Ducimus

How about something like the first boss of Stratholme (The Banshee) stretched to an epic 25 man scale? As you aggro the boss, a speech introduction begins (similar to Kael'Thas). After the speech the boss posseses one randomly selected raid member and the rest of the encounter is determined based on their class. Each different possesed class could have a different encounter type independant of the players specific spec. Once possesed, the player is empowered by the boss and attacks the raid with abilities unique to their class. In addition, so the possesed player isn't bored and unable to do anything, in the process of being possesed their spirit is forced out of their body and able to contribute normally* to the encounter.

You could rotate this with only a single raid member going through a possesion or several different raid members before the boss is defeated. Perhaps the boss is weakened every time you force it out of a player by doing a certain amount of damage to the player, allowing you to do damage to the boss directly. This, at least in my imagination, would feel somewhat like the C'Thun encounter, race to defeat the boss before you are overpowered by your own raid members (instead of tentacles). Personally I remember that fight being one of my favorites so I thought something similar would be a cool addition to WoLK (Hence the Banshee format).

*Or with a special bonus mechanic of some kind. Perhaps running around buffing non possesed raid members in order to force the boss out of their body faster.



Overall though, I think Blizzard has managed to produce alot of fun fights over the years but it is fun to brainstorm some ideas of our own.

 

Strauss

The mini game/free loot events are a nice change of pace. Basically combine elements from opera event with a chess event.

One idea based on Baldur's Gate II Limited Wish and Wish spells would be a genie event. Say the raid gets 3 wishes selected from a gnome genie who has a pool of a dozen so week to week people could have some choice that would have an effect on the outcome of the raid (also addresses random rewards but I digress). Each wish could have a consequence or/and reward.

Wish to be incredibly wealthy: All mobs drop n% more gold for 1 hour; increases random loot drops by 10%.
Wish for Immortality: Summons vampires. Defeat them to Increase HP by n for x amount of time, also provides soulstones for the raid (for undergeared raids or when learning the zone).
Wish to rule the world: Turns you into a boss for the raid to fight. Different loot/abilities depending on class.
Wish that all your enemies would die: Kills all mobs in the zone save for final undead boss (addresses Ragnaros/ Kael loot/attunement situations). Boss goes into a hard mode.
Wish for more wishes: Summons lots of evil gnome genies.
Wish that everyone liked you: turns the raid into copies of mobs there, you gain chess style abilities; you can talk with bosses and minions and betray them at your leisure.

Et cetera et cetera....

Nothing new or ground breaking, but hopefully adds some flavorful content that's not too stale. Could insert some humor, disaster and or entertainment wishes for kicks.

 

Mistaya

Kel'thuzad was really one of the most interesting boss fights in the game.

Think about it. Kel' had a beggining 'add-phase', where everyone got to dps a little and get ready, and then there was the clock positioning, (Group 1 at 12 o'clock, group 2 at 2 o'clock etc.) Each party had to function to keep it's members alive through the full hp ice block tick, and melee had to watch for it especially since it was conal. There was a bomb effect AND a floor tile exploding effect, the mind control component made it vital to have multiple tanks and then the scarab adds coming in and coming faster and enraging as time went on just made for an amazingly busy and EPIC encounter. I don't think Kel enraged himself, but there came a point where you just were overwhelmed. I haven't made it into Hyjal/BT yet but I hope there's some encounters of this level waiting in there for me.

If I was to design a new boss I'd totally steal the acid floor from Heigan, but with a hydrossy twist. The acid path would have to be very large and pie shaped with probably 6 pie pieces. The boss, A GIANT SLIME, would change colors every 30 seconds to 1 min and you would have to shift position to the left or right (signified by the boss' color change) to avoid the acid. The way that it works is the one safe tile is doused with cleansing water instead of acid, which makes the boss vulnerable to attack and gives a mana/rage/energy refreshing buff to any players in it. Getting hit with the acid isn't a one shot, but hits for 7k, halves your MAX health for 10 minutes and leeches your mana/rage/energy at a pretty nasty rate. Removing the debuff is only possible by getting in the cleansing water (basically you get one chance, if you miss 2 waters in a row you die and no one can save you.) The boss itself will be rather like Vael in that players will be threat capped not really gear limited, and with infinite healer mana the boss can put out some pretty sick damage and probably have a nasty stacking debuff that forces tank transitions every third water or so. Oh and an AOE poison volley with NO dot component that must be healed through and causes 25% health damage (so it won't auto-kill those with the max health down.) And how about we give this boss an undispellable thorns effect so attacking it generates a small amount of damage to each person in the raid. (So those with max-hp down have to be very, very careful.) If the tank does not manage to drag the boss into the cleansing water it is charged with acidic might and cannot be damaged that tile. NO enrage timer.

