Quote:14. Sapphiron. Does a lot of frost damage, has coordination elements as well. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of random factors, though.

Quote:3. Razuvious. The only time this fight is trouble is if you don't have 4% spellhit priests or if you're trying to do it with virtually no healers.

Quote:Case in point, we had a couple of back to back resist with +3 to hit (so only a 1 in 50 chance of a resist).

Quote:Per about 5 seconds. The hit check happens about every 5 seconds, which is why those priests with spell hit gear or points in Shadow Focus can hold their mind controled targets much longer than those who don't.

Quote:Per about 5 seconds. The hit check happens about every 5 seconds, which is why those priests with spell hit gear or points in Shadow Focus can hold their mind controled targets much longer than those who don't.

Quote:I don't believe SF actually helps. The person that got the back to back resists with +3 to hit was a Shadow Priest with full SF. The students have 0 SR and IIRC, MC is not a binary spell.

Quote:I believe SF is actually implemented as +to hit, not -resist. I could be wrong though, but that's what I've heard.

Quote:I don't believe SF actually helps. The person that got the back to back resists with +3 to hit was a Shadow Priest with full SF. The students have 0 SR and IIRC, MC is not a binary spell.

Quote:Remember that they need to keep within 20 yards or else they fail the range check, too. Also, if a person is damaged, they lose time on the Mind Control -- which is not important for Razuvious but is important for Faerlina. Or at least it was important before she was nerfed all to heck.

Quote:Posting this while waiting for our Atiesh group to finish the Stratholme event. Yes, Kel'Thuzad is down on Stormrage, and now that I've seen everything, I'll do a final evaluation of all the bosses in order of difficulty. I'm trying to index this as a unified rating of how difficult a fight is to learn and how difficult a fight is to execute, which are distinct types of difficulty.

1. Grobbulus. I'm ashamed to admit that we've had one wipe to him since I posted last, although it was a freak one in a thousand conflation of events. At any rate, Grobbulus is still by far the easiest fight in the zone. He's easy to learn and easy to execute: just don't cleanse and run when prompted.

2. Razuvious. Learning is simple: a Chromaggus style LOS and otherwise just tanking him in the corner. The twist is doing it with MC'ed adds, but on a theoretical level you can know exactly what to do from the moment you see him. It's slightly trickier to actually do the tanking, but the only gear check aspect of this encounter is checking priest spellhit. Random MC breaks can wipe you, but those are relatively rare and will happen infrequently.

3. Grand Widow Faerlina. Once you know how the enrages work, which is publically available knowledge now, this is entirely an execution fight. You tank things, MC worshippers, and run out of rains of fire. It's no more complicated than that. The execution isn't really hard, either: it's straight tank and spank except for the priest timing the MCs. Even if the priest is slow on the button, prepared healers can keep the tank up through enrage for a while.

4. Anub'Rekhan. Anub is a learning and execution challenge. Learning, because it's a fight where a lot of little things are going on, and only experience can teach you the particular ways to handle each of them (how do you handle guards, where do you position guards, how do you avoid Impale, etc.) Execution, because if your tank or hunter slips up, that generally means the rest of the raid is doomed. Having your tank or hunter disconnect is an automatic GG in a way that it isn't for many other fights in this instance.

5. Noth the Plaguebringer. In learning and execution, Noth is actually slightly easier than Anub. The only execution question is not shooting on a blink, and there's always a raid-wide indrawn breath every time he curses, because one missed curse is going to cascade badly. Learning is a matter of allocating DPS resources correctly. The reason I place this above Anub is because, especially for a guild coming out of BWL and half AQ, there's a DPS gear/consumables check involved, whereas Anub has no particular gear requirement.

6. Heigan the Unclean. He's rated a lot higher than in my previous assessment because both learning and executing is extraordinarly rough until you get him on farm. When he's on farm, he's a loot vendor, but when you get most bosses on farm, they all are, and so ranking them that way isn't particularly meaningful. The clear to him makes learning him very painful, and everyone's first few tries at the dance always result in getting roasted. He can be incredibly, incredibly frustrating on those first few goes, more so than any other bosses, because you can easily wipe a dozen times to him and get the feeling that you're not going anywhere.

7. Maexxna. Learning is somewhat tricky, harder than Faerlina but probably not as theoretically complex as Anub'Rekhan. Strong execution component as well, coordinating HoTs and Abolish Poison. That said, it's pretty light on gear requirements: you can do it with a tank in mostly Wrath and healers in nothing better than BWL gear. A low number of ranged DPS will hurt you when trying to farm, but otherwise, not that hard.

8. Patchwerk. A lot of people like to describe him as a sheer mathematical exercise. They're not necessarily wrong, but finding the right fit of healers and tanks can take a little while. That said, it didn't even require a full raid night for us to learn him. Placed so highly because of his gear requirements.

9. Thaddius. Now that I'm thinking about learning him, I realize that it wasn't all that hard. When prompted, go left, or stay. (If you use the diamond strat, it's even eaiser than that). If you can tell your left from your right, you have the skills to defeat this encounter; lag will be your greatest enemy. Our first try beyond midnight resulted in a kill, and after hardware upgrades, he hasn't given us trouble. He's a DPS check at first, but you lose DPS from people dying more than not having enough gear.

10. Gluth. I still maintain that Gluth is harder because of the complexity of learning. There are a lot of ways to kite chow, and finding the right way for you as well as making it reliable and repeatable is a challenge. A much harder execution block than Thaddius, because it forces a small number of people to do something very difficult as opposed to forcing everyone to do something simple. Learning not easy, executing troublesome. He also has a DPS check factor and a raid composition factor that add to the constraints in the encounter.

