NB: I have not fought/tanked Archimonde, but I have tanked the old Nightbane who had the same 1 sec fear cast.

On a good night, my latency to the server is 550ms, on a bad night it's 800ms+. Even with saving GCD's on Nightbane and his old fast cast fear (which Archimonde has too) I would still end up feared due to latency.

While this might not be fair for everyone, especially people who do not have localized servers (eg. Australians), I generally expect someone who is playing a fast paced online game to have a latency of no more than 300ms at worst. 800+ms is a huge handicap on a lot of encounters. If the game was designed with that latency in mind, it would be boring for those with a good connection.

My guild is 95% all Australia and the oceanic region. We are pretty much going to start doing Reliquary of souls hopefully next week and i just can't begin to explain the handicap we are going to face with the essence of Desire's spirit shock and deaden. The amount of hours we have wasted wiping due to people having 900-1500 ping and there isnt a thing we can do about it. One thing that comes to mind is Heigan the Unclean, we actually had to run into the slime as it bursted because of our latency, which made the fight alot more annoying and difficult than it really should have been.

Eh, Heigan with high ping was nothing much more than a retard check for people whose mental faculties just can't wrap around the idea of moving earlier (WHAT? I have to run -into- splashes before they go down? ....... burrrrrrrrr)

Latency != lag spike - it's completely compensatable. Heigan was 100% following a set pattern on a bunch of set timers. So was Thaddius.

On the other hand, there's no real way to anticipate short casts as on Archimonde's fear and RoS p2... and barring Blizzard somehow adding some sort of advance warning, which would make the encounters cheese for non-high-ping guilds, I don't really see what could be done.

We'll see what happens, I guess. I'm not particularly worried about Archimonde - Iron Chefs, another Oceanic guild, raped him without the benefit of fear ward even.

edit:- to highlight the RoS issue, we have four things we need to look at
1) That "interrupt but didn't" bugginess Praetorian highlighted where interrupts landing in the last 0.2 to 0.1 secs don't actually stop the cast even though they read interrupt.
2) Latency of 400-500ms on a good day
3) Needing to see if it's a Deaden or Shock. Lets say an amazingly fast reaction time of 0.3secs
4) Purging shields.

I really don't see how it's going to fall in place. :/ Meh, I'll take this line of discussion over to the RoS thread... getting wa-ay off topic here. Apologies.

This is really overstated. We have an aussie interrupt on Desire. Just use an offtank and you'll be fine. Cast times for most casts are 1.6 seconds or so?

Seriously, as the main tank I've been hit with spirit shock like 7 times and we still made it to phase 3 with 25 people up. Although on our kill-shot I was only hit once. Just plan for it to happen, because it really will happen about a third of the time when the shield goes up. You're dealing with human beings here!

As for deaden, the timing on it is so tight that unless it casts early, I hit reflect when the bigwigs timer disappears and it reflects it every-last-time, in the dark. Shielded deadens are simply too fast when you want to be focusing on other things. You can reflect deaden blind. Also assign 1 person to blind-interrupt the second the deaden goes off. EoD actually queues spells up. If two people interrupt at the same time - you can interrupt spirit shock, and then deaden 0.0000001 seconds later. This works in reverse when a spirit shock is due after a deaden. Anyway theres some leet beta infoz right there.

All that being said - I don't want to sound like an ego raving maniac saying "learn to play". Your points are important when it comes to unfair timings and things that need to be addressed in "the real world." These fights do not appear to be tested on crappy computers over laggy connections. We've seen this on a number of fights, and it is disconcerting. We've already seen combat logs of nearly unavoidable issues related to lag.
I've actually seen someone die to Tears of the Goddess not firing due to a horrendous lag spike. I've heard in a few cases this happens - but people always insult them saying "you didn't click." The reality is sometimes lag can actually hit you at the worst times there. (Although this is fleetingly rare, maybe once in 70ish attempts ever). And once when we were practicing on the hills.

Once you have Shahraz down, you will wonder what/why it had taken you so long, with capped SR, it is not hard to repeat. I wouldn't say it is any harder than Archimonde or Illidan, or RoS for that matter.

