Came here to say the same. If chess event isn't the pinnacle of gimmicky then I don't know what is. Yeah it's not a classical bossfight, but it is one. Would have expected it to be a honorary mention at least
With how advance the raid mechanics in later expansion are, it boggles the mind how some players still argue that vanilla raids are the best raids mechanic wise lol.
I'd suggest it plays on the idea that at the time, we had to be able to coordinate a large group so efficiently in order to do what had to be done. Getting 10 people to coordinate their attacks, debuffs, healing, CC, special procs, etc is not quite the challenge it took to get 25 or 40 people to do the same thing.
The amount of comments saying they’re surprised one fight or another wasn’t mentioned really puts into perspective how many fights have “strange” mechanics. Could easily make a top 20 and still miss some! Great video! 😁
Id argue that, while Immersius is pretty gimmicky, its just a less gimmicky version of Viscidus from AQ40. Not only did it have the split into adds to actually progress the boss like Immersius, but it also had to be frozen by 200 frost attacks then shattered with physical damage to cause that split. Still a really great video though!
Honestly, Tarragrue has been one of my favourite fights in years. It's so simple, but the addition of the anima powers made the fight so fun week after week, trying to see how high you could get those numbers to go.
You didn't progress on it on heroic then...might be the worst progression experience I've ever had except heroic rag. Not the longest (that goes to rag) but definitely the most annoying. Used to dread rekilling it each week because it was so easy for it to just take 10x as long as it needed to lol
BRF could make a whole episode on its own. Hans'gar and Franzok with the conveiour belts and stomps, The Blast Furnace (maybe), Operator Thogar with his trains and Blackhand. All kinda fitting the Industrial theme resulting in some gimmicks. Kargath Bladefist, Shadowlord Iskar, Mistress Sasszine, Maiden, Essence of Eonar, Argus, Opulence, Mekkatorque all had something unique/gimmicki. Some I hated, like Iskar and Mekkatorque. For Hans'gar and Franzok I always increased dialogue sounds :)
I still don't truly know what that mechanic is, despite doing that boss many times. We always had the same person do it, and he'd never mess up. I was and still am blissfully unaware.
It's an oldie, but the Shade of Aran was pretty gimmicky. He would teleport you to the centre of the room randomly and slow you to the point where you would spend several seconds walking to get to the edge of the room. If you failed to make it in time, he would throw you up into the air and the fall damage from the way down would kill you unless you had a way to slow your fall. He also had an ability that would draw a circle around everyone in the party, and anyone who would move would explode their circle and deal massive (at the time) AoE damage. I played a warlock and if I remember right, that AoE was enough to one-shot me. Also, same raid, there was the Opera which had several fights, some were weirder than others. And also the chess fight and Moroes Now that I think about, Karazhan in general was just filled to the brim with really weird fight mechanics save for like 2 or 3 bosses.
Also Shade of Aran couldn't be tanked and if you did it pre 2.1 you basically needed a warlock for banish/fear because those water elementals shit on you so hard.
I'am surprised you didn't mention the Amongus phase from Lords of Dread and to a lesser extent the rings of runes from Fatescribe Roh-Kalo. Either way, good video! Edit: and Argus The Unmaker.
Eonar????? I'm surprised you mentioned other add-focused fights without including the one where you fight off waves of adds like a tower defense game and half the raid goes onto a spaceship
Seeing new videos from your channel always makes me happy Hiru! Did you do a top ten Worst Final Bosses? I can't remember if you did, but I'd love to see that video. For example, even though I enjoyed fighting the Jailer, I was really disappointed with the fight. It was all in one room, and while I feel it was supposed to be like Argus, it was NOTHING like Argus, still my favorite end boss. You could include bosses like Malygos, which I hated doing back in Lich King.