11. Loatheb. I've lowered him because random crap is becoming less and less consequential. That he, of all the lower-Naxxramas fights, STILL needs Flasks of Supreme Power bothers me a lot. You still need to drink every DPS enhancing potion, use every DPS enhancing weapon buff, and drink 3 Greater Shadow Protection Potions as the cherry on top. He's not hard, per se, but the absurd materials cost functions as a kind of difficulty, in way. Needless to say, his stupid-DPS-check-ness is also a high gear requirement, which is why he ends up so high on this list.

12. Gothik. Gurgthock of Elitist Jerks calls this the ultimate skill > consumables fight. I'm not sure I agree. I agree that consumables won't push you through if you haven't got the basics sound, but they sure do help. If you've got the general gist of what you have to do - and you have to do a lot - consumables grease the gears and allow for room for error. No mistake, though, it's technically complex - difficult to learn, difficult to execute.

13. Sapphiron. Within your first two wipes, as I've said, you know everything you need to know to beat him. Execution is a matter of not walking in blizzards and decursing for most people, and crazy mana management by priests. Priests face an enormous challenge, everyone else, not so much. High gear and consumables requirements put this fight as high as it is - we learned and killed him in five hours.

14. The Four Horsemen. Learning is starting to become easier as more videos are released, but it's still a heavy learning barrier as everyone has to figure out what to do in a number of situations. Hell, even picking your preferred tank rotation is a challenge. On top of that, the encounter is summarily lethal in many ways, very punishing of mistakes. A very, very intense fight.

15. Kel'Thuzad. The hardest thing in the instance. Learning for phase 1 and phase 2 is not too bad, and phase 3 is challenging to figure out how to handle Guardians of Icecrown. The reason Kel'Thuzad comes out on top is because of its stringent execution requirements, which tend to kill multiple people if small mistakes are made (compare to 4h where a mistake tends to just kill the person making it). Not only that, but the execution requires that *none* of a certain subset of people (tanks, healers and DPS each get a turn at various parts of the fight) make a mistake, which is much harder to guarantee than one person not erring. Finally, this is a heavy DPS (and hence, gear + consumables) check as well.

The fact that guilds were stuck on 4h for a while and then blazed over Kel'Thuzad shouldn't be taken to mean that KT is easy. He's far from it, and a worthy challenge for the end of the last 40-man.

On to WoW 2.0!

Quote:Big grats! I am hoping we kill Kelthuzad before the expansion. We have the time but not sure if we are going to have the attendance. But i am looking forward to the x-pac either way.

Quote:11. Loatheb. I've lowered him because random crap is becoming less and less consequential. That he, of all the lower-Naxxramas fights, STILL needs Flasks of Supreme Power bothers me a lot. You still need to drink every DPS enhancing potion, use every DPS enhancing weapon buff, and drink 3 Greater Shadow Protection Potions as the cherry on top. He's not hard, per se, but the absurd materials cost functions as a kind of difficulty, in way. Needless to say, his stupid-DPS-check-ness is also a high gear requirement, which is why he ends up so high on this list.

Quote:However, since the last thing we want to do is use all those consumables and barely lose due to some fluke or mistake, we decide to overkill him. After practicing once or twice to make sure that everyone knows what to do in the fight, we then port out and get all the world buffs we can quickly conjure up. Last week, it was the Zandalar buff from turing in the Hakkar Head, the +10% damage Darkmoon Faire buff, and the Northpass Tower buff (extra health). This week, it was the Wickerman buff, the Zandalar buff, and the Northpass tower buff. We have Rend and Onyxia heads ready to turn in for future weeks. Our philosophy is that if you have to spend all that money and time gathering all those consumables, you might as well overkill him and make sure Loetheb dies the first time.

Quote:15. Kel'Thuzad. The hardest thing in the instance. Learning for phase 1 and phase 2 is not too bad, and phase 3 is challenging to figure out how to handle Guardians of Icecrown. The reason Kel'Thuzad comes out on top is because of its stringent execution requirements, which tend to kill multiple people if small mistakes are made (compare to 4h where a mistake tends to just kill the person making it). Not only that, but the execution requires that *none* of a certain subset of people (tanks, healers and DPS each get a turn at various parts of the fight) make a mistake, which is much harder to guarantee than one person not erring. Finally, this is a heavy DPS (and hence, gear + consumables) check as well.

The fact that guilds were stuck on 4h for a while and then blazed over Kel'Thuzad shouldn't be taken to mean that KT is easy. He's far from it, and a worthy challenge for the end of the last 40-man.

Quote:Yeah, it's going to be a close one for us, as well. Gothik should die this week, so it's all a matter of how long it takes us to get a handle on the Four Horsemen.
We've killed him two weeks in a row now -- both on first shots when we use potions. We have our system down like most guilds -- greater shadow protection potion here, bandage here, tuber/healthstone here -- etc. and theorycrafted and practiced it to a precision such that we can probably beat him with just your run of the mill flasks and consumables. However, since the last thing we want to do is use all those consumables and barely lose due to some fluke or mistake, we decide to overkill him. After practicing once or twice to make sure that everyone knows what to do in the fight, we then port out and get all the world buffs we can quickly conjure up. Last week, it was the Zandalar buff from turing in the Hakkar Head, the +10% damage Darkmoon Faire buff, and the Northpass Tower buff (extra health). This week, it was the Wickerman buff, the Zandalar buff, and the Northpass tower buff. We have Rend and Onyxia heads ready to turn in for future weeks. Our philosophy is that if you have to spend all that money and time gathering all those consumables, you might as well overkill him and make sure Loetheb dies the first time.