Is spine of deathwing heroic the hardest raid boss ever conceived?

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Two bloodlusts and absolute hell for healers to heal. Thoughts?

[WorcesterSauce]

Not even the hardest raid boss in the expansion.

[Aucald]

I think that crown still belongs to pre-nerf C'Thun. But if you discount encounters that were manifestly impossible, it's a close tie between TBC's Kael'thas and OG Ragnaros back in Classic (the '04 version).

[Zogarth]

Nah not at all. Rag Heroic alone was harder, the only reason why the fight was so damn infamous is because you had to do stupid stacking of certain classes. Besides that, Archimonde Mythic was at least a lot harder. I remember Method commenting that it was the hardest boss ever released then.

[Varolyn]

Mythic KJ was more difficult and probably the hardest mythic raid boss of all time though for the wrong reasons. 0 margin of error and every single player in your raid had to play flawlessly.

One minor mistake from just one player in that fight, and it was basically an insta wipe.

[Thelxi]

Wasn't it cheesed by stacking a ton of arcane mages with the legendary staff and sinestra trinket that reduced the mana cost of spells? maybe I'm remembering wrong.

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

Not even close. The hardest part was to have DPS to nuke each armor in 2 tries. Raid was pretty much stacked so with enough shamans it wasn't that bad to heal.

One of the hardest DPS checks in WoW? Yeah but overall not that hard boss.

[Saltysquidoon]

Spine is only hard because one of the stupid fucking mages would blink to their death ever other pull because they could not grasp the concept of "if you can't judge distance just run it".

[Seratox]

Spine was easy if people stacked correctly lol

[Jastall]

Not by a long shot, it wasn't even the hardest fight of its expansion. It demanded stupid amounts of class stacking at first, but that's hardly the same thing as the ball-breakingly hard bosses like Rag H, Yogg+0 or KJ M.

[Mammoon]

There is a gigantic difference in "X fight required crazy DPS to kill" and "X fight had ridiculous mechanics and still required crazy DPS." You could have a Patchwerk fight with literally 0 mechanics but required a bajillion DPS and HPS to kill, and half of the playerbase (who never does the content when it is current) would claim it is the hardest ever, just because the DPS and HPS numbers were overtuned or because the boss lived for X days.

[antelope591]

Mythic KJ is the answer....the fight got nerfed like 20 times and it was still too hard for the majority of mythic guilds to kill.

[Razion]

From a thread back in 2011 on bosses that stayed unkilled the longest:

#1 Ouro - 87 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 26th April 2006.
#2 C'thun - 86 days from the Twin Emperors' death. 25th April 2006.
#3 tied Chromaggus - 74 days from Ebonroc's death. 25th September 2005.
#3 tied Ragnaros - 74 days from Majordomo Executus' death. 25th April 2005.
#5 Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness - 70 days from One Light in the Darkness. 7th July 2009
#6 High Astromancer Solarian - 59 days from Magtheridon's death. 24th April 2007
#7 The Four Horsemen - 56 days from Gothik's death to D&T's kill. August 25th 2006
#8 Al'ar <Phoenix God> - 48 days from Magtheridon's death. 13th April 2007
#9 The Lich King (Heroic 25) - 42 Days from Heroic Putricide's death (first pull). March 26th 2010
#10 Heroic Al'Akir - 36 days from Heroic Conclave of Wind's death. January 22nd 2011.
#11 Kael'thas Sunstrider <Lord of the Blood Elves> - 31 days from Solarian's death. 25th May 2007
#12 Magtheridon - 29 days from the first 70 raid kills. 24th February 2007
#13 Lady Vashj <Coilfang Matron> - 17 days from being unlocked. 29th March 2007
#14 Leotheras the Blind - 16 days from Hydross' death. 4th March 2007
#15 Loatheb - 14 days from Heigan's death. 17th July 2006
#16 tied Heigan the Unclean - 13 days from Noth the Plaguebringer's death. 3rd July 2006
#16 tied Hydross the Unstable <Duke of Currents> - 13 days from Gruul's death. 16th February 2007
#16 tied Heroic Cho'gall - 13 days from Heroic Ascendant Council's death. 15th January 2011.
#16 tied Heroic Nefarian - 13 days from Heroic Atramedes' death. January 9th 2011.
#20 tied Archimonde <The Defiler> - 10 days from Azgalor's death. 9th June 2007
#20 tied Gothik the Harvester - 10 days from Instructor Razuvious' death. 30th June 2006
#22 tied Mimiron Firefighter 25 - 8 days from Ensidia's KnockKnockKnock kill to Firefighter kill. May 1st 2009
#22 tied Sapphiron - 8 days from Four Horsemen dying. 2nd September 2006
#22 tied Gruul the Dragonkiller - 8 days from Maulgar's death. 3rd February 2007
#25 Reliquary of Lost Souls - 6 days from Gurtogg's death. 2nd June 2007
#26 tied Kel'Thuzad - 5 days from Sapphiron's death. 7th September 2006
#26 tied Kil'jaeden <The Deceiver> - 5 days from the opening of the third Sunwell gate. 25th May 2008
#26 tied Sinestra - 5 days from Heroic Cho'gall's death. January 20th 2011.
#29 tied Heroic Anub'arak 25 - 4 days from Heroic Twin Val'kyr's death. September 6th 2009.
#29 tied M'uru. 4 days from the opening of the second Sunwell gate. 4th May 2008

