History ThatOneBoss / WorldOfWarcraft

** C'thun was brutally hard in his initial version, mainly due to the fact that he would cast his raid-wiping Eye Beam attack without any delay for players to enter the room. Only a few guilds managed to kill him before he was nerfed, and even at 80, if someone [[LeeroyJenkins jumps the gun]], the raid will likely wipe if he does Eye Beam.

** Vanessa [=VanCleef=] in Deadmines; she is only available on Heroic, but is required for completing the dungeon on that difficulty. To even reach her, you must work your way through a room full of fire and collapsing icicles, fight the second boss without aggroing or being killed by the dozens of spiders on the ground, avoid spinning sparks that can kill you instantly and save several NPCs from attacking worgen. The encounter itself is relatively simple, but the detonating explosives ([[BetterToDieThanBeKilled including one she]] [[TakingYouWithMe detonates just as]] [[KaizoTrap she's defeated]]) can kill you if you're not prepared.

** Vanessa ==VanCleef== in Deadmines; she is only available on Heroic, but is required for completing the dungeon on that difficulty. To even reach her, you must work your way through a room full of fire and collapsing icicles, fight the second boss without aggroing or being killed by the dozens of spiders on the ground, avoid spinning sparks that can kill you instantly and save several NPCs from attacking worgen. The encounter itself is relatively simple, but the detonating explosives ([[BetterToDieThanBeKilled including one she]] [[TakingYouWithMe detonates just as]] [[KaizoTrap she's defeated]]) can kill you if you're not prepared.

*** Simply put, the mechanics of Sindragosa demand that everyone in your raid knows what their job is. Now that the Icecrown Citadel buff is up to 30%, any boss before Sindragosa can easily be killed if people make a few mistakes. However, while learning the fight, you absolutely have to understand the mechanics; if not, you will wipe again, again, and then some more at the same point.

*** Simply put, the mechanics of Sindragosa demand that everyone in your raid knows what their job is. Now that the Icecrown Citadel buff is up to 30%, any boss before Sindragosa can easily be killed if people make a few mistakes. However, while learning the fight, you absolutely have to understand the mechanics; if not, you will wipe again, again, and then some more at the same point.
** The Storm King's Vengeance quest in Zul'drak. It's bad enough that it's so hard to see what you're doing when riding the giant. But the kicker? You have two minibosses to kill: Prince Navarius and Thrym. For the Prince you will definitely need to heal yourself, which you accomplish by grabbing and consuming storm clouds. These clouds disappear when eaten, and have fixed spawn points, one of which is right beside Navarius. So he's easy enough. But the only way to summon Thrym is to kill Navarius. So you kill him, consuming his nearby storm cloud in the process. He dies and Thrym appears. You're at half health. You have five seconds to run to the nearest storm cloud (which is near a small group of ghouls who normally pose no threat but occasionally will call on every mob in the zone to come and kill you, and if you fight them while fighting Thrym they ''will'' kill you) and grab it before Thrym attacks. If you try to run to any other storm cloud you will aggro a lot of mobs, take too much damage, and die. If you do not time your killing of Navarius and eating of his storm cloud just right, you will not have it respawn when you need it for Thrym, and you will not be healed enough, and you will die. If you die (and you will die trying to get it right), you must run back to the giant, ride him over to one of the few places in the area that is not full of zombies, turn around and spend five minutes mashing your keyboard to kill everything you just aggroed (which is probably everything in the zone, regardless of how careful you were to avoid them), find a storm cloud to heal to full for the Prince, and wait for it to respawn because the only two you can access without running through more mobs (they've all respawned by now) are the ones you'll need for Thrym. Worst quest in the zone, possibly the expansion. Possibly the game.

*** [[EnergyBeings He]] was a[[TheDragon second-to-last]] boss of an [[JustifiedTrope entire]] [[YourMileageMayVary expansion]].

