Poll of the Day > What's the most complex/advanced boss fight in a MP / MMO?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Looking for bosses that go beyond mere gear checks and beyond mere puzzle mechanics... stuff that really satisfies the gamey feels.

According to one of the top WoW guilds, this fight

https://youtu.be/8it5rki5I10

Savages and extremes in FFXIV are so complicated it's like marching band with your eyes closed

Zareth posted...

Savages and extremes in FFXIV are so complicated it's like marching band with your eyes closed

dangit... I lament not playing 14 ever since the devs started caring about it, everyone is positive about it

What was the one boss in FFXI that took people literal years to kill it properly and the GMs would literally force into Rage mode if people did it wrong? Lol

ZangsBeard posted...

What was the one boss in FFXI that took people literal years to kill it properly and the GMs would literally force into Rage mode if people did it wrong? Lol

Absolute Virtue. Even with data mining people don't know the intended method

Thats the one. I played with it was first released. I farmed the shit out of the lower level bosses. We saw a couple of linkshells attempt it but no one lasted more than a few minutes.

Mythic Kil'jaeden was definitely up there on release. There've been a few other fights on release that were simply unfair until they got patched. Huge stacking damage, stupidly tight knockbacks happening constantly, like 50% more meteors to soak, tankbusters just did twice as much damage...

I'd argue FFXIV ultimates are up there, but it's a different kind of difficulty that requires a different kind of skill. I've always said FFXIV is like a waltz whereas WoW is like a mosh pit. WoW allows more minor mistakes without an autowipe, but there's also way more going on at any one time and the gap between skill floor and ceiling is way huger.

Now that I think of it, Guild Wars 2 wins in one specific area: challenging open world content. Dragon's End, the huge multi-hour long map event added on release of the latest expansion, had a massive failure rate last time I checked. It's still peanuts compared to these other fights in a vacuum, but for an instance that can fit up to like 100~ people, the average dps had to be very good in order to be able to succeed. Before this point, open world content in GW2 (and basically every other MMO I've seen with compelling open world content) was usually a gimme.

Lokarin posted...

Absolute Virtue. Even with data mining people don't know the intended method

I think it was actually figured out in recent years that you're meant to lock off 2-hour abilities by using your own within a second or two of the boss using it. It was figured out years later when SE released a couple videos hinting at the correct way to handle. It's still absolute fucking bullshit of a mechanic considering one of these abilities is Benediction and if you miss it can use it multiple times and also how the fuck are people going to figure that out??

as a former WoW/XIV player, the Lost Ark raid bosses seem like something else, they just look... fun. I'd love to try it but hate controlling my character's movement with the mouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARKBxQXZ96U

This is only the first fight against this boss too, there's another 2 encounters against him after this with some really unique mechanics like having to assign each player to have to play a 2D platforming minigame that gets more difficult each time.