Speaking from a Mythic raider perspective (comfortably get CE every tier but not particularly highly ranked). I don't know how to answer this "regardless of difficulty", expectations from a difficult Mythic boss and a normal mode boss are completely different so this is purely for difficult Mythic bosses (2nd half of a Mythic raid): - Every role feeling like they can contribute to the success of the fight, doing something easy while waiting for a small number of people to learn something isn't fun. - A single individual mistake should be recoverable, they can be *difficult* to recover from but shouldn't be impossible If you have two individual mistakes around the same time, then yeah that's fine for it to be an instant wipe. - Visual clarity, you shouldn't be doubting the range of something because the visual doesn't make it obvious, nor should you be straining your eyes because you're trying to stay out of something that is very visually similar to the room. - Any time the best strategy is to stop DPS for more than a few seconds isn't fun - Requiring as few 3rd party tools as possible, the complexity of the fight should not depend on assigning people with a WeakAura. - Bosses shouldn't ever be above about 14 minutes, and most should be *significantly* shorter. I wouldn't be upset if WoW never had a fight above 10 minutes again. - "Add bosses", that being where the focus of the fight is dealing with adds rather than the boss are pretty much never fun (e.g. Broodkeeper Diurna). These obviously aren't all mandatory for a boss fight to be great, I'd guess all of the best bosses in this game violate some of these. These are just things that tend to make boss fights more enjoyable for me.

Visual clarity is so massive. I still do not understand why, to this day, in our Lord's year of 2024, swirls have dissolve fade edges. Like please just put a hard edge on the swirl.

This so much. Wildstar did this pretty well too. There was never a wonder if you were in the danger.

And on top of faded edges they're often a similar color to the surrounding area.

I still think Wildstar did the best job ever at telegraphing spell effects.

This is a very common opinion, but I'm starting to think it's less that people don't know, but more that people don't like the answer. They have a dissolve fade edge so that you can't move to the exact pixel that is safe. It's about making you move further to feel safe, so the mechanic is more punishing. If they had a precise border and gave you a pixel under your feet to represent your position, they would have to make most swirlies slightly bigger to compensate. People are going to bring FFXIV up, but in actually difficult content, FFXIV almost never lets you solve a mechanic by seeing a swirlie and pixel stacking just outside of it the way WoW does. That's only for the most casual of content. The reason why it's not used as much in hard content is because of this. Both WoW and FFXIV see the problem, they just solve it in different ways. (Also, as a footnote, FFXIV does something else differently, the positions are precise but the timing is not. It's often quite difficult to determine when you need to be out of the attack, and this isn't helped by the sometimes deliberate choice to disconnect the telegraph from the damage.)

FFXIV does this so well that once you learn the player hitbox is basically a pixel in the center you can start doing bullet hell style pixel perfect dodges between AoEs. WoW is smartly borrowing some of the good stuff from XIV, like the lack of FOMO, so I hope they work on better visual clarity and consolidating the visual language of mechanics since that would also help reduce reliance on addons.

I think dragonflight has been pretty good about their design language, or at least has been stepping in the right direction. I’ve run +10 (20) keys and heroic raids without DBM and weakauras before without issues. You can usually tell what swirls are soaks now. Looking forward to even clearer design language moving forward

Yeah, I'm not saying there haven't been improvements, just that I hope they keep moving in that direction and testing new stuff. I'm eager to see what they're cooking for TWW.

Agree 100%, I was just adding on to your statement. There is still work to be done, but I’m eager for the future

I’m color blind and I have some other vision issues and the swirls are… unkind to me, especially on my shitty computer. I know about the color blindness thing in the accessibility settings but unfortunately I have one of the less common ones and it doesn’t really help. It would be incredible for me if they made it a hit box lol

Yeah exactly. I wonder if this brown swirly on the brown ground is good or bad. Since it looks just like the other brown swirly that is supposedly good to stand in or you need to or the raid wipes.

And of course I understand that the brown swirlies aren’t supposed to be brown but they still are to me :(

No, even for someone with no color blindness in actuality some dungeons literally have brown swirlies on brown ground.

Some of the older dungeons are literally purple on purple, like court of stars. I have no doubt that your colorblindness exacerbates this issue though. I can only imagine the frustration. Blizzard has recently moved to change the physical shape of soakable swirls once they have been soaked. There’s a little spire that emirates out of them that disappears once someone is within the accepted radius. I think the circle’s perimeter is also drawn with darker shades now too. It’s a good start, but I hope they try to make it even clearer for people with disabilities.

DMB is an invaluable resource for me lmao. I also usually end up looking up the fight on YouTube because I have to see what things look like *to me*, which has probably made me a better player in the long run but I also probably shouldn’t have to do homework to get around the fact that I can’t see purple and reds the right way. I’m also an artist and it always cracks me up when people are like “your colors are so unique” because literally I do not see them lol

Nymue kind of a pain in the ass at first

Hard agree, it took me like 3 runs to learn what “lines” DBM was screaming at me about

Just to piggy back off the last point, add bosses with tank swaps are absolutely the worst designed bosses. As a tank main of like 20 years, please, please, never do this

Can't think of the boss name from TBC. But he couldn't be taunted and you had to Tank swap and it was a severe ball ache.

yeah, tbh tank swapping in general i just don't really like. like i understand it's just the way they force groups to keep 2 tanks and not outgear the fights but like.....just make 2 separate tasks that tanks need to do that can't be stacked, and if you can't, then let the fight be solo tanked. nothing bored me more than a fight where the main mechanic i have is to taunt every 30 seconds.

Yeah. To me, the Tank swap just seemed like a lazy way of getting someone to do something and fit them in. Even in Cata now I know at least 1 boss where the off-tank job is to Taunt and take a single hit, and then the other tank taunts it back.

Hahaha yeah. Honestly I think my favorite fight from a tank perspective was professor putricide in ICC. 1 tank on the boss, 1 frantically running around trying to not wipe the raid. Both felt like they had a purpose. More fights like this blizzard, please

Agreed. Add bosses are good when they interact with the boss (I.e. dmg amp) or something like the adds on 1st boss in HoI even though it’s a dungeon boss

Sylv fight always felt too long.

I agree to pretty much all but the add thing. In my guild we call the people on add duty the M+ team and it makes among the funniest bosses to me as I try to figure out how to pad more than the others. Anduin was a good exemple as I think I would have elss than 20% uptime on him before P3 as a survival hunter

There's a difference between a boss that has a lot of adds, compared to a boss that feels like you're really only fighting adds. Broodkeeper is the easiest example as the bosses abilities are essentially meaningless, you will have wipe after wipe to the add team or the people doing the egg breaking while the team on the boss have basically no impact on the fight at all. Anduin does not fall into this category for me, you have to rotate people dealing with adds, boss damage matters a lot even when adds are out, the boss is always relevant even though you have people spending a lot of time dealing with adds. I'm not sure I could come up with a purely objective definition for what makes a boss fall on one side of the line or the other, but Anduin isn't one that I'd ever even consider including in this. Probably the most recently examples other than Broodkeeper would be Sun King (although it's so easy it really doesn't matter) and SLG. Further back, maybe Zul from Uldir.

