Rank the hardest Wrath raid encounters

[kranur]

You think firefighter is harder then anub 25h? Something tells me you didn’t raid during togc.

Actually Firefighter did seem harder. Don't remember the actual progress times, but I remember 25h Anub being quite simple as opposed to Firefighter that was much more hectic.

[Tehalbino]

You think firefighter is harder then anub 25h? Something tells me you didn’t raid during togc.

Nothing was difficult about either of those.


The only thing that made either of them difficult were bugs.

Mimiron would randomly 1 shot non tanks. Anub would randomly 1 shot the tank. Players could not see Spikes, Fire, Orbs, or traps randomly.

[Bigbazz]

Trial of the Crusader was a great raid, all the bosses were awesome.

[Shiira]

You think firefighter is harder then anub 25h? Something tells me you didn’t raid during togc.

When attempting both at a relevant gear level and before nerfs firefighter was way harder. Yes, I raided both tiers when they were relevant.
People were able to clear togc despite the attempt limit, and none of the guilds that didn't use exploits were able to clear firefighter in the same week as ensidia.

[Somic]

You think firefighter is harder then anub 25h? Something tells me you didn’t raid during togc.

mim was alive twice as long as anub homie.

Anub took 7 days to clear even with limited wipes.

Togc was a joke

[Bigbazz]

mim was alive twice as long as anub homie.

Anub took 7 days to clear even with limited wipes.

Togc was a joke

I don't have any strong opinions either way but Ulduar was a huge raid while TOTGC was tiny and Firefighter was done in 2 weeks, lets not exaggerate the differences here. The limited wipes thing was a factor but it can be sidestepped by progressing on alts, and plenty of people had alts back then as well geared as their mains.

[SinR]

My moneys on Yogg +0

That said, it will still be rolled within 24 hours of the raid opening.

[Somic]

I don't have any strong opinions either way but Ulduar was a huge raid while TOTGC was tiny and Firefighter was done in 2 weeks, lets not exaggerate the differences here. The limited wipes thing was a factor but it can be sidestepped by progressing on alts, and plenty of people had alts back then as well geared as their mains.

I’m not exaggerating any differences here. Heroic anub lasted 7 days, with limited wipes, so without the wipes it probably would have been done way sooner because they beat it the first day their wipes reset.

Mimiron had unlimited wipes and took twice as long. That was just an example tho. Anyone who actually played back then or even on a pserver knows that full clearing TOGC was way way easier than a ton of hard mode fights in ulduar.

[Deferionus]

So the following bosses set a new standard for difficulty levels back in the day:

1. Yogg+0
2. LK 25 HC 0-5%
3. firefighter

There were other tricky encounters, but nothing came close to these three bosses.

Nowadays you will hardly have any problems with the bosses mentioned above. This also means that all other bosses are just push overs.

The real deal will become second world first of tribute to immortality.

Basically this. I was in a top 100 US guild that was top 3 on my server, so we were decent for the time period. We downed firefighter after enough attempts, but Yog 0 was an absolute bitch. We never got LK to my knowledge, though I did quit raiding when I server transferred so they might have eventually.

1. LK without the buff
2. Yog 0
3. Firefighter

Everything else in WOTLk was really simple. I think Yogg 0 and LK will still wipe a lot of groups in classic because I think their designs are in line with modern mythic bosses. Edit: before people start responding to this, they would be considered easy mythic bosses early in a raid tier today, imo.

[Kralljin]

I’m not exaggerating any differences here. Heroic anub lasted 7 days, with limited wipes, so without the wipes it probably would have been done way sooner because they beat it the first day their wipes reset.

Because Anub'arak has a massive bottleneck that is the last phase.

Generally speaking, the encounter is pretty straight forward once figured out.
The last phase however, if your healers suck, use the wrong heals and pump the raid too much (which heals the boss in turn) or even worse, do not coordinate their heals for the Penetrating cold debuff, you lose people rather quickly.
If your healers are bad, you need insane dps to compensate this.

Top tier raiding guilds almost (which do the world first kills) pretty much always have top tier healers, more average guilds don't.
A boss that puts a heavy emphasis on a rather select group of people / role is much more difficult for average guilds because performance between raiders massively fluctuates.

