As someone just reading the thread (I havent done the fight yet) I love the how this fight sounds. The fear sounds like a very important part of the design philosophy of the fight. I don't really understand why people want it removed - simply because they 'dont like fear'?

The whole point of blizz's archimonde vs you (imo) design, is meant to make you feel very small and force you to go to huge lengths simply to retain a small semblance of control over your character - simply to stay alive. I find that a very appealing design attitude. They could have made archimonde just a big ultimate 'tank and spank' boss, but they went with something quite different and I think its refreshing.

Hes fearing you round, hes throwing you up.. your character is getting beaten every which way. Hes in total control and your struggling to keep some control or suffer dire consequences. Your death could come very quick, at any second - with even a small mistake or lapse of concentration. Removing the fear and doing something like simply having 'fire spawn on someone' really takes away a big chunk of that philosophy towards how they designed the fight.

I can't comment on whether the fights too random/unfair/unforgiving and how best to change that etc - but as an interested observer the idea behind his design to me is something very impressive. Most bosses im familiar with, it feels like the raid controls the boss - I cant wait to try this fight and have it reversed.

I do have one question though, since unfortunately I wont get to see Illidan/Archimonde for sometime.... Ive read people refer to Illidan as 'harder' than this fight. What aspect of his fight makes it harder? I mainly ask, because Ive seen many Illidan videos where the majority of the fight it looks like they really have him under control for much of the fight. On all the archimonde information available, it seems like a bigger struggle, that can fall apart at any moment?

Fights with fear are retarded because they reward stacking your raid with classes to counter it - shamans and dwarf priests.

The Illidan fight is a lot easier. No part of that fight feels random and it's totally controllable all the way.

Has blizzard ever said they intend 25 mans to be ~3 per class? I dont know if that was some mythical quote people have thrown around - but its always stuck with me.

As that quote mentions, if Blizzard is intending classes to be roughly equally represented in raids, ~3 each, then its fairly understandable that some encounters simply will be difficult if your guild wants to go against this mentality - and that doesnt necessarily mean the fight is badly designed. Your guild might have no choice but to adapt to Blizzards design idea for raid class setup. But....

Somebody could say , 'to what extent can a 4th or 5th of that class trivialise the fight' - and thats a very fair comment to make. So heres my question to someone whos killed archimonde. How would you rate the difficulty of the fight if you have (1) , (3) and (5) shamans, respecively. If blizzard is intending we have 3 per class and the fights difficulty is balanced around 3 of each class, im curious to see how the fight difficulty would deviate if you brought 1/2 or 4/5. Is the difference really as dramatic as people say, if you had 2 or 4? Or is skill still the determining factor?

I realise people have alluded in various parts of the thread as to 'how much easier' or 'how much harder' it can be, but id like something a little more tangible. Ultimately, id love to know what strategies Blizzard can use to design a fight to be balanced for optimal difficulty at 3 per class, but not get too hard/easy if you deviate from that.

The difficulty is more than just "number of shamans * X = difficulty", as there are many other ways of breaking fear. If you have 5 DPS warriors in the raid, they can all break their own fears if needed and so won't "need" a shaman for that aspect. If you have a lot of undeads who all have the better PvP trinket then they can survive pretty well without a tremor too. If you have 5 dwarf priests, that would also impact the difficulty.


As said a few posts up, the difficulty of the fight is trying to retain control over your character. More fear breaks = more control = easier fight. If you only have 2 shamans, but 15 undead characters with PvP trinkets (of which say 3 are frost mages for ice block and 3 are rogues with CloS for fire, although I'm not certain that works), then you could easily form groups where everyone has multiple fear breaks. What Mearis said is true - fear is quite a stupid mechanic to balance a boss around because specific classes/races change the balance significantly.

I would certainly say that having a horde raid (wotf) with many PvP trinkets and 5 shamans for tremor virtually trivialises the fight. Even with 4 deaths (2xdruid, warrior, shaman) it was still pretty easy to control when we did it like that.