** Compared to the other Keepers in Ulduar, Mimiron is a fairly difficult fight - it's long, has four phases each possessing a number of abilities that one-shot raiders, and has a tight enrage timer. In heroic mode, it's the same with higher damage - oh, and the room is on fire.
** Yogg-Saron in Ulduar. If you touch a roaming cloud in Phase 1, you'll spawn an add. Do this enough, and even Kingslayer groups will wipe. Once the fight begins, every player gains a new debuff called "Sanity" that starts at 100%. During the fight, specific abilities will decrease your Sanity; if Sanity reaches zero, you become Insane--Yogg-Saron controls your mind and you begin killing the raid. Yogg-Saron is so powerful that he can break you and destroy your sanity. Phase 2 requires priority on killing tentacles, keeping Sane as high as possible, and DPS entering portals to attack the Brain of Yogg-Saron. Phase 3 becomes more of a DPS fight, but still maintains Sanity. Every 12 seconds, Yogg-Saron casts Lunatic Gaze; staring into madness itself lowers your Sanity by 4% every second. This is easily countered by turning away; healers must never look at Yogg-Saron and tanks/DPS must quickly turn away. The Normal Mode version allows the four Keepers of Ulduar to assist your raid with various buffs. The Hard Mode versions reduce the number of Keepers as low as the raid wishes, even to, God forbid, zero Keepers for [[http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=3159 Alone in the Darkness]].

** Devourer of Souls in the Forge of Souls is another recent addition that can be a nasty surprise for players used to the relately easy launch dungeons. He has a hard hitting, fast spell that should be interupted as often as possible, hard to see area effects and several nasty special abilities that require the whole group to react accordingly. One of them almost always kills the player it aims for, but fortunately its usually only used once at low health. Groups often die to Mirrored Soul, which results in the person being targeted taking damage when the Devourer of Souls does; if the healer dies, the rest of the group soon follows.

** The Beasts of Northrend require a considerable amount of cooperation from all the members, making it difficult for raids with many pick-up members to progress. The first opponent, Gormok the Impaler, throws Snowbolds onto people, which cause damage to players until the DPSers kill them. In the second encounter, Acidmaw hits players with a poison that paralyzes them (''before the debuff timer even expires''), unless they run over to the tank on Dreadscale who has Burning Bile. The third opponent, Icehowl, is simpler, but if the raid wipes on one of them, they have to start over, and it is very difficult to resurrect people between phases.

** Blood Queen Lana'Thel turns members of the raid into vampires. They get a damage buff, but soon have to bite someone within 10 seconds or get mind-controlled. Getting the damage output to beat her enrage timer involves working out an order of who should be bitten when, then ''finding'' the right person to bite before time's up. Losing one person to mind control almost inevitably means a wipe. With 25 people, this gets...interesting.

** Nowadays, we have Sindragosa. While the Lich King himself is harder-he's the Final Boss and wouldn't go on this list. But Sindragosa? Oh, god. A fight that is basically built around RNG. The first phase shouldn't be too bad. She just pulls the raid in and they need to run out before a big ice blast happens. Except that the entire party being moved like that tends to overload people's connection. People die to it solely because they lag too badly to get out. She has an airphase that isn't too bad; it just involves two people getting hit with Ice Blocks(not too close to others or it will chain-on 25 this can be a bit hectic but compared to what's to come...)and then these iceblocks need to be hid behind or her frost bombs will damage you(read: Kill you on Heroic mode.) They also need to be killed before the people suffocate, but this is fairly trivial compared to phase 2. Phase 2 is a nightmare where she ice blocks people during the fight, and casts a stacking debuff on the raid that increases magic damage done each stack. The RNG of the melee cold damage and Unchained Magic(the magic debuff from phase 1) continues. Tanks need to get out of the way or their debuffs will stack to high to survive her breath, which needs tanks need to switch and people need to run behind iceblocks. Oh, the Iceblocks during this phase chaining typically means a wipe. Most can get through the first phase with the air phase, but this last phase can make it fall apart in seconds. Strict, strict coordination must be set to get the iceblocks close enough so the tanks can clear their debuffs, but the blocks aren't chained. All of this over the [[{{Understatement}} most god awful annoying voice ever]] screeching at you the entire time. On Heroic mode? Though there has been technically harder fights, this one could possibly be one of the most unfun fights of the game if the crowds are to be believed. [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]], of course, but she bears a bit of mentioning here.
*** Simply put, the mechanics of Sindragosa demand that everyone in your raid knows what their job is. Now that the Icecrown Citadel buff is up to 30%, any boss before Sindragosa can easily be killed if people make a few mistakes. However, while learning the fight, you absolutely have to understand the mechanics; if not, you will wipe again, again, and then some more at the same point.