Another problem when arguing about the difficulty and using the real time it took to clear as metric to judge difficulty, that's just not a good metric for the reason above, because a highly competitive roster doesn't give a fuck about bosses that put a specific focus on a role or a massive roster adaptation is necessary, because they're far more flexible than less skilled raids.

Disregarding that there are examples in the past where this is already an inaccurate metric.
M'uru for example is probably the hardest boss in TBC, yet died after like 5 days after being made available.

[Konteil]

what made nub harder was overtuning at the release as well as people screwing up mechanics. its always been the same thing that screws people up. gtfo the stuff on the floor.

[Somic]

Because Anub'arak has a massive bottleneck that is the last phase.

Generally speaking, the encounter is pretty straight forward once figured out.
The last phase however, if your healers suck, use the wrong heals and pump the raid too much (which heals the boss in turn) or even worse, do not coordinate their heals for the Penetrating cold debuff, you lose people rather quickly.
If your healers are bad, you need insane dps to compensate this.

Top tier raiding guilds almost (which do the world first kills) pretty much always have top tier healers, more average guilds don't.
A boss that puts a heavy emphasis on a rather select group of people / role is much more difficult for average guilds because performance between raiders massively fluctuates.

Another problem when arguing about the difficulty and using the real time it took to clear as metric to judge difficulty, that's just not a good metric for the reason above, because a highly competitive roster doesn't give a fuck about bosses that put a specific focus on a role or a massive roster adaptation is necessary, because they're far more flexible than less skilled raids.

Disregarding that there are examples in the past where this is already an inaccurate metric.
M'uru for example is probably the hardest boss in TBC, yet died after like 5 days after being made available.

I’m really not sure what you’re even attempting to say here. Because most healers are bad that means the fight is now… harder? So if you have good healers the fight is easy. That’s not a very good defense on the difficulty of the raid my dude. If you have a raid full of people who can’t click a cube then mags liar has a solid case for being one of the toughest raids in history now following your logic. Togc was cleared by way more people on not jsut my server but on any private server you’ll go on. People still struggle with certain ulduar hardmodes. It’s not even remotely close either.

Also what are you attempting to say about Muru? Are you seriously attempting to say that muru is harder than any of the two raids I mentioned, is that what you’re seriously suggesting?

[CostinR]

My list. In order.

Firefighter 25 Man
Lich King 25 Man Heroic
Putricide 25 Man Heroic
Yogg Saron 0
Lady Deathwhisper 25 Man Heroic

[Bigbazz]

I’m really not sure what you’re even attempting to say here. Because most healers are bad that means the fight is now… harder? So if you have good healers the fight is easy. That’s not a very good defense on the difficulty of the raid my dude. If you have a raid full of people who can’t click a cube then mags liar has a solid case for being one of the toughest raids in history now following your logic. Togc was cleared by way more people on not jsut my server but on any private server you’ll go on. People still struggle with certain ulduar hardmodes. It’s not even remotely close either.

Also what are you attempting to say about Muru? Are you seriously attempting to say that muru is harder than any of the two raids I mentioned, is that what you’re seriously suggesting?

Seems clear he's suggesting that Muru didn't survive the longest out of the TBC bosses but it's quite clearly the hardest TBC boss. He's also saying difficulty is relative when the difficulty of a fight is narrowed down to a specific task. You could have the best DPS in the world on Anub and it doesn't do much for you if your healers aren't able to grasp the idea of the fight, which is to keep the tank/raid alive while healing as little as possible.

Difficulty is relative. Also worth noting that had Ulduar Hardmodes been locked in the first week (like in TOTC) they would have had a week's worth of loot before the "Hardmode" counter started and that same 2 weeks to kill Firefighter probably would have been closet to 1. I don't think there is some big gulf in difficulty between Ulduar and TOTGC, save for perhaps Yogg +0 alone, aside from the fact that Ulduar is a much larger and more time consuming raid regardless of encounter difficulty.

