but, as you said, its going to depend on composition and which elements of your raid group are strongest.

Hey, thanks for you input. And yeah, I think we were just making amber-shaper harder on ourselves by doing a couple things the wrong way.

I am curious which fights you feel are strongly misplaced, just to get more perspectives on things.

[Xami]

I would put Spirit Kings before the Stone Guards. While the overall difficulty may be about the same, Stone Guards can be a bit tricky depending on the combo. Of course that could have changed with the nerf to Jasper Chains.

[Spotnick]

Elegon is way harder than the first 2 bosses of Heart of Fear.

[apinksquash]

Elegon is way harder than the first 2 bosses of Heart of Fear.

Anyone else find this to be true for them, or not to be? Please speak up.

[PalawinFC]

I am curious which fights you feel are strongly misplaced, just to get more perspectives on things.

Sure thing, from my raid groups experience the order of difficulty is probably something like;

1. (normal) Spirit Kings
2. (normal) Gara'jal
3. (normal) Stoneguard
4. (normal) Feng
5. (normal) Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
6. (normal) Blade Lord Ta'yak
7. (normal) Will or the Emperor
8. (normal) Elegon
9. (normal) Wind Lord Mel'jarak
10. (heroic) Feng
11. (heroic) Stoneguard
12. (normal) Garalon (even pre-nerf... we optimised dps big time for a 5:05 kill)
13. (normal) Amber-Shaper Un'sok
14. (normal) Grand Empress Shek'zeer
15. (heroic) Elegon
16. (heroic) Gara'jal
17. (heroic) Spirit Kings

This is just a rough list off the top of my head.

[Maxvla]

Normal Stone Guard is actually not that easy. Tanks have to constantly watch the quillen's energy, which one is overloading, swapping at the right energy... the raid has to watch for multiple ground effects and chains while trying to be in range and target swapping to the 2 quillen that are near each other. Garajal normal is really easy. You almost have to try to fail at it. Spirit Kings normal is almost Gunship level of retard proof. Normal Will is not too difficult, only the tanks have to do anything special. I'd put Kings then Garajal then Will then Stone Guard normal = Feng with Elegon the hardest normal in MV.

Zor'lok is pretty forgiving, but there are several things to watch for. Slightly more difficult than the easy bosses. Ta'yak is not too difficult, but the final phase is deceptively difficult since it looks like a fun 'free' end, but raid damage is pretty high even if nobody gets caught in a tornado. Garalon normal is mechanically easy, but requires either healer class stacking, high gear level, or both to counter the very high raid damage. Mel'Jarak is actually pretty fun. We didn't have our best comp on when we killed it. It was about medium difficulty. Mostly this comes down to healing cooldowns for the spinning blades. Gave a few attempts at Un'sok. Doesn't seem too bad, but there is a lot to learn. Best attempt was around 50% out of a handful of pulls with people learning the construct abilities.

[BigLeague]

Sure thing, from my raid groups experience the order of difficulty is probably something like;

1. (normal) Spirit Kings
2. (normal) Gara'jal
3. (normal) Stoneguard
4. (normal) Feng
5. (normal) Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
6. (normal) Blade Lord Ta'yak
7. (normal) Will or the Emperor
8. (normal) Elegon
9. (normal) Wind Lord Mel'jarak
10. (heroic) Feng
11. (heroic) Stoneguard
12. (normal) Garalon (even pre-nerf... we optimised dps big time for a 5:05 kill)
13. (normal) Amber-Shaper Un'sok
14. (normal) Grand Empress Shek'zeer
15. (heroic) Elegon
16. (heroic) Gara'jal
17. (heroic) Spirit Kings

This is just a rough list off the top of my head.

Raid comp has something to do with that. If you have several bursty specs, Elegon wasn't all that tough. Same with having strong dot classes on Gar'ajal. Garalon was not challenging for us at all once we got the focus swapping down and decided to 2 heal with me using conductivity to heal melee in the leg circles. I would move HcFeng one spot easier as we've had our struggles with Mel'jarak more than Feng. Nice list tho.

[Nakkí]

Just listing MSV Heroic from easiest to most challenging - "personal" experience of course:

* Stone Guard (no jasper or cobalt)
** Feng the Accursed
*** Gara'jal (2nd heroic reset ->)
**** Stone Guard (Jasper + Cobalt)
***** Elegon
******* Will of the Emperor
********* Gara'jal (1st heroic reset)
************** Spirit Kings

[Libertarian]

Wind Lord should be higher up.

