A while back a thread mentioned reasons to solo hard bosses or do them with smaller groups. One of the more intriguing mentions (and one I like too) is for the sake of doing it, to see what you are possible of aka "Iron Manning". So with that in mind I've started theorycrafting about the best way to do various raid instances / bosses with small numbers of people.

Molten Core :

From what I've been told mobs in MC don't see through stealth. By that observation a small group of rogues and druids (my best guess for a solid team for this would be 3 rogues, 2 druids, both feral for the record). You could easily stealth to Magmadar, and since there is AOE damage we need an easy way to heal the rogues. This next sentence will appear a lot in this post : Enter improved leader of the pack. With a decent number of crits (which any rogue, combat swords or daggers will be getting against a mob 7 levels below you) you'll easily out heal the AOE damage in MC. Kill that, put out the first rune.

Second rune is a pretty quick tank and spank. You can have one tank probably tank all three using the bear instant cleave with the other druid decursing and healing as needed. Kill the adds, kill the boss, put out the rune, get to Garr. You might want to kill a core hound or two to make the room a bit more navigable. Garr will be an interesting excersize in Improved Leader of the Pack healing. Hypothetically with evasion and a few cooldowns one of the rogues will probably finish soloing his rock down before the other ones (I see it going garr + 2 adds on one, 3 adds on another, each rogue takes one). Whatever rogue finishes first will probably be a swords one (in my hypothetical example I see a shadowstep rogue, a combat daggers and a combat swords). The swords finishes and starts attacking another rock. Vanish on the daggers rogue, he starts ripping into it from behind. Same on the third rock. The rogues kill the adds and then finally garr. Or maybe leave one add. I don't see it mattering too much with a bear tank that's probably got a quite noable amount of HP and is regenerating 6% (a maximum of once per 6 seconds) everytime he crits.

As for Shazzrah and Geddon in this hypothetical I think it'd be possible to do them stacked on top of each other. You've got a 67% resist rate for spells so resisting the AOEs will be pretty easy and in general if he teleports to another group member if you're all stacked it won't be that bad. Living bomb is a fixed amount of damage near as I can tell, and given feral charge and the rogue fall reduction I don't see the knock up as being painful. It'd take a while but it'd be funny. That's the fourth rune down. I'm assuming at least most of these guys have eternal water from Duke Hydraxis and it'll take a bit to get from Magmadar to the 6th rune.

Next is Sulfuron. They heal each other sure, but with the kind of dps this group will be handing out (and comedy wound poison) I think you could out pace it. After that, its a snake with a back ripe for stabbing with daggers.

I think at 70 a druid can probably solo Golemagg. You can easily get threat on the dogs, the extra swings help proc the leader of the pack more often (with the druid cleave thingy (sorry for not knowing the names, I haven't leveled a druid past 10 or so)) and the other four will just help it go faster.

Majordomo will be a bit tricky I'd think, but in general with stunnable mobs and the dps potential of three rogues (plus you can have the druids roar to keep aggro from the other mobs off the rogues). Have the druids tanking what they can, maybe see if you can sap the casters (I honestly have no idea), and just various dps trickery. If it becomes too much have a druid tank and a druid heal. In general I don't see it as being too horrible an encounter, even if they do outnumber you. Blade flurry + AR + level 70s against level 63s will be hilarious.

Ragnaros might take a while but since the only timer is the sons of flame its not going to be that bad. Rogues won't need fire resist given the aforementioned 66% resist rate for a 63 vs a 70. A druid tank should be plenty to keep threat. And honestly this is another case where I think improved leader of the pack has a chance of being enough healing to suffice, but you do have a second druid if need be (he can probably just melee the rest of the time, melee seems to get more of a bonus against lower level targets than casters do).

Sons of flame come, both druids go bear and rogues just dps around. The sons can't hurt the melee people too much (no mana burn, and the melee attack will be mitigated like someone in ~300FR currently) and any crits they get will heal up a relatively large chunk of damage taken.

Further phases will be the same.

Blackwing Lair :

For these fights I can't see any way to avoid changing the group compisiton for various encounters, but it won't be too drastic hopefully.

