I may have spoken a bit too soon about Naxxramas being %26quot;too easy%26quot;. It%26#39;s not as tough for new 80s as Karazhan was for new 70s, but once you get into the Construct Quarter and Military Quarter there are some fun challenges. Right now my guild has made it%26#39;s way through Military Quarter, but just barely, and is working on Grobbulus in Naxx/10 and just starting on Patchwerk in Naxx/25.
My favourite fight so far is The Four Horsemen, a 4 boss tour-de-force requiring raid movement, careful positioning, tank handoffs, ranged tanking, and a lot of awareness from the entire raid. It%26#39;s a really great fight and a good challenge. I feel particularly proud of how we figured it out in Naxx/10 this week. And we just got it down in Naxx/25 last night, where it%26#39;s significantly harder.
The basic gimmick is that each boss has a 45 yard aura that puts a stacking debuff (%26quot;mark%26quot;) on you. The first three aren%26#39;t bad, but the fourth mark hits hard and the fifth will likely kill you. So no one in your raid can stay within 45 yards of any one boss for more than a minute or so. The room is big enough that you can stay out of range of any boss you feel like, but if you want to DPS or heal a melee tank you have to move. And to further complicate things, the two bosses in the back (Lady Blaumeux and Sir Zeliek) are best tanked from range by casters: warlocks, shadow priests, etc.
The basic strategy, then, is to bring each boss to one corner of the room and have the tanks switch off every minute when they get three stacks of the mark. It%26#39;s not too hard for the melee tanks, basically once a minute they back the bosses up to each other and taunt off each other. You can either then have the tank drag the new boss back to the same corner or have all the DPS and healers follow the tank across the room so everyone swaps sides.
It%26#39;s a bit trickier in back with the range tanks. They tank by proximity, not aggro, so the victim just needs to be the closest to the two back bosses. But they need to swap, too, and the healers ideally have to be close enough to the ranged tankers to heal them but far enough to avoid the auras entirely. Or else be smart about watching marks stack and moving as necessary. In both Naxx/10 and Naxx/25 this healer positioning was the hardest thing and once we figured that out the fight was ours.
The fight%26#39;s supposed to get easier once you get the first boss down. But in some ways it%26#39;s harder because your simple strategy of swapping every minute doesn%26#39;t work anymore and instead you have a bit of chaos as people look at their mark debuffs and figure out where it%26#39;s safe to be. Also things get ugly when the melee goes after the two bosses in back, lots of raid damage.
I had a nice Hero Bear moment on our kill in Naxx/25. One of our ranged tanks went down just as we killed the first melee boss. So I dashed over to start tanking Lady Blaumeux myself in bear form. It%26#39;s not ideal, but even in cat gear I had some 35k hit points and enough self healing to last for awhile. Then someone better suited took over for me so I went back to kill the second melee boss, then people started dying left and right and before too long it was clear we needed someone with a lot of HP to soak damage. So I ended up alternating tanking on the last two bosses, relying on Barkskin, Feral Instinct, etc to help bridge the damage. Our healers were absolutely fantastic and did a great job of adjusting to figuring out who was tanking at what moment and keep us alive long enough for the DPS to take them out. And a win!
It%26#39;s a great fight, I really like how it requires everyone to think on their feet and be aware of what%26#39;s going on. Great game design. It%26#39;s also one of those fights that you really learn, and once you understand it things will go smoother the next time.