Mythic HFC difficulty

[Brison]

For me its currently
1. Hellfire Assault
2. Iron Reaver
3. Kormrok
4. Kilrogg
5. Council
6. Gorefiend.

I just started this mythic raiding this week as a 723 Ret paladin so I'm hoping for the best as progression comes along.

[KaPe]

When you have the gear to do 1 doom fire and only 2 wroughts IMO Archi is easier than Manno.

That's rather extreme gear levels or class stacking. If you had this much dps on Manno, you'd probably kill him within 3 Doomguards and finish last phase shortly after first Shadowforce.

[TwentyTwelve]

Both from a tanks PoV

Personally - In terms of first look glance / damage intake

Kormrok
Iron Reaver
HFA
Kilrogg
Council
Iskar
Socrethar
Fel Lord
Manno - Damage in take felt really weak for a tank
Gorefiend - on par with Tyrant and Xhul, literally aids.
Tyrant
Xhul - Xhuls p1 damage is just much more chaotic than Tyrant i.m.o and the awful swaps between void/fel post p2 is annoying.
Archi


For the raid team? - note, 2x guilds from 5m and 13m

HFA
Kormrok
Kilrogg = Soc - just a bit of planning required
Council = Iron Reaver - i wish i was joking but apprently barrage is hard, even melee manage to get hit ???
Iskar - not sure where to rank this 1 as it's cheesed very easily w/ ring
Fel Lord - Literally i think people are clueless, they get seeds and just try blow the raid up in burn phase.
Tyrant - Not that difficult tbh, i was thinking of ranking before Fel - Just requires a lot of planning, alligning cooldowns for edicts and calling for externals etc...
Xhul - Not sure what to say here, like the tanks would have an odd agro issue explosion due to pally Class trinket, the chain group would fail a few times, but most of our wipes were simply heroic mehcnaic fails. Standing in unstable voidstep spawns, which wasn't even fast casts- literally they do like 2 jumps and someones been hit... /facepalm
Archi - Easy boss i.m.o, the only people with responsibility is the people soaking doomfire (which is clearly not hard with timers), deathcallers hurt A LOT but the fights really easy, you get to p3 and wipe to someone being stupid with mark or such, compared to mannoroth the mechanics are not hard i.m.o.
Manno - took more wipes than Archi - mainly people not learning though, would often wipe in p1 because people didnt realise after 50-100 wipes that the felseekers are delayed here and there (3rd)... Just a lot of personal responibility and it screwed up the raid a lot, often missed dispels (?), bad placement with guldan... Clueless people in p3... All sorts

[LilSaihah]

In descending order;
Manno
Archi
Xhul
Gorefiend
Tyrant
Zakuun is hard to place because he's a hard DPS check and Valor has inflated ilvls, but I would probably put him here
Iskar
Socrethar
Council
Iron Reaver (though she is another DPS check)
Kilrogg
Kormrok
Trash: The Encounter

[Feral Druid ist Op]

HFA = Iron Reaver = Kil'rogg = Kormrok = Council - Socrethar - Iskar - Tyrant - Xhul - Gorefiend - Archi - Manno

first 5 bosses dont rly matter cuz they are brain death 70 guilds from my server are 4 - 5 Myth+ lol Gorefiend is were Mythic starts

[Cookiecutters]

Ascending order:

Assault>Reaver>Korm>Kil'rogg>Council>Socrethar>Gorefiend>Iskar>Xhul>Vehlari>Manno>Archi.

This is more looking at the bosses from a whole vs. what- I consider to be easiest, etc. I do not feel that any of the bosses are "hard" per se, but to get 20 attention spans to click/groove and the fact that everyone has a different learning curve, that would be the list.

[Gaidax]

Mannoroth is easily harder than Archimonde. Archimonde has like two, maybe 3 tough spots in the encounter, the rest is a snooze-fest once people stop dying to the silly things like chains, chaos or dance.

[Keashaa]

Archimonde is easier than Mannoroth because of two things:

- less setup dependent: there is no class you really NEED (Mannoroth without one death knight? you can also cancel that raid)
- more gear dependent than Mannoroth: though Mannoroth gets easier with gear (pushing doom lords without doom) Archimonde's difficulty seemed to lower extremely after the item upgrades

[Crillam]

1. Hellfire Assault
2. Kormrok
3. Iron Reaver
4. Kilrogg
5. Socrethar
6. Council
7. Iskar
8. Gorefiend
9. Fel Lord Zakuun
10. Tyrant
11. Xhul
12. Archimonde
13. Mannoroth

[EzG]

Most of you keep saying Mannoroth over Archimonde. Lets for a second say you have the amount of gear for that level of progression, I'm ok with saying you have 10 more ilvls because of when this thread started, and your ring is not nearly maxed out but maybe more than halfway there. Mannoroth starts with deciding how you want to move about throughout the fight which will take attempts to figure out. Imp positions can be taken by a DK, although with max gear or close to it a DK is not needed at all. The next phases depend on where you decide to stand for each ability and how you decided to handle wraths. Deaths from this part will only come to a failure of heals, imp management, or screwing up shadowforce. Wrath is the most coordinated you have to be throughout the entire fight. Otherwise it is a long 6-8 minutes. Fel seeker is redundant.

