10-06-2006, 05:10 AM
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.
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.