Lich King 25HC toughest boss in WoW History?

[Reclaimer]

People saying AQ40 was the hardest. From what I have seen its tank and spank all the way with a little " Kill the adds " " Stay out of this " Use a frost attack on him " really really basic and boring stuff.

But like out of the 40 people 20 didn't know what they were doing.
Yeah sure, you attempt aq40 the bosses from twin emps and beyond without knowing tactics..... you would not have lasted long before being replaced or kicked.

1 sided. Maybe for you it was like that. But lets talk about Twin Emps for a second " Have this guy tank this boss and have a mage tank this guy. Oh yeah kill adds " Yeah that sounds really hard for 40 people. Sorry but from what i can i guess AQ40 was just a massive gear and listen check. Back in Van raiding was a fresh play-style not many people was used to it. if there was mechanics like heroic Rag or LK back when nobody would have downed shit. C'thun was the hardest? Because he was Broken? Really?
lol you can't count " Broken " bossies. Fights have to fair for then to count.

[Deleted]

C'thun was very hard per se, the bug made him broken. Twin emps were hard for many variables. 'what you have seen' with you 90 char doesnt mean shit. You have to think the skills the characters had back then.

[Renx]

Comparing 2004-2006 Raiding to 2013 raiding it just doesn't work. They're totally different now, classes are no where near what they used to be. Hell mechanics in the game have changed. People tend to factor out what made Vanilla(TBC also) slower in terms of raiding outside of the difficulty. A lot less overall gear to the raid, attunement restrictions being cock blocks for recruitment and so on. Not saying this is what made the pacing "slower" in terms of progression, but it did have a heavy impact on quite a few guilds having to regress to progress. Nowdays it's not really the case anymore. There's A LOT more blood out there to recruit that can perform at your current progression.

There was just a lot more steps in raiding back then to be successful compared to now. As for encounter difficulty really only someone who's had "Current Tier" experience on X and X encounter could give solid information on that. Everything else is just based on word of mouth or looking at a time stamp and thinking "X boss took 1 month longer, IT MUST BE HARDER" which isn't always.

Also people really should learn the difference between "Overturned" and "Tightly tuned" - Seems people are getting them mixed up. As for the OPs question. No 25 HLK isn't the "Hardest" boss, I'd say it's in the top 10 if not top 5. The whole limited attempt thing really was annoying and cock blocked my guild back then due to it. It was for sure a challenging and well made encounter though! But it didn't make me want to tear my house down like M'uru (Outside of Looking up and seeing 1 attempt left with another night of raiding still left"

[anaxie]

Lich King heroic wasn't hard. Valks just had so much hp after his hotfix buff <thus making the stacking buff mandatory> that if you didn't warlock RNG or have perfect poisitions/stuns it would snowball. Once you could kill valks the fight died. Fight was easy.

Hardest thing about HLK was praying your bad raiders didnt get Defile

Hardest thing about Rag H was praying retards didn't get Fixated in P4

Both these things are fixed with a sizeable bench roster.

HOWEVER, both of those are in the top 10 greatest fights in WoW history imo

Ret Exp T4-T16H

[Deleted]

False.
They were PTR back then. I wiped in Skeram in the PTR so please dont lie.
The hard part of 4h were to get the warriors and gearing them. C'thun post fix were harder than 4h. Yeah C'thun were bugged but it was a pretty hard encounter without the bug too. The pro guilds kill it quick after the fix cos they had mastered it wiping and wiping in the buged version (and you technically could kill him with the bug but you had to be very lucky with the spawn point of the tentacles).

Some bosses back then were bugged but a lot of them were very hard given the poor skills of the classes back then. The mechanics were simpler but much more unforgiving. I think for example HC Rag, H LS and 0-yogg were harder than anything from Vanilla / BC but i feel the difficulty avergae of the whole raids were high those days than today.

And answering the question: No. LK wasnt even the hardest boss from his ex-pack.

Ah now that he says it i remember playing on a PTR when Battlegrounds were tested... don't know about raiding though. People didnt have that much reason to play on PTR anyways... nowadays lots of people play simply because there is no content on live. Also there wasn't much "productive" testing as it was just a few ours of lagging, disconnects and bugs.

And Cthun wasnt harder than 4H what are you smoking? During that time a was at a quite mediocre guild (i was in hardcore guilds before and after AQ40 till Cataclysm and then Top 150 Semi Hardcore) and still we got him down quite fast without having tryed him a lot before it was fixed. P1 was all about making a picture with MS-Paint where everyone has to stand before and after Dark Glare, P2 you needed decent Damage Dealer to avoid getting overrun by Tentacles.
4 H required much more preparation (not only gearing warriors) in terms of strategy, the same or more discipline by everyone in terms of positioning and a big part of the raid had much responsibility meaning that if they failed it was a wipe... which wasn't the case in most fights in Classic, because 20 good people could carry 20 bad people.

