Rate: Best > Worst Expansion on Raid Quality

[Haywire5714]

My rating will be based off of the raids and raid bosses that I've only seen videos of while they were current, and my personal experience with the raid content.

MoP -> BC -> Vanilla = Wrath > Cata

Having completed all the normal modes with I think 9 heroics in T14 and 1 heroic in T15; I think MoP raiding has been very solid overall. From a healer perspective I have thoroughly enjoyed and continue to enjoy both tiers of content.

I didn't play in BC but I've been in all of the raids, I've read and heard other peoples perspective on the content and I've seen the kill videos. Overall I think raiding was one of the stronger aspects of that expansion.

Vanilla's raids weren't that amazing; they looked cool when you got inside and raiding with 40 people could be epic (raiding in general would've be epic since most people hadn't done it before), but the bosses were fairly uninspiring and probably bugged to all hell on release. Wrath's raid content was decent but had fairly straightforward mechanics; Ulduar was definitely the highlight of that expansion, the rest of the raids however were just ok.

Cataclysm had some hard raid content that was either very enjoyable or not at all. Tier 11 was ok and T12 was really good besides the fact that it only had 7 bosses; but Dragon Soul fell short by a significant margin. It really wasn't a good raid to end the expansion, and other than raiding this expansion was rather boring.

How about you guys?

[Buxton McGraff]

BC > WOTLK > MoP > Cata. (I didn't raid in Vanilla)

[Tojara]

Have to see the final tier of this expansion.

I think raid quality wise TBC has been the best (no nostalgia either) as we got quality and quantity.

WoTLK is tainted by it's first and third tier. ICC to wasted potential, still a decent raid but could have been so much more. The crown jewel of WoTLK obviously being Ulduar.

If the final tier of MoP doesn't get Dragon Souled, it will undoubtedly (to me) be the best raiding expansion to date.

[Immitis]

hmmm

im gonna rate the raids based off story,

mists will either be 2nd or first depending on how good SoO is, i didnt like the mogu raids or terrace that much in patch 5.0 but i thought thunder king and the mantid raids were awesome.

vanilla and wrath are tied because aq and naxx were awesome but so were ulduar and icc

cata and bc are tied because i didnt like any of them.

[Thunderbleem]

You didn't raid in BC, but rank it higher than everything but MoP.

Overall I think MoP has been the worst, though I might just be bored of PvE. In terms of my personal enjoyment I rate it:

Vanilla > Wrath > Cata > BC > MoP

Each expansion has had good and bad raids, I think. I didn't really enjoy TBC raiding that much, but I liked Kara and Hyjal ok. I loved tier 11 but didn't really care for 12, hated 13, and I can't say I've really enjoyed a minute of MoP raiding, and have thus stopped and probably won't ever really raid again.

[Vargur]

MoP > BC > Cata > WoTLK > original

Firelands is one of the best raids in WoW btw.

[FinalDestonaion]

In terms of how much fun I had raiding these...
Mists > BC = Cata > Vanilla > Wrath

In terms of the story of the raid...
Mists = Wrath > Cata > BC > Vanilla

In terms of the mechanics and how the fights worked...
Vanilla = BC > Mists > Cata > Wrath

Overall...
Mists > BC > Cata > Vanilla > Wrath

I didn't like wrath very much as you can see, nor Vanilla. Thought those raids were boring and stupid, but I wasn't as into the game as I am now, that may play some sort of factor into it. I'm one of the few who kinda liked Cata raiding, but oh well. Wrath raids were piss easy and I quit after I downed LK on normal. Came back for cata, had a shitty guild and didnt advance through BWD and BoT very far, but I hate firelands. Dragon Soul was boring after attempts on Yor'sahj (spelling?) with my shitty guild. Joined a new guild in MoP, having much more fun now.

You could argue that my ratings are based entirely on the fact I was in a really bad guild for a while, but my opinion is mine, and yours is yours. /shrug

[Chickat]

MoP>Wrath>bc>vanilla=cata

[RabidHexley]

I'm more interested in just which expansions people think Blizzard actually designed the best boss encounters in, where did the blend of creativity and solid mechanics excel most? Outside of things like patch pacing, plot or things like LFR, 10/25 man, or other things not directly related to actual encounter design. Where you look at the raids in the expansion and think "These guys know how to make cool fights".