Razorgore - For this fight my stylish solution (in my own mind of course :p) involves a trio of affliction warlocks with DS (40/21/0 or some build like that) and two druids. The warlocks each take a corner and are responsible for snagging any mobs that spawn towards the middle. This will be with a combination of healing from voidwalker sacrifice and through (seed of) corruption, siphon life, agony, just basic dot rotations as needed. Then its a case of spamming tab target and keeping dots ticking on all of them as they keep spawning. Its probably a bit unreasitic to expect 4 people to keep 50+ mobs busy at once but I think with a druid able to moonfire tag and heal its possible. As long as most of the mobs are at relatively low health you can use the fireball from Razorgore to kill some as well.

Phase 2 will end up pretty easy, just have the warlocks chill while the second druid fights for a bit of aggro. Resist rates on conflag ticks will reduce its damage pretty heavily and once again this is a case where hopefully improved leader of the pack comes through. If not then have a warlock spam up a lot of aggro and kite razorgore a bit while the druid is conflagged while the other locks work on wearing him down. I have doubts about the viability of my earlier description of the zerg phase, however adding a mage or two to IAE / blizzard would make it a lot easier.

Vael - I can't see a way, short of insane dps scaling that allows you to kill him before he starts BAing rogues (evasion tanks are possible I'd think, just not a good idea).

Either way this fight will remain around 10-15 people just because of BA.

Broodlord - This fight might be iffy but a group of some rogues and druids stealthing to the boss and killing him is the best solution I see, followed by a soft instance reset to get rid of the mobs in the room.

Firemaw - This fight depends entirely on how much bear HP / AC scales in the expansion. Maybe having a token hunter for tranq shot will be necessary, but I honestly have no idea. Hypothetically with enough hp you could solo it. Might still need that ony cloak though.

Hell packs - I don't have any good ideas, druid cleaves plus level resist plus random AOE (warlock dots, rogue blade flurry, whatever) is my best guess.

Ebonroc - If you can kill Firemaw you can kill Ebonroc. Just need two druids on the off chance a shadow lands.

Flamegor - If you can kill Ebonroc...yea even without a hunter this guy wouldn't be bad with the great resist rate.

Chromaggus - You really want a decurser / cleanse for this encounter. Unresistable changing into a dragon = game over. Other than that it seems like it'd be pretty easy.

Nef - Phase 1 is Razorgore strat times a billion. Probably like 2 mages and a warlock or something silly.

Phase 2 would be relatively easy. Just have a warrior there, feral druid to give LotP to him and watch the health roll in. For added fun have Improved LotP proc while lifegiving / last stand are stacked. Druid call dosen't seem so bad now eh? I wonder if nef still does class calls for a missing class.

AQ40 I don't have enough experience to guess, nor did it grab my interest. The same is true of most naxx bosses, except one...

Loatheb - I think this fight will be possible with 3 people, but for fun's sake I'll layout my 5 man team for it.

Druid tank - Feral through Imp LotP, NS helpful
Paladin - Needs BoK, Judgement of Light and preferably do okay damage on his own accord.
Shadow Priest - Needs lol shadow gear.
Sword Rogue - Where's Xin, he could probably get this team assembled and run it all himself :p
Warlock - Because I love my warlock :3

Okay, so here's the thing. When Loatheb is in full out Shadow Spam mode his Impending Dooms do 160dps. If we can find a way to heal 160 dps we can maintain hp on the boss with minimal effort. A warlock with a VW sacrifice and various life drains and siphon life has the best chance of doing this normally. The best part is the entire team can (as soon as the first one comes) get the spore cloud buff, meaning the priest and warlock can stab a couple times for a crit and hp. A vampiric embrace staying up half the time is worth the priest's healing, espically if they get a decent chunk of mind blast crits or what have you. The priest and warlock need to make sure and stab the beast every so often for the free heals. The sword rogue will probably benefit a great deal by having lifesteal on his weapons, and a darkmoon card (don't forget, your proc rate generally increases against lower level targets, however I don't know if any research has been done towards this regard). If its too big a problem you could easily replace the rogue with a fury warrior who has the added benefit of bloodthirst.

