Original Naxx 4 Horsemen hardest encounter ever?

[Sengiratolom]

Raided and cleared everything in classic as a mage, the most difficult part of the game back then is for people to understand what gear to use, especially in entry lvl raiding.

Peoples minds were usually set on "it is purple, it must be better" and "it has a higher lvl req= it mus be better", while blizz designed some godawful items in mc/bwl.

Let me start on set items in general (as pointed out previously by a pala) they had useless stats on them, for mage sets, the useless stats were agi, spirit, mp5 and the "epic" sets from raids even had resistances on them, taking away chunks of the items budget. More often then not, random items, possibly from lower lvl dungeons, were better then the raid equivalent.

Mage BiS in mc times: (Any stamina beyond what made you 1 random attack in raids was useless, as the aoes were timed and you got healed up inbetween)

Head: Crimson felt hat (stratholme) used to not have spirit on it and had more int then arcanist
Neck: Choker of the firelord (mc-rag)
Shoulders: either Magister ( blue dungeon set) or kentic amice depending on the value of int versus crit, dont recall which i used back then.
Cloak: Bloodmoon cloak (ubrs, beats)
Chest: robe of the archmage (crafted from a lbrs pattern) this robe was bis until aq40 with t2.5, even then it was used on some fights for the mana regen
Bracers: either strath (unforgiven, random roll with spellpower) or lbrs wyrmlatak
Mainhand: mageblade (yay the first drop-epic on the list) golemag in mc
Offhand: some lvl 47 quest reward from unguro (had highest spellpower on it)
Ranged: lunar wand of ... power (frost in mc) green wand with +23 that school spellpower ("epic" ones had like 10 spellpower) This wand, or rather the fire version, was bis even in naxx
Gloves: blue pvp set (the blue set had a 2part bonus of spellpower, the epic set had stamina as 2part afaik)
Belt: Belt of the archmage (DM north tribute craft), had a few int more then mana igniting cord in mc
Pants: Padres legs (diremaul hunter boss) until you got tier 2 pants of ragnaros
Boots: blue pvp set
Rings: Ring of spell power*2 (random mc bosses)
Trinket 1: Talisman of Emphemeral Power (ToEP) (mc drop), on use +spellpower trinket for burst, Eye of the Beast for stable dps (quest reward for clearing ubrs)
Trinket 2: Briarwood reed (drop of a rare spawn in ubrs)

so the entire bis included 5 items from a raid, 6 if you include duplicates, and 0 i repeat 0 items from the instances main tier (rag dropped t2 pants, but mc was a t1 instance)

This trend continued for most of the early instances, so you were bombarded with garbage in raids, because 5 man stuff often beat it, ppl just looked @ color and ilvl and used whatever they felt was more prestigus, instead of min maxing.

This combined with general unawareness of the game mechanics made encounters more challenging to them, as they simply didn't know how to play. Granted by the time some1 was fighting 4hm they would have replaced most of those blues, and the later sets were actually better then, but resistance or general gear requirements withheld ppl from rushing through instrances like we are used to now, as some fights simply were made with months of farming the previous bosses in mind.

[Kurgosh]

The overall hardest encounter ever that wasn't impossible is hard to say, but 4-horsemen is not one of them.

Yogg'saron 0-lights original, Heroic Ragnaros, Lei Shen..... perhaps one of those.

Definitely not Lei Shen. It's difficult, but nowhere near Yogg or Lich King heroic. Raggy maybe. But Yogg 0 was still hard in heroic ICC gear, with Shadowmournes. And Lich King, man. There's a reason guilds were working on it for half a year.

[vesseblah]

But Yogg 0 was still hard in heroic ICC gear, with Shadowmournes.

Fuck no. With ICC gear Alone in the Dark was brute-forceable easily. Have melee dps keep adds at 1hp and ranged shoot boss and it was just as easy kill as normal mode in proper Ulduar gear.