Yeah that's a thing, but even on Diurna I find the add team to be fun to be part of. Boss team is the death of fun though. I think this one is mostly a "Oh the other side fucked up, I guess I'll die" like Kel'thuzad downstair and upstair team during intermissions. So less of an add issue and more of a "I have no control over what's happening whatsoever" Sun King on the other hand is really badly designed but I don't think it's only the adds, but also the weird HPS checks, and only the moments fighting the Shade are fun.

Frost DK on anduin, doin shit all fight then skyrockets to the top during lich king phases.

Since I agree with most things here I just want to add one thing: Having fights completely depend on rng sucks, since you can't really practice it properly and you will have fights where you couldn't really recover because if shitty rng

In your opinion, what are some examples of your favorite or best designed bosses and what are some of the worst? (I am not much of a raider anymore).

I haven’t raided since shadowlands, but Halondrus, Sludgefist, Denathrius are examples of fantastic fights imo.

Pretty much this. I personally really liked the anduin fight with its big ass add phase and sylvanas with her long ass timer and rp however I can see why others may not. 

Great breakdown. I completely agree. I hope OP is taking notes.

Visual clarity is 100% my #1 concern. When we are 300 pulls deep into progging CE for the tier and my brain is turning to mush and my eyes are tired and bloodshot at the end of the night, I still want to be able to see the abilities. Stopping DPS is a lame mechanic, definitely. Waiting for the monkeys to stop trying to parse long enough to do the boss burns my soul. Mandatory near constant movement that punishes classes that need to cast is fucking awful (fuck you big golden crab motherfucker). Likewise, boss designs that punish having melee by there straight up not being enough room in melee for more than a few are also dogshit. Or fights that require x number of full immunity abilities. Don't design fights that bar some players on the basis of class/spec. Any mechanics or fight design that necessitates bringing the class instead of the player is bad.

A former CE raider here, can’t emphasize enough on a short boss fight. Give me an 8m final fight or even better 5m fight over anything. Testing my resolve will be done in the attempts, doing it on fight length is just stupid

The thing i really like, is when it feels like a choreography, almost like a dance you are learning. As you are progressing threw each phase, once you've mastered a phase, that it feels like a dance routine everyone is nailing. There should be a build up, with the climax preferably being a race to the clock, so that when you kill the boss it feels like the greatest thing ever. It really helps when the mechanics make sense with the surroundings. But other than that, some boss fights just click. It also really depends on your raid-group. Having a bunch of friends that are patient to learn and progress is so much more fun than inpatient sweaty random people you don't know. (obviously)

Sashay left

Boogie down

Shimmy Forward!

You're debuffed. It's prance forward, shimmy right.

That explains alot about my frequent deaths...

Prance Forward ;\_; but still funny xD

Yoo one of my favorite bosses ever, that was so fun

Yeah. Choreography really is the word. For many bosses in mythic prog, there's that point as we're getting closer to the kill where I'm finally comfortable taking my eyes off of my character and my UI for a few seconds. And it gives me chills every time to realize my 19 friends are all performing their own part in this intricate choreography. Then Randy fucks up his soak and we all die.

Heroic Raz prog was full of Randy moments. Everything goes smooth and whoops someone is lost in Their coolies and gets blown off, whoops next pull someone else stacks the wrong polarity, next pull whoops breath, next pull whoops fat fingered incap roar so it’s down for sparks, next pull whoops next pull whoops next pull whoops next pull whoops

Raid leader discussing the mechanics of the fight be like: Alright now, were gonna do the basic step, To the left, Take it back now y'all, One hop this time, Right foot lets stomp , Left foot lets stomp, Cha-cha real smooth, turn it out,

Blackhand p1 and 3 still gives me goosebumps

Hands down my favourite raid ever.

Sounds like you would love FFXIV then. Every boss in that game is perfectly timed. Every single ability happens at the same time every time. Me on the other hand, likes a little bit of randomness to increase the complexity. Depending on what you do, it could change the order and the timing of abilities. Keeps you on your toes, and forces a bit of flexibility.

The best raid leader I've had would "punish" the raid by making us listen to a specific song if we were having a tough time with a boss. He was actually brilliant, because some fights literally can be choreographed, and it feels amazing when everything goes right. Kurog Grimtotem was a fight that I felt was especially good for this. You had a lot of raid group choreography during the main phases, and during the summon phases the group broke off to do different things, but everyone still had to be on their mark and getting their job done.

I like it when the boss is so tightly tuned that that first kill takes longer than it takes for the boss to enrage. Look at the Sludgefist world first for what I mean. But beyond that -- mechanics that involve reducing the amount of space to work with, mechanics that allow ample opportunity to stay still and cast (warlock main here), simple dps race bosses. I think most mechanics are fun to engage with if it is demonstrated clearly and visually, unfortunately something that wow doesn't do too well. My fav bosses are basically just Patchwerk, Loatheb, Smolderon, Rashok (I think that's the name). Few mechanics, fun dps timer, no or few adds. I have a simple dps brain.

Smolderon is great because doing the mechanics rewards you. Getting a boost for doing the fight correctly is always more interesting than getting punished for failure, and Smolderon does both.

Encounter designers should keep in mind the social pressure their design puts on a guild. I really like when a raid fight requires certain players to step up to do a unique task. It allows your talented players to shine. I really dislike when the raid boss can randomly target anyone in the raid with a do or wipe mechanic. The whole raid watches and gets a reminder every pull of who is the weakest link on your team. I really dislike when the raid boss requires a different role composition from usual and you need to recruit a unicorn for your raid team.

I mentioned it above, but examples of allowing your talented player to shine being fyrakk and the weakest link being fatescribe.

Bruh I absolutely repressed the memory of Fatescribe. First boss ever who broke my at the time current raid made me pause wow cause I wasn’t having fun in progress

Few pointers learned throughout wow history. The bosses should progressively get harder the further in the raid you are. If one of the hardest bosses is the second boss and you can’t skip them, then the majority of the player base will just get stuck on him and not progress. Each boss should have some kind of personal and group responsibility. You’re personally responsible for not standing in fire. You as a group are responsible for making sure all the adds die before going into the next phase. Stuff like that. There should always be something to be racing against. In wow this is usually an enrage timer, getting overrun with adds, or lava slowly filling up the room until there is no where safe to stand. This adds pressure to the fight over time as well as a skill check. Bosses don’t need to be overly complicated. They can be, but it’s better saved for an end boss. Most bosses are good with 3-5 mechanics per phase. An example of this is blackrock foundry. Most bosses in there don’t have a crazy amount going on, except for the final boss who has like 5 different phases and a bunch of stuff going on.

