What do you think were the best boss fights in WoW?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What would you say are your most favorite, most memorable boss fights in WoW?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

What would you say are your most favorite, most memorable boss fights in WoW?

What are yours?


Also, there is a difference between what one would considered the "best" versus considered "favorite/most memorable" but to answer the question, my favorite/most memorable would be Lich King.

[Al Gorefiend]

Faction Champions - Trial of the Crusader - Wrath of the Lich King.

A fight so challenging and requiring so much skill Blizzard promised to never do something like it again.

[kranur]

Illidan and Kil'jaeden.

Lich King is a bit lower on the list because of the multiple difficulties. Once killed on a difficulty then it becomes meh.

[Lochton]

Some of mine are... very controversial, I believe...

World Of Warcraft - Vanilla: - Onyxia.
World Of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade: - Chess Event.
World Of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King: - XT-002 Deconstructor/The Lich King.
World Of Warcraft - Cataclysm: - Spine of Deathwing.
World Of Warcraft - Mists of Pandaria: - Lei Shen.
World Of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor: - Operator Thogar.
World Of Warcraft - Legion: - Star Augur Etraeus.
World Of Warcraft - Battle For Azeroth: - Lady Jaina Proudmore.
World Of Warcraft - Shadowlands (For now): - The Council of Blood.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What are yours?

• Flame Leviathan. Everyone climbs into vehicles and you fight armies of thousands and destroy buildings. Feels like you are in the middle of a war, assaulting a fortress.

• The gunship battle in ICC. People manning turrets and machinegunning the other boat. People equipping jet packs to board the other ship to assassinate the enemy general. Mages shielding the gunship and turrets being frozen. Feels like you're in the middle of a war.

• Spine of Deathwing. You parachute onto the back of a huge dragon and start ripping out his scales and trying to hang on for dear life while he barrels rolls trying to shake you off.

• Madness of Deathwing was also cool for jumping between the platforms.

• The Siegecrafter fight where a B-team splitting off from the raid to jump onto a conveyor belt, trying to DPS down random inventions, but they can't destroy all of the inventions in time so the one that is deployed will have an effect on the raid like pushing people back with magnetization.

• Garrosh: every now and then, you get yanked into a vision and you revisit key places along your MoP journey. You have a minute to sprint through the place to the end and DPS down Garrosh.

• Hans'gar & Franzok: you fight two bosses on a moving conveyor belt, dodging presses stamping down from above and such.

• Operator Thogar: you reenact the train station fight from the 2003 Clone Wars cartoon, constantly looking both ways to dodge incoming trains left and right, and reinforcements are being unloaded.

• Blackhand. Debris falling from above, Iron Stars crashing through the floor, snipers down at shooting at you, tanks rolling onto the battlefield, Blackhand screaming at you as the room is being consumed in flames and the heroic WC3 music playing.

- - - Updated - - -

Though he wasn't a raid boss, I also really liked the Kruul fight. It felt challenging, and getting him to the victory lap second phase where he is having a breakdown felt satisfying.

[Al Gorefiend]

World Of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor: - Operator Thogar.

I didn't even remember this bosses name, yet I immediately knew who you were talking about. I totally agree, Thogar was a highlight moment in WoD, very fun chaos of a boss fight.

[arkanon]

• Flame Leviathan. Everyone climbs into vehicles and you fight armies of thousands and destroy buildings. Feels like you are in the middle of a war, assaulting a fortress.

• The gunship battle in ICC. People manning turrets and machinegunning the other boat. People equipping jet packs to board the other ship to assassinate the enemy general. Mages shielding the gunship and turrets being frozen. Feels like you're in the middle of a war.

• Spine of Deathwing. You parachute onto the back of a huge dragon and start ripping out his scales and trying to hang on for dear life while he barrels rolls trying to shake you off.

• Madness of Deathwing was also cool for jumping between the platforms.

• The Siegecrafter fight where a B-team splitting off from the raid to jump onto a conveyor belt, trying to DPS down random inventions, but they can't destroy all of the inventions in time so the one that is deployed will have an effect on the raid like pushing people back with magnetization.