And Lich King, man. There's a reason guilds were working on it for half a year.

Maybe the reason was that it was the last boss of the expansion and option was to keep doing it or do nothing.

[Deleted]

^-Lich King was supposed to be very hard for a reason. He is the center piece of the whole foundation in World of Warcraft.

[Deleted]

10 man Rag HC was very brutal if you didn't have the luxury of optimal raid comp.

[Deadhank]

Fuck no. With ICC gear Alone in the Dark was brute-forceable easily. Have melee dps keep adds at 1hp and ranged shoot boss and it was just as easy kill as normal mode in proper Ulduar gear.



Maybe the reason was that it was the last boss of the expansion and option was to keep doing it or do nothing.

Alone in the Dark was actually possible to beat with better gear. The mechanics were pretty intense, but H ICC gear would make that way easier.


Now LK was more fucked up. You could be full geared and it still took months to kill dat shit.

[RyanEX]

Aside from overturned bosses that were all of impossible to kill due to bad design pre-nerf I think that the original iteration of the four horsemen was the hardest most complex fight in the history of World of Warcraft and I don't know if it will ever be beaten in that aspect. The encounter didn't have as many different mechanics compared to some of the modern day bosses whose raid info page is a mile long. But, the encounter had a full 40 man raid group broken up into many little groups that all had to rotate correctly or pretty much be killed instantly.

In a raid group unless you're in Paragon there's typically at least one tard that the rest of the raid is covering for and that's always made very apparent on boss encounters where the raid has to split up and do multiple things at the same time. This has never nor will it ever again (unless blizzard brings back serious 40 man raiding again) been more apparent than on the original four horsemen.

There were 4 tanks all tanking separate mobs and they had to rotate based on stacks of the debuff and with taunt being spell hit back then there could be some hairy situations due to taunt resists.

You had between 10-12 healers who all had different roles some following tanks around but because of the tanks higher health pools the healers had their own separate rotations they had to follow.

Then you had 24-26 dps split up into different groups. There was no zerg the meteor boss strat back then because the dps just wasn't high enough so you had to rotate out in multiple groups. You had some groups resetting stacks in the safe zone, you had some on Morgraine and then you always had to have some with the tank to soak meteors. You also had to run in and out together because other wise you risked taking a stray meteor to the face and being one shot.

People also had to deal with invisible void zones which some people did use that as an excuse when they just tarded it up it was a buggy mechanic that really did exist and would one shot a healer if they didn't get out before the damage from it ticked (think of moving on heroic lich king except sometimes defile was invisible and instantly killed you when it ticked it's first damage). Not so much of a mechanic but a common bug that had to be dealt with.

But, by far the hardest mechanic was getting 40 people to split off and become extremely fragmented and yet still function as a whole and to do their jobs with it being almost impossible for the raid leader to see the entirety of the battle field and keep an eye on everyone even if someone could keep track of that many people moving at different times.

So, I'd propose that the original version of the four horsemen was the hardest boss encounter of all time and will never be beaten just based solely on the amount of coordination it took to down that boss and the fact that there aren't 40 man raid dungeons anymore.

The actual strat to defeat them back in the day was figured out pretty quickly according to Death and Taxes.

The problem was that Naxx was the first dungeon that required to have a large number of ACTUAL tanks. In Vanilla most guilds had only 1 or 2 prot specced warriors with others as dps warriors who equipped a sword and shield to tank extra mobs.

For the 4 horsemen you required between 6 - 8 PROT specced warriors decked to the gills. That was the main reason behind how long the kill took.

[Gigapants]

To be more precise, you needed 8 tanks all with 4 piece t3 for the taunt hit chance increase.

[Weightlifter]

This is almost like 2 hipsters arguing which obscure garage band is better. How many people even saw those fights, let alone killed them, and how many of those people still play? Can't really argue "I never did fights A and B, but I think fight C is harder"