Top Bosses that remained unkilled the longest.

[Pfeff]

It's funny to me how people think encounters are tuned easier for whatever reason. The truth is, it's the addons and websites that killed raid difficulty. Want to know why vanilla bosses were hard? Pull a boss for the first time without researching tactics and log in using the default UI with no addons. I bet you wipe for a few extra weeks. Not to mention most of the vanilla bosses had maybe 3 mechanics in the entire fight, as opposed to the 20 they have now

[Count Zero]

It's funny to me how people think encounters are tuned easier for whatever reason. The truth is, it's the addons and websites that killed raid difficulty. Want to know why vanilla bosses were hard? Pull a boss for the first time without researching tactics and log in using the default UI with no addons. I bet you wipe for a few extra weeks. Not to mention most of the vanilla bosses had maybe 3 mechanics in the entire fight, as opposed to the 20 they have now

Blizz has even straight up said they have to balance encounters around 3rd-party resources (websites, addons) due to their prevalence. I'll try to find a source on it.

[Pfeff]

Blizz has even straight up said they have to balance encounters around 3rd-party resources (websites, addons) due to their prevalence. I'll try to find a source on it.

That is true, and I've also seen the post. But remember...they are using the last expansions (or tier) addons as a resource, so right off the bat they are already behind the tech curve for addons

[Cernunnos]

4 Horseman still holds the record for longest undefeated encounter with no bug fixes, nerfs, hot fixes or any changes to the encounter from the time it was first attempted to the time it was defeated.

A lot of those bosses on that list were bugged and required a hot fix or a nerf. Cthun, Kael'thas.

[IxilaFA]

4 Horseman still holds the record for longest undefeated encounter with no bug fixes, nerfs, hot fixes or any changes to the encounter from the time it was first attempted to the time it was defeated.

A lot of those bosses on that list were bugged and required a hot fix or a nerf. Cthun, Kael'thas.

Well I guess you can say that 4 Horsemen didn't have any bugs or nerfs, but any fight that requires 8 well-geared Warrior tanks is seriously broken, and if you think otherwise I'll just say I'm glad you don't design raid encounters.

[Deleted]

Well, there was nothing wrong with that. They weren't buggy per se, just required some gear.

[IxilaFA]

Well, there was nothing wrong with that. They weren't buggy per se, just required some gear.

If there is anything wrong with it, that's up to individual opinion. But Blizzard has clearly stated they're against bosses that require just a lot of gear and luck to defeat. So, a fight like the old 4-Horsemen would go against Blizzard's design philosophies either way, thus, broken.

[otaXephon]

One thing to consider when comparing this tier's opening instances and relative difficulty versus T11 (Cata) is that gated instancing has given guilds a lot of time to farm gear. If all 3 instances were available at launch, I'm sure we would have seen a lot larger gaps in the time it took for guilds to kill bosses.

[Marston]

Oh, this thread again.

When did it pop up the first time? Okay, some new bosses were added, but still.

I am not sure, did you write the original thread as well or did you just copy and paste the old one and added missing bosses?

[skitz0129]

Resistance grind.

The bosses weren't more difficult. The prerequisites were just a grindfest.

[Deleted]

Well I guess you can say that 4 Horsemen didn't have any bugs or nerfs, but any fight that requires 8 well-geared Warrior tanks is seriously broken, and if you think otherwise I'll just say I'm glad you don't design raid encounters.

just 8 tanks nothing more didnt have to be super well geared.

[Tomed]

It's funny to me how people think encounters are tuned easier for whatever reason. The truth is, it's the addons and websites that killed raid difficulty. Want to know why vanilla bosses were hard? Pull a boss for the first time without researching tactics and log in using the default UI with no addons. I bet you wipe for a few extra weeks. Not to mention most of the vanilla bosses had maybe 3 mechanics in the entire fight, as opposed to the 20 they have now

A lot of good points in this thread. One thing people don't seem to mention is that players are simply better than they used to be. Many top players Fraps themselves and are trying very hard to improve. Every gear decision is based on heavy theorycrafting backed by math. All DPS rotations/priority lists are optimized through simulation before the game even hits retail. Hell, the very concept of flasking your entire raid didn't even exist back in classic WoW. People take this game a lot more seriously now and that is really the main reason these encounters are finished so quickly.