[Yutani]

I only raided in vanilla and wotlk so my rating is: wrath > vanilla.

[Haywire5714]

I'm more interested in just which expansions people think Blizzard actually designed the best boss encounters in, where did the blend of creativity and solid mechanics excel most? Outside of things like patch pacing, plot or things like LFR, 10/25 man, or other things not directly related to actual encounter design. Where you look at the raids in the expansion and think "These guys know how to make cool fights".

That's exactly what I'm asking in my post.

I didn't want another Which Expansion is your favorite in general thread; I'm just referring to the actual raids and raid bosses, not the attunements, daily quests, lore, pvp, new features, overall enjoyability, etc.

[Deleted]

Going purely by raids, this is how I'd rate them:

BC>Mists>Classic>Wrath>Cataclysm

[Definition]

going by raids I'd rate them
Mists > BC > Wrath > Cataclysm > Classic.

I think i'm in the minority here, but I thought that SSC and Hyjal fucking sucked

[Deleted]

Didn't raid AQ40 and Naxx in classic, so can't fully rate raids there.

BC > MoP = WoTLK > Cataclysm

While all expansions had great raids, in BC there wasn't a single raid that sucked. There was a perfect mix of hard bosses and loot pinatas, right amount of trash (well... SWP trash might have been too much, but that was part of SWP progression for many guilds who were stuck on trash). Mechanics weren't over the top, while still being hard.

Also raid model was way better than in any expansions that followed: no multiple modes of same boss, different 10 and 25 man content, natural progression.

Its not nostalgia, I'm not saying that BC was perfect. It had flaws, but most of those flaws had nothing to do with raids.

[Krez]

This is so incredibly subjective. How do you define "Best" or "Worst"? By difficulty? Aesthetics?

Aesthetically speaking, the game gets 'prettier' (in terms of sophistication of design) each expansion. Themes in visual design choices comes down to preference. For example: Throne of the Four Winds and Firelands raids were equally difficult for you, were made with similar technology, and no nostalgia attached; your choice between the two would come down to artistic preference.

In my humble opinion WoW can be broken into two parts with the schism happening with the launch of Wrath. Naxx 40 and Sunwell are the pinnacle of the pre wrath design: making each encounter successively more difficult oftentimes requiring supreme (top .5% level) skill and/or weeks of farming the previous boss in order to make the numbers to beat the next boss. Encounter design was never the block on downing a boss, it was usually numbers: more dps/heals/stam on tank. Some servers never even cleared those raids. Then to Wrath. The Naxx revamp and Malygos (to show off their vehicle mounts) were nothing new really. Obsidium Sanctum however, added in the idea of Hard Modes (Later Heroic Raiding). Personally I thought it was perfected in Ulduar (which I consider the best raid in WoW). Flipping the switch to heroic seems boring to me, I like the idea of doing something different to activate it, like killing XTs heart for example.

I digress. Heroic raiding was necessary as people wanted to raid: ten mans made it easier to do so. A vast majority of the playerbase has been playing since at least Wrath: and the skills of these players have gotten larger and larger, requiring an increasing amount of complexity in raid design. Further requiring Heroic mode as skill disparity became greater. (Off topic: do we really need normal modes anymore? can't it just be LFR and Heroic?) Compare the difficulty of the Molten Core raid with Firelands. Absolutely zero comparison. Firelands is exponentially more complex.

The schism I mentioned earlier was to quantify encounter complexity, and since Ulduar came to be, things have stayed fairly complex level (at least more so than the pre wrath days.) (Difficulty does not necessarily equal complexity)

So let me give my opinion on the raids. I value encounter complexity and theme, with a small dash of nostalgia.

1. Mists - Seems to be doing a good job fixing the mistakes of the previous raids. Varied, polished aesthetics, good encounter complexity - (Not LFR though) Probably be the first expansion were they don't change the paradigm midway through. BC - 10man then move to 25 man. Wrath - hard modes, then heroic mode. Cata - LFR.
2. Wrath (Would be first if every raid was like Ulduar). Naxx was a mistake, Argent Tournament was released too soon and went on too long. ICC went on way too long as well but looked neat.
3. Cata - DS sucked we all know it. Firelands was short, but good. H Rag no joke. First tier raiding was varied and fun. Encounters were complex!
4. BC - Better encounter design, although still simplistic. Way better aesthetics Naxx and ZA and Sunwell especially; the other raids did a good job differentiating themselves.
5. Vanilla - worst encounter design, themes generic although Naxx (Especially Naxx at the time) and AQ were done well; if you think Vanilla was best raiding thats nostalgia speaking.

