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Hardest High-End Bosses Ever (or How I Learned to Start Cursing and Hate the Raid)
Liquid Ghost
DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered User regular
DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES, TOO?!Registered User regular
So I was sitting back in my rune-etched Chaos throne this morning, kicking about the charred and smoldering skeletal ruins at my feet, when I realized that even though I've played most of the major MMOs out today, I've never really gotten a taste of the end-game with most of them. I mean, WoW has its Illidans and its Archimondes and so forth, and CoX has the massive Task Forces where you take on major story characters like The Statesman and Lord Recluse, but what about EverQuest 2? Lineage 2? Vanguard? Hell, even Sword of the New World and Rappelz? What are some of the hardest raid bosses that these games have to offer?
Also, I eventually came around to the idea of attaching a bit of potential discussion to this topic: What are some of your most frustrating and/or harrowing stories of 1% wipes, pulls gone wrong, and miracle boss kills with three rogues Evasion tanking and everyone on Vent simultaneously bursting out into a hysterical explosion of glossolalia? I'd be interested in reading about these situations in all games, even just to see how similar the experiences can be. We might be trading off our Swords of One Hundred Cocks and pieces of cloth gear with agility on them for sleek, sexy harem ships and plasmatic butt thrusters, but I'm willing to bet that knowing grins will pop up all around the moment someone speaks of getting ganked during an outdoor boss fight or being slaughtered by respawn in the middle of an important task.
So, then, have at it. And I'm still interested in hearing about the "end bosses" in various games. Not sure why, but I've been curious about that for a while.
Also, I eventually came around to the idea of attaching a bit of potential discussion to this topic: What are some of your most frustrating and/or harrowing stories of 1% wipes, pulls gone wrong, and miracle boss kills with three rogues Evasion tanking and everyone on Vent simultaneously bursting out into a hysterical explosion of glossolalia? I'd be interested in reading about these situations in all games, even just to see how similar the experiences can be. We might be trading off our Swords of One Hundred Cocks and pieces of cloth gear with agility on them for sleek, sexy harem ships and plasmatic butt thrusters, but I'm willing to bet that knowing grins will pop up all around the moment someone speaks of getting ganked during an outdoor boss fight or being slaughtered by respawn in the middle of an important task.
So, then, have at it. And I'm still interested in hearing about the "end bosses" in various games. Not sure why, but I've been curious about that for a while.
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DPS took just a little too long and the last tank was going down. RL calls a wipe. Rogue leader says "Fuck that, heals to me," and evasion tanks the dragon from 2% to dead.
I had to take my headphones off, people were screaming so much.
I remember raiding the Arena in Kael too....40 people running around killing giants praying for some drops. The Plane of Hate was kinda disappointing. It was dark, cramped, the mob textures were nothing new(they were all stuff I'd seen in the newbie zones). One mistake on a pull pretty much meant a wipe. It was better after they revamped the zone. I was even able to solo there on the trash mobs(I was after a quest item for the mage epic staff). Of course by the time I could solo it the quest reward wasn't so hot anymore. I raided the Plane of Fear once too....I remember sitting on a hill in some outdoor foresty zone while someone else pulled mobs for us to kill. I never did get a chance to kill Cazic-Thule though(the Lord of Fear). I hear he was fun though...every 30 seconds or so he death touched someone, killing them outright.
I tried to solo raid Molten Core once on my paladin. Ok, more like poked my nose into someplace I shouldn'ta been. Oh look....molten giants. I can take them as a 70 paladin. Oh wait...these things hit pretty damn hard. /bubblelayonhandsrunaway
Raiding Karazahn has been rather interesting. The bosses there a lot more complex than anything I've fought before and after being there, it seems like the rest of the game is easymode in comparison. It's not the better gear which I'm slowly getting so much as having the experience with more difficult fights. It's changed my perspective on the rest of the game a bit.
Nefarian
Twin Emps
Just because those were the most fun I've ever had learning/executing a new boss. Emps got boring quite quickly after the kill, but it was hugely satisfying the first time.
TE was hella unforgiving though. A positioning/threat mistake = BOOM raidwipe. 0 chance of recovery.
