Hello EJ-community,

in the past few months, especially after the progress guilds' race through the Black Temple, many people regret the lack of really new ideas in the bossencounters in terms of mechanics that are used. In this post I want to list the different mechanics that are currently used frequently, give an overview of the mechanics each TBC 25-man raidboss uses and encourage you to think about new basic mechanics that you would use if you were in charge of designing new encounters.

Nearly every boss needs to be tanked by either a feral/warrior or by a ranged damagedealer, where mostly a warlock proves to be the best choice. Sometimes an encounter requires more than one tank (Hydross) or switches between phases so that you have to bring both ranged and melee tank. Additionally, every boss needs to be damaged in order to be killed. These 2 elements are present since Onyxia and Molten Core (warlock tanking was introduced with the twins, iirc) and probably will be in the future, too. When looking at the encounter mechanics, I dont want to specify what tanking role needs to be fulfilled. The following abilities and mechanics are used very frequently, how many of them come to use in one encounter depends on the difficulty of this boss.

Adds
We all know them. There are basically 3 different types of adds:
1 - Adds which have to be focused down one by one (called "Adds 1" in the following. E.g.: Hydross, Lurker, Vashj)
2 - Adds which are killed with massive AE damage (called "Adds 2" inthe following. E.g.: Tidewalker, Solarian)
3 - Boss adds which have to be dealt with separately (called "Adds 3" in the following. E.g.: Karathress, Illidari council)

Area Effect Damage (AE)
AE damage is used very often and again we face some different types:
1 - AE which hits only one or some targets at a time, but requires preventive positioning to not affect normally unaffected players (called "AE pp" in the following. E.g.: Najentus' needle spinde, Hydross' watertombs.)
2 - AE which "contaminates" a certain area of the map and therefor requires reactive positioning to not be affected (called "AE rp1" in the following. E.g.: Azgalors rain of fire, Wintherchills death & decay, Al'Ars flamepatches)
3 - AE which is shot at one or more players and requires relative recavtive positioning of these player(s) and/or the other players to not affect the latter (called "AE rp2" in the following. E.g.: Solarians new mark, Kaz'Rogals manaburn bomb, Vashjs static charge).
4 - AE damage that is either completely unavoidable (Netherspites shadow aura) or is avoidable but accepted in some cases (Lurkers whirl for melees, Voidreavers pounding). Calles "AE U" in the following.

Curses, magical debuffs etc.(AE)
Nothing specific in this category. Sometimes the debuffs are very bad (Archimonde, Gorefiend), sometimes they are only annoying (Hydross' vile sludge). Only curable debuffs are listed as "debuff", because you can't do anything against non-curable debuffs anyway, despite healing them (Vashjs static charge) or coping with their restrictive nature (Hydross' vile sludge, Anetherons -heal). Also listed "interesting" debuffs which demand a special action or reaction in order to handle them (e.g. Azgalors doom).

Miscellaneous
A category that houses all the things we call "creative":
-Items (e.g.: Vashjs tainted cores, Kaels legendary weapons)
-Enviromental Triggers: A classic staple of arcade boss battles. (Ossirian's crystals, Magtheridon's cubes or Hydross's cleansing beams)
-Class-Dependant Effects: Stuff that changes based on your raid composition. Nefarian's class calls, Hex Lord's Soul Drains, and even Archimonde's differently colored soul charges fall into this subcategory.
-Piloting: Certain encounters require players to directly control NPCs with predetermined abilities. Examples: Razorgore, Razuvious, Faerlina, Gorefiend.

Single target damage
This causes one single non-tank player to unavaoidably take massive DPS for either a limited ammount of time (Winterchills icebolt) or until the player dies (Naj'entus' impaling spine). Called "STDPS" in the following.


In the following I want to give an overview over the raidbosses in SSC, TK, Hyjal and BT and try to categorize their abilitys with my given schema.