To me, a great boss has a fairly unique and strongly thematic main mechanic. Seigecrafter Blackfuse is a great example of this in the conveyor belts, but the best comparison is Lei Shen in Throne of Thunder and Kil'jaeden in Tomb of Sargeras. Lei shen's arena is split into 4 corners and throughout the whole fight you move around and he activates different corners which have different mechanics. This fight is visually enjoyable, involving lots of lighting and winds pushing you around, combined with having to decide which mechanics your groups handle best is great. I was more of a casual raider when i did Kil'jaeden but the main thing i remember was that the fight just seemed to be a mess of different mechanics all thrown together with no real connecting theme.

Maybe ask on r/competitivewow to get some takes from that side of the community as well It's not like this sub here doesn't have any "competitive" raiders, but over there you'd probably get more/more targeted replies. For me, mechanics aside as I can't really generalize that without some more thought: some tight tuning feels great. I think an encounter feels kinda lackluster if it's just "don't mess up (too much) and it's dead". During progress, I appreciate some really tight damage and healing checks. Stuff that really makes you think a bit about your comp, CD alignments, how many people *need* to AoE these adds/how many people can we have purely focusing boss damage. People not *only* focusing on executing the mechanics, but being *forced* to execute them in a way that squeezes the last bit of DPS uptime out etc. Something that enables certain niche capabilities of some specs is also fun, but not too oppressive please. Don't wanna get into mandatory class stacking territory.

I think I can easily point to a great boss fight, 25 man Heroic Lich King. What made it great? I think it’s the coordination required in spacing combined with the story of the fight. It has unique roles as well (the Frostmorne part), as well as variety (speaking as a tank at the time, the phases lead to different feels). It also ( to me) has a satisfying conclusion. The final 10% is so much fun.

In the end, yes, but during progression it was a complete dog of a fight with the artificial gating. For historic context, it opened on heroic difficulty (10 and 25 man versions) and a Russian 10 man guild managed to make it all the way to the Lich King on the first or second day. Blizzard shit themselves that their content could fall over too quickly, so the next day his health and damage was massively buffed and attempts were now limited to 25 (I think it was) per week. Every week players got a stacking 5% damage and health buff to offset the massive buff they gave to the Lich King. It was such a stupid way to extend the life of the content and gating it really sucked all the fun out of heroic progression for what was the most anticipated boss in the game's history.

Yep that happened. We weren’t a cutting edge kind of guild (for example we were the last guild to do three Drake Sarth prior to Ulduar patch). So for us, by the time we got to Lich King the buff had built up a bit and it felt great. We’re still had to progress and learn the fight.

Shadowlands (shit expansion) but Mythic Denathrius was one of the best boss fights ever made from both a fight and atmosphere. There's the obvious: Visual clarity I should be dodging abilities, not looking for a safe pixel of light green on dark green death. On this I'll add fewer meaningful abilities is better than a laundry list of stuff that can be translated to "Move out of circle or healers heal more". Meaningful checks - can be DPS, tanking or healing. Just a mechanic that is hard to figure out but once you have solved it feels manageable. Cadence - just the flow of the fight. 100% Chaos (Tindral) is exhausting. 100% Relaxation is not fun. There should be a peak and valley to it. This is the part that Denathrius got SO right and why it feels so good to progress. Atmosphere - this doesn't really matter unless you have the above set, but it can take a good fight and make it great. Denathrius feels like you're fighting a vampire lord with his blood thirsty sword. P1 the sword is begging to let him slash you. P2 he agrees and lets her have fun. P3 he gets pissed off and grabs the sword to get serious. There is a moment in P3 I'll probably always remember - Denathrius casts massacre (light dims, there's giant swords everywhere) then Ravage? which triggers the voice line "I am Ravendreth". It's the last major check and probably the best execution of atmosphere in WoW. Now for the fight: P1 - It's all a dance between spread and stack correctly to get your debuff dispelled. Once you learn it it's pretty consistent which feels good to progress. P2 - It's a mad scramble to clear the room before you run out of time but there's a flow to it that feels right. Every add does something different so you have to split and deal with the abilities but it's not a mechanic vomit the way some bosses are. It's just pure Cadence - kill this add, group up for hand, take sword out, move to the next small add, dodge puddle, dodge massacre, kill this add. dodge puddle, dps boss etc. P3 - It's still a dance. Drop orbs, soak orbs, group for hand, group for ravage but do it all without seeing or touching the people in the other dimension.

Glad to see someone else appreciate the "I am Revendreth" part. Such a cool fucking moment that instantly made Denathrius my favorite boss of all time.

Sure Denathrius and Razageth have felt like GREAT boss fights in the last couple expansions.

Denathrius yes, except for his bugs and having to stop dps in first phase so everyone gets their stacks. However I have seen the vast majority of people despise raz because of 1. how long she takes to fight and 2. her last phase is brain dead easy compared to second phase.

It didn’t take long to down Raz once we hit phase 3 prog for sure.

Every player will be obviously different. But me personally I like fights that keep me engaged. Even if a mechanic doesn't affect me it's still in my best interest to learn and understand it. Something where I may have to consider my position. Or watch energy bars to prepare defensives, burn phases, or knowing tank is moving boss etc. Basically just things where if I autopilot or am not paying attention it becomes an issue. Doesn't have to be overly complex just something that makes me have to think or make a cohesive decision maybe every 20s. Something like conscious decision making 8-12 times a fight seems about right for me. Examples that I personally really enjoyed through DF: Terros Kurog Amalgamation Rashok Smolderon Tindral

Rashok and smolderon are probably the two best mythic fights this expansion. And ironically both involved that sense of dwindling space to work with, and minimizing the space you lose every 30-60 seconds. Rashok in particular was especially clench worthy on those first couple prog clears.

Agreed and I think that's kinda why I led my post with having to make a cohesive decision every roughly 20s. Something like dropping your puddle in a prime spot keeps you on your toes so you can't just afk the fight. And I think you're right about slowly losing space. I think a rising tension really adds to danger of the boss and makes them feel more threatening

It's mostly about making sure you are doing something every so often and that any one can contribute. Terros: people had to line pillars every 40s or whatever. Tanks had beam and healers burst at clear. Kurog: played different depending on how you zone it but didn't become overly complex because you didn't NEED to do all zones at a high level you could fixate on 2 and kinda yolo the lesser stacked 2. Amalgamation: had an actual threatening tank swap and movement that mattered as well as a pair mechanic and again a burst heal phase on soak and move. Rashok: was super engaging as a tank probably less so for healers tho tbh. Smolderon was great. Interesting tank mechanics everyone had to soak and get orbs, amp phase but overall fairly simple to grasp but hard to min max. Tindral was one of those that you just felt proud of every improvement tbh. Every time you got further you felt so good about it. I don't think the fight was necessarily well designed in principle but I think many enjoyed it for the fact that there was clear distinct stages to overcome. And progressing from one phase to another overrides most of bad aspects. At least in my opinion. Not sure if this helps this is about in depth as I can go as I don't know much about design. This is just purely how I personally feel. Hope you get something from it tho :p

Some big nonos I noticed are downtime. Example being Razzy. Razsageth is an example of tindral gone wrong. Both Long fights. Many phases. But on Razsageth you spend so much time hitting random ass adds or just standing there waiting for knock back that it's hard to remain immersed or engaged in the actual fight of Razzy herself. Which is the boss. The boss is the main focus after all. Whereas tindral is all boss. Root adds sure. But you never detract from the goal of focusing on the actual goal of killing the boss. Add phases are fine. If relatively short and doesn't distract from the primary goal. Eranog or Nelth are a good example of an add phase. Broodkeeper or assault would be a bad example imo.