[fiestatastic]

Perhaps but this thread is about the hardest boss and i can tell you from first hand knowledge that the bosses in aq40 were the hardest bosses I have every fought in wow to date, The only boss that comes close is yogg 25 no lights.

But as difficulty goes vanilla had a huge amount of super difficult bosses. People today do not know what difficult raiding is.

This stuff makes me LOL IRL always, thx! We have a few vanilla raiders in my guild and other than one of them (who is still not good, but isn't terrible) they are all terrible. One of them is often telling us about how he killed original rag when it was current content and is without a doubt the worst raider I've ever played with, we try to avoid his comments of "bring me! bring me!" when someone doesn't show up and we have open spots even for flex raid he'd be able to manage to find some way to wipe us. I've done dungeons with the guy and he tanks and people will try to vote kick him and then leave, every single time.

If you had to raid with a group full of people like that, OF COURSE the encounter is going to be super hard! So yeah, I guess people today don't know what difficult raiding is.

[Deleted]

No, I dont think it is/was the hardest boss, Imo it was Archimonde, there were some hard mechanics which you could master and then beat the encounter.
Lich king HC (25) just felt overtuned... I would relate to one of the posts above me as Blizz really ruined raiding for me with this.

Im not a big fan of the heroic difficulty, as it is just an overtuned version of the same encounter - an "excuse" for not doing more unique content.
And yes, there is a huge difference now if youd want to compare original, tbc raiding with raiding as it is now. Encounters are now overtuned which is tryint to substitute for the lack of encounter mechanics which goes with class and abillity numbing to simply being a couple of button mashing and avoiding one or two abilities that mean death/wipe - not really clever mechanics in my books.

Thats really that for me

Back when I started each encounter felt different for me, now you just go in, face more or less same mechanics, the only measure is if you have enough dps or raw healing to beat the fight or not. Beat the raid, beat the SAME but HC version of it and be done with it. This is where the game got boring for me and Im really sad abt it because I had some very good fun playing WoW.

[Deleted]

My experience was the opposite. I killed 4h very fast once our warriors got their gear. I feel C'thun was much less unforgiven than 4h.

[anaxie]

No, I dont think it is/was the hardest boss, Imo it was Archimonde, there were some hard mechanics which you could master and then beat the encounter.
Lich king HC (25) just felt overtuned... I would relate to one of the posts above me as Blizz really ruined raiding for me with this.

Im not a big fan of the heroic difficulty, as it is just an overtuned version of the same encounter - an "excuse" for not doing more unique content.
And yes, there is a huge difference now if youd want to compare original, tbc raiding with raiding as it is now. Encounters are now overtuned which is tryint to substitute for the lack of encounter mechanics which goes with class and abillity numbing to simply being a couple of button mashing and avoiding one or two abilities that mean death/wipe - not really clever mechanics in my books.

Thats really that for me

Overtuned translates to "I am unable to clear heroics" Afterall no heroic raider would say such a thing.

Heroic is progression. If normal was the real encounter... LOL? Holy shit they would of lost my sub years ago. Beat the patch the first 3 days. No thank you.

[Ausr]

Fools, we all know the hardest boss was.

Lord Rhyolith and his douchebag never working foot mechanics.

/grumble

[paralleluniverse]

