What raid had the best bosses overall, excluding the final boss?

[Taeldorian]

Personally I really loved Nighthold and Antorus. I think the AP grind kind of sullied the mood for a lot of people especially in the higher end raiding scene but those two raids were so much fun for me. Even though argus was primarily a gear check the mechanics were fun, I just wish p2 wouldve been a bit more interesting.

Nighthold had an excellent difficulty curve and some of the better boss fights in recent years imo. Elisande, Gul’dan, Star augur, Krosus, etc. Only one I disliked was botanist.

I think Eternal palace would’ve been in my top 5 if it weren’t for Za’qul being a badly designed boss due to spell queuing or azshara being one of my least favorite bosses as a healer. Every boss besides these two were good imo.

So tldr: Nighthold, Antorus, Highmaul, ToT and SoO are all of the raids i have very fond memories of over the years. I also enjoyed Uldir but mythrax was poorly designed for melee and had really bad fps drops which made it unenjoyable, it was a fun raid overall though. Sartharion was interesting as well with 3 drakes, ICC was a good tier and I also liked trial of valor.

[Softbottom]

I'm a big fan of ToT. Lot's of different fights in that raid.

[Will]

Of all the raids I've done personally I'm gonna go with Ulduar. The fights are just so varied and the hard modes are absolutely brilliant. Customise which buffs you want the boss to have? Pick and mix your hard mode! Should we leave Freya up? Should we leave the tower of frost up? Etc.

And Mimiron. What a fight.

Runner up: Blackrock foundry. I'm looking at you Hans & Franz, and Operator Thogar. The first time my guild did these bosses we were laughing like schoolchildren on Discord.

[Nefarious Tea]

I absolutely love Ulduar and Nighthold. Incredibly atmospheric raids with gorgeous story to them!

[Seradi]

Ulduar or BRF. Both had a fun, innovative variety of boss fights.

[Nyel]

As much as I dislike Cataclysm raids (although I'd say BWD was nice) Ragnaros in Firelands was a remarkable endboss. Especially in Heroic Mode he was an unforgettable experience and a fight that was not only very hard and tactical but also fun. Progressing on HM Ragnaros was a pita though.

[Sendhelpxx]

Siege of orgrimmar or throne of thunder imo. I liked all MoP raids tho. Few runner ups are also BRF and Antorus

[Mikazukinoyaiba]

Blackrock Foundry is the pinnacle of raid design, and its not even close to the 2nd best.

I'd rather do BRF Mythic for the entire expansion than any BFA Mythics.

[Arman Kharas]

I still like Karazhan.

[Ange]

Karazhan? Entry level raid tier with the "chess event"? Super casual friendly boring raid tier with worthless itemisation at its time.

Most bosses are pretty boring after you progressed and farmed them for months. Thats why I liked those encounters with something extra to them, like the ICC bosses with shadowmourne infusion players mixed to them. Its a bit more than just a simple achievement run you do one-time, so it made the weekly clears a bit more interesting.

Would allways prefer new bosses, new raid tier to any older ones I farmed enough.

[ydraw]

I don't think any raid can ever be as good as Ulduar with it's player-activated hard modes.

[Outofmana]

I feel like Ulduar would've been by far the best had the fights just been the 'hardmode' variant, aka no 2 difficulties. It being the first time it happened kinda detracted the special feeling of all these cool fights, having just had a progession race on lobotomized fights. Now that is kinda normal, back then it felt really bad. My guild even had a lot of people quit during hardmode Ulduar, as I personally did myself too.

For me, Naxxramas is still the best, unseen variaty for that time, utilizing all classes very well, and thouroughly enjoyable all the way, great atmosphere too which also adds a lot to bossfights. As you said excluding final bosses thankfuly, I can also name Heart of Fear as one I always enjoyed to do up until the Queen, it never bored me one bit, which is not what I can say about most instances in WoW, it had mostly fun fights without too much going on with a very good atmosphere. It was also one of the only times I actually enjoyed to do LFR on my alts too.

I have not raided in Cata/WoD nor Legion, quite sad about it sometimes as running solo through stuff like nighthold the bosses/environments there look pretty amazing.

Every 10sec there's another raid I liked more, so much good encounters/raids. Saying the worst is way easier; Siege of Org and Uldir both taking that cake for me.

[jeezusisacasual]

i'm partial to blackrock foundry. not so much because there was "that one fight" but because there was a lot of variety.

you had the fun bosses like train, oregorger and hanz/franz, the nostalgia boss gruul, a council fight, a way to many phases fight, a singletarget fight, beastmaster where you could be flexible with kill order.

+ that raid gets a big bonus for having very flexible boss kill order.

This is my pick but equal to SoO as i loved the flow and bosses fights of those bosses also ( Speaking from a monk perspective )

[Fitsu]

Throne of Thunder always holds a special place in my heart, I loved every boss in that raid and it just looked so good and I dunno... The whole raid was just awesome in my eyes.

[avitush]

Tie between Karazhan and Ulduar for me.

I still regularly went on Karazhan alt runs in BC (on my main), long after I outgeared it and had no practical reason to be there, just because I found it fun. I always liked the chess event, seeing how much DPS I could pull on Curator when I was Black Temple geared popping all kinds of consumables, getting people killed on those arcane guardians on the way up to Curator's room (my guild made a game out of that one every time we ran), etc. At that point, it was just a raid where I could drink beer, enjoy myself, and not take it too seriously. I went on a lot of those runs where I was mostly carrying things because everyone else was a fresh level 70, but I didn't care (and nobody else had a problem with that either because I wasn't competing with them for gear).

And yeah, Ulduar was just huge and all over the place. I loved it. I liked how the bosses had multiple different hard mode versions. Also quite a few places where you could prank guildies for teh lulz. Good times.

[Danvash]

In no particular order:

Nighthold
Trial of Valor
Battle of Dazar'alor
Ulduar
Firelands
Throne of Thunder
Blackrock Foundry

They tend to do their best work on the second tier of the expansion.

[Musta]

Ulduar and Karazhan. Nighthold was pretty good too.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Blackrock Foundry and Nighthold are the ones that stand out in my memory.

SoO was also an interesting raid, but it lasted so long that I simply cannot remember it in a positive light. It does however represent a chunk of my happiest time in this game overall with Guild and class and gameplay combined.

[Doffen]

Ulduar and Nighthold. Both had these themes throughout the whole raid, but different boss-fight which are easy to remember and point out. For me, that shows that the raid had a good variety of types of bosses, while bring true to the theme thus excellent raids. Elisande, one of the funniest bossfights I've ever done. Hodir as well, that crit damage buff, awesome!

Not to mention I have cleared Ulduar regularly the last 10 years. Fu*%$&# sh@$&$mount. :P

[Setuzor]

Original Naxxramas, because all the other bosses that came before it (minus Twins and C'Thun), were rather simple and easy to learn, Naxx however introduced complex mechanics and huge punishments for mistakes for the first time. There is a reason why only a small percentile of the playerbase back then achieved something in there.

Sunwell Plateau, because it was unforgiving and extremely hard, but not a bugfest like some of the other TBC raids were (Kael'Thas for example). The only negative point was the gating.

Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel, because both raids had very creative and interesting boss mechanics while having just the right amount of difficulty, on Heroic/Hard Mode that is of course. Normal Modes were a joke, but the harder versions were hard enough to be challenging but not as much of a grind as M'uru or Kel'Thuzad from the previosly mentioned raids.