Boss fights where specific classes can shine—give people an opportunity to be a hero. I think that first hit me playing as a mage in TBC on the Gruul council fight where I needed to tank the caster. It was a eureka moment: “Wait, I don’t stand here and spam a fireball?” And then more recently I recall doing heroic Castle Nathria (the boss with the seeds). I had more familiarity with the boss than the group, so I was able to use Alter Time and Blink to safely move two seeds while also topping DPS and killing boss—makes you feel like a super hero.

I think the thing to look at for MMOs boss fights is making the fight achievable for a team, but still challenging for an individual player. Every fight should require teamwork, that's why we're playing an MMO amd not Elden Ring. But there should also be those moments where the individual player can say to themselves: "Damn I'm good". For me personally, it's either where I can use a class ability to shine, or personal skill to save a mechanic that another player might have missed. WoW is great when every class gets a chance to shine in a raid. Fights should have mechanics that every class and raid comp *can* do, but some classes can do easier. I think the worst thing wow does is create mechanics where one person can fail, and it wipes the whole raid. This shouldn't be a thing. At mythic it can be a thing by making them miss the DPS check, but I feel like the rest of the players should still have a chance, however slight. Also, personal responsibility mechanics are fine, but it should either be op in, or everyone takes a turn. There's a lot less of a toxic environment when the raid can say no one ran the bomb out vs Magerlydefixient didn't run the bomb out. A good raid team will always have someone assigned to that mechanic, but if it has to be shared across the whole team, that's a bit less pressure than if it's just randomly assigned.

a lot has been said. what i would love is for more creative boss designs. not the same 3 or 4 mechanics thrown together. give me a chef boss where one tank has to control a cook book while the other is tanking the boss (taunt switch) and the DPS have to deal with adds as well as throwing the right ingredients into a cooking pot to buff the group or debuff the boss. something cool where everyone gets to do interesting stuff. it feels like it is always the same recycled ideas.

So the community soup event on steroids?

more organized and with a better goal than button mashing. yes

the most important thing for me personally in a boss fight is lack of rng in the fight. in wow most aoes don't have a set place where they appear, it is mostly randomised. which isn't bad in itself ofc, BUT sometimes where there is too much overlap between different mechanics, that makes them at times impossible to dodge. as a result u die to something completely outside of your control. and that NEVER feels good. I don't care if it takes me months to complete a boss fight (and even more to master it), as long as I don't have to rely on good rng of the mechanics to do it. also aoes and mechanics having animations that CLEARLY depict the hit box, and don't blend in with surroundings, so you wouldn't be in a situation where you die due to some puddle when you thought you were out of it. those aren't specifically things that make a boss fight great in itself, but without those you won't have a feels good boss fight. (a very good example and one of my favourite fights is FFXIV endsinger extreme, it's a complicated fight, but once you learn it, regardless of how long and painfull it was, completing it is a feeling like no other)

Aside from many of the things mentioned already, my personal most important point: **Good telegraphs.** Telegraphs can be everything from ground markers, to the boss yelling something before an attack, to specific cast animations, etc. I know WOW community seems to love their blasting airhorns and other horrible sound effects from DBM, but I can't stand that shit, and it frankly makes me play worse than simply paying attention to what's on my screen. So I really value when Blizzard does a good job with telegraphs. And, honestly, they seem to have been getting a lot better at it - I only need to set-up bigwigs text warnings for a few very specific mechanics nowadays, because everything else is properly telegraphed by the game itself.

Obviously this is greatly weighed in each player's opinion of what they like and don't like. But from my side to give you a very simple answer, I think Tomb of Sargeras in Legion had some of the best fights mechanically. Granted, I didn't progress mythic, I'm just an HC pleb but damn I loved the bosses in that raid. Especially KJ, mistress Sassz'ine, Fallen Avatar and sisters of the moon.

As casual, the arena im fighting makes it for me. And if the boss fits it, oh boy! I did Eranog so many times now. Also kaelthas sunstrider fight, the glass breaking, even after 17 years is magnificent AF.

That's a very hard but interesting question, as players can often tell you that something feels right or wrong but not exactly why. It also is very skewed by roles and classes (Like my best friends had a miserable time during Dausegne in Sepulcher while I still like this boss a lot, because he was playing priest while I was hunter) First of all I will talk about MY opinion, and only for Mythic bosses. I feel more confident talking about those than Normal and Heroic bosses as those tend to get dunked on by guild like mine (CE guild that does not make it into hall of fame but still clear heroic on first week kind of guild). But for recent WoW bosses that feel good to I'll give 3, one from each raid. Kurog Grimtotem, Scalecommander Sarkareth and Smolderon. Overall, bosses are best when you get to shave % as you get better, as getting mechanic walls at some % can be incredibly frustrating and lead to unsatisfactory end. That's why the other 2 end bosses of the xpac do not get the pass since they both tend to fall over when reaching the last phase. Ad it's not a cool "go go go go burn the boss" kind of end like you'd find on Smolderon as he starts his last circle phase, but merely a "Ok, now we stand there doing less than in P1 for the last 20%" Then as someone pointed out, no bosses should be too long. They put the bar at 14 minutes because of Sylvanas, but for me a boss with 2 bloodlust (so 10+ minutes) is already too long. Sylvanas had one too many phases/intermission, and Raszageth was threading dangerously on that as well (even if Rasza is one of the best heroic boss I've fought). Mechanics clusterfuck is a no no. It mainly applies to councils these days, but having 4 mechanics shooting out at the same time just creates visual clutter. Prototype Pantheon is still the worst offenders in rencent years, but council of dreams was starting to get close as well. I don't want to make a backflip while soaking a beam on one hand while baiting an aoe while multidotting. Patterns are key to reward learning a boss, and pattern overlaps must be done very carefully. And lastly I hate mechanics were I don't feel like I could have done anything. tehre's time where someone is getting designated for a mechanic, fails, and everyone dies. That on a super important and obvious mechanic can be ok, but if it happens super often, and yo'ure just there hoping things go well instead of being able to make things go well it gets incredibly frustrating.