• Garrosh: every now and then, you get yanked into a vision and you revisit key places along your MoP journey. You have a minute to sprint through the place to the end and DPS down Garrosh.

• Hans'gar & Franzok: you fight two bosses on a moving conveyor belt, dodging presses stamping down from above and such.

• Operator Thogar: you reenact the train station fight from the 2003 Clone Wars cartoon, constantly looking both ways to dodge incoming trains left and right, and reinforcements are being unloaded.

• Blackhand. Debris falling from above, Iron Stars crashing through the floor, snipers down at shooting at you, tanks rolling onto the battlefield, Blackhand screaming at you as the room is being consumed in flames and the heroic WC3 music playing.

Basically you like gimmick fights.

[Tziva]

Lady Vashj was probably my favourite fight of all time, but there are plenty of others that I've enjoyed over the years. Honestly it's hard to remember because I can appreciate a lot of fights more in hindsight then I did during progression when I might have been frustrated with unique gimmicks or weaknesses/mistakes in my raid groups.

Fights that I loathed -- and there's usually at least one per tier -- are much easier to recall with clarity.

[Bee76]

What would you say are your most favorite, most memorable boss fights in WoW?

I enjoyed many bossfights in wow.

My top 3 are:
1. Arthas
2. Archimonde
3. Nefarian (!)

Arthas is one of the most iconic fights ever, tough mechnaics (without disc) not to long, not 100000 stupid phases
Archimonde was one of the first fights in which every member of the raidgrp hat to know what to do.
Lagfarian was an fun fight, with tons of lore and history. he felt "meaningful" for the world. something i miss in most actual fights and endbosses.

but a mentioned there are a lot of funny fights and bosses. There were 2 raids out there which i really not enjoyed, Battle of dazadalor, all bosses stupid and unfun and the first elgion raid, but i enjoyed killing xavius for what he did to ysera.

[PsychoSe7eN]

- Lich King
- Thaddius
- Four Horsemen
- professor Putricide
- blood queen Lana'thel
- Dark Shaman SoO
- Nerzhul WOD
- Nefarian

[McNeil]

Lich King stands out both mechanically and thematically. Also really liked facing Illidan for the first time in TBC.

[VinceVega]

Blackhands hands down. Every phase in every difficulty was amazing.

I also liked Mimiron quite a lot and Freya.

The doctor fight in ICC. Just because of " Good new everyone!"

And nearly very fight in Nighthold

[Candy Cough]

For fun I particularly enjoyed Hagara Stormbinder

As for best, I’d say Yogg’saron, and Thats coming from a Cata baby. Kicked both my and the pugs ass even when I did it in MoP

[Relapses]

TBC -- I have a special place in my heart for Magtheridon. It was the first raid I did as a F&F trial (ie, 4th tank replacement for an officer alt's replacement alt) tank. I had no fucking idea what I was doing and my role was pretty much "click the fucking button or we're kicking you from the guild." I clicked the button. The guild disbanded anyway though.

WotLK -- In Ulduar, Hodir because big numbers go brr. In ICC, Sindragosa because that fight on Heroic was just fucking awesome. Naxx and ToC weren't real raids and I'm tired of pretending they were.

Cataclysm -- Everything in Firelands. I fucking love this raid. It's perfect. If you disagree, you're wrong.

MoP -- Sha of Fear -- My first 22 minute boss wipe. Also my last 22 minute boss wipe. Second boss in ToES was fun too. I got to play a janky Holy Priest DPS spec and I'll be lying if I didn't tell you I was blasting Night Man from IASIP for most of our progression. One critique, however: It was Tsulong. Had fun farming the shit out of Garry McOrcface, too.

WoD -- End of my raiding career, but there were a lot of good encounters in here. Blast Furnace is one of my favorite Mythic encounters ever made. (Again, Priest bias. Sorry not sorry.) Blackhand was fun, too, but after 6 weeks of 4 hour prog on it I was... not in a good mood by the time we killed it. Outside of this, I think Gorefiend was also a really cool mid-tier roadblock and both Manny and Archi were a lot of fun. The Arcane Mage cheese in this Tier was a bit much, though.