Serpentshrine Cavern
Hydross: Adds 1/2, AE pp
Lurker: Adds 1, AE rp1 (spout), AE rp2 (geyser), AE U (whirl)
Tidewalker: Adds 2, AE U (earthquake), AE U (Watery graves, no real "AE" in the tightest sense)
Karathress: Adds 3, AE U (totem, waterbolt-AE)
Leotheras: Adds 1, AE rp1 (whirl), AE pp (chaos blast)
Vashj: Adds 1, AE rp2 (static charge), AE rp1 (sporebat poison clouds), AE U (forked lightning), Misc. - Items

Tempest Keep
Al'Ar: Adds 1, AE rp1 (flamepatches), AE pp (meteor)
Void Reaver: AE pp (orbs), AE U (pounding)
Solarian: Adds 2, AE U, AE rp2
Kael'Thas: Adds 3, Adds 1/2 (weapons), (debuff, mindcontrol: not curable in the tightest sense, but counterable via sheep), AE pp (netherbeam), AE rp1 (phoenixes & flamestrike), Misc. - items

Hyjal
Rage Winterchill: STDPS, AE rp1(death & decay), AE pp (frostnova, not really completely avoidable for all but one player, but spreading out loweres its effect)
Anetheron: Adds 1, AE pp (same positioning procedure as with Winterchills FN, not preventable for ALL)
Kaz'Rogal: AE pp/rp2 (explosion after manaburn)
Azgalor: AE rp1, debuff=>Adds 1
Archimonde: AE pp/rp1/rp2 (doomfire), AE pp (airburst), debuff, Misc. - item, class specific soulcharge

Black Temple
Naj'Entus: STDPS (impaling spine), item (impaling spine), AE pp (needle spine), AE U (tidal shield)
Supremus: AE rp1 (blue fire), AE rp1 (volcanoes)
Akama: Adds 1, AE rp1 (elementalists rain of fire)
Gorefiend: AE U (shadowbolt clouds), debuff (incinerate), debuff=>Misc. - piloting=>Adds 1/2

Although I'm informed about the missing 5 encounters in BT I do not want to comment them in the same way, because my guild did not yet progress any further.

The question now is: Which new principles could one add to make bossfights more interesting again instead of combinating the features I listed above. I invite you to discuss this and I'm curious which ideas you have!

Greets,
valeea

PS: Please correct me if you think I missed something or did not properly interpret something within the list of the bosses. I'd also be happy if Illidan killers could complete my scheme for the last 5 bosses. I will update my original post then.

Edit your post and take out the signature before Kaubel comes back from his daily bear wrestling trip, lest ye feel his wrath.

Edit- In an attempt to be constructive, I would like to see another C'thun-esque fight. Lots of things to control all at once with the threat of a "You Lose" mechanic hanging over your head (not a berserk timer, for once!).

I'd make "Items" into a subcategory of "Miscellaneous". Other subcategories would include:

-Enviromental Triggers: A classic staple of arcade boss battles. Think Ossirian's crystals, Magtheridon's cubes or Hydross's cleansing beams.
-Class-Dependant Effects: Stuff that changes based on your raid composition. Nefarian's class calls, Hex Lord's Soul Drains, and even Archimonde's differently colored soul charges fall into this subcategory.
-Piloting: Certain encounters require players to directly control NPCs with predetermined abilities. Examples: Razorgore, Razuvious, Faerlina, Gorefiend.

Thank you for the contribution, I adopted your formulation and changed the category "items" to "miscellaneous" according to your idea.

My dream fight involves a very large animal that isn't evil to begin with but has been infected and is doing a lot of damage and needs to be stopped (a giant hippopotamus trashing Zangarmarsh is the first idea that comes to mind - it is infected by infernal parasites) How about a boss that pukes up these fire gremlins it has inside of it every 10%, its like a channelled puke but they increase by a power of 2 for every second you let him keep puking without interrupting (the puke can only be interrupted by an arcane shot from a survival hunter followed by a crusader strike by the way, thus incorporating some woefully underused class/specs into the raid game!)