Execution from these top guilds is near perfect in many of their attempts, and most likely 100% perfect in quite a few as well. They are relying on RNG more often than not and the only thing limiting them from downing these bosses after the first 50 tries or so is their lack of gear.

[cyqu]

just 8 tanks nothing more didnt have to be super well geared.

all with 4p t3, so pretty well geared.

[Nitros14]

You only needed four piece tier 3 if you were going with a six tank strategy where a taunt resist would wipe you.

The eight tank strategy was to avoid the "haha taunt resist you wipe" thing.

[Heenk]

just 8 tanks nothing more didnt have to be super well geared.

Hey everybody, this is a Shit Post. Want to contribute meaningfully to this forum? Don't make shit posts like these

Infracted. If you think a post is shit, then just report it, don't add spam to the thread announcing it to be a shit post.

[PrairieChicken]

Why is criteria for starting point all different(Example - Solarian uses magtheridon kill, while nefarian uses 5/6 kill)?

Why one boss starting from kills from previous tier, and other from last boss?

This thread looks really stupid

[Nellise]

It's funny to me how people think encounters are tuned easier for whatever reason. The truth is, it's the addons and websites that killed raid difficulty. Want to know why vanilla bosses were hard? Pull a boss for the first time without researching tactics and log in using the default UI with no addons. I bet you wipe for a few extra weeks. Not to mention most of the vanilla bosses had maybe 3 mechanics in the entire fight, as opposed to the 20 they have now

Except maybe for MC, these things have always been there. My guild was 2nd Alliance on our server to kill Nefarian in BWL and we certainly had boss mods (CT_Raid), a threat meter (KTM), and looked at a website for help with strats (I remember specifically looking at diagrams for LoS positioning for the 3 drakes).

But you also had funny gating things like Onyxia cloaks that haven't existed since then (which is part of the reason I think Chromaggus took so long). Wasn't it something like only 1-4 cloaks a week could be made if you didn't get scales from somewhere else and and you wanted probably 30 at least?

[KaPe]

Except maybe for MC, these things have always been there. My guild was 2nd Alliance on our server to kill Nefarian in BWL and we certainly had boss mods (CT_Raid), a threat meter (KTM), and looked at a website for help with strats (I remember specifically looking at diagrams for LoS positioning for the 3 drakes).

People always "forget" about vanilla addons. These were even better than what we have today. Now, sure, DBM (called LV back then I think? or, well, bigwigs) didn't put a skull over your head... because raid icons didn't exist back then. I mean, hell, main difficulty of Garr was actually assigning tanks/banish to multiple mobs, without any ability to mark them. On the other hand, Decursive automatically dispelled any debuffs and didn't require any thought. There was automatic heal cancelling. Emergency monitors. Hell, I have hard time believe something like Noth was designed without Decursive in mind.

Also, bosses taking minutes or hours to respawn upon wipe. 15 minute (or 1+ hour) wait after each failed pull? Yeah, that would make bosses live longer, without actually making them difficult.

[RollTide]

Lots of people don't seem to be taking into account that due to staggered release of t14 instances a ton more gear was available for heroic Sha attempts ... if everything had been released at once, Sha would have taken much longer. Other bosses had similar gating to allow for gearing up but not all

Very good point. Sha in blues probably would have stood up FAR longer.

[Chipperbane]

I personally like this video: "The Problem in the Mists (of Pandaria)" (I am unable to post links until I have posted a few times!)

One quote really hits me. Right here. *Chestbump*.

"All of the first tier of raiding bosses of Wrath of the Lich King were killed within 48 hours of release".

Including the time to level. Sure, Naxx was nothing new, but there was no way people in T6 should have been able to barge in and kill everything.