Boss encounters from other MMOs

[Chiramu]

Shade of Aran from The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft; mid-way through the encounter he polymorphs (turns you all into sheep) and he sits down to drink. That is probably the only really funny things from a WoW boss encounter that I have encountered.

Currently in WoW, the boss encounters have nothing on FFXIV, in fact I wish WoW looked more like FFXIV . The World of Warcraft with the look of Eorzea would be the best!

[Ukiyo]

Some people dislike gimmiks but some things make fights interesting like in FFXI versus Odin you had to /kneel before him in order to avoid Zantetsuken if my memory serves correctly. This game has an ever growing emote collection it could be interesting to involve them some how. And jus in general boss fights that require parties to do certain things in order to avoid damage deat. Ffxi diabolous with the falling platforms would be interesting to see again.

[Fendred]

I personally enjoyed the primal ex fights, and I think they are some of the best fights in the game. They take what is familiar about the previous bosses and add new variants to the abilities. More importantly, quick thinking can save you on almost all of the ex primal fights save ifrit's room wide plumes.

Twintania on the other hand... yeah, that fight is kinda... It's not that it's difficulty bothers me, but rather that they didn't do a good job at prepping the player for the fight. Getting one shotted by stuff that you couldn't see coming isn't a "hard challenge" any more than standing in the open and getting sniped by a sharp shooter you didn't know was there.

[Duelle]

Nefarian was the final boss of a raid dungeon called Blackwing Lair.

Once you've beaten the adds and you start to fight Nefarian himself, he has a move where he chooses one class at random and does something to all members of that particular class. Some class callouts are extremely dangerous (Mind-controlled Shamans were huge trouble) and some not so dangerous . When he's about to cast this spell, you have to be prepared for all eight possibilities and react accordingly. The way to deal with each variation are wildly different depending on class.

I'm ashamed to say I completely forgot about Nefarian. The idea of the class calls was very neat.

◾Death Knights, get over here! (draw in the whole raid)
◾Druids and your silly shapeshifting. Let's see it in action! (turns all druids in the raid into a cat)
◾Hunters and your annoying pea-shooters! (weapon instantly broken)
◾Mages too? You should be more careful when you play with magic... (turns random raid members into animals)
◾Priests! If you're going to keep healing like that, we might as well make it a little more interesting! (all direct heals place a stacking DoT on their targets)
◾Paladins, I've heard you have many lives. Show me. (makes boss immune to physical damage)
◾Rogues? Stop hiding and face me! (teleports all rogues in the raid close to the boss and roots them)
◾Shamans, show me what your totems can do! (boss gets access to totems, AKA stationary constructs with buff auras that affect the boss and the adds that join the fight)
◾Warriors, I know you can hit harder than that! Let's see it! (forces all warriors in the raid into berserker stance, taking 30% more damage for the duration)
◾Warlocks, you shouldn't be playing with magic you don't understand. See what happens? (summones two powerful adds per warlock in the raid)

My take on class calls:
◾Dragoons, show me how high you can jump! (all DRGs in the raid jump but instead of hitting the boss, land in place and take falling damage)
◾Paladins, I've heard you can withstand any attack. Show me. (boss becomes immune to damage)
◾Warriors, give in to the beast! (all WARs in the raid go berserk, attacking both friend and foe)
◾Bards, you wanted to dedicate yourselves to singing. Your wish is granted. (BRD MP is set to 0, and forces the BRD to sing Fool's Requiem, draining the BRD's HP while also damaging the raid)
◾White Mages, let's make those heals more interesting! (direct heals do damage equal to the amount they would normally heal)
◾Black Mages, you've meddled with powers beyond your understanding... (meteors rain from the skies, continuously damaging the raid)
◾Summoners, let's see how you like bigger egis! (triples the size of summoned Egi, increasing the Egis' damage and turning them on the raid)
◾Scholars, show me the power of your faeries! (boss is affected by both Fey Glow and Fey Light as well as a damage absorbtion shield)

[Xellos2099]

Shandra Manaya (Hard) and Kelsaik (Hard) in TERA were some of my favorite fights. The debuff swapping, the DPS checks and the randomness of their AI made for fun fights, especially when we didn't overgear the encounters. Shandra was especially unforgiving during the last 8% when she basically ate steroids and all her attacks came out 3x as fast and hit 3x as hard.

Kelsaik extreme was pretty hard too. MCHM was fun as well but got to love those troll vanrach for boardcasting Enrage timer is up

[Ashira]

Hell no, unless Weight of the Land gets a cast time increase of at least 0,5 seconds.
It's already a pain to avoid Weights at 100+ ms, when you can anticipate when they're coming.

Well that's more of an issue with Weight of the Land and people with latency than it is a problem with my methodology.

[Felis]

I think they should put in some randomness into the fights like it was in 1.0
During 1.0 it was only scripted which skills a boss use in which phases and the time the boss change to the next phase and sometimes also the time between the attacks. The sequence of the skills were random.
As example Ifrit, some times he only jumped 1 or 2 times in the 2nd phase, other time he jumped 10 times. I found it good if he jumped a lot. Gave the players time to heal up and rebuff.

[WhaleBiologist]

Kael'thas Sunstrider or bust. Most memorable kill I've had and why I even bother raiding anymore.

[bokchoykn]

Kael'thas Sunstrider or bust. Most memorable kill I've had and why I even bother raiding anymore.

I thought everything about the fight was really cool except for the part where he animates the weapons that fight you. I thought that part was really goofy.

[Stormblossom]

My favorite raid fight was Saryrn during the Planes of Power expansion in EQ. Saryrn was a tank and spank boss that required fairly hard heals on the main tank, but otherwise was herself nothing special. Saryrn had a pet bird named Sorrowsong who flew in circles around the arena with a continuous AE silence radiating off of it. Sorrowsong was invulnerable at the beginning of the fight. At certain health percentages, Saryrn summoned waves of other smaller birds as adds that had low health but hit extremely hard. The offtanks had to focus on picking the small birds up as fast as possible and the dps had to burn them down. This fight was cool for me because instead of the melee dps having to dance constantly in and out of annoying AE attacks while the ranged sat around, the positions were reversed. The casters had to flee in circles constantly repositioning then casting from the silencing bird while the melee dps were able to simply run up and beat on things. Once you got Saryrn down to 20% health Sorrowsong ended his scripted invulnerable flight and became a tankable enemy, at which point he was burned from max range by casters with blood in their eye. If you got to the point that Sorrowsong died, the fight was basically won, you just turned around and finished off the goddess who had summoned him.