Wow, that's one mean boss.

 

Lujaar

EDIT: Crap, double posted. Mods delete this please.

 

Lujaar

The "HPS race" fight has been suggested before, and it's a cool idea.

I'd imagine the reason it hasn't been done is that it could easily become a horrendous raid-stacking fight. The fight would have to be doable with a typical 7-8 healer raid, and still not trivial for that one guild that can somehow field 15 geared healers. The fight would either have to also be a DPS race, or every DPS class would have to be given some kind of secondary role (kiting, interrupting, offtanking, dispelling, or whatever). The fight would also have to include mechanics to equalize the single-target HPS of the four healing classes, or it would just turn into "bring a bunch of resto druids and you win."

Cool idea, just hard to implement without turning it into a raid-stacking nightmare.

 

valeea

I personally would like to see a total role shift of Damaging and healing.

An encounter where a holy paladin tanks by doing damage to him with his *healing* spells and where damagedealer cast their dps cast on the dpsing healers to heal those.
That would produce quotes like "Lol, my fireball healed you for 6000 + 2400 ignite-hot". I would consider this to be very cool.

 

Sillia

Not terribly hard. Just spawn adds over time who go after the heal target. You need DPS to kill them, or your healers won't be able to outheal the damage done to the target. Give the adds stuff like Mortal Strike, massive stacking DoTs, etc. for more complexity. Sort of like Razorgore, but without the eggs, and trying to heal Razorgore to death.

 

◊ Kalman

And that actually adds a fair amount of flexibility to the fight, in terms of makeup - if your healing is weak one night, well, you bring extra DPS and do it as DPS burn on the adds so the healers you have are still enough. If your DPS is weak, extra healing can outheal the extra adds. Etc.

 

Antiarc

I think it's difficult to translate the single-player Zelda mechanics to a 25-man MMO, but good lord, if they could, wow. Twilight Princess has the best boss fights I've ever had in a game, bar none. Each one was an absolute pleasure. If they could figure out how to translate that sort of thing into WoW, things would get incredibly interesting.

 

Corinthian

I would love to see some more scripted events in game. Almost everything is a variation of "Enter room, kill boss in room" with the evironment staying pretty static. (Disclaimer, experience is 4/5 3/4 SSC/TK)

For example: a complete theoretical re-work of the Magtheridon encounter.

1) Make the path to Mag longer. Lots of bends and chokepoints. Not necessarily more mobs are needed, just more distance.

2) Have the fight initiation be similar. Killing channelers to unbanish him.

3) Once he releases, the fight becomes a sort of escape/race. Mag, being imprisoned and all, REALLY wants to get the hell out of Hellfire Citadel. You are in his way, and if you don't do something about it, you become a red smear on the floor. (No, he's not tankable anymore. Anyone trying to melee Mag will get worked over in short order) Also, once he's free, adds start coming in from the entrance of the instance to kill you, and re-banish Mag.

So the idea is to kill mag before he reaches the entrance, and keeping the orcs from re-banishing him. (possibly add a healing effect to it so it can't be manipulated to control pacing) Melee DPS would be soley dedicated to adds while ranged was focused on Mag. (And can support add killing if needed) The choke points throughout the zone would serve to slow mag down, and give the raid a chance to regroup. Imagine going through a doorway too small for Mag to follow into a room, and fighting orcs while Mag slams into the wall trying to break through. After a set time, he takes the wall down and you need to keep moving forward. You could have plenty of environmental damage, with Mag tearing up the place as he rampages through. (Cave-in type effects, plus a lot of visual candy)

Basically you end up with a seemingly dynamic encounter, (Lots of environmental damage from Mag tearing the place apart) with a natural and logical timer to it. (Kill him before running out of hallway) If paced properly, it would be frantic, but not impossible. You could have a variety of orc mobs to deal with, keeping the fighting complex enough to be challenging, and keep all classes utilized.