Talking about private server difficulty is pointless because they are never remotely close to reality, typically scripted differently and heavily buffed. Archimonde on a certain private server I played on had fire that chased the melee around in all directions and had air-bursts on melee too. Archimonde on TBCC the melee just stand on the same spot the whole fight and just dps without a worry in the world, if there is fire you take one side step... Completely different fight.

[Kralljin]

I’m really not sure what you’re even attempting to say here. Because most healers are bad that means the fight is now… harder?

Because having bad healers means you're going to lose 3-4 people a few seconds after phasing into the last phase, which is something that's extremely difficult to compensate.
As the healers need to heal 5 random targets, because any non tank should sit like ~3k health and the 1st tick of that random dot does 6k damage.
You need pretty much every healer react to a random dot within 3 seconds and have coordinated themselves well enough that they don't overlap their heals among any of the 5 random targets.

As a counter example, having terrible healers on an encounter like Yogg (+0) isn't a big deal, because it's not a very heal intensive fight and especially in the last phase because all a Healer has to do is stare at their raid frame and heal anything that's taking damage.
On Anub'arak it's a big deal, because it's a heal intensive encounter, or at least spot heal.

So if you have good healers the fight is easy. That’s not a very good defense on the difficulty of the raid my dude. If you have a raid full of people who can’t click a cube then mags liar has a solid case for being one of the toughest raids in history now following your logic.

Because you have absolute freedom on Magtheridon cubes outside of your MT when it comes to assignments.
Got a terrible healer? Don't assign it to cubes, boom problem solved.

If you got terrible healers and you want to kill Anub'arak HC, you can't just unassign them from their role unless you want to bring another healer for every bad one.

Also what are you attempting to say about Muru? Are you seriously attempting to say that muru is harder than any of the two raids I mentioned, is that what you’re seriously suggesting?

No, i am pointing out that M'uru, a boss that has been considered one the hardest bosses up to that point (and by that, i mean the year 2008) was killed after mere 5 days.
Which by your standards would mean that M'uru was actually a very easy boss in comparison to quite a lot of bosses else up so far, which is false.

[Somic]

Seems clear he's suggesting that Muru didn't survive the longest out of the TBC bosses but it's quite clearly the hardest TBC boss. He's also saying difficulty is relative when the difficulty of a fight is narrowed down to a specific task. You could have the best DPS in the world on Anub and it doesn't do much for you if your healers aren't able to grasp the idea of the fight, which is to keep the tank/raid alive while healing as little as possible.

Difficulty is relative. Also worth noting that had Ulduar Hardmodes been locked in the first week (like in TOTC) they would have had a week's worth of loot before the "Hardmode" counter started and that same 2 weeks to kill Firefighter probably would have been closet to 1. I don't think there is some big gulf in difficulty between Ulduar and TOTGC, save for perhaps Yogg +0 alone, aside from the fact that Ulduar is a much larger and more time consuming raid regardless of encounter difficulty.

Talking about private server difficulty is pointless because they are never remotely close to reality, typically scripted differently and heavily buffed. Archimonde on a certain private server I played on had fire that chased the melee around in all directions and had air-bursts on melee too. Archimonde on TBCC the melee just stand on the same spot the whole fight and just dps without a worry in the world, if there is fire you take one side step... Completely different fight.

So let me get this straight, because Muru didn't survive the longest out of the TBC bosses he is suggesting this is comparable to how wotlk bosses operated in terms of how long they survived. If that's the case then that's the worst analogy I have ever heard of. TBC released with bosses all open up until hyjal so no shit bosses like KT lasted longer considering people had to level, do dungeons, do t4, t5 etc before even getting to them. Not to even mention KT was bugged for the longest time so he was literally unkillable so Illidan actually died before KT did because of this. So if he is actually comparing a boss like muru which was an extremely time gated boss where people had all the time in the world to get geared and get prepared for him on day 1 of release, to a boss like KT that was literally unkillable for months as well as being available day 1 of release of tbc, then yeah I wouldn't be taking his comparisons too seriously. I'm comparing a wotlk boss to a wotlk boss. Both of which weren't glitched out to the point of them being impossible and both were easily accessible to everyone.