As for the difficulty of archimonde, its been stated so many times in this thread, if you can stack shaman, do it, it makes the fight managable and with decent raid positioning I would expect to kill it within 5 tries everytime.

Killed illidan yesterday, it's indeed a very hard fight but Kael'thas took us longer to learn. Maybe we were just performing better because well, it's illidan and the end of tbc etc... but Kael was so "difficult" to learn because of the long and boring phase 1, the trash respawns, ...

I'll take a fear fight over a resist fight any day of the week. I honestly wouldn't put Council near the top of the hardest-bosses-in-TBC list...you tank them, heal tanks and keep as much DPS alive as possible. Sustain for 10+ minutes and you win. There's no great precision required of anyone in the raid. With a solid plan for BOP'd casting you're fine, and they can heal a fair amount without dire consequences--it just makes the fight last longer. Even ignoring Shahraz's luck factor, executing that fight was substantially harder and more stressful (as a healer) than Council ever was.

Wait what?
This wasn't my statement, it is the one echoed by many other people. You don't have to have beaten a fight to know about it either. I've not heard of anyone who would echo your sentiments that illdari council is harder than Archimonde.

Those trinkets are farmed from PvP, and tremors from stacking shamans, and wotf/fear ward from racials. Thats pretty dumb man.
Shahraz is indeed partly a terrible fight because it requires resists, but that doesn't somehow make archimonde a better fight - one fight being bad is not at odds with another! I've heard from a number of guilds though that Illidan took them 2 nights, and was relatively simple - wouldn't that make Kael'thas harder? And, afaik, every guild that has killed illidan and Archifun kills Illidan much more repeatably. Illidan may be a hard fight - but most guilds do it in under a week, and repeat with 1-2 shots, does that not sum up your experience? But hey, they must have lied to me because our guild hasn't killed shahraz.

Difficulty is really a matter of guild specific opinion as well.
I think that Reliquary of souls is more around Anatheron's difficulty honestly (but thats based on our experience). The hardest part of reliquary was for new guilds to learn his abilities - and put that knowledge to use on a kill - reflecting deadens probably cost some guilds a week of progression. But for guilds arriving at reliquary today, they'll know all the abilities and be able to drop it on 1-2 nights easily. This is a good example of how knowledge is power on a fight, and makes it significantly easier over time (this was mentioned by Tigole in some encounter designs; see: 4H).

Farming for resist gear does suck though. It does make the fight much easier - so once everyone is at 365 perhaps it will turn into a readily repeatable and trivial kill. But thus far it has given most guilds the biggest stoppage (except early with RoS) in progression. So perhaps over time as guilds take longer to get there and get more hearts in the process it will magically dissolve into "just another fight." However, just looking at EJ for instance, they appear to have spent the most time on shahraz - and truly hate the fight; and will probably drop illidan their next raid session with any luck, that seems to reflect what I've seen elsewhere.

How can you make this claim about Thaddius? Heigan's Acid Splashes are absolutely 100% predictable, but there's no way to predict on Thaddius which charge you will get, thus pointing you to which camp to run to (or stay at, depending on your method - we used circular, i.e. 4 points).

I don't think Shahraz is a terrible fight because it requires resists. You need 150 hearts plus some greens to do the fight. By the time you get to her, unless you progressed through the first 2/3 of BT in like 2 weeks, you should have close to 100 hearts banked (we did through Akama week one, Teron and Gurtogg week two, took two weeks off from BT progression to clear Hyjal, then did RoS the next week, and we had 100). Farming up the other 50 should take a few days, and honestly is pretty fun if you just do it casually, at random hours of the day. We had a great time clearing all the way to Shahraz with 8 people late one night (one PvP-spec warrior as the only tank, me and a paladin as the only healers). We just used straight Need/Greed for all epic gems that dropped throughout the farming period, making it really profitable for everyone.

If Shahraz had no resistance component to it whatsoever, it would still suck. I don't mind the SR check at all, honestly.

We finally got our first kill tonight. ~60ish agonizing pulls it took us to finally beat it. Many many wipes due to human error more so than bad luck. I'd say 5 or so of our attempts had a death to the situations mentioned above.