** C'thun was brutally hard in his initial version, mainly due to the fact that he would cast his raid-wiping Eye Beam attack without any delay for players to enter the room. Only a few guilds managed to kill him before he was nerfed.

*** Believe it or not, even the most [[StopHavingFunGuys hardcore guilds]] out there wouldn't yell at you for dying during Heigan the Unclean. (Heck, they won't even yell at you ''now''!) if you lag. It used to be a slogan that lag was a ''very'' passable reason for dying against Heigan...heck, you can even lag a ''tad'' and die!

** Devourer of Souls in the Forge of Souls is another recent addition that can be a nasty surprise for players used to the relately easy launch dungeons. He has a hard hitting, fast spell that should be interupted as often as possible, hard to see area effects and several nasty special abilities that require the whole group to react accordingly. One of them almost always kills the player it aims for, but fortunately its usually only used once at low health.

** Simply put, the mechanics of Sindragosa demand that everyone in your raid knows what their job is. Now that the Icecrown Citadel buff is up to 30%, any boss before Sindragosa can easily be killed if people make a few mistakes. However, while learning the fight, you absolutely have to understand the mechanics; if not, you will wipe again, again, and then some more at the same point.

** Felmyst, who's only the third boss out of six at Sunwell Plateau, has a gas attack that can mind control raid members, and remains very difficult even for raids with level 80 players. Some players refuse to join Sunwell Plateau raids if they have not gotten past Felmyst

** Professor Putricide remains the hardest wing boss thus far, with incredible raid coordination required to deal with all of his abilities, capped off with a severe time limit. Only five guilds managed to defeat him in Heroic mode prior to patch 3.3.3.

** Illidari Council is the one that gives PUGs on my server the most trouble at level 80. Its rare that a group survives to council with more than 10 members, then there's invariably no mage (still incredibly handy for tanking purposes), a tank runs in without checking with the group, there's no caster interrupt with a short cooldown and the person assigned to interrupting instagibs themselves on reflective shield because they get bored. Definitely still requires coordination.

*** And the Suppression Field reduces your movement to 1/4 of normal and your attaxk and casting speed to 1/5 of normal. Walking through is a chore and fighting is extraordinarily difficult.

** Dr. Weavil. I'm not sure if you can fight him anymore, but he was absolutely hellish. If you wanted a chance at getting the Black Qiraj Battle Tank, you needed to fight him. He employed a /permenant/ mind control, and a powerfull multi-target nuke with a 2 second stun. You needed at least 10 people to fight him, and those 10 people would also be trying to ring that gong at the end first.. The whole chain was full of these. Maws, Lord Lakmaeran (Who only one person could loot) and his many chimeraoks.. It was worth it in the end, though. The mount is pretty awesome.

** Frogger. ''JUST'' Frogger.

** Kael'thas Sunstrider is a ''five'' phase boss that can last upwards of fifteen minutes. Assuming you survive his advisors, each of which is a miniboss in its own right, you then have to deal with his attacks, including MindControl, a Pyroblast that will instantly kill anyone it hits, and a phase where everyone is flung up into the air and must "swim" to avoid deadly floating orbs.

*** [[EnergyBeings He]] was the [[TheDragon second-to-last]] boss of an [[JustifiedTrope entire]] [[YourMileageMayVary expansion]].

** Ley-Guardian Eregos, in the Oculus, is a unique fight in that it's conducted while mounted on drakes, using their abilities instead of your own. Once the mechanics are understood, it's simple, but try getting a pick-up group to learn it.

** And finally, the Lich King himself. The guild that killed him (without cheating, on heroic) has gone on to say that the encounter is much harder than anything Old Naxxramas threw at them (including the Four Horsemen, to which most players who saw that content agree). The fight includes many mechanics which can easily snowball and wipe the ride, including a disease that can one shot any player it jumps to while buffing the Lich King, a PBAoE that grows in size and damage the more it hurts people, ands adds that kill your allies one by one. On Heroic...