Talking about private server difficulty is pointless because they are never remotely close to reality, typically scripted differently and heavily buffed. Archimonde on a certain private server I played on had fire that chased the melee around in all directions and had air-bursts on melee too. Archimonde on TBCC the melee just stand on the same spot the whole fight and just dps without a worry in the world, if there is fire you take one side step... Completely different fight.

I mean it's not as if private servers told us exactly what would happen in the last two versions of classic now right?? Lol seems they all got those pretty god damn good. They got wotlk good too. But unless you truly honestly don't believe in private server accuracy (which you should its been proven to be extremely accurate but w/e) then just look at what happened in live. Way way way way more people finished togc than things like hardmode 25 mimiron or things like yogg +0 or shit even things like algalon. It wasn't even remotely close to the same difficulty. But if you truly want to go around and say "Well if you had bad healers it was way more difficult", well yeah you're right and with bad healers then Valithria Dreamwalker is harder than Lich King. But we all know which one is considered harder...

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Because having bad healers means you're going to lose 3-4 people a few seconds after phasing into the last phase, which is something that's extremely difficult to compensate.
As the healers need to heal 5 random targets, because any non tank should sit like ~3k health and the 1st tick of that random dot does 6k damage.
You need pretty much every healer react to a random dot within 3 seconds and have coordinated themselves well enough that they don't overlap their heals among any of the 5 random targets.

Sweet heart I'm not saying it wasn't difficult. I'm not saying it was easy with bad healers. We are comparing two fights to one another. Yes if you had bad healers, then yes it will be harder for you. But guess what if you have bad healers then Heroic Valithria Dreamwalker is going to be harder than yogg +0 but we all know which one is actually harder.

Just because you can come up with an anecdote and say "Well yeah but if someone is really really bad at X then this fight is harder", that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about the fight in general which is way way way easier compared to Firefighter. It's not even close. Not even remotely close.

Because you have absolute freedom on Magtheridon cubes outside of your MT when it comes to assignments.
Got a terrible healer? Don't assign it to cubes, boom problem solved.

If you got terrible healers and you want to kill Anub'arak HC, you can't just unassign them from their role unless you want to bring another healer for every bad one.

Yeah but if everyone in the raid is bad at clicking man you know, it's just too hard, you know.

You know you have absolute freedom of picking your healers out for the raid too right? If you can't find a healer that knows how to slow down healing when you say "slow down healing" then I don't think you were getting down any hardmodes anyway.

No, i am pointing out that M'uru, a boss that has been considered one the hardest bosses up to that point (and by that, i mean the year 2008) was killed after mere 5 days.
Which by your standards would mean that M'uru was actually a very easy boss in comparison to quite a lot of bosses else up so far, which is false.

M'uru and all of TBC bosses should be out of this equation if you knew anything about how tbc bosses were released/bugged/gated which is not comparable to what I was talking about. I was comparing 2 raids in wotlk which both opened up directly after the previous tier of raiding was finished and didn't have any 'gating' of their content or game breaking bugs that allowed them to be unkillable. They are directly comparable.

If you are bringing up M'uru you need to compare him with someone so we know how dishonest you're being when you say other bosses lasted longer. Your comparison here is extremely bad. Extremely extremely bad

[FuxieDK]

Trial of the Crusader was a great raid, all the bosses were awesome.

Literally, every single raid made, before and after ToC was better than ToC.

[Kralljin]

But guess what if you have bad healers then Heroic Valithria Dreamwalker is going to be harder than yogg +0 but we all know which one is actually harder.

No, because on Dreamwalker you can just assign your bad healers to not going into the dream realm.
Nevermind that the encounter is tuned that not every healer needs to be on top of their game, as long as you have ~2 healers that maintain their stacks, it's good enough.

"Just" two good healers however aren't good enough for Anub'arak, because even a good healer can't heal more than two targets by a sufficient amount within three seconds.

Yeah but if everyone in the raid is bad at clicking man you know, it's just too hard, you know.

Look, arguments like are just completely stupid.

There is a world of difference between "this encounter really depends on role X" and "every encounter is hard if everyone is bad".