I'd add Prophet Skitra from Ny'alotha which creates personalized illusions - everyone sees a few copies of the boss spread around the room, and the one that everybody can see it the real one. Really fun whether with proper communications or the chaos that ensued on LFR. :D
I wouldn't say "Top 10", because it is kind of hard to quantify the gimmicky-ness of an encounter (unless you explain your methodology before getting into the list, an dwho wants to hear that). Other than that, I enjoyed this video and would love to see more of them.
AQ40, Viscidus needed to hit him with frost skills in order to freeze him, and then hit him as fast as you can before he melted, it was super gimmicky.
I loved the Malygos boss fight. LK was the greatest expansion to date. I started early BC and fell in love with the game. LK and cata were excellent. But LK had amazing raid mechanics and the lore was beyond reproach. I feel like LK offered all types of players an opportunity to enjoy the content from any angle.
in cordana's hide phase, while you have to have elune's light to get close to hert in order to be revealed, spectral sight can show her location then the bearer of the light get close to her to be attacked.
The big heart thing from EN where you had to dps certain adds near the boss so he would get hit with nightmare burst so you could advance to the second stage. Not that complicated but its worth mentioning.
Desolate Host and Queen Azshara being on this list while Lord Rhyolith and Alysrazor aren't is a bit of a head scratcher for me. For Desolute Host, while it is the most complex version of the "split the party" mechanic, it is not a gimmicky one. It was old before Legion and was actually used twice in that Tomb of Sargeras. Most of these, however, only affect their immediate surroundings and were mostly get in, cleanse yourself, get out, but the Malygos encounter in Sunwell Plateau was pretty much the first version of this gimmick, and I would argue that Gara'jal was more difficult due to RNG. I wish I could remember Halion Phase 3 better, but I think that fight also had abilities that would cross the two environments. Queen Azshara was just a overwhelming ballache. Stand in the thing to mitigate the effect is the closest to a gimmick for that fight, and it was done in two very unique ways, but compared to steering Rhyolith and pilotwinging behind Alysrazor while DPSing her are much more gimmicky to me. If "gimmicky for its time" is the criteria, then Razorgore would also deserve to be ahead of other choices as not only was it the first boss fight to use wow's "delightful" vehicle combat system, it was also the first (and still only?) boss first that causes a wipe if you kill the boss too fast. But to counter my own shit piling, yeah, pretty much every raid has something gimmicky, and how many players are affected by the gimmick is probably a more important metric that the two mandatory priests for Razuvious or the eight tanks for the Four Horsemen.
Not unique but something intresting is the safety dance mechanic which has been used twice now. Heigen the Unclean in Naxx and Soulrender Dormazin in SoD.
You can kinda see the progression in MoP and going into WoD, up until current content even, that Blizzard is/was designing insanely mechanical fights to try to fight back against more and more people using WeakAuras to cheese every mechanic without having to think much about it. Some of those fights, especially Azshara, are completely ridiculous and I honestly don't think they'd be cleared by many folks outside of hardcore raiders without using WeakAuras.
1:20 at least on the groups I did this fight, they always left Frieda for last. But I don't know much because I barely did that raid on heroic at that time.
Same on my end, it'd always be Frieda: trying to find the one DPS-able add out of the entire lot was just too obnoxious for most guilds so we kill Stavros second instead :p
Do you think we gonna see the return of Onyxia in Dragon flight ? The first raid boss to be downed not be in a dragon expansion doesn't make sense to me.
I'am surprised you didn't mention the Lootship from ICC in Wotlk, now that is really just free loot and running around wondering what is going on and when it all gonna end even.
Good list, though I'm surprised only Iron Maidens was there for BRF and HFC fights. Iskar, Blast Furnace, Oregorger, etc were all pretty gimicky (most of the time in a good way) imo. Also, Lords of Dread in Sepulcher is probably one of the most gimicky fights I've seen in a long time (though arguably less than Tarragrue I'll give you that).