Anyhow the fire gremlins take the aspect of whatever AOE damage they take, now this is where it gets interesting, they are immune to that damage school and get special powers based on it: arcane attuned gremlins spin in place, firing arcane missiles, but they can be jumped over; ice gremlins summon frost wolves that attempt to kill the party in the following order: mages, shaman, warlocks, druids, then everyone else randomly; shadow gremlins are the most unique part of the encounter by far, I think, though, because of what I've come up for them:

Shadow gremlins deal damage but only take damage based on what blessings they have (that's right, the main paladin role in this fight is to BLESS the ENEMY to make it vulnerable!) but on the downside, the shadow gremlins, although open to damage now, get the extra powers of the blessing as well. To take physical damage, you have to blessing of might them, to take fire damage, you have to blessing of freedom them, and so on. It would be a unique fight for pretty much *every* guild in the WoW endgame as the blessings would be based on your own unique composition of DPS.

After a ton of fire gremlins have been killed, I don't know, lets say 64 or 65 to be safe, the boss explodes and the 8 Master Gremlins that have been feasting on his innards come out to do damage to you. These Master Gremlins all attune like before, but they do it in rolling synch, i.e. they shift every 8 seconds but it is staggered so its like a synchronized ripple effect. Once the first Master Gremlin dies, whatever school he was at the time of death is locked in as the "Kill" school: you have to kill all the other gremlins only when they attune to that school, or they HOT to 100% in 6-8 seconds.

To add a bit of the Zul'Aman time trial thing that seems to be a resounding success, you can SEE the loot they are gonna drop. The Master Gremlins whole loot table of 10 or 12 items is split up amongst them, and you only get the loot from the one you kill last when his powers have waned (the others detonate and the molten fire consumes what they had.) Now you see the Gremlins toss the items back and forth every so often to give it the hint of suspense - it isn't just left to the RNG entirely, alleviating the most common complaint of raiders, but you have to be very good to get exactly what you want and pick that gremlin to be the last one you kill that night.

All in all, in terms of lore, uniqueness, and challenge, without resorting to enrage timers or those old stupid cliches, I think I have brainstormed a pretty intriguing encounter.

There are some other elements which frequently appear in boss encounters:
- AoE fear, such as Magmadar, Archimonde, Nightbane and Lord Sanguinar
- Mind Control, such as Lucifron's adds, Prophet Skeram, Kael'Thas and Kel'Thuzad
- Aggro reset between different phases, which usually requires some timing with hots and dots to avoid taking aggro: e.g. Hydross and Leotheras

I submit to you that there is a 4th type of add on some encounters - and those are adds that are either unkillable, kitable, or controllable indefinitely in the encounter (or at least shouldn't be killed in the general strategy until the boss is dead).

Examples: Gluth, Razuvious, Razorgore [to an extent]

I can't think of this add type in any TBC Raid Boss - we should see a revisit. Gluth was very clever this way.

There should definitely be more fights which require constant movement, as they were the most fun encounters in the game pre-bc (C'thun, Heigan and Thaddius if it weren't for lag issues). I'm sure there are many movement patterns that Blizzard could replicate in a boss encounter. I also consider the random ability bosses like Shade of Aran to be very challenging and fun, making the whole raid adapt quickly to whichever spell is cast.

I was envisioning a fight where the boss is an elite Hunter mob which can't be tanked and constantly moves at 200% speed away from the raid spamming instant shots at the nearest person to him (invariably the main tank). The room would be a bit of a maze in which he has to be cornered and shackled down by mounted players with ropes in order to be DPS'd. His enrage timer would be that each shackle lasts shorter than the previous one until he can't be snared. Of course the room would have to be very large like Ossirian.

Ashtongue Defenders?

In addition:
Threat reduction abilities, usually a knock-back, requiring multiple tanks; Broodlord, Chromaggus, Void Reaver, Gurtogg Bloodboil, ...

Agreed, my three favourite encounters are: c'thun, archimonde and shade of aran. All require a good degree of movement (which you cant plan fully in advance, you dont know which way you have to move until you see a giant eye/doomfire etc)