** Anub'Rekhan would summon adds from dead players in addition to the dead adds. Que Exponential hell.

** Frogger. JUST Frogger.

** The Four Horsemen had the strictest timing and movement requirements of any boss before or since, needing as many as ''eight'' tanks to perform correctly. The few guilds that successfully defeated this encounter had no trouble at all with the remaining bosses.

** Nowadays, we have Sindragosa. While the Lich King himself is harder-he's the Final Boss and wouldn't go on this list. But Sindragosa? Oh, god. A fight that is basically built around RNG. The first phase shouldn't be too bad. She just pulls the raid in and they need to run out before a big ice blast happens. Except that the entire party being moved like that tends to overload people's connection. People die to it solely because they lag too badly to get out. She has an airphase that isn't too bad; it just involves two people getting hit with Ice Blocks(not too close to others or it will chain-on 25 this can be a bit hectic but compared to what's to come...)and then these iceblocks need to be hid behind or her frost bombs will damage you(read: Kill you on Heroic mode.) They also need to be killed before the people suffocate, but this is fairly trivial compared to phase 2. Phase 2 is a nightmare where she ice blocks people during the fight, and casts a stacking debuff on the raid that increases magic damage done each stack. The RNG of the melee cold damage and Unchained Magic(the magic debuff from phase 1) continues. Tanks need to get out of the way or their debuffs will stack to high to survive her breath, which needs tanks need to switch and people need to run behind iceblocks. Oh, the Iceblocks during this phase chaining typically means a wipe. Most can get through the first phase with the air phase, but this last phase can make it fall apart in seconds. Strict, strict coordination must be set to get the iceblocks close enough so the tanks can clear their debuffs, but the blocks aren't chained. All of this over the [[{{Understatement}} most god awful annoying voice ever]] screeching at you the entire time. On Heroic mode? Though there has been technically harder fights, this one could possibly be one of the most unfun fights of the game if the crowds are to be believed. [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]], of course, but she bears a bit of mentioning here.

**Nowadays, we have Sindragosa. While the Lich King himself is harder-he's the Final Boss and wouldn't go on this list. But Sindragosa? Oh, god. A fight that is basically built around RNG. The first phase isn't...bad. She pulls the raid in and they need to run out before a big ice blast happens. But during the whole phase, your casters randomly get a debuff that builds up as they cast...which does a LOT of damage if it builds up too high, so they need to stop casting to let it wear off. Meanwhile, melee randomly get hit with a debuff that builds up the more they hit her, doing more damage the higher it gets; so they need to stop hitting her. Good luck if you are a fast hitting melee. She has an airphase that isn't too bad; it just involves two people getting hit with Ice Blocks(not too close to others or it will chain-on 25 this can be a bit hectic but compared to what's to come...)and then these iceblocks need to be hid behind or her frost bombs will damage you(read: Kill you on Heroic mode.) They also need to be killed before the people suffocate, but this is fairly trivial compared to phase 2. Phase 2 is a nightmare where she ice blocks people during the fight, and casts a stacking debuff on the raid that increases magic damage done each stack. The RNG of the melee cold damage and Unchained Magic(the magic debuff from phase 1) continues. Tanks need to get out of the way or their debuffs will stack to high to survive her breath, which needs tanks need to switch and people need to run behind iceblocks. Oh, the Iceblocks during this phase chaining typically means a wipe. Most can get through the first phase with the air phase, but this last phase can make it fall apart in seconds. Strict, strict coordination must be set to get the iceblocks close enough so the tanks can clear their debuffs, but the blocks aren't chained. All of this over the [[{{Understatement}} most god awful annoying voice ever]] screeching at you the entire time. On Heroic mode? Though there has been technically harder fights, this one could possibly be one of the most unfun fights of the game if the crowds are to be believed. [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]], of course, but she bears a bit of mentioning here.

*** [[EnergyBeings He]] was the [[TheDagon second-to-last]] boss of an [[JustifidTrope entire]] [[YourMileageMayVary expansion]].

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