The Daily Grind: What's your least favorite sort of boss fight?

Any boss fight where you have to look at a guide to complete to work out what is even going on is a problem in my books. If its not obvious what you have to do then somethings wrong. People shouldn't have to use external resources just to be able to complete raids/dungeons/etc.

Also, anything that requires perfect choreography or perfect group composition is another problem. So what if my groups of friends haven't rolled a perfect group, that shouldn't stop us doing everything.

Nice screenie! I just did that fight last night, lol!

Anything where the boss goes immune or unattackable in stages. Oh boy, we're down to 50%! Time to deal with random minions again!

I agree that having to have a certain set up can be annoying, but perfect choeography makes for interesting battles i think. Especially since flawless execution in such battles feels extremely rewarding, unlike tank'n'spank fights which are plain boring whatever you do.

In my opinion DPS races are some of the less interesting encounters, if that alone, although i've seen some that were quite entertaining. Vaelastrasz in BWL for instance added an aggro management aspect and also gave crazy buffs, which made that encounter fun.

Encounters that require massively clearing before actually reaching the boss, e.g. Broodlord (BWL) or wave-type the initial Mount Hyjal encounter in TBC (All WoW i know, its the only MMO i've actually done much endgame in) can also be pretty frustrating, especially since they tend to be so time-consuming when done wrong...

Nevertheless, i think the overall composition of encounters in a raid or dungeon has a higher impact on how irritating it is than an individual encounter itself.

I can't stand the types of boss encounters that have the mentality of "if one person is out of step, the whole thing is shot". I know this tends to push for your whole party to be more skilled and paying attention, but in the case of an encounter I remember where one party member is set to explode unless they get some distance from the rest, it always came down to one or two whom just don't have the latency or mental awareness to move enough. So, one person's inability to pay attention spoils the fun for everyone else.

Yeah, the solution was always either get that person on track or replace them, but once you fix that, another would just stop paying attention. No room for error, can't stand it.

I get fed up any time there is so much crap going on that I end up watching and clicking on little green health bars. It makes it painfully obvious how pointless what we're doing is. I could make my screen flash by clicking cells in Excel but it doesn't make it a fun game.

I hate boss fights with loads of adds. A boss with 2 very powerfull adds is ok, but not a boss with a swarm of small adds that just overwhelm you and your monitor. That being said dps race / tank and spank is kinda boring.

Still, worse of all are bosses that have soooooo much going on you have no idea what's happening and you need to read 10 pages of a wiki to have even the smallest idea of what's going on

I like your screenshot (from Dragon Age 2). I have to say this rock wraith monster was the first boss fight in DA2 wherein I got totally owned on my first couple of tries.

I found the boss fight with Shiro Tagachi in Guild Wars Factions to be pretty irritating, because he used a special immunity "meditation" skill that destroyed you once he was done but was exceedingly hard to stop or prevent.

I also don't like twitch boss fights (like Cyndr the Mountainheart in Guild Wars) where you have to run around gathering items (bombs, in this case) or activating switches while simultaneously getting owned by the boss.

I can't stand DPS races. They force certain group configurations. I like playing characters that focus on the intangible skills (CC, debuff roles) where timing and selecting the right mob is important. This role is usually passed up for DPS races, because a dead mob is better than a debuffed/CCd mob that you still have to kill.

I hate straightforward bosses, that have two or so mechanics, which you are guaranteed to kill if you know what you're doing. I like to feel that a boss could just as easily own me as i can own him.

This isn't for a particular boss fight, but a concept of boss design in general. Through most games, you get all kinds of nifty abilities, interrupts, crowd control, etc, that, for whatever reason, don't work in 90% of boss fights. In the fights where they do work, not using those abilities will spoil the whole fight. That is just a stupid design decision. If you want to design a boss who casts a spell that cannot be interrupted, make it an instant cast. If you give it a cast bar, then anyone who can counter spell should be able to do so.

I dislike any boss that, if lucky crits and one-shots someone, puts a debuff on the wrong person or generally does or does not completely neuter you based on a RNG.