Rating Naxxramas Bosses

[Sword_of_Doom]

Now that my guild is getting close to finishing this instance, thought it would be fun to rate the bosses in order of difficulty (easy to hard).

1. Heigen the Unclean (once everyone in the raid figures out the dance routine he is a virtual epic dispensing slot machine)

1. Grobbulus--A very nice relief after Patchwerk. Easily the fastest boss we have learned (killed him the same night as our first kill of Patchwerk on the 3rd pull). Even Tigole, raid dev for Blizzard, has admitted this encounter is probably too easy.

1. Razuvious--We have one shotted this boss for a long time now. As long as you have two Priests with 4% chance to hit, easy easy fight.

1. Anoobrekhan--Any guild with Twin Emps experience should easily deal with this boss. As long as your tank has a good comp (no disconnects) and can kite this is an easy fight as well.

5. Grand Widow Faerlina--I could arguably say this is the easiest fight in Naxx but its debateable. But Blizzard seriously nerfed/fixed this encounter by nerfing/fixing the Rain of Fire animation bug. Essentially in the past if you were caught in the Rain of Fire you generally took an extra tick because of animation problems. But its fixed and its easy mode now.

6. Noth--We have one shotted this boss for a while now. Our raid DPS has increased significantly and consequently we are at 66 18 and zero for the phases. Probably we could do this in 2 phases eventually.


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The above 6 bosses we virtually one shot every week.
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7. Loatheb--Straight execution fight and only took our guild one full night of attempts to kill him. Thats probably an indication of excellent raid DPS but its a fairlly uncomplicated straightforward fight. By the time you reach him in Naxx you have plenty of execution/coordination experience and i found him quite easy.

8. Maexxna--Can be a tricky fight. If the Mages are not on the ball the loose spiders kill Priests and the attempt is over. If the Healing is sub-par the tank goes down early and the attempt is over. If the wall DPS is slow or ineffective too many die before the enrage and the attempt is effectively over. We still have troubles with this fight even though we have been killing Maexxna for 2 months.

9. Gluth--We use kind of a wierd strategy for this fight which increases the margin of error. We mainly hold the Zombie chow in place with use of a Frost Nova rotation. We have Warriors kiting/piercing howl the chow into the Nova. Sometimes it works flawlessly, other times it can be a total disaster.

10. Patchwerk--Still a real difficult fight for our guild. Some weeks we one shot him, others we are stuck for 3 hours. We have zero DPS problems but if healing is sub-par we are in for a long night. Part of the problem is we may be attempting Patcherk with too few healers (3 Priests, 5 Druids and 5 Pallies) but our raid/guild leader is big fan of huge raid DPS (we usually run 9 Warriors with 5 in full DPS gear, 6 Rogues and 6 Mages).

11. Thaddius--Easily the most sucky fight in Naxx. This fight is too dependant on people's internet connection and the graphics card in their computer. We usually have 2 or 3 disconnects every kill we have done. Can be a frustrating night when you wipe at 2% because your DPS Warrior has been d/c'ed for much of the fight.

Gothic the Harvester: Only had one attempt on him.
4 Horsemen: Only seen in videos
Sapphiron: Only seen in videos
Kelthuzzard: Only seen in videos

After i finish the zone i am going to rerate the instance and see if my order changes at all.

[The Gnu]

1. Grobbulus
The first two attempts we've had on him were wipes, since then he's rolled over every week without resistance. A more intensive version Baron Geddon, that would actually be interesting if they cut the size of the room in half.

2. Noth
Hard at first, completly overpowered with Naxx gear.

3. Anub
With a MT that knows what to do and healers with a decent amount of health, this is no problem. Any major mistakes can quickly wipe a raid though.

4. Grand Widow Faerlina
Rain of Fire nerf really brought her down a whole bunch of positions.

5. Razuvious
Chromaggus with priest tanking and no need to spam decurse/cleanse. Experienced rogues and warriors can rescue a raid from MC's breaking.

6. Patchwerk
With better dps this fight gets shorter and shorter, letting the healers really pour away their mana without trouble.