I also remember relearning Nef from the AoE strat to the 2 doors strat in a single night, 2 weeks after patch 2.0 came out (first week was bug riddled, and we also had to relearn razorgore and deal with bloodlords much higher damage output. One of the best nights for our guild, just completely redoing the hard part of the fight and getting it right in like 3 tries.
The biggest lol experience after 2.0 was frankriss though.... we always had Shout tanking there too, we switched to "all hug the bug" and AoE'd everything down.... kill in half the time.
I did take the Crown of Destruction (as a Warrior) over a Hunter.
Almost lost it to a paladin.
... I guess it wasn't super-hard (I died pretty early on, don't recall what happened), but it was still, y'no... cool.
That guy, he dual wields the corpses of the defeated.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
The gift that keeps on murderin'.
Present: Shade of Aran before they made him a pansy. First time Maulgar and Gruul are also awesome because on our firsts for both we didn't have more than 1 or 2 people dead at the end.
Magtheridon before all the nerfs was an awesome bastard.
Funnest fight.
edit: I should talk about how champ spawns work in UO since a lot of folks here never played it. Basically at the bottoms of dungeons where the strongest monsters are, a red altar would spawn and monsters related to the boss monster would start to spawn. So, this rat guy I mentioned would have little rats and giant rats spawn at first. Once enough of them were killed, ratmen started showing up, then ratman archers, then ratman magi and eventually the rat lord himself would spawn. These monsters do a lot of crazy things, the rat lord for example would, at about 50% health, turn everyone within 15 spaces of him into ratmen and turn into a ratman himself while peacemaking everyone and teleporting into the crowd. This meant everyone had to retarget him, but everyone in the fighting area looked the same now. Everyone would also turn gray so that everyone showed up the same when moused over (you could also attack your fellow players without repercussions; PKs took advantage of this on many occasions).
Now the rat lord is easily soloable (along with most crazy bosses if your gear is nutty enough).
LoL: failboattootoot
Gruul and Maulgar were both headaches as well, although Gruul we were probably attempting too early gearwise, and Maulgar is easy now that everyone's on top of their shit.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Also Twin Emps the first time you downed them, then it just got annoying because there was so little room for error ;_;
I'm sure quite a few EQ bosses would have to go on the hardest ever list. Some of them took upwards of 45mins to kill using 2sec Complete heal rotation etc. While EQ was aggravating for all the timesinks and annoying keying/flagging, I will give it credit ... in hindsight there was effort in just getting out to the raid zone or getting in the front door. Just running out to NToV in Velious for EQ was quite a trek, and hard to find.
I really miss that about EQ actually -- you didn't have Thottbot and all that datamining shit to spoil everything. Guilds were tight-lipped about their strategies, and everyone had to be on their game or you wiped. It took players something like 9 months to even FIND the zone for Kedge Keep for example... they were merely told "yeah this zone is in the game, have fun finding it". Or the epic weapon quests "yeah the quests are in the game, good luck" ... and you had to discover how/where to start it and go through it on your own.
Original Plane of Mischief is probably one of the best and most brilliant zones ever designed in an MMO. Finding the zone, figuring out how the riddles worked, etc. was very clever. Something MMOs just don't seem to have anymore as its all handed to you in black and white.
For WoW my list of "guild breakers": Vaelastraesz, Princess Huhuran, Twin Emperors, and Patchwerk. Most fun fight to date: C'thun. Kael'thas is extremely involved, even moreso than C'thun, but it's more aggravating than fun.
A.) Glad I dropped WoW before I got to the serious numbers part of the game
B.) Glad the worst thing in CoX is the Hamidon
C.) Very, very sorry for early EQ players by Arkady's math. A 91% chance that 120 people would lose their gear and cash? No thanks.
My friend mentioned Seb last night and I almost reinstalled.
almost.
I happened to be in Stormwind once, when a buddy who had just started an alt was heading to kill Hogger. So I joined him.
I run around, shouting things like "HOGGER, YOUR TIME HAS COME. VENGENCE SHALL ME MINE!!!"
And then I slaughtered the gnolls in the area.
"WHERE ARE YOUR MINIONS NOW, HOGGER? COME AND FACE ME!!!"
My proudest moment.
Now people could probably solo his ass if he didn't Banish anyone above level 52.