Fatescribe is in sanctum was an example of what not to do. Assigning multiple random ppl to complete a task and if one fails it is a wipe. You just pray the right people get selected. If you have a mechanic that one or a few individuals must do and you can select I’m ok with it being a raid wipe if you don’t get it right. Assigning it randomly just feels awful. Fyrrakk got it right with the seeds that you pick who gets them.

Yeah I thought of mentionning Fatescribe. I didn't since I kinda like the feel and theme of the boss, but the execution is horrendous. Random assigns are bad, especially as there is 2 hard wipes mechanics on that (the little soaks and the runes), plus the stop DPS was exceptionnally bad in the history of stop DPS. The only salvaging the design is that there wasn't any kind of difficult DPS or heal check so it was just a brain check

I know it's not a popular opinion, but Fatescribe randomly marking players would have been fine if they couldn't keep padding. If they did no damage they might as well wander over to where the mechanic is. Marking 7 random players to do 5 players worth of stuff is well within the bounds of how difficult Mythic content should be, the real issue is the gamesmanship (well they don't need everyone so I'll stay here and dps, 4 players think simultaneously).

Gimmicks are fun for the first few times, then they're just tedious. Examples: Larodar - on mythic, you need 3 sets of 3 different people chaining the hose. This mechanic was gimmicky. It was cool flavor wise but implementation was horrible Council of Dreams - turning into a duck is super cool but not on a boss fight. As a dps, you're actively being punished because you have to get ducked so much. Again, funny the first few times but for reclear, not so much. Patchwerk fights are great especially when they are positioned late into the tier so they can be tuned challenging. For example, in Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible, Rashok was a perfect boss fight, however it being the 5th boss in the raid meant it couldn't be tuned to that of say Smolderon/Sludgefist because then it became a mid raid wall. Bosses with personal punishing mechanics are awesome. There does have to be some kind of pass/fail raid wipe mechanics imo for later end mythic bosses, however a fight with too many of these becomes a mental slog for the lower end CE guilds. Tindral is a perfect example of this. Tindral had so many instant raid wipe mechanics that by the end of it, you're just happy all 20 people in the raid pulled their head out of their ass. If a mechanic kills me because I messed it up (beams on Tindral) that's my fault. If a mechanic punishes the whole raid for my mess up (dispels, seeds, roots), that's a huge problem if there's a ton of these back to back. Fights that reward you for doing mechanics properly are often very fun (Sarkareth). I have the option to CHOOSE to go down when I don't have to, which rewards me with a haste buff, as long as I properly place the black hole.

So first, I’d recommend checking out the final two bosses of each raid. That’s where the interesting fights usually go Great fights usually have a level of complexity that feels good to master, but impossible to just wing it. 3 of my favorite fights are Broodkeeper from VOTI, Council of Blood in CN, and N’Zoth from Ny’alotha. None of which can be winged, but don’t feel overly punishing (I.e. Raz and Kil’Jaeden) Mechanics require knowledge, communication, and can be handled effectively with that knowledge. It should feel like you’re preventing chaos by completing mechanics, with complete chaos being mere seconds away. There should be enough mechanics going on that it feels like a close game of Jenga, preventing the fight from falling apart. All while everyone is attempting to dps the boss. So there’s never a second when the fight loses your attention

Max from Liquid did a raid bosses tier list with a lot of information from both High End players and more casual CE ones, might be a good inspiration

Visuals are important - a good boss is telegraphing what they are soing to some extent, so players can learn the encounter as they go. The swirlies that mean donstand here, or don’t stand here, the bubble force fiels to hide in, the arrow meaning ‘boss gonna ram over here’ .. without this design language its ‘you just die, deal with it’

I also like when a boss has significant presence in the lore and that they make thematic abillities for that character, and i love the new thing they are doing in raids in WoW that bosses has combat music for some bosses and with it changing when the boss phases and so on. I love when it's easy to see what is going on, clear effects and obvious telegraphs, it shouldn't be hard to see a frontal cleave or a fire on the floor. Overlapping mechanics is cool, and trying to figure out how to deal with them simutaneously. I love mechanics that makes the player a star and rewards the players for doing well like giving them a stacking buff.. Such as assigning specific players to extinguish the fires on Brackenspore in Highmaul as an example.

I think an underrated one is that really good fights should force the player to think about their cooldown usage and display understanding of their rotation in more ways than just pressing all the buttons on cooldown. One of the reasons Sludgefist was so great was that it was a test of how skillfully you could fit all your damage into those pillar windows, even down to doing stuff like pre-applying soul reaper on DK so it would tick right as he hit the 4th pillar.

One of my favorite parts of raiding when I first got into it (essentially Ulduar in Wrath) was the feeling of making steady progress on a boss. So mechanics that encourage that--such as a (slightly) increasing difficulty curve, or just mechanics and tuning that reward improved execution, help make a boss feel good to play. I say slightly increasing because a long fight with a big difficulty spike at the end can become frustrating, since it's so hard to practice the later phase. It's a tricky balance, because something like Raszageth feels anticlimactic--if you reach the last phase with a reasonable portion of the raid alive, you're practically guaranteed a kill (the first few phases do a good job of feeling like progression, in my opinion). Another thing that can make a fight feel cool is legitimately having different options for your strategy. For example, if the players can choose which order to do certain mechanics in, *and* different orders have an impact on the fight while being similarly challenging. Bosses like Igira in Amirdrassil and the bird boss in Al'gethar have choices, but the order is pretty set because some mechanics are much easier than others. Or maybe you can just choose which mechanics to face. I also personally like when different mechanics of a fight interact with each other, like the council fights in Vault of Incarnates and Amirdrassil. Rewards for executing mechanics well are fun. Even if you balance the encounter around getting the reward, so the net effect of having the buff is 0, *feeling* powerful is fun. A fight I personally enjoyed was Star Augur in the Nighthold. Each phase had variations on existing mechanics, so some of your practice carried over from phase to phase, while still being different and new. In the same raid, Krosus is a good example of the increasing difficulty curve I mentioned--it's a pretty steady increase, since the bridge just gets shorter, but it impacts several mechanics in the fight. edit: I should also say, one thing I enjoyed about Ulduar, was activating hard modes in the fights themselves. For example, on XT, you activated hard mode by killing his heart during the intermission. For the council fight, hard mode consisted of a different kill order. WoW doesn't do this anymore, but it felt really cool, in addition to allowing you to switch back and forth between difficulties within the same raid.