I dunno, it seems really cool in my head, what do you guys think?

 

Enova

Mind adding Frenzy bosses to the wish list? I didn't loot that Tranquilizing shot tome for nothing, all that time ago...

But seriously, what i would really like to see is more along the lines of Dire Maul Tribute than, say Black Morass/Hyjal.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Sillia

One of the things I noticed about most of the Zelda games (as well as Shadow of the Colossus, which is another absolutely awesome game) is that the bosses are very large, very epic-feeling, but also very easy. After playing through Twilight Princess, I never once had the problem of losing to a single boss, though I did feel like I wanted to fight that boss again due to how much fun I had doing it, no matter how wacky the item I got in that dungeon was. Specifically, I was really skeptical about the Spinner item, but when I fought Stallord in that dungeon, I was totally floored at how cool the fight was.

It really made all the raids I had done in WoW pale in comparison. The Stallord fight was frickin' awesome, compared to poking Nefarian in the ankles till he fell over.

Ninja Edit: (Twilight princess SPOILERS) YouTube - Zelda Twilight Princess - Boss Battle VS Stallord is a video of the fight, for those who haven't had fought him and wish to see what I am talking about.

 

djkillingspree

I'd really like to see a "Caverns of Time: WoW Boss Greatest Hits" when the new expansion comes out. Take four or five of the best old world and TBC raid bosses, tune them for a 25 man level 80 raid, and have you have to run a gauntlet of them.

 

◊ Quigon

This is a superb thread, especially kudos to the author. Some of you guys have some fantastic ideas. Its clear there is a lot more exciting raids that could be conjured up with the right imagination.

 

Opioid

What's interesting is, to be quite honest, C'Thun (the most interesting encounter I've ever done) is basically a 100% perfect Legend of Zelda dungeon end boss =)

 

Kettle

Agreed.

I'd really like to see a fight where you lose all of your 'real' abilities and gain a small few, possibly accessable from the pet bar. Much like the ghosts in the Teron fight. Each raid member randomly becomes either a healer, tank or dps.

Haven't really thought this out, but tanks might just have a taunt and a threat move. Damage dealers get a a nuke and possibly a CC and the healers..well, a heal. The thing to keep it going would be that the encounter periodically reallocates each of the roles to everybody, possibly with a short pause, so that you have a musical chairs moment of everybody needing to rush to be where they should be or do what they should be doing.

The encounter itself could even be the simplest tank, spank and adds but constantly changing roles might keep it interesting.

Or an encounter that uses steam tonks! Everyone gets a tonk and has to head into an inaccesable area to to blast the crap out of something, in a mini encounter, to enable the raid to move on in the instance.

 

Blackpatch

Tongue in cheek idea:

It's A Gnomedam: The Professions Fight

Theme: Technological
Features: Adds 1 (foot soldiers), Adds 2 (homing bombs), Debuff (rooting net), AE U (laser beam), AE pp (explosive artillery), AE rp1 (toxic spore artillery), Items

The boss (nefarious gnomish mastermind works well for this one) is riding around in a large mecha or tank, named the Gnomedam. The Gnomedam is huge and unstoppable, and cannot be killed by normal means. Rather, the raid must use its gathering and crafting professions to construct a laser cannon during the battle and destroy the boss.

The setting of the battle is a large workshop area with forges, anvils, mana looms, etc.

The boss is immune to physical and magical damage, and does not melee conventionally or have a threat list. He strides about the arena, using six abilities:

1. Summon drones. Stops moving and launches several homing bomb drones with very low HP that track players and explode. Drones must be eliminated with ranged AE on top of Gnomedam, Multi-Shot, etc. Bomb Drones leave Bomb Drone Wreckage when destroyed.

2. Summon foot soldiers. Teleports in goons to attack the players. These foot soldiers must be tanked and DPS'd. (Immune to magic?) Foot soldiers leave Soldier Armor Scraps when killed.

3. Launch nets. Stops moving and shoots out nets (RSTS) which root players in place. Nets must be DPSed down. Nets leave behind Net Scraps when destroyed.

