Sunwell>Naxx40>Ulduar>BT>ICC>ToT>SoO>SSC>.......................................Firelands> GL>Totc>Tot4W>EoE>OS>RS>DS
Sunwell>Naxx40>Ulduar>BT>ICC>ToT>SoO>SSC>.......................................Firelands> GL>Totc>Tot4W>EoE>OS>RS>DS
Best Tiers (raid content).
T3 > T8 > T5 > T4 > T2.5
Worst.
T13 > T12 > T14 > T9 > T10 (Yea, ICC)
DS was quite the anti-climax, as was the Firelands. Tier 14 I got bored of really quick sometimes even those one-off great encounters don't make up for the rest. What I hated most about TotC was how shit the fights were outside of 25 man HM, Anub 25HM was a good encounter and just proved that an A-N raid would have been a better idea. ICC is literally the most anti-climatic raid I've ever seen. The LK wasn't at all a bad encounter, but the build up to it was pretty weak imo. I expected to see the ultimate WoW villain to have the most exciting raid instance, visually menacing and perilous... but no. We ended up with something that was not even slightly visually interesting, a winged instance joined together by huge empty looking halls, I am sorry, but to me that was quite a big let down.
I really hated TotC. All of it, it's whole existance made my brain hurt. Why was it even there, right under Arthas' nose? Why didn't he just, like, smash it instead of showing up for the last boss? Anyway, it was boring. You didn't have anything to experience, it was just "stand there and hit the next guy that comes in". Especially hated the faction champions... ugh.
SoO is nothing compared to that. I actually find it quite fun and amusing. Though the dull look of Org gets a little boring now...
Last edited by mmoc7bb91407d7; 2014-07-16 at 02:16 PM. Reason: spelling
Despite being stuck with it for like a year now, I actually think SoO is a decent raid. Much better than turds like Dragon Soul, TotC, and WotLK Naxxramas.
TotC is the worst raid ever.
I don't think any other comes close to it, really.
Maybe DS is that bad, but I didn't play it so I don't know.
Remember Lk says during fight he allowed it all so we could become strong and be turned into his elite dks.
In terms of toc I actually loved it, all the fights were very unique and thematically fun. I understood why I was fighting each boss ( we captured the animals for first boss, lord jaraxus is a badass mofo and broke free, alliance challenged us). Most raids you get a few bosses that make sense but most are random ( nazgrim made sense, klaxxi made sense. Who the fuck is immersius? Where did the iron juggernaut come from?)
And in terms of ds I think the final battle with deathwing was kind of anticlimactic but at same time taking him head on would not have made much sense either. A direct punch to the tank should utterly obliterate them, a direct fire breath should instantly kill the rest of the raid. Deathwing ranks in wow lore second to only sargeras in power.
What pisses me off about SoO compared to say DS is the annoying trash packs. The trash before dark shaman, nazgrim, siegecrafter, klaxxi and garrosh makes me wanna quit the raid. Especially the dark shaman one. If you quit the night on dark shaman progress and have to come back a day later and then have to kill trash again... I know it's not as annoying as SSC but at least you were progressing on bosses in SSC so the encounters were fun (except Leotheras because having to tank him as a warlock was stupid (especially grinding all that stam+fire resistance gear)).
my personal list of raid tiers would be:
Best: T8 > T14 > t15 > T6 > T11
worst: T13 > T7 > T4 > T1 > T2.5 (aka AQ40)
to make a tl;dr of why I listed those raids is easy, the ones I disliked used rehashed content or were either too easy, had stupid gimmicky mechanics, were boring.
my peeves with SoO was on one boss: Paragons
Paragons was definitely quite hard (harder than Garrosh pre-nerf imo) on 25man hc, didn't seem like a fight really designed for 10man since it's not very chaotic on 10hc. I didn't particularly like the fight since there were a lot of game breaking bugs that were not fixed until recently (pun definitely not intended). The worst bug being the one where Xaril would randomly heal for 300mil from DP, Bloods going to the wrong boss (which still happens now sometimes), Aim going off instantly and one shotting like 4 people, bosses meleeing people mid air as they flow over them to jump down, Skeer not spawning bloods with BoP etc.