#1 Ouro - 87 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 26th April 2006.
#2 C'thun - 86 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 25th April 2006.
#3 tied Chromaggus - 74 days from Ebonroc's death. 25th September 2005.
#3 tied Ragnaros - 74 days from Majordomo Executus' death. 25th April 2005.
#5 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 70 days from Stars' first pull. 7th July 2009
#6 High Astromancer Solarian - 59 days from Magtheridon's death (unlocking the Eye). 24th April 2007
#7 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
#8 Al'ar <Phoenix God> - 48 days from Magtheridon's death. 13th April 2007
#9 The Lich King (Heroic 25) - 42 Days from Heroic Putricide's death (first pull). March 26th 2010
#10 Heroic Al'Akir 25 - 36 days from Heroic Conclave of Wind's death. January 22nd 2011.
#11 Kael'thas Sunstrider <Lord of the Blood Elves> - 31 days from Solarian's death (first pull). 25th May 2007
#12 Magtheridon - 29 days from the first level 70 25-man raid. 24th February 2007
#13 Lady Vashj <Coilfang Matron> - 17 days from being unlocked. 29th March 2007
#14 Leotheras the Blind - 16 days from Hydross' death. 4th March 2007
#15 Loatheb - 14 days from Heigan's death. 17th July 2006
#16 tied Heigan the Unclean - 13 days from Noth the Plaguebringer's death. 3rd July 2006
#16 tied Hydross the Unstable <Duke of Currents> - 13 days from Gruul's death (Unlocking Serpentshrine). 16th February 2007
#16 tied Heroic Cho'gall - 13 days from Heroic Ascendant Council's death. 15th January 2011.
#16 tied Heroic Nefarian - 13 days from Heroic Atramedes' death. January 9th 2011.
#20 tied Archimonde <The Defiler> - 10 days from Azgalor's death. 9th June 2007
#20 tied Gothik the Harvester - 10 days from Instructor Razuvious' death. 30th June 2006
#22 tied Mimiron Firefighter 25 - 8 days from Ensidia's first pull. May 1st 2009
#22 tied Sapphiron - 8 days from Four Horsemen dying. 2nd September 2006
#22 tied Gruul the Dragonkiller - 8 days from Maulgar's death. 3rd February 2007
#25 Reliquary of Lost Souls - 6 days from Gurtogg's death. 2nd June 2007
#26 tied Kel'Thuzad - 5 days from Sapphiron's death. 7th September 2006
#26 tied Kil'jaeden <The Deceiver> - 5 days from the opening of the third Sunwell gate. 25th May 2008
#26 tied Sinestra - 5 days from Heroic Cho'gall's death. January 20th 2011.
#29 tied Heroic Anub'arak 25 - 4 days from Heroic Twin Val'kyr's death. September 6th 2009.
#29 tied M'uru. 4 days from the opening of the second Sunwell gate. 4th May 2008


****

LK 25s difficulty is overrated due to the pacing mechanism of only allowing 50 attempts per week on the boss. It took 6 weeks to kill, but that was in actuality only ~325 wipes. Had there been no limitation on attempts a serious raiding guild would go through that in a couple of days learning a boss. So the real difficulty of LK was the limited attempts mechanic, which was total bullshit.

I also agree with Mu'ru being the most challenging at the time. It was the tightest tuned I've seen anything, and the first boss that really made sure every single person in the raid had a job they had to execute flawlessly throughout the fight.

Where does Ragnaros (Firelands) fit on this list.

This is arguably the hardest boss ever. Al'akir, H LK, Yogg 0 are also probably about as hard.

Not surprised to see so many Vanilla bosses on that list despite them all having very simple encounter mechanics, because tuning and balance wasn't as good back then and player skill was much lower.

[Aphrel]

will ppl stop posting that rediculus list? c'thun and ouro was bugged.. my guild downed both of them the very day the bugs were fixed.

the hardest boss is definetly lk 25hc 0% but thats simply because he was tuned retardedly hard.. it was a boring fight with simple mechanics tuned to hit like a nuke.. does tanks getting randmly oneshotted form time to time sounds like your view of a hardboss? IT sounds like badly designed encounter to me. and thats what lk was on low%.

and yogg+0? finding a needle in a haystack (fidning 5 adds in a group of 20+ adds with a debuff and have ppl taunt them out be4 the explode in 10 seconds.)

M'uru, luck.. (tanks not gettign randomly oneshotted due to unlucky streaks of avoidance? sounds like fun lets do it.. orbs spawning at a random place in the room (/pray not to many dps were near it or we will die from softenrage and its nothing we can do about it..) andother great rng mechanic.. oh and (boss tuned to tight? better rely on locks enslaved demons and pray to god the dont break midfight.. ) why not just play the lottery for loot? TL;dr easy fights tuned hard and based on rng mechanics sucks balls.

but rag 25 hc, was a great fight. and among the other insanly hard fights blizz have thrown at us this one was actually hard due to its mechanics and not due to retarded tuning.
this was imo the ahrdest and best encounter blizz ever have done. (and its seconded by leishen hc imo).

[Yalingo]

Rag hc was probably the greatest encounter blizzard have ever designed.

Also did everyone forget he had to be nerfed before he was killed? Enrage timer had to be increased by 2 minutes. Also the triangle strategy on the breaths was never intended which would have made it even harder if the whole raid was dealing with dropping superheated stacks in phase 4.

[Obsession]

--Irrelevant statistics, imo--


****

LK 25s difficulty is overrated due to the pacing mechanism of only allowing 50 attempts per week on the boss. It took 6 weeks to kill, but that was in actuality only ~325 wipes. Had there been no limitation on attempts a serious raiding guild would go through that in a couple of days learning a boss. So the real difficulty of LK was the limited attempts mechanic, which was total bullshit.

I also agree with Mu'ru being the most challenging at the time. It was the tightest tuned I've seen anything, and the first boss that really made sure every single person in the raid had a job they had to execute flawlessly throughout the fight.