4. Laser beam. Shoots in a straight line at a single player, doing heavy but survivable damage to that player and any other players along the line. Leaves Fused Glass where it strikes the walls of the room.

5. Explosive artillery. Fires artillery shells from cannons mounted on the Gnomedam. Artillery shells have a travel time, are visible in midair, and are fired in varying patterns around the Gnomedam (think a shooter boss). Explode for fire damage in a 10 yard radius. When shells explode they leave behind Shell Fragments.

6. Toxic spore artillery. Fires spore artillery shells from cannons mounted on the Gnomedam . Spore artillery shells behave like explosive artillery, but explode into damaging mushroom patches with a 20 yard radius that persist for 15 seconds. After 15 seconds the mushroom patches wither and leave behind Withered Spore Colony.

Over the course of the battle, while maintaining the responsibilities associated with tanking, DPS and healing, players must also loot Circuitry from Bomb Drone Wreckage, mine Glass Chips from Fused Glass, harvest Leather Scraps from Soldier Armor Scraps, loot Cloth from Net Scraps, mine Metal Scraps from Shell Fragments, and herb Volatile Pods from the Withered Spore Colonies.

Once a sufficient amount of materials have been assembled, Engineers must turn the Circuitry into Control Mechanisms, Jewelcrafters must turn the Glass Chips into Focusing Lenses, Leatherworkers must turn the Leather Scraps into Reagent Tanks, Tailors must weave the Cloth into Blast Shielding, Blacksmiths must forge Metal Scraps into a Cannon Barrel, and Herbalists must turn the Volatile Pods into Cannon Fuel.

Then everyone puts their pieces together, huddles behind the blast shielding, connects the cannon to the nuclear reactor conveniently located in the workshop, and the Chosen One right-clicks to blow the boss to smithereens.

Then you loot.

 

Soulshade

Lot of really interesting ideas blizz could implement into boss fights. I always enjoyed Chase fights (Buru AQ20). First thing popping into my head as of now would be a fight similar to Al'ar phase 1 tanking. Boss moves around, but say, have the room shaped like Al'ar's with a platform in the middle as well, each platform has launch pads that send you flying to a respective platform.

Now, the difficulty would apply to either having to follow the boss platform to platform since he explodes any platform he is not on(Heigan dancing type). Could also be running away from him, possibly with bomb-like adds that you kill on your platform and explode when he lands on them. The later would be more of an add control fight, killing add waves while waiting for bomb spawn and avoiding boss jumps.

Ive enjoyed most fights using npc-controlling, chess event in kara was tons of fun. However, fights like Razuvious were a pain, due to bugs (who puts fade and npc taunt on shared cooldown?). Fights like Teron were fun, but the issue with them is learning how to use the npc since everyone does not get to experience the npcs.

I would definatly enjoy a fight that involves class changes. Have phase 1 be normal class roles, and phase 2 be npc controlling for the entire raid, with jobs/aggro changing every 20-30 seconds or so. Have tank/melee dps, a healer/buffer, and a range dps/debuffer classes. The fight just has to be implemented properly even numbers like polarities, so you dont end up with 1-2 healers. Easiest way to make phase changes easy to manage is to have adds spawn that are Illidan demon-esque. They spawn next to people and attach with beams so you have a warning as to who is what class.

Just about any fight can be created by blizz, just simply how they make it challenging that is the limiting/fun factor. Not too many people enjoy random luck factors deciding if they wipe or kill a boss (ex: Gorefiend ghosting only healers, Azgalor dooming lots of healers, Archimonde curse/punt kills)

 

Daldain

I would love to a see fight against a "mirror" copy of your own raid / group. The encounter would always be on scale with your own gear progression, the better the gear (and buffs) you bring, the tougher the "mirror" raid would be to defeat.

I always thought the dungeon 2 BRD arena AI was very good.

 

◊ Quigon

A lot of console RPGs have had plenty of really fun chase fight - it seems like this could work well in WoW. There are certainly movement elements, but not quite chase. Chasing and being chased of course.
They should just steal the wall of death from FFIV.

 

Kuai

I always thought during the Kael fight that the exploding debri was a really nice touch. Perhaps during the fight with Kil'Jaeden in the Sunwell he detonates Tempest Keep which you can see from the sky in his boss chamber. Anything with more explosions really.