7. Gluth
Caused us a *lot* of trouble before we switched to having a priest kiting grabbing aggro with renews, and some warriors/mages keeping the mobs off him. Getting more stable each week with more experience for the kiters and faster dps.

8. Maexxna
Still a bit random, even with a tank decked out in 7/9 dreadnaught. The occational wipes still occur though.

9. Heigan
What can I say? My guild can't dance. Usually get him to 50-60% before the first teleport, then 20 people die during the first dance and the rest finish the job with a couple of more dances.

10. Loatheb
Know your pot/bandage-rotation, know your healing rotation, know your spore rotation. This is more a fight in logistics than strategy or execution. See you in scarlet monestary!:)

11. Thaddius
Our solution to this fight so far has been to figure out who the disconnecters are, and replace them until they've managed to sort out their problems. Very easy fight IMO, that gets ruined by it's inherant errors.

12. Gothic
Hardest fight for a dps class since C'Thun, and probably the most fun one. The design of the fight makes it too raid balance demanding though, which can be a problem.

13. The Four Horsemen
Strangely mechanic when you get into it, apart from taunt resists there really isn't any random stuff going on in this fight. Still very demanding on raid setup, and very unforgiving towards mistakes.

Sapphiron: Coming up sunday or monday!:)
Kel'thuzad: No experience

[Skandranon]

The first six could easily tie at 1 as well, but there's a little bit of margin.

1. Grobbulus. The one and only time we've wiped since learning him was because a paladin kept accidentally mashing decursive, repeatedly bombing the raid and dropping poison clouds on the healers. And we still got Grobb to 3%.

2. Heigan. Even if half your raid can't dance, the other half is more than enough to finish him.

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.

4. Anub'Rekhan. Easy once you've learned it: that said, random stuff can still happen, that due to the design of the fight, wipes you. If your MT takes one misstep into the slime, GG raid unless your healers are awesome.

5. Noth. Easier than Anub once you have Naxx gear, but for a mostly BWL/some AQ40 raid, a bit of a DPS challenge, plus the minor coordination issues in splitting raid DPS correctly to cover all the spawn points and still hit Noth.

6. Faerlina. Since they made Rain of Fire a non-factor, we haven't gotten even close to a wipe. Our kills nowadays are with one worshipper left over. She's a little bit of a challenge to learn, I guess.

7. Maexxna. Once your coordination is set and your healers know what to do, only major raid imbalance issues will stop you. The one that usually hurts is <7 ranged DPS. Otherwise, oneshot oneshot oneshot.

8. Patchwerk. Got enough healers? You win. With deep Naxx gear he isn't even a meaningful DPS check. We've had a bit of trouble with him of late, but that's what happens trying him with 12 or 13 healers (4-5 of which are paladins). Bringing 15-16 seems to be about the right number, and if you've gone deep into Naxx, your DPS will handle fine with lower numbers, even without flasks.

9. Thaddius. If no one disconnects, the fight is relatively simple. Hell, you can lose a bunch of people and still be okay so long as everyone else focuses and prevents one accidental shock from cascading into a bunch of them. Our last kill was with thirty seconds left before the enrage, with a sub-optimal raid composition.

10. Gluth. The problem is that chow kiting is a highly specialized task upon which the entire raid depends. It's not easy to do, and whatever kite strategy you use, the kiter risks getting themselves killed, leading to a wipe. Tough to learn, but farmable once you've learned it.

11. Gothik. Requires individual excellence, raidwide coordination, and pinpoint high DPS (which is going to require flasks/potions at the start). Despite the theoretical presence of random elements, we've gotten better and better at it every week (this week was a one-shot and the three before it were two-shots). Not as raid balance dependent as many think: this week's one shot was done with six priests and four mages.