I REALLY hate information like this, the amount people raid during progression has increased exponentially since Vanilla and BC. Getting world buffs, and things like that, which were "necessary" because they existed, and qutie frankly, people were terrible at min/maxing, reduced the attempts you get per night by a lot. If you took a guild such as Method or Blood Legion which raid 14+ hours a day during progression, Ouro wouldn't have taken 87 days. LK's 50 attempt/week was irrelevant, we used alt raids for practice. Lich King at 0% was theoretically impossible based on the damage requirement until much better gear, it would have easily topped this list if the stacking buff wasn't introduced almost immediately.

Mechanically, the bosses in AQ40 that people like to nostalgically say were hard, can't hold a candle to Yogg0/LK/etc.

[Sierra85]

was it Defile what made things difficult? especially to oceanic raiders with higher latency....

[Xe4ro]

Aha... ahaa......

What?

yeah alliance had problems with mass poison debuffs (no shaman totem )

This stuff makes me LOL IRL always, thx! We have a few vanilla raiders in my guild and other than one of them (who is still not good, but isn't terrible) they are all terrible. One of them is often telling us about how he killed original rag when it was current content and is without a doubt the worst raider I've ever played with, we try to avoid his comments of "bring me! bring me!" when someone doesn't show up and we have open spots even for flex raid he'd be able to manage to find some way to wipe us. I've done dungeons with the guy and he tanks and people will try to vote kick him and then leave, every single time.

If you had to raid with a group full of people like that, OF COURSE the encounter is going to be super hard! So yeah, I guess people today don't know what difficult raiding is.

Yeah of course all people that raided during classic must be bad because you have a few bad guys in your guild that played back then? Amazing logic you have there.

[Matt0193]

I think yes. Nobody kill him before 5% nerf hit so yes.

While statistically this is true, Paragon had several very close attempts at 0% and without a doubt would have had it down without any buffs if they had unlimited attempts.

was it Defile what made things difficult? especially to oceanic raiders with higher latency....

It was Defile + every 2nd wave of Valks. Defile on it's own was fine but having all of 2s to move out of Defile once people had been picked up by Valks and then get the Valks to 50%, which was made harder with everyone who fucked up with a melee heavier composition. Once you made it to p3 2-3 times and had a good crack at it you had it killed generally. For my guild at the time we had 2 solid p3 wipes (1 to Enrage, 1 shortly before it) before we got into a good p3 with enough people up to beat the enrage timer.

[ataraxey]

Defiles and Valks were the reason this fight sucked so much, agree Thassarian.

[Grinco]

From personal experience it was either 25 HC LK or Illidan. Both are very different as encounters and in our guild we had a lot of change regarding the roster so hard to decide. I guess Illidan was harder regarding execution but Lich King might've been harder in the numbers department such as DPS and so on.

Although, from a "spectators" view the best guilds in the world seemed to have a lot of trouble on Ragnaros, Dark Animus, Siegecrafter if I'd have to choose one of the most recent ones. It's hard to decide which one is the hardest. At least in my opinion.

[RoKPaNda]

People keep saying these bizarre things like there was no min/maxing in vanilla, or nobody had rotations, and there were no mechanics. But then I remember that the vast vast vast majority of people playing now never got to see any of that raid content when it was new. Most "raiding guilds" in vanilla, never even finished Molten Core, and all of MC except for Rag was really faceroll.

We most definitely had rotations at level 60. Min/maxing, while not called that, was definitely a thing. And some boss mechanics would ruin your day. Remember Razorgore? Of course you don't, because most people never got through that fight if they even attempted it. It had nothing to do with rotations or any of that, it was a pure skill fight. If you were bad, you lost. Chromaggus? Nefarian? And then, if you made it through BWL and got it on farm status and geared up, AQ40 kicked you right in the face. Like right from the start all the way to twin emps and twin emps were brutal beyond anything up to that point in the game. That fight destroyed raiding guilds. I don't mean it was just difficult, I mean it literally killed raiding guilds. So many guilds failed at that fight and disbanded. C'thun was literally unkillable for quite awhile.

Naxx was difficult, but Naxx also had some push-over bosses. Then 4 Horsemen was pretty much Twin Emps all over again, and KT was pretty horrible too. Kael/Vashj in BC were pretty great. Illidan was an total pushover. Once we had access to him he died in like one reset. By far the biggest disappointment during my time as a raider. M'uru was painful, KJ was painful, and then everything between that and hard mode Mimiron and Yogg was laughable. ToGC was a joke. And then ICC was the point where I basically stopped raiding outside of helping a casual guild that had some of my friends in it.

Some current stuff looks very difficult. I'm not trying to take anything away from modern WoW, but every time I see these weird "THERE WAS NO MIN/MAXING AND NOBODY HAD A ROTATION!" posts I just have to roll my eyes. Maybe you didn't have an optimal rotation .. but we did. O.o