boss type

Sometimes regular heroes and their badass gear just aren't enough. Sometimes, the boss is just too big, or just too aerial. Then it's time for the raid to hop aboard something (or someone) and defeat evil with a shiny new action bar. This is a Vehicle Gimmick.

The effectiveness of the raid's vehicles usually scales with gear score, regardless of how good that gear might be in the player's typical role.

A Gear Check is an encounter designed to be winnable via numbers: the sturdiness of the raid's tanks, the damage per second produced by the raid's damage dealers, and the ability of the healers to sustain the raid. A boss in such an encounter has few to no gimmicks but a middle-of-the-road (or sometimes aggressive) Doomsday Clock.

Examples

• Naxxramas
  • Patchwerk is the archetypical gear check.

Sometimes the boss doesn't do as much physical damage as magic damage - flame breath, frost auras, and so forth - and the encounter is basically unbeatable without mitigating this damage. In such cases, the MT, all tanks, or even all raid members are expected to wear alternative gear that provides resistance against one or more schools of magic.

The Pull From Hell is found whenever there is difficulty just starting the boss encounter without totally losing it. The reasons for this can be many, but they all boil down to a complicated set of actions that are required to engage the boss with any hope of success.

Examples

• Gruul's Lair
  • The King Maulgar encounter was usually started by the mage, who would Pyroblast his tanking target.

The boss is assisted by one or more additional mobs, who rank as bosses in their own right but frequently have few to no special gimmicks of their own, and less HP to boot.

These bosses are sometimes optional; leaving one or more alive activates Hard Mode.

Examples

• Bastion of Twilight
  • Halfus Wyrmbreaker has a rotating roster of helpers, either individual dragons or whelps. While a dragon is up, Halfus is penalized in some fashion, but the raid must tank the dragon. Killing a dragon puts a debuff on Halfus which increases damage dealt.

An encounter sometimes features a boss who has helpers or support, either summoned during the fight or present at the start.

If these mobs merit the title (and HP pool) of "boss" in their own right, they are Minibosses. If fighting the adds is a prerequisite to a successful Phase Transition and the boss is relatively invulnerable during that time, then it has an Add-Powered Bubble.

The "boss" actually comes in the form of multiple mobs which share an HP pool, resurrect if only one of them is killed, or something similar. In practice, the DPS usually splits up somehow to handle these encounters. If the bosses are tackled in sequence, or are otherwise relatively unique entities, you are probably in a Multiboss encounter.

Examples

• Bastion of Twilight
  • Valiona and Theralion share a health pool. While one dragon is on the ground, the other will fly around causing trouble.

A Multiboss encounter consists of two or more actual bosses, rather than just a Boss With Adds. Tanks must usually be dedicated to each boss in the encounter, and the DPS will generally focus fire on one at a time.

If the bosses are homogenous or have their HP pools linked in some fashion, you're fighting Conjoined Twins.

Examples

• Throne of the Four Winds
  • The Conclave of Wind is made of three bosses with their own health pools, tactics and requirements.