In general the problem will be keeping the druid healed, however hopefully with the paladin throwing the occasional heal, Judgement of Light (which equals even more free heals for the dps) and Vampiric Embrace healing the entire party I think it'll have a shot at working. I don't see the paladin as optional as long as BoK remains 15%.

Question for someone that knows, does Vampiric Embrace affect any shadow damage done by anyone in the party or only the priest in question? If its the former than having two priests and two warlocks seems better than even having a paladin there (for keeping Vampiric Embrace up the whole time).

Thoughts? Flaws? "Why in the hell would you do that"?

PS - The answer to the last one is "because you can"

You've been told wrong. Both Lava Surgers and Core Hounds see through stealth.

Has this been verified in the expansion? I'd heard that people went in and died to patchwerk but I also heard that was due to them outleveling their armor and screwing up the reduction formula.

Ah, I think the person I was talking to stealthed through an instance that already had Garr and Magmadar dead, thus the lack of Core Hounds and Surgers. Still how likely are they to see someone 7 levels above them if (as I'm making an assumption in my entire post about) the mobs in MC / BWL / * don't scale.

Since when did Firemaw even need tranqing? You're probably thinking Flamegor. The fire debuff would eventually kill whoever was tanking it, and also if you had no one to take the knockback, his threat would lower and Firemaw would go kill the DPSers.

Can't stealth past the hatchers, and you wouldn't want to anyway, because they patrol while you fight Broodlord, so you'd end up with adds. Also his AOE would kill the rogues and druids quickly.

I think due to his HP pool, the 20% enrage would stop you ever being able to Iron Man this boss unless you're tanks can just take the beating.

Level based resists. You have a 66% chance to not get a stack of flame buffet. Firemaw does require tranq shot for most guilds (YMMV of course) but in general the combination of thrash / shadowflame is usually a bit much, doubly so if enraged.

To be honest if druid gear is high enough quality you can have a shot at soloing firemaw, thus eliminating the issue with tank rotations. However that's a whole different bag of tricks. I think having two tanks for Firemaw is worth mentioning though.

Ah, that's what I get for assuming stuff about Stealth. I'd like to note that as long as one druid per party has improved leader of the pack, unless you get a string of unlucky resists (see earlier 66%) you'd be healing yourself plenty.

I forgot to expand on this, but there was a reason I've mentioned druid tanks mutiple times.

1 . It seems they're getting some decent itemization
2 . Armor scales extremely well against lower level mobs
3 . Lack of +def skill that usually hinders druid tanks is minimalized as an issue due to naturally having 35 defense skill over the enemy's offense skill before any mods.
4 . Improved Leader of the pack

I don't really see Chromag killing a tank with as much hp as a druid will probably have in TBC that quickly, Chromag is definetly one where you'd have to have a healer or two healing I'd think.

EDIT : I didn't think of the ZG / AQ20 stuff, but some initial guesses :

Various Priests in ZG :

Bat - Possible with minimal number. Maybe have a druid solo it? I think its within the realm of possiblity.

Snake - Ironically enough the less people you bring the weaker he is. Given most of his damage abilites are spell based (and that sweet sweet level based resist rate) this guy will be pretty easy.

Spider - Another one where I see druid soloing in the realm of possiblity. Might have to have a rogue to kick her soul drain though.

Broodlord - Entirely physical. A druid has a shot at soloing this, maybe duo with another druid handling the raptor so you don't have a ton of sunders on you.

Tiger - I'd say you'd probably want 3 people for this, just for the ease of killing the priests at the same time. As long as you've got improved LotP I don't see class balance being a huge issue.

Panther - To be safe, two druids and a dps class. To be funny, one druid.

Jin'do - Two, so one can nuke the MC totem when it spawns to prevent him from resetting the encounter (I think that's what happens if there's only one person left and he gets MC'ed). Skeletons can be handled by cleaves / grenades / whatever.

Hakkar : Two druids. Always standing in a poison cloud. (When there are two un MC'ed ones one hops and gets a tag with a Faere Fire Feral, cleaves kill it). It'd take a wile but I'm willing to say possible. Alternatley two druids and a priest for fort buff, heals and SW:P pulling.