I wonder how the WoW playerbase would react to bosses that can instantly kill (death touch) characters anywhere in the zone at whim. They were a staple of EQ!
Of course, for absolute hardness, I would probably have to go with either the Sleeper's Tomb guardians (AoE death touch!) or maybe the stupid time restriction in the Plane of Time.
Now that was a real "enrage timer." Heh-heh...I kill myself.
Vael does a psudeo deathtouch. It doesn't insta kill but it will kill the target in 10 seconds with no chance to resist, heal through or prevent.
It took me a long time to finish the mage epic quest. I got lucky on quite a few of the drops by just being in the right place at the right time. Heck, I'd picked up the pegasus cloak a year earlier when I'd been wandering around south karana. I think if I hadn't already had that I wouldn't have bothered starting the quest. For those that don't know, the flying pegasus in south karana was a rare spawn(like, very rare). The pegasus cloak was his uber rare drop. My finding it was like winning the lottery. The staff I needed from the plane of hate I got because I'd been up there soloing(in the hopes of finding it). It dropped on a mob someone else had killed and he let me loot it. There was another piece I needed from the City of Mist...I was there soloing and a big raiding guild came and decimated the place just for kicks. They pulled the mob I needed all the way back to near the entrance where they were killing stuff and they let me loot the item I needed. I got so very lucky on many of the drops like that. Thankfully the crown from the plane of air could be bought at the Bazaar. It took me a month of working the buy/sell to raise the money for it(fortunately someone sold it cheap....75000 plat). I had a lot of help from guildies getting some of the relatively easier to obtain pieces too. I think the piece from Kedge Keep and the one off the wyrm in Burning Woods were probably took me the longest. Kedge Keep was nasty....8 hour spawn timer and the item wasn't all that common. Took me a couple weeks to nab it. After it was all done though.....loved my shiny new bauble! I promptly quit after that because there was nothing else in game I wanted to accomplish.
Yeah, that's pretty much nothing like old EQ death touches.
They were random. They could happen to anyone. They didn't give you a big ass DPS boost. You just died.
Also, some of them (see Cazic Thule's) could happen to anyone, anywhere in the zone, regardless if he was aggroed or not.
There's a reason why not many people are still raiding in EQ.
We were the only guild (on my server) that could break into that plane back in the day, precisely since it was so goddam hard due to the aggro radius and pathing of a pet.
Once they were gone, the whole zone was on easymode, even in pre-kunark.
Plane of Fear was a total monk's game, your guild broke in based on 2+ monks, and the speed at which you broke in was based on how good your monks were.
I also agree on the tactics comment, my guild of 15-20 did things that guilds of 40+ couldn't do with comperable gear.
I'd say my best "boss" accompishment ever was doing pre-kunark Nag and Vox both in under 3 hours.
Very few guilds were able to boast that feat.
Emarr 1999! Never forget!
It was deleveled down to 50, I think, but fear was broken and on farm status by one character.
Knowing your shit in EQ meant you could get away with crazy stuff.
its fucking, Oh so you want to play a troll? Fuck you 25% exp. penalty. Ooh and a Troll Shadowknight at that, add another 15% onto that exp penalty.
You want to solo? I hope you're a necromancer, or a druid. Otherwise you're SOL. (That changed later, but not still soloing was mostly a caster thing to do.
90% of my fond memories from that game come from way before the raid game. Like trying to find the rogue guild master in Qeynos. Oh, so it's in the back room, through the false wall, down the tunnel to the right, not the left. Make sure you don't go left or you fucking die.
Ah yes, you're a level 2 ranger, I think you're fit for this quest. Carry this letter across the world from Surefall glade to Kelethin. You're reward will be 1 silver. Yes we know you'll have to cross kithicor forest, which turns into a zombie laden 45+ zone at night, but I'm sure you'll be fine. Oh just watch out for the lvl 30 lions in the karanas, and the patrolling dragoons in the eastlands.
Random higher lvl mobs spawning all over the place. A fucking necromancer gnome in Qeynos Hills (nub zone) who could own any nubling. A 45 minotaur out in the lvling fields of the gnome lands meant for like lvl 12's. A pissed off lvl 50 unicorn who could outrun everyone but the fastest and best geared bards, in a lvl 20 zone.