12. Loatheb. I hate this fight because of the random elements in a fight that, in theory, is based off of non-random rotations. Loatheb's "weapon skill" is 310 to prevent him from scoring crushing blows, specifically to avoid overly random behaviour on the tank. Yet the spore spawn location can still, without warning or reason, change and pop the spore halfway across the room before returning to the original spot. Every time this happens, raid DPS drops because of having to run, get the spore, go back to the original position, etc. If this happens five or more times during a fight, you'll be racing to get the kill, and through no fault of your own. Also placed highly because he's a stiff DPS check: no other boss has guilds racing to get world buffs.

13. The Four Horsemen. These guys died to us on Saturday. It's a fun fight, but challenging in a lot of ways, including random unavoidable elements (invisible void zones). Figuring out what to do is also an issue with this fight: there are at least four different workable ways to win. Also, yeah, bring eight warriors or you're pretty much wasting your time. I guess you could do it with a couple fuzzytanks, but I wouldn't want to try.

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.

Haven't been to KT yet, but soon....

[Arethor]

I agree with Skan on pretty much everything here, there's only one thing I'd add.

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.

Also seems like it is going to be very mana/consumable heavy fight. FrR gear looks like it's going to be essential, but that cuts down healer mana pools significantly, making mana enchants/consumables key.

[Skandranon]

Now that we've killed him, I would rate Sapphiron down at 12, pushing Loatheb and 4H up one slot. Frost resist gear sucks, yes, and Sapph is at least as consumable-intensive as Loatheb, but: 1) there are no random elements and 2) frost pots are easier to farm than shadow pots. If this list ranked solely on how hard bosses were to learn, Sapph would come fairly early, since the first few wipes pretty much show you everything you need to know to beat him.

[Lissa]

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.

One quick note on him, this appears to be the one fight in there where the pRNG can screw you. 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). If the pRNG decides not to screw you, this fight is pretty much cake.

[MongoJerry]

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).

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.

[oldmandennis]

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.

What is the cap, 4%?

[Lissa]

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.

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.

[Xanthix]

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.

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

[lfd]

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

The ever-reliable *cough* thottbot seems to bear this out:

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=15330

but I've had it break far too often with 5/5 shadow focus _and_ +4% hit, which is really going well overboard. I know there's a 1% chance to break which is tested every 5 seconds, so it gets hit up 11 times during a mind control, but that means our priests should expect a break roughly once every 9 controls or so. Clearly all our bad luck is happening right now, so it'll all be plain sailing in a few months ;-)

[MongoJerry]

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.

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.

[MongoJerry]

The order difficulty of the bosses depends on whether you're talking about the learning phase or after you've learned the fight. For example, Patchwerk to my guild is a total snoozefest, but to get it to the point where it became a snoozefest took a lot of wipes and experimentation. But, what the heck, this is for discussion's sake, so here's my list:

1. Grobbulus -- I consider him merely a ceremonial kill designed to give those raids who manage to "pass" Patchwerk two more epic items for their effort.

2. Razuvious -- Not only is Raz easy, but the clear to him can be done comfortably with less than 20 people. A raid with only Molton Core or Zul'Gurub epics could kill him. I think he and the first part of the Death Knight wing were put there to let less progressed guilds have a little fun in Naxxramas.

3. Anubrekhan -- Easy to clear to and only requires a few people to know what they're doing. Like Razuvious, I think he was put in to let less progressed guilds a chance to kill something in Naxxramas. However, he is a bit of a gear check in the sense that if your raid doesn't have the dps, they won't kill the spider adds fast enough and won't be able to kill Anub'Rekhan fast enough.

4. Faerlina -- Used to be harder when her rain of fire rained everywhere and lasted even after you ran out of its supposed range. We used to have to use fire pots on her each week. Now, she's largely a joke, although occationally a bad pull or a bad Mind Control break can mess things up.

5. Heigen -- It's hard to classify Heigen. He is a gear check -- not of your character but of your computer equipment. In the one sense, he's incredibly easy, but in another sense, he's a pain, because when you wipe, you have to reclear to him all over again (like the Broodlord in BWL). This is a fight where the early guilds got the advantage, because there used to be ways to bug the encounter so that you could rez back up inside his room without doing the tedious reclear. If you were able to do that, then the encounter was easy to learn. But if you didn't have the benefit of those bugs, then the encounter can take a while for a group to learn, because you have to wait about 30 minutes between each attempt.