[dennisdkramer]

chiming in here

Spirit kings (N) was not only the easiest fight in MSV for my raid group, it was probably the easiest raid encounter I have ever experienced. We had a healer get chomped or something the first attempt and then killed it on our second try.

Will of the emperor (N) was nearly as easy, we killed it the first attempt after deciding to keep all melee focused on adds, which I believe was our fourth attempt.

Stone guards isnt that hard to push through, but doesnt really get easier after you've done it.
Elegon is hard the first time but poses no challenge in subsequent weeks
Feng is really really easy, but you have a chance for your raid to get one-shot by resonance if you're not careful.. does that count as difficulty? idk
Garajal is kind of like elegon, hard to get down and then a loot pinata for all subsequent weeks



Long story short, if we're going to collectively rank difficulty (which i think is actually helpful, for guilds still progressing to get a feel for how they should be doing) we should define whether we're referring to initial difficulty or not.

If we are referring to initial difficulty, yeah, ... spirit kings takes the easy cake

[Keashaa]

Just from what I have experienced so far...

1. (normal) Spirit Kings
2. (normal) Feng
3. (normal) Stoneguard
4. (normal) Gara'jal
5. (normal) Blade Lord Ta'yak
6. (normal) Will or the Emperor
7. (normal) Elegon
8. (heroic) Stoneguard
9. (normal) Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
10. (heroic) Feng
11. (normal) Garalon [after enrage timer nerf]

[apinksquash]

Added a survey to capture the community consensus. See OP.

[Blackmist]

Spirit Kings is possibly the easiest of them so far. Maybe it was seeing it in LFR that made it simpler, but we took it down in just a few attempts. Gara'jal took an evening or two. This is all normal mode ofc, because I'm a nooby baddy scrub-nub.

Overall it's quite nicely tuned though. Far, far better than DS. It's tuned for normal players to spend an evening or two wiping on each boss. Obviously, if you're better than normal, then heroics are tuned for you.

[Bellum]

I completely agree with the results so far. I found Spirit Kings to be the easiest boss in normal MSV. We accidentally 1 shot it while just giving it an "exploratory pull." But heroic is a completely different story. We have been wiping now to H Spirit Kings for over a week. Us being a 3 day/12 hour a week guild, we don't have very much time to dedicate to the boss in comparison to some other guilds. When attempting H Garajal, I got highly frustrated at the RNG of voodoo dolls and at times blamed it for our wipes, when in reality it came down to execution. Now that we've killed Garajal and moved on to Spirit Kings, I can say that I feel stupid for complaining of RNG before. It is so irritating to have to purposefully wipe just because we got Meng second in the order. With over 160 attempts on the boss, I can say that probably 30 to 40 of those were spent wiping it within the first 20 seconds because it happened to be Meng. And honestly, any order other than Subetai>Zian>Meng is insanely difficult. We've had a few close attempts where we would get something like Zian>Meng>Subetai or Subetai>Meng>Zian and wipe due to raiders panicking because of overlapping mechanics. Meng being anything but last seems to cause a huge issue.

[Bisso]

I would have put Garajal or feng first. Feng is so stupidly easy in normal mode, unless you stack up Fire buff with 3rd phase, then it becomes a nightmare, but this is just a timing issue, if this is not happening, this boss is as easy as it can get. We also never wiped or had anyone die on Garajal, ever. Boss fight is simple and there's no movement involved (except for the totem, but they are very easy to deal with too), probably the easiest of all. Stoneguard is in a good spot (3rd) as it ask much to tanks that aren't used to do something else than keep aggro. It was, for a night, a very good way to find out our tanks needed some serious help when they have to look around what's happening on the fight.

[Sygil]

I would have put Garajal or feng first. Feng is so stupidly easy in normal mode, unless you stack up Fire buff with 3rd phase, then it becomes a nightmare, but this is just a timing issue, if this is not happening, this boss is as easy as it can get.

This.

Feng is so easy on normal. The only way to fail is really to have a lot more than 5 fire stacks when you hit 3rd phase (which shouldn't happen anyway).