Kurinaxx : Since the mortal strike affects all healing, two tanks. One druid (Imp LotP...I know I sound like a broken record).

Rajaxx : Two or three druids. Stacking hots on the general combined with a druid tank will probably be plenty. Maybe.

Buru : Won't drop my goddamn slime kickers. Is his poison resistable? If not you might need 3-4 people to have the DPS to down him before it kills you all. Maybe 5-6.

Moam : Moam's Arcane Explosion hits you for 2000 (3000 resisted). Comedy "no mana to drain from us" bear / rogue / warrior option.

Ossirian : This fight will always be a pain in the ass. I'd say priest, druid, druid (with feline swiftness, to activate pylons), mage. This way you've got good coverage on all the vunerabilites and a solid shot at kiting him for god knows how long it'd take.

That bug thing : I was never a fan of it. I donno about it, just take some mages maybe. Once again improved leader of the pack is insane, and the only thing you've got to worry about is having people alive to nuke the small bugs as they spawn.

If it seems that I'm being too generous in my assumptions of how few people will be required remember, we're dealing with gear with considerably more stamina, and dealing with monsters (if my assumption is correct, feel free to link me to something if I'm wrong) that are struggling to hit you with melee or spells.

Even with level based resists, the fight would go on for so long I'd expect Firemaw would kill your bear.

The rest seem alot more feasible now you explained them. Especially Chrom. Droods would have top mitigation by 70 I expect, and nearing the 10k+ HP pools I reckon.

I'm curious about this. My understanding was that armour was hard-capped at 75% reduction, so if I take my 13k armour druid ass and go and attack Hogger, he still hits me for 25% of his normal damage.

I can get 72% mitigation or so already when raidbuffed. Even with that going to 75%, I doubt I could solo any of those bosses, or tank them without a dedicated healer. I would have thought avoidance scales much better than armour against low-level mobs, because as far as I'm aware there's nothing to stop a warrior dodging, parrying and blocking everything that Hogger tries to do.

edit for comparison: There's no way, for example, that I could solo Eranikus in Sunken Temple right now. And he's a 5-man boss, not a raid boss. I know he's level 55, and for this comparison to be accurate he should be level 53, but I can't immediately think of any level 53 dungeon bosses, although that's just cos I haven't done them in ages.

WTF are you talking about ? Did you even fighted him ? Firemaw doesn't frenzy or enrage. The only drake thats needs tranq is Flamegor.

I've fought him but its been a while. I think you guys are right, I'm having nightmare flashbacks to when my old guild tanked Flamegor in Firemaw's spot.

I'll admit, I forgot the mitigation cap. Add in the fact that there will be more misses / dodges due to the level change and in general we are dealing with much larger hp pools and I think it becomes plausable. Also as hp pools increase ImpLotP increases rather quickly in effectiveness.

Crap, you're right. I've never raided with BoK, so I think I got it confused with the Hakkar buff or demonic embrace. Either way its an insane increase in health.

Also, you need to go re-read the threads on bosses. Current mobs marked as raid targets in the expansion are still hitting like they were +3 levels above you - it's not an issue with armour reduction, it's an issue with the boss itself. Venoxis was hitting a level 67 tank for *more* than he was hitting a level 60, with nigh on identical gear - same amount of crushing blows and everything.

Also, re. armour - people are getting confused because when you level up, you see your % reduction go down, so they are assuming that's what is happening. It isn't. Your % reduction *does* go down on your character sheet, because that figure is the % reduction against a mob equal to your level - you % reduction doesn't change one bit against a mob lower level than you.

It's a mess currently, and it seems silly that killing patchwerk will be easier with a level 70 raid and a level 60 tank, than it would be with a level 70 tank, but that's how it goes atm on the test realms.

Nearing 10k? With fort and mark at lv67 my friend was at 14.7k. By lv70 and BoK we should be seeing 20k.

If the always +3 boss rumors are true, than this will be impossible. If not, than I could easily see a few bosses get taken out by a party.