From another thread, I read that a Blizzard CM stated they had run out of 40 man raid encounter ideas, prompting me to post this asking for your ideas on new raid encounters.

Be as detailed (below) or generic (Nefarion with 360 shadowflame which spawns Chromags on player death) as you want (with lore or not as well), but I'd like to hear what other have dreamed up.

I'll start.

25-man encounter with two distinct phases/sections.

Section 1:
The raid enters a large room with 9 doors, each labeled for 1 class. Each member (1 by 1)must enter their respective door and complete a gauntlet type event which is unique to each class. (I'd have to type far too much to describe each gauntlet and I do not know some classes well enough to have a good idea of what it could be.)

As each member of the class completes their gauntlet it is incrementally harder for the next member of that class to complete. (This discourages raid stacking and builds in strategy as to which spec/players are best for the particular gauntlet.)

Section 2:
Section 1 is tuned such that you can reasonably expect to get 9-18 people through the gauntlet fairly easily, but getting 20+ would be difficult initially and those that fail to get through can be generally mocked by their friends.

Now in section 2, there is a raid gauntlet which is simply a battle of attrition. Pretty much every style of damage (AoE, AoE Volleys, exploding mushrooms, flame throwers, RoF, Blizzards, etc..) is happening to the raid through the room. The raid must out-live the boss who is channeling all their energy (and hp) into these damage types.

Each damage type can be mitigated however in some way. Some damage types can be toggled off for X seconds by ranged dps from the raid. Other types are disarmed, others can be avoided with raid movement, other straight dps'd down.

If at least 1 person lives, the event can be one and the raid can rejoice. Obviously it would need far more though put into but it is different than anything we have seen before and these are the types of ideas I am curious in,

Unique ideas promoting class balance, raid coordination, individual skill, etc. Thanks.

One epic fight might involve slaying a series of shadows of former bosses - similar to what you might have found in some old nes console games - as some form of prelude to a final boss (as a separate encounter). Obviously, not all having 5 million HP, but something unique where you fight multiple bosses simultaneously, or something along these lines. Almost infinite possibilities Pretty crappy summary there, but its enough that people know what I mean.

If they could ever work on the AI of computer controlled players, it would be neat to have an event which is just like PVP... Everyone in the raid is cloned and controlled by computers. Would be really amazing and attract a lot of the pvpers that aren't interested in pve atm.

Buuut, until that day I'll watch myself get mc'd and shoot at someone in the raid (as a rogue.)

Role Reversal!

A huge undead boss, that gives everyone sans the main tank a debuff that swaps their faction (Boss & mobs = green, MT = red) and reverses damage/healing. That means, healing spells do damage, attacks and skills heal. The tank stands in a certain spot to both not get the debuff, and autotaunt boss (think Netherspite red beam)

MT himself has a buff that gives him x10 max hp, so we're looking at a tank with 200,000 HP. The boss himself does about 10k dps on the tank, spawns adds which also lock on to the tank and do ~3k dps each.

So, how does the fight go? DPS has to unload on the tank and match the amount of DPS the boss does... 200k hp is a pretty safe buffer that it becomes more of a tug-of-war than wack-a-mole cast/cancelling.

Healers have to split up the 'dps' between making sure adds die, and slowly whittling at the boss. Mana efficiency, of course, becomes a key to the fight.

This could be an awesome gear check with a twist. Pure numbers and theorycrafting, minimal execution.

Said boss could have some defining abilities, of course, to not make it a snoozefest. A periodic strike that takes %current hp, or randomly selected phases every 10%, or... or a rage bar! The more damage healers do to him in a short period of time, the more abilities he can spam on the tank. I don't believe I've ever seen a mob with a rage bar so far.

I've often thought it would be hilarious to be lined up against an enemy raid... and only one warrior is attackable. This warrior aggros and begins sundering his target... and all the casters and rogues and hunters and such stand back waiting (except the one firemage who jumps the gun and becomes attackable and can be quickly taken out). Once five sunders are up... you can figure out the rest.

This "boss"'s health would be the mana of the healers, more or less. Potentially it would also be possible to burst the tank down which would force the enemy raid's DPS to stop while another warrior (or druid or paladin) built up aggro on your own tank. Enemy DPSers could periodically "pull aggro" allowing them to be attacked until they soulshattered/etc. Perhaps AoEs could be used to disrupt the enemy raid, forcing enemy raiders to move out of blizzards and such and forcing healers to heal the damage.

Obviously this is completely contrived but it would amuse me to no end. "Mages are shooting us... can't attack them, this warrior is just too shiny."

From the ingame sound files, the Shiva boss in BT has some kind of Taunt mechanic. Maybe it'd work something like that, without requiring the huge changes to enemy AI.

One I've had in mind for a while is heavily 'inspired' by an encounter I read about absolutely years ago. It probably lends itself better to a 10 man event than a 25 but anyway:

End of the zone, atop a tower/cathedral/whatever. A sacrifice is taking place to revive 5 all powerful magi. The first phase involves trying to rescue as many captives held for sacrifice as possible while also under assault from a horde of fanatics. The fanatics have to be held off ideally as any that are killed inside the sacrificial area add to the power of the sacrifice, as do any player deaths. After a certain amount of time, the sacrificial area erupts and anniliates anything still inside and the ritualists conducting the ceremony attack. At this point, you can kill everything with impunity as the ritual's over.