 

• Nemesis

On the topic of random factors in encounters, that change weekly: it isn't really a boss fight, though at times it sure felt like it, but I always liked the anubisath thrash in AQ40/20.
You never knew what powers they had before pulling and everyone in the raid had to adjust accordingly. Felt great as a raid leader when people actually did their job, sometimes without even having to yell at them. Also applies to breaths on Chromaggus, I know we all hated Time Lapse + Blue (I think, long time ago) but it sure made for a "well lets see what boss we got this week" feeling, rather than a "oh god, this boring boss with these abilities again".
So yeah, more randomness for me!

 

Eylirria

Along the lines of the "It's a Gnomedam" reply, throwing my hat into the ring:

Theme: Icy/Magical Lair

Malygos, the Spell-Weaver

As Malygos is a major character in Warcraft, I would envision this fight as something extremelly elaborate, that feels Epic, but not necessarialy overly complicated, nothing you wouldnt be able to figure out in a couple of pulls or times seeing the ability and with that in mind, and also taking some bits of information we already know such as:

- Help from the Red Dragonflight
- Malygos' background, how he "fights", lots of mind games.

This is what my not so imaginative mind came up with for ideas on this encounter.

Multi-stage fight, based around a "natural" (if such expression could be used for a game) progression of events taking place during the fight.


Background info: During your progression within Malygos' Lair, you receive increasing help from the Red Dragonflight as you progress through it, and your "raid" by the time you are about to engage Malygos would consist of your Raid Group, and some select Drakes from the Red Dragonflight.


Stage 1:

As you enter Malygos Lair's main room, the walls behind you collapse, cutting you off from the Red Drakes, at this point you have Malygos engaging you, along with some Blue Drakes. Also, the collapsed wall that is cutting you off from the Red Dragonflight aid is an actual targettable entity, with hitpoints, that once depleted, will allow the Red Drakes to rejoin you.

So you have Malygos, in a "Kael"esque status, just watching things as they unfold, talking, so you don't actually deal with him at first, and you pick up these Blue Drake adds (with real tanks, as in, these drakes need to be properly tanked/dps'd down, not just zerged), but you can see in the back of the room more Drakes, that aren't aggressive yet (so you have to make sure you never have too many "Active" drakes attacking your party). Give these drakes some breath attack goodie to artifically increase the difficulty and forcing your tanks to not be able to move around freely picking things up (you wouldnt want tanks chasing down freshly aggro'd Drakes in this case so you don't have melee/healers/casters being breathed on by accident -- artifical contributor/limitor to this stage's "soft berserk", which is explained further down)

Malygos, while not actively attacking your party, would have an "AE U" aura, much like Sapphiron's, except it would also drain mana, at a certain rate that you cannot effectively counter through shadow priests/consumables, though you can slow it somewhat.

The whole idea is, pick up adds, DPS down the wall while OTing and thinning down as many Drakes as you can. Once you break down the wall, the Red Dragons rejoin you, and since Red Dragons are awesome, they give you an "Essence of the Red" kind of buff, which basically counters the mana-drain effect from Malygos'. Or in short, tear down the wall before you are either a) Overrun, b) Out of mana.


Stage 2:

Red Drakes (with Fire Nova -- Vael style and unhealable) rejoin you and at this point Malygos' becomes an active entity that needs to be dealt with. Everyone with a mana bar is afflicted with a "Mana Repulse" (AE rp2) debuff that basically means people with Mana bars can't be bunched up or they damage each other (spice ranged dps positioning a bit, without wrecking it for your 1-2 RET paladins/ENH shamans -- Imagine Malygos is big enough to fit 2-3 melee with mana bars without destroying each other if positioning is done correctly)

Give Malygos a cleave, signature move for Dragons, and a random magical breath (no resist gear needed/desired, as the magic school is random each time, but still a spike nonetheless)

Malygos at every X seconds does a Wing Buffet, that doesn't deaggro your tank, but rather, sends people flying around the room(minus the tank). Extra attention on this to obviously not allow Breath + Buffet timers to overlap and cause completely unavoidable wipes.

