Exploring the bosses of Vanilla WoW and analyzing their encounters in preparation for Classic. - General

[video]https://youtu.be/vZcR-OcrJGg[/video] Hey guys, with the Classic Announcement made by Blizzard a few months ago where they are interested in creating a server for Vanilla - I decided to focus on a video series revolving around these bosses and breaking down their encounters. While bosses in the past are no where near as mechanically complex as today in retail or other MMO's - it's interesting that the challenge is still there in other ways such as the logistics involved with consumables and resistance gear but also the nature of 40 man raiding. Today I wanted to share with you guys my video for C'Thun - a very interesting fight by 2006 standards and a turning point in Vanilla!

Personally I think a lot of bosses in recent WoW have too many mechanics. There's so much shit going on that you need to pay attention to and some fights just feel chaotic and aren't fun. Back in vanilla I thought it was kind of neat trying to hunt down gear from certain dungeons to take down a boss. It was a pain in the ass holding onto all that crap though.

OP updated with this week's guide featuring the 14th boss of Vanilla Naxxramas - Sapphiron. Sapphiron is the final obstacle that players will have to overcome on their path to defeating Kel'Thuzad - This fight is unique among many of the raid bosses in Vanilla WoW due to its Resistance check which forces almost every player to have proper Frost Resistance gear for this encounter. This video was a blast to work on and hopefully you guys enjoy this one!

Wow, I had no idea how raids really worked until now. The positioning maps are neat.

The game has changed significantly. If you put up a Vanilla boss into current WoW, it'd be way too easy. People have also gotten way better over time as well.

I understand that but I think there's a fine balance between a boss with good mechanics and one who has a lot of mechanics just because Blizzard isn't creative enough to make them challenging otherwise. Fights like Archimonde, Maiden of Vigilance and Gul'dan felt clunky and ridiculous. Other fights that are tough and done well imo are Kil'jaeden and Argus.

Maiden of Vigilance was nothing compared to the unholy clusterfuck of KJ. KJ somehow managed to be ball crushingly difficult and boring as hell at the same time. The worst offender for mechanics spam this expac was probably Mythic Helya. What a fucking abomination of a fight.

It's a problem because without some kind of major engine or gameplay overhaul WoWs combat is inherently boring. And the only way they can make things more active for the player is to heap mechanics onto what you're fighting so you have more shit to deal with. Otherwise you're just going through your rotation until the boss dies.

There's barely any mechanics in current WoW, there's like 2-3 things per role you have to do. To use an extreme example, Mythic Varimathras in the current raid, for tanks, is literally "taunt when you're not tanking and Varimathras casts Shadow Strike". We haven't killed Mythic Aggramar yet but for ranged DPS the fight seems to mostly be "do not stand in fire", and for melee (I'm playing Feral on the fight instead of my usual Balance or Guardian), it's "do not stand in fire" - the standard for the fight is to dedicate one person to tending the adds, so that other people don't have to think about them. Mythic Coven is mechanically trivial too, you assign CC ahead of time and after that it's just cleaving and not standing in the middle of the room. After you get the rhythm of each fight, they essentially turn into Dance Dance Revolution. And learning the fight is the fun part.

okay lol but mythic varimathras is literally the easiest fight to tank in the entire expansion compare that to Avatar of Sargeras where you need to be juggling beam soaks, dodging blades, staying spaced out for when you drop swirls, while also staying close enough to the maiden to focus her down when she starts casting, and if anyone messes up their positioning even slightly at any point you fucking die(also his abilities come out semi randomly) or Mistress where you need to dodge pools, tornadoes, and also have the entire raid separate into five equal groups with no two soaks overlapping on the fly or worst of all the previously mentioned mythic helya where you need to dodge breath, the evil balls of death that spawn on and fixate random players, AND the instant kill clothes lines between the balls of death, AND the patches of shit the balls drop on the floor, AND you need to kill the slimes before they explode, AND you need to kill the boat adds while making sure you don't spread the AIDS you get from the fat guy oh and also you need to soak the multiple tentacle slams with the rest of the raid and also you need to soak the breath swirls too or that'll kill the raid instantly also did I mention the healers during intermission that constantly cast that heal on the boss but you need to make sure you have a rotation because every time you interrupt it damages the entire raid and also holy fuck im going to fucking kill myself