Even though I technically raided in EN and Nighthold up to Gul'daniel progression, I don't remember early Legion very fondly and I didn't like any of the bosses outside of Star Augur. And since this is where I stopped raiding, I like to pretend that raid bosses after this point are all figments of everybody else's imagination.

[exsanguinate]

Ragnaros Heroic.

[Rockstaar]

I loved Mimiron, Yogg, Algalons room and the pvp fight in Trial of the Crusader.

[Kyphael]

The Lich King. Being a Kingslayer back in Wrath felt special.

[garicasha]

Ragnaros and Lich King were some of the most epic fights ever. I mean my guild extended raid time an hour just so we could SUMMON Ragnaros, just so we could SEE him, knowing full well he'd murder us all.

And the defile was just a great mechanic to wipe to, that fight just had everything it should've...Tirion, Frostmourne, Val'kyr, Defile, he hit hard as ----, the plague, etc.

Malchezzar was pretty cool, and his voice acting was really good. "Madness....has brought you to me."

The keepers of Ulduar were all amazing fights in their own right. I really think Ulduar was the best raid ever, but none of the individual fights stand out so much. Descending in to madness to fight Yogg was so much fun though, and learning that he was observing/controlling all of Azeroth's most pivotal moments from the shadows...

Anyone that mentioned a raid that may or may not have existed between Ulduar and ICC should have their account deleted.

Ragnaros 2.0 was pretty epic (I wasn't raiding hardcore then.) Nef 2.0 was kinda fun but the lore was such a joke...why is he alive after we cut his head off and hung it from the rafters of Stormwind?

I'm surprised some people mentioned Spine of Deathwing, I didn't raid it but I thought most people despised that encounter...1 min DPS CDs or GTFO. Dragon Soul was one of the weakest raid instances ever IMO.

Didn't raid Pandaria or really first part of WoD.

Hellfire Citadel meh.

Star Augur Etraeus was a LOT of fun. That's probably one of the fights I liked the most that other people didn't. I like the "match the shapes" type of encounters, keeps each attempt kind of interesting. Making the whole raid spread then people slowly match up and then it's safer for the other people to run through. Just a really neat encounter.

Grand Magistrix I didn't care for at the time but it was a really neat idea to fight her 3x in a time bubble with things from the first times affecting the later ones.

I liked Fallen Avatar P1, beam soaking is the kind of guild-wide coordination I really like to see, really makes it satisfying when he goes down.

KJ was just hard.

Mythic Aggramar was a lot of fun, I would have really liked to see the class design change for these fights with tons of adds. I would also like to see CC tools moved from DPS to tanks, but that would obviously have enormous impacts on PvP (which I never do). The idea is that tanks instead of just getting smacked hard would gain more abilities to control the monsters and tanking would be more about that than "DPS except they react to getting hit."

Didn't raid BfA.

I also thought Flame Leviathan was enormously fun.

Least favorite--Mistress Sassz'ine in Tomb of Sargeras. A bewildering hodgepodge of every clump up / spread out mechanic that only an ADHD kid could love. And I was on a resto druid, which were incredibly mobile in Legion! (Remember displacer beast, aka druids get blink?)

I never did him on hardmode but I also loved the idea of the Gothik fight. Kinda like Aggramar, where there's an enormous amount of the raid working together to control a ton of adds.

Honorable mentions: Professor Putricide, Valithria Dreamwalker, Denathrius (A+++ voice acting but the fight is just a touch too spastic for my tastes...also Blood Price lag)

I'll also give a shoutout to Fatescribe Ruh'kalo as the one fight in all of WoW that requires the most different strategy for a coordinated guild group in a large raid vs a small disorganized pug. That fight isn't that tough to pug...except 99% of people dunno how to adjust from what they read in their strategy guide. I put a post on how to do it in this forum, it's probably 2-3 pages down.

Oh and one last shoutout to probably the biggest laugh I got in the last ten years of WoW....SASHAY LEFT!!!

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Lich King. Got Bane of the Fallen King in WotLK and am proud of it.