Malygos at every X seconds summons blue whelpling adds that need to be AOE'd down (Adds 2, with a twist to be explained)

Malygos at every X seconds (short cycles, this would happen often, but not in an overkill fashion) pick two casters and "Mind Swap" them, swapping their spells. Now, how this would work: There would need to be a rational system behind it, ie. big nukes swap with another big nuke, or a big heal. Small/Instant Nuke swaps with another Small/Instant Nuke or small/instant heal spell. This wouldnt by any means be a permanent thing during the fight, make it work so if the two "Mind Swapped" people come close to each other, the "Swap" ends. Why I think this would be interesting: One, it adds a random element with a flavor consequence, it would be very neat for a mage to cast a healing spell, or load up Malygos with Warlock dots. Also, since this is obviously not something sustainable (Think of the clusterfuck of possible spell swapping between all the classes for a second, and how it would be humanly impossible to just "pick it up" and keep going as a Mage->Warlock or Shadow Priest->Resto Druid on the fly, and not to mention the lack of any Talents supporting your "new" spells. In short, you have two people running into each other, while avoiding people in their way (Mana Repulse).


The big picture for Stage2: You have people with mana not being able to stand near each other, You have people flying all over the place, forcing on-the-fly and quick reaction from people, you have adds rushing in at certain periods of time, these adds get picked up by the Red Drakes' Fire Nova, however, the adds hit hard enough that you can't just let them be offtanked by the Drakes, or the Drakes will die, and you will lose your "Essence of the Red" buff, which would mean certain death as you would again be susceptible to Malygos' aura.
And you have pairs of people having their spells swapped between them, having to also adjust/reposition on the fly, while avoiding other users with mana bars. Victory condition for this stage is burning Malygos down to a certain %, there is also a "Soft Berserk" timer to this Stage, as the Drakes are in a situation where they are bound to die eventually, and it's game over if they do.


Stage 3: Enrage

Time to throw reasoning out of the window, it's the lord of all magic, crazy, yet manageable stuff time.

Malygos plays an event like Illidan's where you are forced to sit and listen to it, about how the reckless use of magic can only lead to demise and the such. At this point, Alextrasza joins you, tries to reason with Malygos, fails, and Malygos enrages.

- No more mana repulse.
- No more wing buffets.
- No more whelpling adds.
- Kill off drakes (vulnerable once again to his aura)

+ Essence of the Red, minus the Burning Adrenaline side effect. (Infinite mana/rage/energy. Counters the mana burn aura, but not the damage taken)
+ Malygos damage ramps up to normally unmanageable levels. (including the aura, but to a smaller extent)
+ Rain of Fire on random targets.
+ Blizzard on random targets.
+ Flame Strike on random targets. (same graphic as Kael'thas')
+ Bellowing Roar (come on, it's a dragon, this had to be in here somewhere)
+ Blue Drake adds (much like Stage 1, except remove the cone breath and replace it with a cleave)

The big picture: Big blue dragon is dying, and not happy about it, neither is his dragonflight, who begins to zerg you in an attempt to stop you.

The idea is, Malygos going all-out, he's hitting the tank hard, he is tossing around AOE effects to force people to move around, Blue dragons start pouring in, the idea is obviously not to kill them, but to off-tank/CC them. Kill him before your raid is dead.


Hey, it's almost 4AM here and I'm bored

 

Dustwhisper

Tbh what i'd like to see more than anything is more epic boss-rooms. Ragnaros cave and C'thuns room and belly were just WOOOOOOAAAAAAW to get into. I'd love some more c'thun like fights and KT like fights where the raid needs movement, awareness, coordination but where everything is controllable. Not these completely random spasticfights!

 

drats

I really expect blizzard to knock our socks off with the Malygos fight. Magic is responsible for all of the really interesting lore in WoW, so it's aspect should be able to do above and beyond anything we've already seen.

Another thing I wish they would incorporate is the FF6j end dungeon idea, where you split your party up into teams and activate different things around the dungeon. So team A would fight through wing 1 at the same time as team B was fighting through wing 2. At the end of the path, each would have a small boss fight (maybe like the first two Mechanar bosses), then hit a switch and wait for the other team to finish in order for them to progress.

This doesn't really lend itself to 25 man raids, but it could be a terrific way to have people progress from 10man content to 25man content.