I'm messing around with doing a general video-essay on MMO raids and raid-content in general. Personally I'd say for the most part bosses in current Legion have the right amount of mechanics most of the time, often splitting important mechanics to specific roles. There are a few outliers, though, such as the Coven of Shivarra on anything that isn't LFR or Normal. First, you have the main gimmick of the fight - every minute or so, a random mechanic (Torment) will activate out of a possible of four. It cycles through all four before beginning again randomly. And all four of these are fairly different things - You have one that means if you stand next to someone, you both get zapped really hard for damage, one where five (IIRC) adds spawn and start doing a long cast for a spell that applies an increasingly painful DoT [i]and[/i] heals them up to full, so you have to go around the arena focusing one down at a time instead of just splitting up. One that spawns a dude on all the cardinal directions (north, north-east, etc) that then fires a fire-beam at the center of the room, so you have to go around killing them all and pre-positioning yourself incase you get caught in the crossfire, and then the last one spawns four walls of adds that can't be killed for thirty seconds, and will walk slowly forward unless you crowd control them by stunning or etc. That's all well and good and doesn't really change much from Normal to Heroic. HOWEVER, on top of this a new mechanic spawned by the boss is a "Storm of Darkness", which periodically covers the area in a killfield, with randomly assigned safe circle zones. This can overlap with any of the above Torments I just mentioned. And they're not "fairly" random either - it can literally be that all the safe zones spawn on the west side of the room, and you've got to quickly march your ass there otherwise you die. Which may be impossible if it's either the walls of adds or the firebeam torments! ...but I digress - I'm generally a large fan of raid encounters in games such as WoW, Final Fantasy XIV and Destiny 2 - they feel like the logical evolution/next step in boss fights that aren't just "Hi I'm a big guy, with lots of HP. Shoot me. Hey you won have a trophy."

Coven is so fucking dumb. All you do is stack affliction warlocks and shadow priests and bam, it's done. They do 1.5-2x more damage than every other spec and they're ranged which means they can't get cut off from the boss by shitty safe zone RNG. Not to mention locks have obscene self healing(post nerf, pre nerf they were fucking unkillable). It's practically a free boss if you have the right comp, but complete shit if you don't. If you want real examples of RNG just taking a shit on you, look at Kingoroth. Here I am, 80 wipes in, trying desperately to not accidentally splat DPS, and suddenly I have to deal with 3 fucking death marbles all in melee range, 2 of which are almost exactly on top of each other. Here's the real problem with mythic boss design. It isn't designed to be fun. It's designed to be barely killable. It's designed to take a fucking long ass time to clear. It's a fucking time sink. The mechanics are so fucking ridiculous that half the time the best strat is to just cheese them. I mean fuck me, when you have bosses where the most consistent and effective strategy is to have one of the tanks group up all the adds in the corner somewhere so that the rest of the players don't have to deal with them, something is wrong with your encounter design. And there are multiple bosses like that. WoW has a serious, serious problem. LFR, Normal, and Heroic are boring, stripped down, bland versions of mythic. And mythic is so punishing and demanding that it's just a chore to clear. The top end of content is designed for the top .001% of guilds, while the rest of the game(artifact power, legendaries) makes the game absolute shit for that top .001%. You end up with end game content no one except the hardcore players can even play, in a game that fucks over hardcore players constantly.

Unfortunately, I don't raid Mythic so I don't really have context for Mythic issues. Because of the aforementioned AP and legendary stuff though I basically said to myself "Nah, I don't wanna go that far" with raiding in WoW, at least this expansion.

The beginning of the expac was absolute cancer for DPS. So many guilds died from the AP grind and legendary shit alone. Nighthold was a complete disaster. Legendaries are gone from BFA, but now they're also removing master loot. Which means instead of having your DPS get fucked because you got the sonic shoes instead of the ring that increases your DPS by 10%, you get to have your DPS get fucked because your BiS trinket dropped for someone who already has it but it titanforged 5 ilvls above what they already have so they can't trade it.

It does help remove the need for split raiding, however, which makes mythic life a bit easier. Though I'm still pretty iffy on its removal. Back when I started it was such an experience when the boss died, GM bent over, and then people began figuring out where shit will go. But after awhile loot becomes pretty boring.

OP updated with this week's boss guide featuring Kel'Thuzad - the final boss of Classic WoW. Kel'Thuzad was the final boss of Vanilla but was he the hardest? Classic was a unique version of World of Warcraft in which there wasn't a single "arch-enemy" that players faced - instead we were adventures traveling across the world facing many threats from Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ and then finally Naxxramas.

OP updated with new boss guide featuring the Four Horsemen from Vanilla Naxxramas. The 4H fight represents the peak of Classic Raiding and introduction of more interesting mechanics that requires coordination and mobility as seen in later versions of WoW however did this fight actually expose prominent issues with the Vanilla Raid System that would lead to what we have today? Brief Thoughts a) Guilds were completely caught off-guard by needing eight tanks - could this have influenced the "bring the player, not the class" model as seen today? b) C'Thun and Vanilla Naxx pushed the 40 man raiding model to its limits but could things such as the common meme of most vanilla raids having to be carried by the other half pushed Blizzard to go with the 25 player size since their future mechanics would be too complex for 40? c) They say that less than 1% of the population cleared Naxxramas in Vanilla while many in TBC didn't clear Black Temple or Sunwell Plateau - could this have pushed Blizzard to introduce different difficulties for all types of players?