I'm also not sure I can think of a fight which _doesn't_ get significantly easier/harder with class/spec imbalance. The other issue is that you could have 2 perfectly balanced 3-per-class raids and end up with 2 completely different setups because of different specs. A raid with 3 shadow priests, 3 feral/balance druids, 3 enhancement/elemental shamans and 3 retribution/prot paladins is totally screwed for healers.

I think the original "3 per class" thing came about because 25/9 = ~2.8

So when blizzard sat down and designed this boss - knowing fear is a big factor in the fight - how many shamans do you think they anticipated to be in the raid? Did they vastly overlook/misjudge how much other factors (trinkets, racial talents, talents) will heavily (and perhaps unfairly between guilds/factions) change the intended difficulty?

If they truly wanted , for example, an ability which necessitated shaman usage -They could have made a completely new horror category-type effect that *only* a grounding totem removed, negating anything else in the game that can be used to trivialise parts of the encounter (such as the things you detailed).

But since they never did that, the player can only be left wondering what the designers were thinking at the time.

Until blizzard change the use of tremor or nerf/fix the fight I dont see any reason for us not to bring 5 shaman, that said the fear ward comment and balancing fear on boss fights, is one of the most infuriating things blizzaard have ever done for me.

Yes, the DoT from Doomfire is CloS-able.

If they removed the fear and made doomfire even harder to dodge I would guess that the encounter would benefit hugely from it. It would somehow be "harder" yet you would have no points where you lose total control over your character and have to rely on racials, pvp trinkets and other nonsense (honestly its not a hard fight, but repeating a kill takes up to 1-2 hours even when you know everything about it, and THAT is the problem).

I hate to ask for advice, but this fight really gets to me...

We did our first round of attempts last night. We brought something like 5 shamans, 4 decursers, and about 9 healers, so we had a "stacked" raid for the most part. We usually raid 4 hours a night, and we ended up with a 31% attempt somewhere in there. People were confident we could get him down, and we ended up going 2 more hours - the longest we have raided in a long time. That didn't end up so well however, as the next 2 hours yielded constant wipes of 50-80%.

We did about 39 attempts total I believe. We had deaths from falling even on our last hour of the night, which was unexcusable of course, deaths from grip + airburst, though that happened rarely and we managed to keep people alive who had it for the last half of our attempts, and of course the MT dying, though he died in 3 attempts out of the 39.

Our main problem was doomfire. No matter how much I emphasized staying away from it and such, it seems like at some point we would always get a bunch of people hit by it.

We tried bunching behind him at first, but air-burst ended up hitting too many people constantly, and we had doomfires that just generally covered the entire area at times. We ended up switching to having groups "positioned" around Archimonde. Though doomfires seem to be spread out a bit, it seemed to me like the number of people getting hit by it wasn't any lower then when we were all directly behind him. We also had incidents where people just ended up getting isolated from their groups and dying to a grip or doomfire.

This fight is very frustrating. I am personally very hardcore about content, so I have no problem wiping over and over, but i'm more overly worried about how it might be a guild breaker, since it does seem to be very demoralizing wiping that much AND that fast so easily.

Sorry for the long rant, my questions were basically, do you guys even position your raid properly? It seemed to me like there was no point to doing that, since doomfires had no proper pathing from what I saw, and eventually just got people away from the main group, and those people usually died. Also, is it worth doing/repeating it? Would we be better off working on Relinquary of Souls? It seems to me like even though we will be able to handle RoS better since I hear its 100% execution, we would hit Mother Shahraz and still be left to do one of the two blocks either way, so it seems like I would only be delaying the inevitable.

This fight seems so doable, yet so...hard at the same time. I don't think I have ever felt so frustrated at a fight before. Perhapes we might get "lucky" eventually and beat it, but it does feel like it's not worth it to even attempt to repeat it.

