Totally Warcraft

As an avid World of Warcraft gamer, I have been witness to many boss fights. Actually, I’ve done every boss in the game come to think of it. Not all the hard modes, but you get the idea. I’m going to do a famed top ten list. This list is my personal favorite raid boss encounters in the game. There will be a bit of bias towards vanilla WoW, simply because it offered the most challenge.

10. Curator

Biggest damage multiplier in the game to date, I believe. When he was evocating he’d take like 400% more damage. Big numbers make us nerds go “HURRGHH,” and white knuckle our wireless WoW gaming mice with excitement. Yeah, really… it’s that fun, I promise.

9.  Ossirian the Unscarred

What’s better than running around like a chicken with your head cut off, avoiding giant ass tornadoes and needing to time clicking a crystal exactly right, all at the same time? Nothing is! That’s why Ossirain makes my list. A controlled chaos fight that is so unique that we’ll probably never see anything like it again.

8. Patchwerk

Okay, anyone who doesn’t like this fight is probably a healer or a tank. If you’re a ranged DPS, you probably cream yourself thinking about doing this fight. This is a fight where DPS, especially ranged, can just absolutely unload with no thought about threat generation whatsoever. Patchwerk today is still used as the standard “test dummy” for raid DPS. You all know what I’m talking about, too. Having 6 different people link meters after Patchwerk and engaging in some sort of e-peen measuring system that somehow makes their everyday lives better. Sounds like great water cooler chat at work. “Hey Frank, what’d you do last night?” “I topped meters at 6.7k DPS on my DK in a 10 man Naxx run on Patchwerk.” “Oh… well… I have to go now… nice uh, nice talkin’ to ya Frank.”

7.  Hodir

I know I’m jumping a few expansions here, but bear with me. Hodir’s fight is another one of those fights where everything bad can happen at once, but it has awesome buffs that make the fight fun. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy 200% critical strike damage? 28k executes always brightens my raid night up. Yeah, another fight that isn’t fun for healers. I suppose it’s a masochist type of thing. I enjoy healing hard fights. The more crazy spiky damage the better! Anyway, next boss.

6.  Archimonde

Yeah, I know a majority of people hate this fight. Actually, I was with you there while my guild was learning that… in fact… wait… I still hate this fight.  Uh, yeah, get off my list Archimonde. Worst fight ever.

The real 6. The Lurker Below

Bear with me here, I know it isn’t incredibly epic, but it’s one of those fun fights where you get to laugh at idiots. We’ll start with laughing at idiots in PUGs. Toward the end of Burning Crusade, when every boss fight got nerfed, we started to PUG and sell our loot. We would tell the PUGs to go ahead and jump in the water to get ready for the boss Lurker boss fight. Of course, since we hadn’t cleared the trash all the way yet, they’d just get nearly instantly killed by the fish in the water. I know it’s evil, but it was hilarious and awesome at the same time. Also when idiots died to spout it was pretty awesomely funny because they would fly about five-hundred feet away from where Lurker is. I once lauded a guild mate so hard, that they ragequit the guild. Oops. Take a joke, friend. Anyway. Lurker, number six. Moving on.

5. Netherspite

Oh man, where do I start. Portals that make you grab instant aggro and give you 50k health, portals that make your damage go exponentially up while taking exponentially more damage. Well, there’s also the lame portal that lowers your mana and increases your healing power… lame. Sorry healers, I know we were all a bit disappointed that everyone else got some kickass buff and we got one that sucked. Anyway, another one of those fights that you don’t have to worry about aggro and can just blow the boss up. After learning the boss fight and farming it for months on end, it was always funny to see who could stay in the beam the longest, or have someone ninja the beam from them and having them fight over it to the point of standing point blank on the portal and not really being sure who has it. I’m getting a little too nostalgic here, gonna tear up man. Man cry. MOVING ON!

4. Nefarian

I chose Nefarian for several reasons. One, he’s the son of Deathwing, which makes him completely awesome simply by being related to one of the coolest villains ever. Also, the second reason, the boss fight mechanics themselves. Phase one was funny because it could be the easiest thing ever (bronze/green) or it could be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done in your raiding career up until that instance when the color combination was red and blue. The randomness of it all, and the cruelness of some of the combinations had to leave some developers cackling evilly in their giant… developer… castles. Or wherever developers develop things. Phase two was awesome because of the different class abilities that Nefarian did. Just another horrible and hilarious random event. The mages could get their class debuff and start sheeping everyone right when Nefarian resurrected his troops to zerg you. Great stuff.

3.  Ragnaros

I picked Rangaros for several reasons. The boss fight itself isn’t as epic as the events surrounding it. Picture yourself, you’ve just bought this brand new game set in the Warcraft universe. You spend 4 months leveling up to level 60 because you’re a newb and you don’t know how to do it any faster. You run Scholomance and UBRS for your Magister’s gear and your Lightforge gear. (Hey, Lightforge had spirit on it. ++++++++++++ regen man!) When you’ve gathered all of this, you and a group of friends decide to start getting people together to form a 40 man raid. This 40 man raid goes into the newly released Molten Core and wipes 16 times on the first pull. You call the raid. Next time they only wipe once clearing trash and you’re looking at the first boss. 6 laborious, toiling, tear-filled, raging months later you’re staring at a giant firelord. This is it right now. This is the end of WoW as you know it. After you beat Rangaros you have beaten EVERYTHING. For those of you who experienced a guild first downing Ragnaros, and I know I’m not alone, you know what I’m talking about. Screaming yourself hoarse after seeing that freaking hammer drop into the lava. Good times. Very, very good times.

2.  Kael’thas Sunstrider (raid version)

Legendary weapons at your disposal, crazy zero-gravity phase, adds, and a crazed magician villain. Doesn’t get much better than that. The first phase was the easiest, of course. It was fun as a hunter pulling the caster add to the warlock tank. Other than that, not much to it. Second phase got way crazy with all the adds engaged, plus Kael… plus the weapons. Geez! After the weapons dropped though, that’s where the fun really began. There’s nothing like playing with a legendary weapon that makes a frequent raider like myself happy. Like a vast majority of the WoW community, I’ve never been blessed with having one. So 5 minutes of fame with one was a great time. A lot of elements made this boss  fight an epic one, right down to the last phase where Kael causes zero gravity and breaks all the glass in a movie-esque scene. Just a great fight overall.

1. Vaelastrasz the Corrupt

Yeah, there could have been other choices for number one. But this is my list, so I get to put what I want at the top. Vael was an awesome fight for a million reasons. Having unlimited energy, mana, rage, etc. was probably the top reason. Spamming whatever you wanted with complete disregard for your own safety was never a good idea though. It had to be a controlled insanity, which is part of what made that fight so unique. Tanks had to keep their aggro lined up, one after the other, clicking off their blessing of salvation when they wanted to spike their aggro. Oh, right, forgot to mention. THE TANKS EXPLODE. One after the other. How awesome is that? On top of that, one random raid member gets 20 seconds to walk to the back of the room, cast all their spells instantly and eventually explode. So you have a slowly exploding raid to contend with as well. Overall, an amazing fight.

Yes, I probably left out YOUR favorite fight or this fight should have been on there. I’ll agree with you though. Some of these fights are interchangeable as far as awesomeness goes. I just chose these ones because they are near and dear to my heart. I hope you enjoyed my first top 10 list. Follow this link to discuss it on the forums!