Archimonde. Assuming you cannot push 2 or even 1 fires, assume you get 3. That complicates the fight and was a huge part of the strat a couple months ago. If you can get 2 fires the strat is simplified and you don't have to worry about much. Wrought will be the main cause of death for awhile while people get used to standing still and sidestepping a couple feet out of someone elses lasers. This, and the 55% adds will be a large cause of deaths for many wipes to come. There will also be the occasional chains miss-step that might result in a death or two. The final phase includes conduits which will become a raid killer later in the encounter. Stars are redundant. Marks of the legion will cause wipes sometimes to someone screwing up where they need to be. Infernal's will be the largest source of raid deaths in this entire phase, and until you understand who needs to pick them up and split them will continue to be. Source is redundant. The dance will snipe the players who cannot move out of fire on the ground quickly enough, and lets be honest, it seems like everyone will say its a super easy mega simple mechanic, until that person and others like him start to die repeatedly (melee).

In terms of count lets say 1-5 with 5 being a raid wiper and 1 being a personal mistake.
Deadly Ability Count:
Mannoroth: Imps=3, Wrath=4, Shadowforce=1, Rain=1, Doomlord=3, Doomlord mark=2, Final phase imps= 5, Final Phase Shadowforce=1, Final Phase wrath=5, Gazes=2.
Count: 27

Archimonde: Fires (if low dps)=1-2, Wrought=4, Wrought+Adds=5, Chains=1, Conduits (later in fight)=4, Infernals=5, Marks=4, Dance=.
Count: 27-28

Now the counts above are all complete opinion, argue it all you want, but archimonde has more chances to screw up on a lengthy encounter (again assuming progression and not yolo farm). Mannoroth has fewer abilities, easier abilities, to deal with although some are deadly depending on what part of the fight they are on.

[BiggestNoob]

You're understating Mannoroth's mechanics and overstating the difficulty of Archimonde.

Mannoroth's mechanics don't get trivialized by gear. The fight is shorter but otherwise identical.

Archimonde is basically trivialized in comparison to the original difficulty. You're left with 1 Doomfire, 2 Wroughts, 1 set of links you have to break, and Marks. There's very little personal accountability. It's similar to how Kormrok is significantly easier with gear because you don't have to deal with overlapping mechanics. I've watched guilds progress in total in half the wipes it took them on Mannoroth with 1 Doomfire from the first pull. Nobody is getting 3 anymore.. and your raid DPS would have to be abysmal to get 2. And because you realistically only see 3 sets of Conduits, the first set on the right, the second set on the left/back and the final set (which happens long after a dance before marks) in the middle of the room, it's basically impossible to fail. At worst it'll kill a single person who was too close when it spawned, but having them overlap before the 4th set means your raid is impossibly stupid. So stupid that they're probably dying to dance and getting hit by stars, and in that case sure, Archimonde is harder for you than Mannoroth. Though I question that, because how can you do Wraths competently yet fail simple mechanics?

[Deleted]

You're all missing the most important factor when comparing two fights of similar difficulty. One of them is before the other one. Think about what that means in terms of gear and team mentality.

[IxilaFA]

This is all very largely dependent on each raid group. I've progressed through HFC twice now: once at relevant gear levels up to 10/13 in July/August, and once with ridiculous gear levels up to 12/13, still working on Manny right now. My ranks as follows for each:

Relevant Gear Levels (705-720):
HFA
Iron Reaver
Kilrogg
Kormrok
Socrethar
Iskar
Council
Zakuun
Gorefiend
Xhul'horac

I put Council high up there because if you didn't have two Holy Paladins to trivialize the debuff the healing can get pretty insane, pretty fast. Also people are putting Gorefiend WAY too low. That is a fight which required expert coordination at the lowest gear level because you couldn't do what people do now and just break out people ten seconds early. Break out a healer ten seconds too early back in those days and it was an instant wipe. I never did Tyrant back then, but if I did I would've probably ranked it lower than Gorefiend. Tyrant is all about your raid moving properly. It has far less things for an individual to fuck up on than Gorefiend does. As for Xhul, I still suffer nightmares from all 3 of our Hunters being absent for two progression nights. *shudders*

Current gear levels (730-740)
HFA
Iron Reaver
Kormrok
Killrogg
Zakuun
Council
Iskar
Socrethar
Tyrant
Gorefiend
Xhul'horac

Again, you say 'Why rank Gorefiend so high?!" Because again, it's a fight that, even today, can easily wipe the raid. Especially with gear levels being at the point where you can accidentally one-shot the tank while he's downstairs. People messing up chains, not clearing their stacks and letting spirits hit the raid during feasts, breaking out healers 20 seconds too early (yes, that does happen) are all things which are too easy to occur and which will wipe the raid. Aside from Xhul'horac, no other boss pre-Manny has so many single mechanics that one person can fuck up and endanger the raid on.