Your experience sounds typical for archimonde. You would kill him tomorrow almost for sure had it not been a reset. You would have 2 hours of unbroken time on him where now everyone actually knows how to kill him, and you would get lucky basically once in that time frame - no strat change, no player change, no class change - he would just magically go from 70% to dead; thats how this fight works sadly.

Honestly, I've seen guilds kill him on their first wipe night due to good luck, and then not be able to repeat the task for 2 more raid days because they killed him the first time so quickly. This is another one of those "2 raid sessions and its dead" bosses. Which so far for us still applies to everyone but Kael'thas. Its just far more frustrating somehow - and it should take a good guild about 50 wipes to kill Archimonde the first time (contrary to the reports here that 6 pulls and he's free loot).

As for doomfire, if there is a doomfire in the east, we have the entire raid shift away from the east - it is now a biohazard zone. We can get to the point where no one in the raid is affected by doomfire beyond 1-2 folks the entire fight. I think our guild is quite good at this fight now since we can all react appropriately - I certainly don't see our strat or players improving.

At this point in our progression though, hearts are much more valuable to us than Archimonde loot, and we actually gave up attempts on him to farm hearts... that sums up my feelings on Archimonde.

Hearing this from you is somewhat disheartening, but at the same time, a relief. We also have a similar experience, and the same mentality. We put in another 2 hours on Archimonde last night, but were unable to reproduce our kill on him after the "buff" 2 weeks ago.

We are at a similar point in progression as far as farming hearts of darkness. And instead of rolling the Archimonde russian roulette, we are opting for heart farming and silenty praying that they fix Archimonde in some way.

If you're really getting that few people doomfired, I can't imagine that he'd take more than 3-4 pulls to kill, and with the lack of trash, how is he (and his 151 ilevel loot) not worth killing?

*cough, cough* You are stopping Archimonde with the reason being 'too random encounter' and going towards mother? I think you are up for an unpleasant surprise. If you wipe on Archimonde, someone fucked up.
Mummy is quite different in that aspect and the encounter can be a lot more frustrating as you can easily wipe when everyone played perfect.

As I was saying we only need hearts at this point to kill Shahraz, who is probably the hardest boss in TBC. You don't need Tier 6 helmets to kill illidan or Illdari. Loot for the sake of loot isn't worth it at the cost of progression; in this case 10 more epic SR items is worth our time. Archimonde's frustration and annoyances, combined with it tiring people out, and making folks emo isn't worth potentially losing them for important nights.

The difference is one is farming and one is going toward completing the zone. We could do sapphiron for shoulder enchants also!

As for the bullshit about "if you wipe on Archimonde, someone fucked up." The last 3 attempts before our previous kill-shot were all wiped under 30% from silence-classes being feared under the world and wiping us. Two attempts prior to those, I was killed in under 2.5 seconds taking absurd parry string damage. Just before that we had a priest disconnect.

ISP problems and blizzard being shit at coding raid instances in general are hardly encounter specific. I've not experienced the falling through the world myself there, but well that's just crap that happens and I doubt they fix that soon. They are notoriously awful at fixing stuff that takes them serious work, so if you plan to kill archimonde within the next 2-3 weeks, waiting for that to happen makes not much sense.
I really don't wnat to know how many times we wiped to Al'ar cause he just randomly flew up 30y and aoe'ed us. Or when he charge/1 shotted 3 healers in a row early on. This shit happens and it will happen. The only real solution is to delete your char, otherwise it will happen again.

If you try Archimone for more then two raid days and blame wipes on impossible situations, you're lying at yourself. Make people bring decurse pots, get more hp on everyone, bring more shamans/decursers, if everythign else fails. And sort the positioning better.
Back for Thaddius we had a black list of guys we just would not take to the fight, both ISP/computer wise and just not being fast enough with the running (although we did use arrows, but I'll not start to get unfriendly here :p). Maybe you need to do something like that, dunno.