6. Noth -- Can be a fairly complex fight. I wouldn't want to take him on in a pug, that's for sure. There's a lot of stuff going on in this fight that has to be taken care of -- different kinds of adds, making sure the decursing coverage is sufficient, and making sure that Noth teleports are handled properly. We have beat him each week for a while, but I think that's more of a function of the fact that he's the first boss in his wing. I don't think he's that much easier than many of the later instance bosses.

7. Maexxna -- At first, it seems like there's a lot going on but after you understand the fight, you realize that there isn't. It's the same pattern repeated over and over and each person has their one assigned role that he or she does over and over. The only tough part of it is the gearcheck aspect of making sure that the tank has enough health to survive web sprays (easier for Alliance than Horde) and making sure that the tank always has full hot's and the poison cure buff on before every web spray. Other than that, it's a fairly trivial fight with lots of room for error.

7. Patchwerk -- A pure mathematical gearcheck. You either have the dps, healing, and mana to beat him or you don't. If you have it, it's an easy snoozefest of a fight. If you don't, you're done. I would rank him sooner on the list if it weren't for the fact that so many guilds can't get past him. He's definitely one that requires mathematical theorycrafting. Simply walking up to him and "trying him out" won't get you anywhere. My guild has lots of engineers and scientists, so we got this fight down to where we one-shot him with no deaths or trouble every time now.

8. Gluth -- We probably made it harder on ourselves to kill Gluth, because we kept changing zombie kiting strategies. But we finally found one that sort of worked for us, and when we did, we've been one-shoting Gluth ever since. It takes a while to get the hang of the zombie kiting, though, and knowing who and when to heal or not to heal. I never quite feel comfortable about this fight, even though we've been one-shotting him for several weeks now.

9. Thaddius -- A very mechanical fight. The tough part is that it requires nearly everyone to be perfectly mechanical. A couple of people going the wrong way can blow people up and cause a wipe. Heck, a few people missing the jump can cause enough loss in dps that the fight is lost. There is also the problem of server lag on this fight. However, Tichondrius's hardware was just upgraded, so our last fights with Thaddius were wonderfully server lag-free.

10. Loetheb -- We haven't killed him yet, but we've done enough attempts on him to see that he's not all that hard. He seems mostly to be a fight where you "buy" your epics with a lot of consumables. Once we beat him, I might put him earlier on the list.

11. Gothik -- Again, we haven't killed him, but we've gotten some attempts on him. Again, he doesn't seem too bad, but until we get a full real group together to take him on, we won't really know how hard he really is.

I haven't had any experience with the Four Horsemen, Saphiron, or KT. From what I've read, it sounds like the Four Horsemen are the real main bosses of the instance, though.

[Quark]

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.

Considering almost all the early breaks were below 20%, I'm thinking we had these parts covered.

[Skandranon]

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!

[Sword_of_Doom]

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!

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.

[MongoJerry]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Skandranon]

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.

We do the same thing. Our regular visits to Stormwind have started to attract people of other guilds since they know buffs are coming:D

[The Gnu]

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.

After having only one raid on KT I must say that I agree with you on this. After the first four minutes of "easy" zerging from the portals, there's not one moment in the fight that can't be described as "critical" and "intense". And as you said, totally unforgiving.

Phase 1 feels a bit like "Defenders of Darrowshire" for the raiding guild btw. :D

Congratulations on taking him down!

[Sword_of_Doom]

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.

Loatheb is a fight you definitely do not want to waste the guild bank on. So we stack our raid with DPS going only with 13 healers and as much as possible getting all the World buffs. The result is 3 straight one shots and tonight we took him down in around 4:40 which was our fastest kill. We have been equipping one Warrior and Paladin with Nightfall which has upped our caster DPS.

We have downed 12 bosses so far this week which leaves us 3 nights on the 4H. Looking forward to banging my head on a tricky fight. But having that much time should allow us to figure out a reasonable strat and possibly kill them.