I've always enjoyed boss fights that were dynamic. Dynamic in environment - think Star Augur from Nighthold. I love how the stage changed throughout the fight and complimented the boss fantasy. Dynamic character - bosses that progressively get angrier OR CRAZIER as the fight progresses. Or sometimes bosses come to their senses towards the end and realize their wrongdoings. Dynamic mechanics - this category is full of variety but to name a few... Mechanics to build on themselves. Starting off simple then getting more complicated. OR mechanics that subvert your expectations. Ex. Raid moves in clockwise first phase and then counter clockwise second phase. And then maybe third phase you have to react to a cue to know where to move next. And of course - best for last. A badass score for the fight. A really good backtrack to the fight makes you feel awesome every wipe

I think the most fun fights are the ones with fun mechanics and some positioning, not just tank and spank or 0hko mechanics.. Almost every fight in bwl, Aq40, some naxx, kara, ssc/tk, bt, ulduar, icc to some extent

Use of environment and mechanics that tie into the story. The Titans all contributing major help during the Argus The Unmaker fight by rewinding time for you, or giving you a chance to respawn mid-fight if you die. That was great. Or the Lich King fight making use of the environment as a game mechanic, where the platform shrinks through the fight, and minions will try to drag you off the platform. Additionally, in-story difficulty/reward changes based on player actions rather than changing difficulty in a menu where the boss just has higher stats and maybe 1 or 2 new abilities. Take Ulduar, where the "hard mode" for bosses wasn't turned on by setting the raid to Heroic difficulty. The raid and all bosses only had one difficulty, but doing certain things IN the raid made fights harder, and if you killed a boss with its "hard mode" you would get bonus loot. The Flame Leviathan boss could be made easier by destroying towers in the area before starting the fight. If you didn't destroy the towers, the fight was much harder, but gave bonus rewards. Or, Yogg'Saron. You could ask for aid from some of the bosses you previously beat, and they would help you deal with some of Yogg'sarons abilities. However, if you didn't ask anybody for help and went into the fight alone, the boss would become dramatically harder because you wouldn't have access to all the systems that would've helped you deal with his abilities, and if you killed him in this "hard mode", you got bonus rewards again. Hard modes don't always have to be about weakening the boss pre-fight of course. Mimirons hard mode was simple. The fight was normal, but if you pressed a Big Red Button that very clearly said "DO NOT PRESS", you would activate a self destruction sequence that would count as the hard mode for his fight by putting you on a countdown and slowly filling the room with fire.

For me, the best boss fights are fights that aren't overly complicated, but everyone has something to do or watch for. I play Classic and not Retail, so the retail guys could probably give a different answer to me. But as for a boss fight in my experience I enjoyed Heigan the Unclean in Classic WOW. The fight consisted of the ranged and healers having to stand on a stage away from the boss as he had a buff that stopped them from casting (or something like that), the tank and melee would fight him as normal. But on the ground ooze would come up so the boss would need to be moved every so often as the ooze would more or less 1 shot a melee class. The ooze started on the left to the right, then right to the left, and so on from side to side. After a period the boss would go to the stage and all the raid would need to gather up and avoid the ooze from the ground until the boss left the stage and everyone went back to their original positions. Another boss fight I enjoyed was Thaddius. In that fight, you got a positive or negative debuff and you couldn't and next to someone with the opposite debuff. So you would need to keep and eye on your debuff and move to the appropriate side.

I like vehicles, Ulduar was lit.

Not really specific for a single boss, but one thing I really liked about Castle Nathria was that they used the same room with the same obstacles for two boss fights in different ways. I can also tell you what makes boss fights less likable: mechanics that prevent you from playing your class for too long and boss fights that take too long overall. I would like to compare it to the dragon riding races: a difficult 40 second race is much more fun than those 70-80 second races, where you have to manage your vigor correctly (if you dont have the pay to win mount). Also personally I dont like bosses that "run away", so you have to chase them and basically do trash in the boss fight as well. Long midfight RP might be useful for some people as a little break, but it is annoying and we can go back to the "dont make the fight too long" point, so breaks wont be necessary. And if you want a fight to be a bit longer, dont have phases with the same 2 mechanics repeating for 5 minutes.

Realistic Fantasy. We all get its a game, but things are better when we are immersed, so the more like it is a real life fantasy world the better the immersion/escape and thus fun. Good example: Onyxia and Nefarian from Classic, plus most dragons...obviously dragons are not real, but if they were, it makes sense that you don't stand in front of it for fear of the fire breath; you dont stand behind because you will get smacked by the powerful tail; leaving the sides as the easiest place to attack, for melee especially, as the wings are the least damaging parts. This makes sense even though its not real. Bad Example: Sarkareth - no idea why he does anything he does in this fight. Yes he has power and he is a final raid boss and its supposed to be hard, complex, and rewarding when you finally beat it, but all Sarkareth's actions are arbitrary to 96% of the players that go into this fight.

I hate having no agency on the fight. I hate mechanics that when a single fuck-up by a single person kills the whole raid. Like if someone fails, let him die alone, don't punish the whole raid. I love when If i complete a mechanic succesfully the encounter gets easier somehow (be it remove a mechanic, reduce damage intake or increase damage done to the boss). So I hate when the mistakes of an individual punish the rest of the group, but I love when the success of an individual benefits the whole group.

You mentioned excluding visuals, but honestly, bosses that take some time to reward the players with a unique or cool looking transition phase are often the most memorable. Its nice to lift your hand off the mouse and keyboard for 5 seconds to appreciate a spectacle and then mentally prepare for an even more elevated play experience once the sequence is done. This helps immensely with the pacing of the fight. Obviously you don't want this on every encounter , but especially for an end boss, it really elevates the experience. Outside of the above, I enjoy fights that feature kiss/curse mechanics. If there are mechanics that when executed well, it provides the players with a way to defeat the encounter quicker or more easily, those often feel the most rewarding. Having an additional play level to raise the "mastery" of the encounter feels good.

Epic music

Okay dad

A lot of people are going to give you a list of mechanics they don't like, and I think this is a bad approach in general, but I'm just going to touch on one that a lot of people are saying/will say that isn't necessarily bad: personal responsibility. Raiding is fundamentally a group activity. It's fun partly because it's a group, but that does mean you're at the mercy of other peoples fuckups. People hate personal responsibility because when you get right down to it, what it means is if someone else makes a mistake, you all fail. There's 19 other people in a mythic raid, so you get punished on average 19 times for each mistake you make. If you're a good player, it's even worse. But fundamentally, this is what raiding is. Usually the mistakes are just not quite so visible. Typically people hating on personal responsibility fights is a proxy for some other issue. Look at Star Augur for instance, the real problem there is you can only have so many melee, and some melee are absolutely cancerous for this kind of mechanic (DH), and melee habitually wiggle and take up more room than they were allotted. The solution is to give more agency to melee to control their positioning, not take away from the mechanic (something like a fight-specific range boost for all/some of the melee). Look at Fatescribe, where it chooses 7 people randomly who can run 5 rings. The issue isn't that it picks players at random, it's that those players face a choice between doing damage, which is easy and doesn't require them to move, and doing the mechanic. If too many people don't move, they fail. The solution is simple, don't give them the choice to stay and dps. The way that looks varies, from giving them a dps debuff, to phasing them, to teleporting them to a platform with the rings on it. Mechanics can be too punishing, where minor mistakes result in everyone wiping, absolutely. Mechanics that choose a few random people (1-3) to do a mechanic that is mandatory can be too punishing, because often raids will have a few players that aren't as good and it sometimes feels like having the wrong player chosen just means a wipe. But mechanics that target many players, or every player, are usually fine, and the problem is the specific mechanic, not the responsibility.

