Worst boss fights

[basketofseals]

Most story boss fights since they're insanely long and non-engaging. Extra points to the Zenos fights you're suppose to lose, but also can't lose too early.

The entirety of Void Ark. Completely unengaging snore fests which is impressive considering probably less than 1% of players were even able to get gear out of Gordias. I'm convinced that this place would be a cake walk even if you did it with fresh 60 leveling gear.

Zurvan/A11, although this is more of a meta reason, but I blame these fights for the disgustingly disproportionate "dps>everything" attitude that still plagues the community to this day.

[Avidria]

The entirety of Void Ark. Completely unengaging snore fests which is impressive considering probably less than 1% of players were even able to get gear out of Gordias. I'm convinced that this place would be a cake walk even if you did it with fresh 60 leveling gear.

I'm pretty sure it's a combination of hugely outgearing it now and... Did they add echo to it? I genuinely don't remember, but I do not remember it being a snoozefest when it was new. Definitely not what I'd call hard, and not bad at all with a good group, but I remember wipe after wipe after wipe on just about every boss but the first. Cthulhu or whatever the slime tentacle guy was was the worst, but I had so many wipes to people getting eaten on leaf dog, and people not knowing what to do for the haircut mechanics on the last boss. Heck, I had wipes on the triple morbol pull after the first boss more than once. People didn't kill the sprout things and the explosions from it would just wipe people out.

I actually loved void ark though lmao, it's just outdated now and slowly suffering the same fate as CT... becoming a boring snoozefest because most of the mechanics can just be skipped or ignored now.

[Vyrerus]

They lowered the total HP values on all old 24 man raid bosses is what they did. That's part of why it's a snoozefest,

Also, all y'all saying Steps of Faith is boring. I understand that in this age, but how many of you did it before they nerfed its HP value, step on damage, and all that jazz? Cause like, I remember when it paid to explain to people the tactics you had to employ, to not jump the gun on the dragon killers after the first, assigning people to the chain tethers and stuff. Without coordinating it, failure was pretty much a given, and I don't see how something where you have to coordinate would be boring.

As for Stepjam's comment on if you fell behind and had to wait till the end... that was deliberate, so that you could see everything that was going to happen and plan for it on the next go around. Yeah, waiting when you know the outcome is kind of a bummer, but them letting you see the whole fight even if you were way behind was kind of the greatest amount of leniency any fight has ever had, and they still nerfed it due to players having trouble with it.

[yukiiyuki]

They lowered the total HP values on all old 24 man raid bosses is what they did. That's part of why it's a snoozefest,

Also, all y'all saying Steps of Faith is boring. I understand that in this age, but how many of you did it before they nerfed its HP value, step on damage, and all that jazz? Cause like, I remember when it paid to explain to people the tactics you had to employ, to not jump the gun on the dragon killers after the first, assigning people to the chain tethers and stuff. Without coordinating it, failure was pretty much a given, and I don't see how something where you have to coordinate would be boring

Oh, this nice times when this walking dragon pops up and everyone except novice guy just leaves, because people are lazy to press any buttons or even bother to do mechanics in roulettes. Game had nice ideas, that was killed by people who don't want to play game, and that's about most of our playerbase.

[basketofseals]

I'm pretty sure it's a combination of hugely outgearing it now and...

I actually loved void ark though lmao, it's just outdated now and slowly suffering the same fate as CT... becoming a boring snoozefest because most of the mechanics can just be skipped or ignored now.

It was complete snoresville even on launch with mostly everyone in 170-180 gear. You could stand in anything and not die. It wasn't Lahabrea levels of easy, but it wasn't far from it.

[negiman4]

It depends on what you mean by "worst". If by "worst", you mean "most boring", there's plenty of contenders. Almost every boss fight from levels 1-50 (excluding patch content) is mind-numbingly boring and only expect you to have a higher brain function than a star fish. So many bosses in this level range just simply don't have mechanics at all. I could forgive the early levels for this, but I would expect to start seeing mechanics that MUST be dealt with by Haukke Manor (lv. 30). The worst offender here in my opinion is the first two bosses in The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. Widely considered to be the worst dungeon in the game, the first two bosses in this dungeon are literal copies of one another. You fight the same boss two separate times in that dungeon, and it pisses me off more than anything.

Now, if you mean "most poorly designed", I can give you several here too. All of the bosses in Castrum Meridianum/Praetorium are poorly designed. Period. Sure, they have mechanics, usually. But they're often disjointed and extremely unfun. For example, the first fight with the Ultima Weapon in the Praetorium, he's literally nearly invincible for the first 30 seconds of the fight, rendering your attacks useless while he just goes ham on you. This would normally be a great way to set up the Ultima Weapon to be more imposing, but it falls flat because Hydaelyn literally just says "swiggity swooty, you may now smack the booty" and you can hit him like any other enemy. So you're actually just supposed to sit there while Ultima Weapon flails around until Hydaelyn Deus ex-machina's his ass. Awful. Then there's Lahabrea, who's actually the final boss of ARR 2.0. And he's down in actual seconds, has zero mechanics, and it's just SO anticlimactic! HUGE disappointment for anyone! And before you folks start with "oh it was way harder back in the day" NO IT WAS NOT! I was THERE, two weeks after launch, running Praetorium and it was JUST as disappointing back then as it is now! Week 3 after launch, and people were already taking ALL of their gear off for Lahabrea because he's always been SO EASY!

You also have all of the bosses in all three of the Crystal Tower raids, which were all poorly designed in terms of future proofing. Crystal Tower was fantastic back in its heyday, but now it's absolute garbage. None of the bosses, save a small handful, were implemented with the future in mind. As time went on, bosses that used to have mechanics are now just burn rushes. You can skip almost every single mechanic on every single boss in the Crystal Tower raids. Hell, Glasya Lebolas in ST hasn't shown his platform jumping mechanics to people in ages! I bet you didn't even know he had a platform jumping mechanic! This is poor game design. Heavensward raids don't have this issue, neither does Stormblood raids.

[Recon1o6]

Hell, Glasya Lebolas in ST hasn't shown his platform jumping mechanics to people in ages! I bet you didn't even know he had a platform jumping mechanic!

As of the last live letter a lot of people did finally learn about its existence, but before that I haven't seen it since hmm...I will be generous and say when the max ilevel was 115. Hell glasya was a joke even at launch in terms of his hp pool. I only recall doing the jumping a handful of times

yoshiP and a server went and did CT and ST unsynced...they wiped on glasya twice XD everyone even yoshi himself was struggling because nobody had seen the mechanics in years, same with crystal tower
The behemoth kicked everybody's ass a couple of times too

[Morningstar1337]

Any boss where u can ignore/skip mechanics and still win.

So everything but Savage, got it :P

[Avidria]

It was complete snoresville even on launch with mostly everyone in 170-180 gear. You could stand in anything and not die. It wasn't Lahabrea levels of easy, but it wasn't far from it.

I guess our experiences just differed then, because there was certainly a lot of dying going on when I was running those raids. Like. The amount of people who either didn't know or didn't bother to try to deal with the mechanics was staggering. I had a group wipe three times in a row to enrage on the leaf dog boss once. It was hilarious. And awful. Lmao

Anyway Lahabrea sucked too, super anticlimactic fight. Especially after that sea of cutscenes and crap that built him up to be hateable. Was surprised by how quick he just... flopped over when I did it, even if it was like. The very end of ARR, very beginning of HW when I did it

[Roda]

Samurai boat fight. It just feels way too over tuned for what it is. :T