The EQ dev's were bastards, but I loved that game. I never really connected with WoW the same way. I was a twoboxer in EQ. at the end of my game I had two bots, a wizard on one account and a druid on the other, solely for transporting my characters around. Because it could take so goddamned long to get from point a to b in that game. Even with PoK (ports to all towns) you could still be looking at like 2 hour travel time if you didn't have some help. I ran a Shaman primary with a necromancer backup. Talk about EZmode.
I believe the shaman catchphrase was "tank it in TEH FACE!" meaning shamans who went wis/mana like casters did, were pussies who couldn't play, shamans who went all ac/hp/sta, and just stood toe to toe with anything assuming they'd outheal any dmg it through down, was what we did. Then add a necro bot on the 2nd account just throwing dots on with a monk pet. It was badass.
Sometimes I want to play that game again, but other times I'm glad I don't. That motherfucker was one hell of a time sink. Even the most bullshit faction grind in WoW, whatever you want to pick something out of BC, the bloodsails hat, the damn druid faction for those bugs zones, is nothing compared to just regular play in some of EQ shit. Not to mention there weren't really any instances when I played. So if you wanted to kill a certain guy for a quest, there's a good chance there are a lot of other people lined up waiting for their turn to kill him. Then a better chance of like 5 invis manaburn wizards sitting there grouped up to instagib your quest guy soon as he spawns, and try to sell you his loot. LOL lodizal!
Fully agree with the poster that said raiding changes perspective quite a bit - I spent a year playing WOW as F/F casual - endless 5-10 man runs, then a year and a bit as a raider - it was like two different games entirely.
Yeah, it went from pointless to mind numbingly repetitive.
To contribute, as a rogue probably the only hard fight was Vael when BWL was first released. Was in a top tier guild at the time and there were no strategies out, we had to figure the shit out ourselves with only an hour per night before he despawned. Then as a rogue I had to walk the razor line of "Oh shit another 1% wipe" and "you fucking pulled agro you idiot" because there were no newb threat addons back then.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bJVRgun7M7c
Lol, that was fucking hilarious.
One of the warriors couldn't be convinced that execute did the same damage no matter what your gear was, so he spent his time in the 20% area sundering. He was our 2nd best geared tank.
Conversely, I loved Razorgore like it was my baby.
Oh ya he does, especially when you get him down to 1% and wipe repeatedly because of those damn infernal drops. Ugh!
How fun.
Veeshan's Peak was fun - that is, after they made the key soulbound. For those of you who never played EQ, let's see if I can explain how ridiculous that was. You had to complete a long ass quest that involved clearing a shit zone, killing a Dragon that spawned every 7 days (in a common zone, no instances) and that dragon had a chance of dropping 1-3 teeth that were required to get the key. You typically had to key about what, 70 people at the time?
Then, once you zoned in Veeshan's Peak, you could only get out through the exit at the very end of the zone. You couldn't gate or teleport out. If you happened to die inside, tough luck - the key was attached to your corpse, so you effectively had no way of getting your body back. You couldn't zone back in. Needless to say, it was a nightmare.
Still, what made me quit the game was getting to plane of time. The last encounter before getting into the final zone of the expansion required you to kill The Seven, aka 7 mobs that had to all die within 5mns of each other? or they'd respawn. Think of the core hound packs in MC, but replace every one of those dogs with a crowd-controllable Broodlord. Fun fun. Twenty attempts later, and after a 5 hour fight, we'd done it. We finished plane of time, the next expansion came out, and I canceled my subscription.
Fun fights? Xegony was alright in EQ, Trakanon and Kormax were alright too. Innoruuk, when not buggy, was pretty cool as well. For wow, some AQ/BWL/MC fights were alright the first time around, but I was struck at how cool Archaedas in Uldamann was. Not hard, but just fun.
they don't it be like it is but it do
Hyjal has one of these. You get a death touch debuff, a few seconds later, you die and it spawns a doomlord, so ... you lose a player and gain an add, fantastic. Combined with a 99yd AE silence and a boss that can instaraep anyone, it's all good : b
Edit: Archimonde - if there is nobody in melee range then he does a 99999hp lazor. If someone is in the water of the nearby lake thing (Well of Eternity) then he does it to everyone in the raid simultaneously