Once the cultists are mopped up, one of three outcomes occur.

i) Too many people died in the sacrificial zone, the 5 magi revive at full strength and make Kazzak in Supreme Mode look like Mary Poppins. Go straight to Graveyard, do not pass Go, do not collect shiny purples unless you're amazing badasses of the Hakkar-with-aspects disposition.

ii) The 'normal' outcome - with very few sacrifices to power their return, they revive as far weaker versions of themselves so the fight is on! Each magi representing a different school of magic and requiring their own specific method to be defeated. Kill them, save the world, count your gold, relax.

iii) The 'exceptional' outcome - there wasn't enough people sacrificed, the ritual implodes with a cute little pfft. However (and this is the bit I liked the most about the original story) the very first of the magi that you encountered at the start of it all gets his hooks in and manages to manifest himself through you. The more time he has to establish himself in reality, the stronger he becomes - so a magical Gruul in effect - thus he needs to be killed before he starts thowing out 20k arcane bolts and the like. This would be the ultimate way to beat the encounter and so provide the best reward as he alone is designed to be far tougher than with his 4 comrades. If your group wasn't quite up to it yet, or just fancied a change, you have the other option in the meantime.

And yes, if anyone else is familiar with all this, I'd definitely say it should retain the wonderful cheese option to stop the lone magi within the first 5 seconds but for a substantially lesser reward than the other variations, naturally!

Obviously this could never be used but something that had a similar degree of variation in it would be very welcome, though the problem is balancing the rewards so that all versions of the kill are worthwhile and viable.

Raid encounters.

I'm a big fan of story-driven encounters myself, the only one that really pops to mind right now if Nef, where the mechanics are kind of subsumbed by the personality of the boss and the enviroment you fight him in.

Wouldn't it be cool if you had an instance which is essentially one big scrap?

Example:

You must help your faction besiege a Burning Legion stronghold, the stronghold is impossibly huge and scary looking. We will not settle for any wall less impressive than the black gates from the LotR movies.

Phase 1: You need to support steamtanks and footmen through waves of winged Demons dropping down from the battlements, this would involve several different elements:

1) The footmen can handle themselves fairly well vs. the demons, and outnumber them allow them to gang up and kill plenty of them. However there are caster demons that do AoE damage which will kill the footmen in the end, these demons need to be specifically targetted by the players, who are like the Hero units of an RTS in this case.

2) The tanks do massive amounts of damage, but are slow, eventually flying demons will sometimes drop behind footmen lines and will attack the tanks which cannot fight in close quarters. Stopping this can be done either by engaging the demons on the ground or having ranged classes defend the tanks by standing on them and blasting the demons.

3) The survival of the footmen and tanks is critical in destroying the -massive- gates of the fortress, the footmen will pick up battering rams, ladders and in some cases take a defensive position near the tanks, tanks will pewpew the gates.

Phase 2: The siege of the walls underway, the amount of demons descending will either drop sharply, or simply stop (limited demon spawns would be best, nobody likes endless spawns). While the army attempts to breach the defenses they are under fire from turrets and such (not -really-, there is no timer for the army to be shot to pieces, it's just a story element that an NPC will tell you about.)

The raidgroup now needs scale the battlements in a specific segment and fight their way to the turrets and destroy the forces manning them. Ideally each turret has a mini boss commander that needs to be killed in a more or less conventional tank-spank manner, and each will drop a nice item. Ideally, each commander has a small gimmick to keep things interesting. The trick here will be that the raid needs to be split, and that the commanders have anti-zerg mechanics. Too many players, and they will detonate the ammo in their turret in a suicide action.

Phase 3: The big bad evil guy

After completing phase two, the walls are swarmed by friendly troops and the gates are blown wide, there is a short mini-phase destroying the remaining defenders with the friendly troops backing you...about three minutes to rebuff, drink, res etc. and then.

A really, really, BADASS demon comes out of the inner sanctum. And he has friends.

The badass demon must be attacked by players, but his buddies can be handled by the troops, provided you protected them well in the first phase. If you do not have enough troops and tanks they will gain the upper hand and begin dsirupting your boss attempt.

Ideally, one add loose should be a salvagable try, two a VERY difficult effort and three should be certain doom. You should be able to mitigate this by sending a small number of players to assist troops in trouble.

That's just a short outline, but it's the kind of scripted action i really enjoy.

The easy solution would be for each attack to life-steal a set amount. Therefore healers and tanks would not be overly gimped and die from this mechanic. It would also prevent the encounter from becoming harder once you outgear it (sorry guys, I accidentally killed the priest again).

This made my morning, thank you.

I too am a fan of dynamic, moving encounters.

Perhaps an encounter where the boss stands in the center of the room, on a large platform. Around his are swirling ledges, constantly moving but in an organized fashion.

The raid splits up and has 2 minutes to use these ledges to get to cannons placed around the room. Every 2 minutes 10 cannons must be fired at the boss or does a massive explosion and insta-gibs you.
At around 30%, the ledges speed up and the boss begins to slowly destroy platforms. This would have to be an easy encounter, similar to the chess event, perhaps.

My main gripe with this is that wipe recovery would be rather painful :X

Do you have a link to this statement?