[Zantera]

TBC > MoP > WotLK > Cata

*TBC is number one without a question for me, because I really loved all the raids it had. Karazhan is imo the best raid ever made, and dungeons like BT, MH and SWP were all amazing to do on a weekly basis. I also really enjoyed SSC, TK and ZA. Overall nice variety and challenging bosses.

*MoP comes in second just above WotLK. I think ToT is the best raid since Ulduar, and the other three raids have been more enjoyable than average. Still quite a few dull bosses, but on the whole.. very good.

*WotLK comes in as number three, mostly because it was very patchy. I feel like Ulduar stands in a league on it's own, and is one of the best raids the game has had. But apart from Ulduar, there wasn't much of joy in WotLK. EoE, OS and Naxxramas all became so dull after just doing them 3-4 times. They didn't have the lifespan that raids in TBC had. ICC was okay, but overall a disappointment compared to something like BT. Let's not even talk about TOTC lol, that one sucked hard.

*Cata last, but not horrible. DS is one of the worst raids in the game IMO, but the earlier ones in the expansion are not that bad. I quote enjoyed TO4W, BoT and BWD, Firelands had some nice bosses but the design of the place with a huge field of trash was just really dull to me. The design continued to feel uninspired in DS with the first trash just being lined up before the first boss.

[Tanthalas]

Well that's a surprise, so many people placing Wotlk on a 2/3 spot. Where is all that whine we had during the expansion? Ulduar was nigh ideal raid, but that doesn't compensate other shitty raids there.

MoP ~= TBC > Cata > Wotlk > Vanilla

MoP is the first expansion after TBC with actually hard and interesting bosses. I wouldn't mind attunements though. Only for heroics of course.
And Vanilla was so bad raid wise, that people either didn't play/raid there or have their nostalgia speaking.

[Rucati]

BC -> Mists -> Wrath -> Cata -> Vanilla

40 man raids were fun, but getting that many people was a pain, plus it made each individual person not matter as much, I remember just auto attacking things because it didn't much matter.

BC was just awesome, 25man raids were at their peak and the boss fights were all well designed. Wrath was good because Ulduar and ICC were both pretty fun, and Cata was trash.

[Posokhov]

Wrath = TBC > Cata > MOP >>>> Vanilla.

Vanilla's raids were snorefests with stupid amounts of trash and bosses that were tuned around you having specific set bonuses. The hardest part about 4 Horsemen was having 8 warrior tanks in 4-piece Dreadnaught. The biggest challenge of vanilla was staying awake, hence why the enrage timers were balanced around 20% of your DPS basically being AFK.

[Hyve]

It is hard to just summarise it, because all expansions have had good and bad experiences.

For me, Wrath of the Lich King was the worst, simply because Icecrown Citadel lasted way to long, Trial of the Crusder before that was lame, and Naxxramas & Obsidian Sanctum were boring. Cataclysm had the worst ending for me personally, but Tier 11 (Blackwing Decent, etc...) were amazing!

Mists of Pandaria is holding top position for me at the moment because of the speed and development of the raids. I'm not enjoying them as much as I did Tier 11 (Cataclysm), but I am happy with them.

Overall: Mists of Pandaria > Cataclysm > The Burning Crusade > Wrath of the Lich King > Classic

The Burning Crusade would be higher up on that scale, but I wasn't playing very seriously at the time, so I only did some random content. Looking back (rose tinted glasses) it was a pretty epic set of raids, despite its flaws!

---------- Post added 2013-04-20 at 08:48 AM ----------

Vanilla's raids were snorefests with stupid amounts of trash and bosses that were tuned around you having specific set bonuses. The hardest part about 4 Horsemen was having 8 warrior tanks in 4-piece Dreadnaught. The biggest challenge of vanilla was staying awake, hence why the enrage timers were balanced around 20% of your DPS basically being AFK.

Quoting for truth.

To many people try to make the whole 40 man experience seem epic. It really wasn't. It had some cool moments, but overall it sucked. The bosses were simple, very few mechanics like we have today, but they were tuned around just swarming the boss, or gear. Very little tactic wise was needed to overcome them.