Anyway, when we did Heroic Spine, it took some cheese with rocket boots banners dashes and whatnot in order to get past a plate. Raid-wide, we functionally didn't get any more damage out of the group and we were just bashing our heads against a wall. But of course, the loot we got from killing Spine and Madness immediately after (a joke, comparatively) and the prior bosses the following week immediately trivialized Spine going forward. It had only been hard the one lockout. I do remember thinking I'd gladly have wiped double the wipes we had done that night if we had the time for it. Good fight. Hardest ever? Probably not, definitely other fights that were left uncleared a lot longer. For the people I was raiding with it was probably the most infamous, though I think our raid leader at the time would probably have said Heroic Ragnaros had been harder. A lot less of a road-block imo, I think we wiped far less. I think Sinestra in Bastion of Twilight was even harder than Rag in terms of a raid-wide demanding fight, but whatever. (And actually, apparently Sinestra was on that '11 list, so go figure.)

On a personal level I think the weights are a lot different. Some fights demand more of individuals than groups as a whole, so for me as melee a fight like Heroic Will of the Emperor Cutting Edge was a lot more enjoyable mechanically than Spine. I loved dipping and dodging between all those arcing slashes... as opposed to, y'know, sitting in pools of magma twiddling your thumbs until the plate flew off and you could actually do something. Spine was actually pretty boring until the plates were off. Not really doing a whole lot until then... in fact you'd probably have gotten your head chewed off if you were caught so much as doing an auto on anything to get a cheeky proc before the plate came off. Meanwhile Cutting Edge Will of the Emperor was involved the entire way through and felt like it had all the intensity of the check of Spine without any of the sitting around and waiting. Maybe that's why my raid leader liked H-Rag - probably a similar involved feeling for ranged, I imagine. He also liked Alysrazor as ranged in a way I'd probably compare melee liking Rhyolith.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

The hardest boss of that expansion was Ragnaros. How can Spine be the hardest boss, when it wasn't the hardest of the expansion? Avatar, Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, Lich King, Ragnaros...

[Djaye]

the fight that just required you to stack and burst armor plates? is this a joke?
spine was a piss ez fight and not even in the top 20 hardest encounters.

you want a hard fight? try pre-nerf C'thun which was literally mathematically impossible to win until the nerf...

[Belloc]

You can tell that Heroic Spine was easy when my 1-day a week guild killed it on our first night. Sure, it was with the 10 or 15% buff/debuff, but it was still easy enough that we got it in one night. No amount of debuffs would've made Heroic Ragnaros or pretty much any of the first tier of bosses from Cataclysm that easy, except maybe Chimaeron or Atrimedes.

Nah, Heroic Spine was a dps check and nothing more. You want a hard boss? Try 10-man Heroic Twilight Ascendant Council... worst max-level fight I've ever experienced.

[Kaleredar]

Spine is such a terribly conceived boss fight that I refuse to give it any sort of benefit or legitimacy.

As others have said... it wasn't really mechanically difficult at all. Literally do the same thing three times and you win.

[ClassicPeon]

I think that crown still belongs to pre-nerf C'Thun. But if you discount encounters that were manifestly impossible, it's a close tie between TBC's Kael'thas and OG Ragnaros back in Classic (the '04 version).

Someone has their rose tinted googles on lol oO

Unless you just mean "for their time". Objectively the hardest boss fights are probably found somewhere between MoP and now.

- - - Updated - - -

the fight that just required you to stack and burst armor plates? is this a joke?
spine was a piss ez fight and not even in the top 20 hardest encounters.

you want a hard fight? try pre-nerf C'thun which was literally mathematically impossible to win until the nerf...

It was so mathematicly impossible that people aa their way through it on private servers where they have pre-nerf c'thun in a BUFFED version to fight lol

[Pandragon]

I think that crown still belongs to pre-nerf C'Thun.

That doesn't count. He wasn't "hard" but bugged. It was mathematically impossible to kill him.

[TheRainman]

Two bloodlusts and absolute hell for healers to heal. Thoughts?

Lmao no, not even close. Like someone else said, not even the hardest fight in Cataclysm.