Mostly, it was just too many people taking doomfire or cratering. We tried many different setups on positioning. Our kill had the raid split between left/right of Archimonde with the back of him as a "safe zone" for people. The airburst+grip combo can be rough, but with enough communication it wasn't too terrible for us. The deciding factor was really just how mobile everyone was. Once we told everyone to stop getting themselves in bad situations and started to analyze how a group got "trapped" it got easier. We also had an absurd amount of shamans and fear ward.

The fear timer I hope becomes more consistent and the cast time increased for the horde/alliance without fearward. Trying to stance dance it was brutal on the attempts the priest fear warding me died. The fear cooldown and it's cast needs to be more in sync with his other abilities. I think we had a couple deaths of grip+fear immediately after that messed us up. I really hope they change the doomfire mechanic also. Having it lock onto someone would help alot. Many wipes were just people not paying attention when doomfire went behind the raid and looped back to run through their group or someone running with it to have it travel off into a group.

It was mentioned earlier in the thread, but positioning/communication really is important. Airburst+grip combo isn't that bad unless you have doomfire ticking. If you are quick to HS/potion and your decursers are on the ball, it's survivable. Having someone calling where to move also helps dramatically.

Err what? How is Illidan the hardest fight in the game? It's a total joke of a fight IMO. Council, Mother, Souls, Bloodboil, Archimonde, Azgalor, Kael, Vashj, original SSC bosses [Blind, Hydross], original Gruul are all harder than Illidan...

You're nuts if you say Council and Azgalor are harder. People one-shot Azgalor, and I'd say a huge number of guilds two-shotted him. Council pretty much fall over after Shahraz. No one kills Illidan in one hour of attempts.

Illidan is hard the way Kael is hard. It's long and has a lot of moving parts to keep track of. And when you wipe you go all the way back to step one, which slows down learning. Council has a fair bit to keep track of, but it's so forgiving and you see it all up front. Take 4 tanks, put healers on them, and just focus on staying alive on Council and ignore healers and such, and you'll have it all figured out in 20 minutes. I don't think Illidan is "hard" but it does have built-in obstacles you have to clear in order to see all the different parts of the fight. And every mistake sends you back to the start with 10+ mins to spend in order to get back to where you were before. Thus it takes a while. It's a fun fight, though.

And thats just the run back because the teleporter breaks after a soft reset :P

Finally got him, whith 2sham, 2drood and 2mage.That was pretty hard and i feel re-kill won't be easy but we learn a lot about reducing impact of bad luck.

Like I said earlier, I think is the worst final boss and i realy hope they'll change him to something better (doesn't mean easier - like gruul).

Err, everyone has a different list and different criteria as to who are the "hardest" bosses in the game. They may have different criteria or perhaps their guilds have different methods. They might not do Illidan as well as they do Reliquary. Judging based on how much time/effort it took to learn the boss, and how difficult each successive kill is, I would say that Council, Gurtogg, and Vashj are much easier than to Illidan, and Azgalor, Shahraz and Reliquary are arguably easier than Illidan. Original SSC bosses and original Gruul are no longer "in the game"

Archimonde
Kael'thas
Illidan
Shahraz
Azgalor
Reliquary
Council
Vashj
Gurtogg

Personally I see Illidan's difficulty being concentrated on a few people, whereas Archimonde requires everyone in the raid to be playing reasonably well.

Phase 2 is really the only hard part of Illidan, once you get past that it's pretty straightforward -- spread out, heal the tank, kill the stunners and parasites without getting too close to other people, and top everyone off. The only really wipe-causing error is if your tank gets nailed on a transition or after the little cutscene, but saving NS for those cases mostly handles them.

The vast, vast majority of our wipes on Illidan were to an elemental leashing and enraging or tanks not spotting an eye beam in time, or healers not being able to keep up when a tank stays in a Blaze or two, or accidentally turning an elemental towards to raid just as they do their frontal cone attack. Once your tanks have phase 2 down, it isn't that bad at all. But as a healer, it's pretty dull and simple actually...spam on tank....move to new position, and spam on tank...spread out and top folks off. Not nearly as dynamic or interesting as Archimonde, though definitely more consistently repeatable.