Your group makeup is similar to ours. I believe that splitting up the raid has some advantages.

Stick the melee in the center and create four equal groups. Each group should have a shaman, decurser, and 2 healers. Balance the groups the best you can and mark each shaman with a raid icon. The shaman becomes the homing beacon for the rest of the group, and they should move around together (as best as possible). If you do not have a shaman for one of the groups, stack the group with players that have the best counters: 2 minute pvp trinkets, wotf, fear ward, divine shield, dispel, etc. A priest/paladin pair can alternate fear breaks and dispell their group as quickly as a shaman (on average). The four groups should be split up evenly around Archimonde.

As a result, you should be fairly resilient against doomfires. If a group is threatened by fire, they can run completely out and away of the fight, (ideally) staying within both healing and decursing range of each other. This gives people more freedom to run away without worrying that the tank or melee group will be left without support.

Kaib, I'm not quite sure who you're talking to, and you seem personally offended that many people dislike the fight... but the last time we did archimonde it took us about 90 minutes to repeat a kill. I was very clear in my post about why we didn't attempt him this week.

I think you really should read posts first before replying. Its really amazing to read something like that. We're not waiting for anything to be "fixed" on archimonde. And your ego is amazing; why anyone would make such a post on EJ is beyond me.

1-shotted archimonde tonight for our first kill after a series of 11-30% wipes last night. Just to echo what others have said, 4-5 shamans, avoidance of doomfires, 9 healers makes this fight quite manageable, and though I can't really say for sure, repeatable. You will still suffer shit deaths, but I can't see it taking more than 4-5 runs to get it down with that sort of compo.

We got to him last night, and wiped for 4 hours straight today, with 50% beeing best attempt. We would probably have downed him if we didnt spend the first hour with the "old" positioning tactic, instead of spreading out in a 360 fasion, which leads me to believe it isnt "that" random. We had our fair share of wipes due to fear+grip+doomfire+airborne, but most of the wipes were l2p issues regarding the tears, or people not thinking ahead when it came to doomfires and fears. Confident we will kill him next reset if we dont get an unlucky streak of the above mentioned.

As for my role in this fight, the main tank, i think he should be able to crush(like quigon mentioned) and hit for less, simply because a parry or 2 can kill you. One of our pulls today, i went in and shieldslammed him, half a second later i was dead due to it beeing parried
I have no issues with the fear tho, and i dont really understand why alot of the tanks here whine about it. I havent saved my GCD for it yet, and in a worst case scenario im feared for 0.1 seconds, harddly enough to kill anyone(never did either in our 25 odd attempts). Had a couple oh shit moments with him fearing early tho, but nothing the old pvp trinket cant fix, although its something that should be fixed imo.

One fatal thing we sometimes have, which almost always results in a death is the MT being burst down within 2seconds on the pull (We all mount for it).

He goes in with PW:S, ES, PoM, as soon as he hits the boss he recieves Rejuv which is SM'd as soon as its needed, however sometimes the only way to counter the burst is with a NS heal which results in the healer getting agro and getting one shot more often than not. Before you ask he does get MD'd as quickly as he can however its not always fast enough when the healers dont have time to wait.

It doesn't happen often... only 3-4 times in total sofar (1 + 1/2 raid days) but its just one thing I'ld like to remove if possible to cut down on the <60second wipes of stupidity

I don't see how crushes would help prevent parry deaths - quite the opposite. Faster hits means your Shield Block charges will be gone and he can crush you to death. Unless you aim for passive immunity, but then you would have to drop a considerable amount of hitpoints just for that. It might prevent Fear Ward'ed druids from tanking him though, or at least make it worse than it is now.

Playered, there is no reason for everyone to mount up. A few healers should be ready to cast and the misdirecting hunter should start shooting Archimonde while he is still running towards the tank.