You know you have absolute freedom of picking your healers out for the raid too right?

Sure, i could also replace every single raider in the roster, replace it with much better people and clear everything in one night, then call it super easy and say everyone else is a scrub.
That is in theory possible, after all, but not in reality.

If you can't find a healer that knows how to slow down healing when you say "slow down healing" then I don't think you were getting down any hardmodes anyway.

You talk about how easy Anub'arak is and believe the "slowing down" is the difficult part of the fight for healers?

They are directly comparable.

No, your metric doesn't "directly" compare them.

Your 14 days are based on the Ulduar launch (15.4) and the first kill (1.5) but completely disregards that Ulduar is a nonlinear raid.
Did Ensidia progress Freya in the meantime? Who knows, probably i'd say, but it's not like Freya is mandatory to access Mimiron.

[rogoth]

You think firefighter is harder then anub 25h? Something tells me you didn’t raid during togc.

kinda obvious lol, probably just regurgitating the third hand info shared over the years thinking it's actually true.

one thing i will say about TOGC that i expect to not be a thing now unlike it was at the time, and that's general latency and connection issues, when i got my first twins kill on heroic, half the raid was DC'ed or lagging so badly due to the balls flying around it was ridiculous, and as far as anub is concerned, it's gonna be funny seeing people try to full heal the raid groups when it's not only not needed, but also impossible.

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Literally, every single raid made, before and after ToC was better than ToC.

that's just your opinion, and for me personally, you're wrong, TOGC was better than the entire first tier of wrath content, even 3 drakes couldn't redeem that mess, although i will say i'm very grateful that it was so easy because the gap between clearing and ulduar release was what allowed me to build up a huge gold stockpile and i was able to become entirely self sufficient as a result of having so much time on my hands, i didn't have that luxury during 3.1 or 3.2.

[Bigbazz]

So let me get this straight, because Muru didn't survive the longest out of the TBC bosses he is suggesting this is comparable to how wotlk bosses operated in terms of how long they survived.

Are you purposely being obtuse just for the sake of arguing here or what? Everyone in this thread can understand his example without jumping to conclusions and getting emotional about it, you're purposely trying to be argumentative here and it's just pointless. Stop acting like what he said is some big deal or that it's some wild conclusion he's making. You're being a drama queen, nobody else in the thread is.

I mean it's not as if private servers told us exactly what would happen in the last two versions of classic now right?? Lol seems they all got those pretty god damn good. They got wotlk good too. But unless you truly honestly don't believe in private server accuracy (which you should its been proven to be extremely accurate but w/e) then just look at what happened in live. Way way way way more people finished togc than things like hardmode 25 mimiron or things like yogg +0 or shit even things like algalon. It wasn't even remotely close to the same difficulty.

Private servers told us wonderful things like how we would stack 15 warlocks on Muru, that Warriors would be a trash tier dps class and that Hydross was harder than Vashj. Comparing a gigantic raid like Ulduar with a 5 boss one room and no trash raid like TOTC which could be cleared 30mins, where you could farm 4 difficulities for loot and where the non-heroic versions of the bosses were extremely easy is pointless.

You're working really hard here to compare two bosses that were killed very quickly, and you're getting dramatic about it. Try to just chill out and have a discussion with people instead of getting mad about it.

But if you truly want to go around and say "Well if you had bad healers it was way more difficult", well yeah you're right and with bad healers then Valithria Dreamwalker is harder than Lich King. But we all know which one is considered harder...

Dreamwalker was an easy boss though, notoriously so. It also doesn't have anything mechanic like Anub has that made it difficult, you can easily carry crappy switched off healers there. It's a silly comparison to make, and given how you reacted to the Mu'ru example above? If someone had made that same Dreamwalker example to you, you would have seemingly lost your shit at them.

Literally, every single raid made, before and after ToC was better than ToC.

You're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to mine, I think it was a great raid. Having a raid with no trash and some interesting bosses as a filler between T8 and T10, spot on. WoW should have more of them. TOTC was the 3rd best raid in WOTLK and WOTLK was the 2nd best WoW expansion.