This. I suppose you can analogize it to the primary difficulty of RoS being interrupts in p2, where you're really depending on a handful of people to do their job. The difference from Illidan is that if a rogue mistimes a kick once, that's still completely recoverable. If a tank stands in a beam or pulls an elemental too far away, your attempt is over instantly. Your tanks have to be perfect. The execution requirements on everyone else are fairly low compared to a fight like Archimonde or Shahraz.

We did, he was in the MT healers group. I can see the bad luck situations popping up more often with less shamans/fear wards than we had. No doubt the raid damage would have been alot higher if we didn't have the makeup we did. I really hope this encounter is tweaked once again. Anything to help minimize the situations you can get into that will kill someone or really put an abrupt end to an attempt.

Doomfire was the main issue for us. People getting into situations that just really made healing difficult is what wiped us so many attempts. A better approach would be the locking on a player. Maybe spawning it on someone in the raid, giving them 2 seconds to get out of it before being debuffed, and allowing you to control where it goes may make the encounter more enjoyable, but probably alot easier.

The bad luck situations are the timers. The grip+fear combo is always bad. Setting it so the fear timer is static and setting the grip to those that aren't airburst are a good start to making this encounter enjoyable. I could live with doomfires erratic behavior if they made it so dumb situations like I mentioned never happened. Is it repeatable? Yes. Am I looking forward to it? No. Grip+fear/stupid fear through doomfire+airburst+grip is the quick way to toss 5g and whatever stoneshields/ironshields I used down the drain. It may be rare, but that attempt when it happens sure is depressing.

For those who were wondering our attempts were basically 70% or greater. Once we analyzed what people were doing with doomfire we just laid out the rule if it spawns in your area just get away from it. Too many people were just standing there waiting to see where it went and then having it lock onto them and getting hit. We also watched people trap themselves and told them if it starts to circle you run to archimonde and get out of it before you're closed in, etc. Believe the next two attempts were 50 something and 40% to dead.

I think on our progress, we spent roughly the same amount of time to kill Illidan and Council.

Our first attempt on Illidan, we hit p2 (not bragging, statement to how much of a joke it is).
P2 took some time. It wasn't learning though. It wasn't wiping to something 'hard'.

We wiped to the following:

1. "Oh, he charged a totem and enrage...cool...."
2. "Tank move!" *tank takes 1 step" "MORE!" *zap*
3. Tank died.

I'm not saying 2 of those 3 aren't entirely our fault...but the tank dying, honestly, is that a learning curve thing? I mean, is it new that an enemy can do decent dmg to a tank, while aoeing the raid? If so, I guess I've been sleeping through WoW raiding. #2...yea it requires TWO people to actively dodge something. If this is what defines a challenging fight, well, *shrug*.

On p3 onward, I think we wiped 1 or 2 times total to people being retarded/having to see it to believe it? P3 and P4 are sooo forgiving though. On our kill attempt, we did decently to ~15-20%, then a spriest pulls aggro on a transition, dies and gets like 6-8 others killed, while healing Illidan for what, 10-15%? We still pulled a kill out of it.

I truly believe that Illidan is one of the easier fights to learn AND execute in BT. (our 2nd kill was wipe a few times to same things as above in p2 while ~20 people play perfectly, then 1 shot p3).
Also, we definitely spent more time learning Bloodboil and Souls than Illidan. Gorefiend is probably about equal. We spent more time learning Blind, Morogrim, Lurker, Hydross, Alar, Magtheridon, and Gruul than Illidan as well.

Yeah it probably doesnt take a month to learn illidan (sorry but your always running your mouth!)

Illidan took us two nights orso basically bashing our heads against phase 2, the council took a night and shahraz took us a while due to scandinvians making up holidays.
You cant really compare the learning curve to SSC etc as there wasn't guides out the week after on those bosses ... afterall unless they make the encounters entirely luck based (some might argue some are) once you have certain information the encounters become alot easier.