Poorly executed fight, would of been more enjoyable if my guild didn't have to wipe 80+ times due to retarded bugs, though I did enjoy quite a few bosses in SoO (even if they were really easy on hc mode), them being Thok, Norushen, Siegecrafter, Juggernaut.
wow, really? Tanking Leotheras and Illidan were one of the most fun things I ever had to do in WoW. It really allowed you to exploit your class stregnths and feel like you're doing more than just mashing buttons (considering our best DPS spec in BC was the infamous 0/21/40 shadowbolt spam spec).
Back on topic, SoO wasn't a bad raid, imho it suffered from the same problem as Firelands did - the first bosses were way too easy and the difficulty dramatically increased as you progressed to the end of the raid.
The first 8 heroic bosses are a complete joke. Malkorok and Spoils increased difficulty a tad but are still very manageable. Thok is killable if you killed Spoils. Then you find Siegecrafter and Paragons, which are the cockblocks of SoO depending on difficulty (Siegecrafter for 10H, Paragons 25H). That increase in difficulty reminded me of Heroic Ragnaros (which will always be the best raid fight ever imho, Lei Shen was good but it was poisoned with bad social experiences for me) compared to the rest of Firelands.
DS was just a terrible raid from the get go - I was sick of it by the time we killed Heroic Madness (US 36 kill here) and we still had to farm it for months on end. I feel like I won't have time to get sick of SoO, it's still an engaging raid.
It's one of the best raids ever, as far as mechanics and boss diversity go IMO. But I can understand if people don't have the same opinion as me. I can understand burn out or not liking it aesthetically, but saying it's a bad raid is just false.
Firelands is a super extreme case of that, but I kind of agree.
The first 8 are indeed a joke but some of them are fairly fun to dps/tank (Fallen Protectors, Sha of Pride, Dark Shamans, Norushen); and the good thing to take away from this is the proper difficulty curve. But I think that it would have been better if the first 4 were super faceroll, not half the raid; oh well.
Worst raids in WoW can be summed up by:
Raids without Thok > Raids with Thok.
I hate that boss with a fury unknown to most mortals.
My favourite raid instances
Firelands / Siege of Orgimmar / ICC / Karazhan / ToT
I never ran Ulduar when it was current content, but I love the zone
Loads of fights I love in Firelands - Raggy, CatDru, Alysrazor.
Siege has plenty of engaging bosses, but I really wish it wasn't so linear.
ICC was really fun for me, I enjoyed nearly every fight - I came back to WotLK after a break in TBC very late.
Karazhan was a magical zone and had plenty of fun and varied bosses and mechanics for the time
ToT - same as Siege, really - too linear.
Overall I think MoP's raids have been a success, even if SoO has lingered on for longer than it should.
Gotta say, I wasnt a fan of ToTC. SoO has been pretty fun at a steady progression level, though now its getting boring just farming for BoAs at this point
I think SoO is actually a really good instance. There are a few things that tick me off about it:
1) Too much trash before some bosses (e.g. shamans / nazgrim), making it very grindy. I much prefer lesser stronger trash packs.
2) Horde has more trash than alliance (technically if you take out the mechanics fast it doesn't take much longer, but that generally doesn't happen).
3) All bosses are very much "Taunt at X stacks". Tank wise it's a pretty dull instance.
But other than that it's solid. Not my favorite (by far) but its ok.
Boss wise I like ToT more, but the trash there is even worse.
My favorites are by far Ulduar and Karazhan though. ICC is also a good one (although the 1+ year grind there got me in the end too).
It's my least favorite of this expansion easily. But I do not think it is worse than DS.
IMO
SoO is IMHO a really good instance, just lasted way too long.
2 words. Dragon Soul. Enough said.
If what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Then I should be a god by now.