I actually quite liked Mythic Iron Maidens. Progress was painful at first but once you worked it out it felt like a really fun choreographed dance. Immerse us was my first mythic (it was still heroic back then) boss and I was not prepared for how aware I had to be. The ptsd realising how much stuff I had to do while being responsible for keeping an entire section of the raid alive on my own was hard, especially when atonement would heal anybody on any side of the room.
Spoils of Pandaria...I mained mage. There was always a box that would break open, decide it was my time, and one shot me. I never actually figured that one out.
I was working on my legion class mount recently and went to do desolate host which I'd never done, I only started playing WoW in 2020. It kept despawning which was annoying... but it was the two phase thing that I wasn't aware of that made it almost impossible. I finally figured it out with the help of some videos.
Whether it's people complaining about vehicle combat or underwater combat- its alarming just how many people are incapable of playing through it yet play video games at all. Never had a problem figuring out up, down, left, and right. It's like these people would be completely useless and confused if they hung upside down on monkey bars. They would go insane and need someone to help them down.
No Alysrazor from Firelands? First one that comes to mind when someone mentions a raid boss with a gimmick, one of the most fun and unique fights they've ever made. Surprised there isn't any really old bosses, usually you put them in these lists, like maybe the first couple of gimmicky bosses in Razorgore and Vael in BWL. Thinking about it, there's so many bosses in wow that can be considered gimmicky, there's multiple of them in basically every raid Blizz releases.
Immerseus was an amazing fight, what are ya'll even on about? Plus, Council of Blood, Queen Azshara, and The Tarragrue weren't actually that bad. Karazhan Chess Event, Siegecrafter Blackfuse, Spine of Deathwing, Gothik the Harvester, Icecrown Gunship Battle, Beth'tilac, Lord Rhyolith, Alysrazor, Magmaw, Nefarian's End, Sha of Pride, Galakras, Yogg-Saron, Tortos, Ji-Kun, Durumu the Forgotten...there are so many other bosses that would have made more fitting additions to the list.
so many missed opportunities here and a lot of straightforward but annoying fights on the list. Retitle it to fights that made your raid leader sigh heavier than usual and you'd have nailed it.
I wouldn’t call Iron Maidens very gimmicky. They’re probably not even in the top 3 most gimmicky bosses in Blackrock Foundry. Hanzgar and Franzok, Oregorger, and Blast Furnace come to mind. Also like others have pointed out, not having the Chess Event on here is a sin
i don't know if its a gimmick but i loved to pop all CDs on the Duel mechanic in Theatre of Pain, not on high keys or anything but it still was fun when the duel partner was serious about the duel and not just giving the win to the better dps.
Hey man I love the video, and I 100% agree with the list. But you did say something that I feel like needs to be addressed. Castle nathria was a terrible raid. The boss design was incredibly weak, the only thing positive I can say about the raid is the aesthetic, and sire phase 3. Shriekwing was a solid first boss, huntsman was okay, hungering was a boring week aura fight, inerva was an RNG dumpster fire, xymox was horrible for a number of reasons which include spell queuing, and worst of all the cardinal sin of raid bosses is creating a situation where a raid leader needs to use the phrase stop DPS, kael thas was fun depending on who you were. If you did really good AOE you probably had a lot of fun blasting, if you were a healer you were probably just stressed out the entire time, council I actually thought was kind of fun, sludge fist was solid, SLG was so terrible that I would say it's probably in the top five of worst raid boss designs ever, and sire was a total snoozefest until about 7 minutes in. This of course is my anecdotal opinion but I definitely know that I'm not alone, and it should be mentioned that my opinion is that of a CE raider. And I honestly don't remember if these bosses were good or not on normal or heroic.
Hey Hiru, love your content and I find myself constantly watching it. Here is a video idea (hope you don't have content like this already) - the history of Paladins and why it's Blizzard's favourite class and is always overpowered and just their favourite kid. Or why were shamans almost never useful as DPS but rather a utility class, which sounds dumb for people controlling the elements (when they should be overpowered as shown when Thrall just nuked Garrosh while cheating xD)