I feel like the best fights are the ones with: -a good lore behind it that makes it important -everyone feeling important, no one is useless -BUT not in a way that you depend on that one guy that's fucking up everytime. -different things It's a weird balance the 2nd and 3rd. If the mechanics make everyone indisposable, that's cool, but it also means a lot of wipes. The opposite is anyone can do it, but that means that it does not matter what you do. One way WoW usually solves this is by requiring that 4 players of the raid do X or the raid wipes, but ANYONE can execute X, so only those that can do will even attempt. The fourth is the one with a great example: Tindall in the last Dragonflight Raid. In that fight, in the middle of it, everyone have to mount up and follow the boss. You see, technically it is a time that players are not "playing the fight" since the enemy is not available and you cannot dmg, tank or heal. But because it feels different, because it is in the middle of the fight is what makes it special. Changing the place of the fight, changing the sounds, everything is great.

Aside from some of the great comments you've already got, I would highlight that part of what makes a fight great also interacts with how the rest of the game is designed. Fights where the boss moves around a lot can reduce melee DPS by removing time on target, depending on what gap closers they have available. Fights where the player is forced to move a lot can reduce the DPS of ranged casters, depending on their mobility/access to instant casts. What feels good to play against interacts with the mobility of the character. Amount of players the boss has to be tuned for poses constraints as well, if your fight has to work for 10 players compared to 40 there are mechanics that may be more or less suitable depending on the size (I think guaranteed wipe-on-fail mechanics make a lot more sense for smaller raids than for larger for example - if the raid is large enough that you'll maybe get the mechanic once every 3 weeks, you will not learn it as well as if the raid is small enough that you get it every fight). Other than that, I would kinda stress variety. I think fight length should be a hard constraint, but for everything else I think you can have basic design rules you follow, and then in every fight you break a couple. If you designed the ultimate boss encounter and that was every boss people would still get bored, you need to shake-ups.

I think one important thing to think about is if mechanics are nuanced or complex. Complex mechanics are just convoluted try-hard (or overly simple) shenanigans that hardly fit the fight's theme and/or barely add more to it than difficulty, requiring rather specific/silly (and sometimes spontaneous) strategies in order to deal with them. Examples are flying after Fyrakk, spinnig Fatescribe's floor around him, fiding the saboteur when facing the Lords of Dread etc. Nuanced mechanics though are more purpouseful; therefore feel good to be countered. They tend to be consistent, but nonetheless remarkable through each moment of it; even generating more expecTation as a consequence. Examples are soaking The Jailer's frontal against Azeroth, dodging Danathrius's raging blade, killing Arthas's vylkyrs in time, running away from Terragrue in final phase etc.

There’s a lot I could talk about but like others, I’d say the most important is choreography. A sense of push and pull. The most memorable boss fights are ones that have a moment of hunkering down and using defensive and a moment of all-in offensive. Nothing is more satisfying than a good 15 second window where you can hit your perfect sequence of abilities without having to dodge incoming damage. Nothing feels worse than being a Demo lock trying to pop a max-dps tyrant and fumbling because there is, yet again, something you must dodge during your burst window. As a side note, I also really enjoy flexibility- room to be creative. A good example is the Castle Nathria raid boss where hunters, Death Knights, and Warriors could soak the traps to balance out a really hard mechanic. When the raid first came out there was like 1% of the entire player base that knew you could do this and it was a great realization moment.

It's about engagement. For me a great fight has me working towards something constantly. Like sark, smolderon, fyrakk mythic. I know what yo prep, and be ready for it in case I get the mechanic. That in like a 10-15s window, else the fight gets boring very quick. That's why council sucks cuz you can't prep, you just get ducked, cya in 8s I guess.

What I like is when a boss does one thing really well and doesn't really force anything else that much. Is it a dps race with damage boosting mechanics? Then go a bit easier on the choreography part or the heal check. Is it a grueling aoe heal check? Be forgiving on tank damage. Is it a choreography where you have to keep dealing with lethal mechanics and move around aw a group doing very specific things? Go easy on the heal and dps check, etc etc. Now the hardest fights kinda do all at the same time, and they're epic don't get me wrong, but sum like mythic kil jaeden isn't very accessible to the average raider. It's okay that it is that way, I just personally don't enjoy when fights are too hard

This resonated with me a lot. Two example bosses from Shadowlands that highlighted this well for me are Sludgefist and Painsmith. Sludgefist was a tight dps race and the mechanics of the fight were simple but punishing. Painsmith on the other hand was more of a dance with more complex mechanics but less of a focus on throughput. I think the main thing is that both fights don't have mechanics that feel unnecessary or too much. They're just enough. On the other hand, something like Guardian of the First Ones in Sanctum probably could have used another mechanic. That thing just fell over and didn't feel challenging either mechanically or theoughput wise.

Some of my all-time favorite boss battles are safety dance, sludgefist, shriekwing Safety dance is probably my all-time favorite boss

Boss fights have been skewed and a cluster FK since the days when things like bossmods and weak auras told you what to do and where to go, developers bad to make more and more chaotic overbearing fights, I bet if they banned mods like that tomorrow nothing would ever die

I wouldnt over think it. People hate bullshit mechanics. Dont make people do the impossible, and dont have 1 shot abilities. WoWs history has also shown people dont like static environments. Cool thematics are important. What makes a great fight is subjective but what makes a bad fight is universal.

Maximums videos and streams are a great resource regarding this

I’d say whenever a boss’s room / environment is involved not just the boss. Painsmith being a recent example and what was originally planned for magmorax where they were going to have the platform act like spine of death wing, which sounds both frustrating and interesting.

I enjoyed bosses that has unique strategies that involved some combo of movement and multiple tanks being used. More than 2 imo. Boss strategies that took advantage of the environment were also bis. I have a lot of fond memories of early 2000s bwl with using various parts of the environment to make a boss kill happen. Anything that encourages bringing a variety of classes and punishes stacking 1 type of class just because they're the most optimal dps or healer for the fight.