I also made a possibly controversial decision and listed Zakuun way lower. That's because nowadays there's exactly two mechanics for everyone in the raid to learn: How to soak, and how to run out seeds. And these are heroic mechanics. Cheese the first two groups going down, and then burn boss before even having to deal with the 3rd set of seeds. Iskar should probably also be lower due to the fact that you can cheese and skip the only difficult mechanic in the entire fight, but I ranked it based on my guild, and we fuck up a lot with managing the orb.

[Amantino]

Archi - Easy boss i.m.o

Makes me wonder when you progressed it.

[EzG]

You're understating Mannoroth's mechanics and overstating the difficulty of Archimonde.

Mannoroth's mechanics don't get trivialized by gear. The fight is shorter but otherwise identical.

Archimonde is basically trivialized in comparison to the original difficulty. You're left with 1 Doomfire, 2 Wroughts, 1 set of links you have to break, and Marks. There's very little personal accountability. It's similar to how Kormrok is significantly easier with gear because you don't have to deal with overlapping mechanics. I've watched guilds progress in total in half the wipes it took them on Mannoroth with 1 Doomfire from the first pull. Nobody is getting 3 anymore.. and your raid DPS would have to be abysmal to get 2. And because you realistically only see 3 sets of Conduits, the first set on the right, the second set on the left/back and the final set (which happens long after a dance before marks) in the middle of the room, it's basically impossible to fail. At worst it'll kill a single person who was too close when it spawned, but having them overlap before the 4th set means your raid is impossibly stupid. So stupid that they're probably dying to dance and getting hit by stars, and in that case sure, Archimonde is harder for you than Mannoroth. Though I question that, because how the fuck can you do Wraths competently while failing simple mechanics?

First off, I'm not drawing my experience from the reality of the difficulty of the encounters with a full bis upgraded raid, but what it was like progressing on him when he was still very hard, and comparing to how it is now. Mannoroth was hard, for the most part, but not as hard and insanely difficult many people try to point out. I only listed the facts of Archimonde, how does that make it more difficulty you might ask, well that's because if gives more risk of error, but if you think spending 30 seconds on Manno and blowing up because of a doomlord as being hard then be my guest. At one point Arch was definitely harder (more than a month ago) but now both bosses are rather easy.

Second, be constructive with your posts, half of what you said was just calling my raid stupid. But even with the ring and ilvls how could you think anything is much more difficult, or the difficulties changing in their entirety. Gear only changes how much you can face roll it, and if anything you might think Mannoroth is harder because you actually have to do a couple mechanics because your gear won't let you bypass them, and by all means call a fight harder because you have to do stuff, but not all guilds are blessed with complete bis gear and top of the line dps, they deal with what they have. Unfortunately they cannot live up to your standards. Archimonde has more mechanics that hurt the raid if people screw them up, and trust me they will, if everyone was perfect we would have had many more kills back in July instead of the handful of top world guilds that managed it.

I shouldn't have to say "in my opinion" in this type of thread, but this is an opinion, and you can argue against it all you want. It doesn't help your argument by calling people idiots, in my opinion of course.

[Deleted]

Relevant gear levels:

Assault
Reaver
Kormrok
Socrethar
Kilrogg = Council
Iskar
Zakuun
Xhul
Gorefiend
Tyrant
Manno



Current Gear Levels:

Assault
Reaver
Kormrok
Kilrogg
Socrethar
Iskar
Zakuun
Xhul
Gorefiend
Tyrant
Manno



Working on Archi atm.

[Nitros14]

Relevant gear levels:

Assault
Reaver
Kormrok
Socrethar
Kilrogg = Council
Iskar
Zakuun
Xhul
Gorefiend
Tyrant
Manno



Current Gear Levels:

Assault
Reaver
Kormrok
Kilrogg
Socrethar
Iskar
Zakuun
Xhul
Gorefiend
Tyrant
Manno



Working on Archi atm.

We regularly one shot Velhari on farm and wipe 10+ times to Xhul'horac. Weird.

Killed Velhari much faster on progression too. The fight is almost the same as heroic except you need to hit a bunch of raid cooldowns in the last phase and use warlock portals for edicts.

[greatestfall]

I'm not totally sure, but I know for us Xhul has taken us way more attempts to learn than Gorefiend took us.

[Keashaa]

The main problem when talking about the difficulty level Mannoroth vs. Archimonde is that Blizzard has screwed up the philosophy "Raid end bosses shouldn't be gear checks but mechanic checks".

The original Archimonde was never a gear check. The only hard part was to survive. The new Archimonde is in many terms a really hard gear check. The mechanics themselves are not that difficulty to learn as you can see most guilds that kill him today (like our guild) need way less attempts to kill him then for Mannoroth.

[Deleted]

The original Archimonde

Don't compare the old game. It was extremely easier in end-game raiding than today. The illusion that it wasn't comes from the clear fact most players were new to the game and knew nothing, the raids were severely gated and you had no way of starting a newly released raid without doing the previous ones and because of that fact middle of the road guilds lost severe amounts of time gearing one or two members if only one or two other members dropped off the team.