Original Naxx 4 Horsemen hardest encounter ever?

[Lulbalance]

ULD yogg saron.

yogg 0 for sure, imo ..i havent raided in mop tho so iuno about lei shen.

[Mascotte]

It wasn't the hardest but maybe one of the more influential bosses.
I've seen guilds decimated simply because their tank(s) got offers they couldn't refuse by further advanced guilds just for this fight.
Yeah, it wasn't a real requirement but it surely made it easier.
In a WoW where guilds where prepping every available advantage possible (Onyxia/ZG worldbuffs for example) people did close to anything to get a bigger chance to get ahead.

[Outofmana]

In the original four horseman fight most guilds used eight tanks rather than four and the hardest part of the fight was having eight tanks with enough gear to even begin.

Yes I was in the 2nd guild of my realm at the time, and my guild got basicly killed by having our 3 MTs stolen by the best guild when they hit 4 horseman. I moved to them as well as I wanted to clear it properly before TBC (We were on loatheb before I moved) hit and actually progress on the final bosses.
On Sapphiron they needed 8 priests so then it was the priest turn to get stolen from the 2nd/3rd guilds, my time to switch guilds. Got to be part of the 2nd 4 Horseman kill of my new guild that week and there were huge nerdscreams even on a 2nd kill, never experienced that again and should be proof that it was one of the fights that took the most out of people.

Must say though that healingwise, there will never be a harder fight than Sapphiron in full frost resist gear aka no regen. For me together with Twin Emps and Patchwerk the three best fights of WoW.

[Posokhov]

No, the original 4 Horsemen fight was not the hardest fight ever. On both an individual and group basis, it is not even a top 5 fight in WOW's history.

There's a difference between something being hard and something requiring your attention. On an individual basis, the horsemen's mechanics were not hard.

Yet even as a 40-man encounter, it still wouldn't have the difficulty to be a top 5 fight in WOW's history.

[Deleted]

It's just another one of those classic Vanilla fights that needed something different, be it 8 tanks or everyone kitted out in resist gear. It was pretty difficult to learn but just like so many of those fights it was still a case of "no rng" (apart from the void zones) so once you knew what you were doing it was a one shot every time after.

Found my first kill on youtube (was a rogue at the time)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb7_5P_EAZE

also found our first kill of Sapphiron, woop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXYLptiGTw0

[Dracodraco]

It's just another one of those classic Vanilla fights that needed something different, be it 8 tanks or everyone kitted out in resist gear. It was pretty difficult to learn but just like so many of those fights it was still a case of "no rng" (apart from the void zones) so once you knew what you were doing it was a one shot every time after.

Found my first kill on youtube (was a rogue at the time)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb7_5P_EAZE

also found our first kill of Sapphiron, woop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXYLptiGTw0

Dear god. I know healing is waaay different nowadays compared to back then, but... That looks extremely boring comparable. If that was a current encounter with those kind of figures going out, it'd be easily solo-healable >.<. You can stand around and consider what heal you're going to cast for such a long time :3.

[Jase]

Actually one of the most unique things of healing back then was the management of it all, there was no padding to pad. You had to be efficient on healing and the thing that allowed so many healers to have such a higher skill cap than now was the different ranks of heals which was unfortunately removed. That was one of my favorite things when doing a long fight, down ranking heals for ultimate efficiency when it was needed.

[Dabrix32]

prenerf C'thun, Prenerf M'uru, and 25 heroic LK with 0% buff all say "Hi!"

[a little Kappa]

Rag prenerf and Yogg 0 was the best fights ever made imo. Lei shen HC was also one of the fights that made my heart beat fasster.

[Dabrix32]

heroic LK 25 in a PuG...during Wrath

[Haywire5714]

Actually one of the most unique things of healing back then was the management of it all, there was no padding to pad. You had to be efficient on healing and the thing that allowed so many healers to have such a higher skill cap than now was the different ranks of heals which was unfortunately removed. That was one of my favorite things when doing a long fight, down ranking heals for ultimate efficiency when it was needed.

So being an efficient healer by using different spells at specific moments based on the players ability to predict and prevent incoming damage thereby maximizing healing done requires a lower skill cap than having to be efficient by deciding between 6 ranks of 1 heal to spam for the whole entire fight?

[LocNess]

heroic LK 25 in a PuG...during Wrath

Why would you ever pug H LK......

Anyway. 0 Light Yogg or maybe H LK with 0% buff was probably the most difficult. I have heard many horror stories about KT too. Haven't tried H Lei Shen let alone normal Lei Shen so can't say there.

[Spalding]

are we forgettin' m'uru? :/

[Sliske]

Yeah, it was pretty damn hard convincing tanks to leave their guilds to raid with another guild for one boss.

[Merkava]

^^ this. It was one of those fights where when u killed it once, u always one shot it after

On a similar note, I remember Bloodshot from D&T saying that it took them longer to kill Mother Shahraz the second time than it took to kill Illidan the first time.

[bigfoot1291]

I like to put fights in perspective. Ra-den now? Considered a joke by all who get to him. Ra-den if he was introduced in vanilla (and scaled obviously)? Would likely be near impossible.

[Haywire5714]

I like to put fights in perspective. Ra-den now? Considered a joke by all who get to him. Ra-den if he was introduced in vanilla (and scaled obviously)? Would likely be near impossible.

Not a good example

[bigfoot1291]

Not a good example

How do you figure?

[Outofmana]

Dear god. I know healing is waaay different nowadays compared to back then, but... That looks extremely boring comparable. If that was a current encounter with those kind of figures going out, it'd be easily solo-healable >.<. You can stand around and consider what heal you're going to cast for such a long time :3.

Errrr, you realise what kind of regen we had? Especially in full frost resist gear, we HAD to stand around for 5 second considering what was the right time to cast our heal and what heal, because that's all you had the mana for. It was actually the hardest fight healingwise I'd ever had to do. If "that was a current encounter with those kind of figures" meaning you remove all of your mana cds you have now and put your regen on zero, try solo healing that then.

- - - Updated - - -

So being an efficient healer by using different spells at specific moments based on the players ability to predict and prevent incoming damage thereby maximizing healing done requires a lower skill cap than having to be efficient by deciding between 6 ranks of 1 heal to spam for the whole entire fight?

... 'spam' wasn't the case, and cast 1 heal too many and you're screwed, would say that was pretty hard. The choice between canceling your spells in time or making them land was rather important too with the tank health that could drop to zero in a second or two was a key aspect as well, again, cancelling too few spells would mean oom and a wipe. Same the other way around.
I recently tried a pvt realm again and my god I forgot what it was like to not heal on autopilot with constantly having to worry about every single spell mana-wise. Instead of having a shadowfiend at my disposal every minute. That was the better design for healers imo, focussing on mana management more instead of just on healing done.
I find I have to use my brain less healing these days, never cancelling a spell and even spamming random PoHs on full health groups just to get Divine Insight procs, no challenge if you have a bit of a brain and know when the heavy damage is going to come in.

[Faesroll]

Oh look one of these threads again.