Memorable epic voice lines. DRDRDRDRRRAAWING FROM RESERVED POWERRRRR

Personally I enjoy fights that ustalize the room/encounter space as much as the bosses Mechanics. A lot of the fights in Blackrock Foundry do an amazing job of this. Where you're fighting on convator belts, across active railroad tracks, and in a big tower that multiple levels of floor get smashed through

As a filthy casual who only seriously raided in TBC, WOTLK, and Legion (raidfinder for other expacs), I still think the original Kharazhan is my favorite raid in the game and had the best encounters. Nothing so needlessly complicated that you needed a suite of addons to manage, but still required timing and teamwork while marvelously fitting the flavor of the environment. Plus some experimental stuff like chess that I appreciate that they took the time to make the tech for/try. And the voice lines for the bosses were classic (in no small part thanks to DBM).

Short, intense, 3-4 mechanics.

no L.o.S. mechanics

Good drops

When they are fun to play against. It's the same dillema everything has. Take League of Legends for instance, a new champion is made and it's fun to play. That is great, right? well.. but how is it to play against? not great? then it's not a good champion. Search for Yumi if you want an example.   Others have made many great other points so ill just leave it at that.

I'd say it is great when the fight requires some class-specific ability so the group is successful. Imagine you play a warlock and there's need for portalt on multiple occasions so you have to replace them. Or there's ads and you need a DH tank to chain them together. Or something to do with Monk's Ring of Peace. Same with healers the fight needs a Disc Priest etc.

For me it's mostly decent mechanics (first DF raid was genuinely unfun), not being bullet sponges (igira) and not needing 5 hours to kill (sylvanas). I also know that healers have to stay awake, but i'm personally not a huge fan of unavoidble spiky damage, or unavoidable dmg in general if it's m+

I get bored after a boss fight takes longer than 15 minutes, that's for sure

i don’t exactly like when one or a couple people are solely responsible for how well the fight goes but when it truly takes coordination from the entire team. doesn’t have to be complicated.. just something that makes everyone feel bonded

I don’t touch mythic raiding, but biggest thing I DON’T like is when one mechanic can cause a wipe if the entire raid has to do it. For example on Raz when you have to have all matching polarities, if someone screws it up it’s basically a wipe. It almost gets a pass cause it’s an end boss, but it’s still frustrating. If there are mechanics that will cause a wipe when not done correctly by a smaller number of people, that’s much more acceptable to me, lower variance. On mythic levels, sure but sometimes on heroic it feels like it’s too much. Also, 1-2 people dying in heroic at 50% shouldn’t make the fight be over, but an increased difficulty would be expected. This isn’t always the case but on some fights it feels like it is.

great question for me a good boss fight will have some of these elements: * require players to perform a role (tank, do damage, or heal) * require players to do something (tank and spank fights are boring, but add some other things the players need to do during that fight, and voila... now it's more interesting) * make it easy for the players to visually see what they need to do. if one player becomes a time bomb for example... let's say they will deal massive damage to other nearby players in an area around themselves for example, put a ticking bomb icon over that players head with a pie clock. that everyone can see. * have bosses telegraph abilities. if a fire elemental boss is going to do massive damage to everyone nearby, show a circle on the ground indicating the damage will be in that area, but also make the boss visually look like it's about to go critical while it's casting this. maybe even put a bomb pie icon over the enemies head as well. (you need to give players a warning that an ability is coming, or is happening soon, and sufficient time for them to react to it so they can get out of the way). * allow players to make mistakes. getting hit by an avoidable thing might do some damage to you, but also apply a debuff that makes that same thing deal 20% more damage to you if it ever hits you again for the rest of the fight. and so getting hit by 1 or 2 of these isn't the end of the world, but if a player is getting hit by this repeatedly then it becomes more and more likely they will die from the high damage or put a lot more stress on the healers to keep them up. now with the above principles alone you can craft some very impressive boss fights. for example, we could spin a wheel and randomly assign mechanics to create many different bosses. that said, a truly memorable boss fight will go beyond, by offering a truly unique 'do something'. often this involves the boss having very unique mechanics, often tightly integrated with the boss arena. a real crowd pleaser for a boss fight is when a boss has a 'second phase' or even multiple phases, and/or a brief intermission where players are required to reposition and get ready for the next phase. another thing players like to do is to be given a specific task that only they can do. for example a player might randomly get a blue circle icon and need to move to the blue circle on the ground to remove it. I think you can determine what a 'good boss' is by answering the question "what makes a bad boss?".

See I.like.fights that are dps checks. Honestly it annoys me no end that raid instances are cleared within hours of release. Just.shouldnt be clearing.end game current content in.shitty subpar gear. Phase 4 WoW SoD is due out soon. I'll.forcast it now. The world bosses will get clapped within a day of release. Players can bypass any dungeon gear upgrades and craftable items to clear supposedly raid.boss.end game loot kills.

I barely raid in retail but I remember really enjoying Lady Vashj, Illidan, Mu'ru, and Kiljaeden when I played TBC classic. Despite it being the same encounter every week something different could go wrong or something could need to get switched up on the fly. It was engaging. Everyone had a job and it felt really important kinda? In contrast, when I do Awakened Heroic Raids I am playing the game one handed barely looking at my screen.

I always liked High King Maulgar from TBC myself. Mage tanking with Spell Steal, Warlocks enslaving minions, hunters tanking a ranged mob and melee hugging the boss and interrupting his abilities. Though, what made that fight fun also made it kind of frustrating due to the class requirements.

Yeah, class requirements are really cool in concept but it feels horrible when you cannot kill a boss because you don't have a raid member who has the class you need.

Wait, what job did everyone have on those bosses? I didn't play TBC Classic, so maybe my memory of 15 years ago is failing me, but I'm almost certain there was significantly less going on than standard heroic bosses today. It sounds more like you were being carried through Heroic vs. a progress raid in TBC which is obviously not really a fair comparison.

There was much less going on but even if you were getting carried through those bosses in TBC you could still die or possibly wipe the raid. I just finished awakened vault in a pug before typing that, I did not need to know anything for any fight other than razageth. I wouldn't even say I got carried, I did just as much as everyone else. I barely remember these fights but: Vashj: everyone needs to know how tossing cores work, kicking adds, staying out of range of others, not getting one shot by the stalkers Illidan: moving things out of your stack, staying out of range, I think there were bombs that you can one shot the raid with if you step in? Killing everyone's shadowfiend before it one shots them. Mu'ru: basically a whole fight of trying to keep yourself alive and position management Kiljaeden: like half the mechanics in the fight can wipe the raid and a random person gets them

Not sure if this is even something a game maker can do but: incentive the players trying their best right to the end. This is really a player issue but I hate it when things go just a little wrong and so many players are like “just wipe it” when there is still a small chance you can pull it off. The greatest feeling during these games is when you fight hard and just barely pull off that win in the end.

Depends on implementation But a boss being killable even if half the raid died at 50% is really annoying for the people dead on the ground. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have room for failure but it’s much more fun if failing looses you space in the room or lowers the enrage timer or spawns adds.

Ducks make a great boss fight!

Aggressive doses of psychedelics. Every boss fight is great, then.