The raid list- exactly how hard IS this stuff?Follow

First, a warning. Ranking the difficulty of mobs is a very dangerous thing. Guilds are extremely complex entities all things considered, when you think about the makeup of them. Some guilds' strength is their dps. Some have a great support structure with some extremely alert healers. Some have fantastic crowd control. Some are strong in all areas, some feel they are just getting by. And for any guild strong in one area, and weaker in another, some encounters will be hard or easy for them that is just the opposite for another guild.

That said, there's a very broad outline of difficulty of raids you can group by, and though I don't write short posts in general (for which I do heartily apologize), actually saying -why- I consider each mob difficult or easy and killable by what would make an unworkably huge post. So I'll try to list raids in broad categories, and if anyone has any specific questions on why I group something or what a raid is, I'd be more than happy to go into detail.

1. Pre-raid encounters. Basically, these are encounters that once were considered pure, hardcore raid encounters that just aren't looked at that way anymore. Mudflation and just an upward growth of the playerbase has basically made them one grouppable. But these are the kind of things that people looking to get their feet wet on raiding could try, to experiment with mobs that aren't really MEANT to xp on, but probably can be taken now with roughly an xp group.
- Nagafen
- Vox
- Phinigel Autropos
- Reavers/Lords in City of Mist
- Chardok royalty
- Venril Sathir
- Ring of Slime in Cazic
- Gnome-walk in Cazic
- Nameds in icewell (aside from Dain)
- Non-nameds in Temple of Veeshan for armor
- Many, many epic mobs
- Faydedar
- Kelorek'dar
- Mindburrower
- Acrylia worm thing
- Some PoN named
- Kod'taz+ xp nameds
- Elemental/Ferubi xp nameds

2. The next step is kind of a broad category of, 'What is probably single grouppable for very high up players, but is doable by 3-4 groups of starting ones'. Quite a bit fits this category, not all in the same league. Very extreme examples one way or the other I try to avoid.
- All Kunark dragons (trakanon, sev, etc). Wuoshi.
- Some Grieg's end nameds (mostly 2-grouppable)
- VP
- Sky
- Ring of Fear in cazic
- Golems in fear
- Hedge Maze
- Chamber of Souls (in qinimi), kind of
- Riwwi slave uprising
- Thall Va Xakras in vex
- Va'dyn
- Temariel in vex
- Some epic end mobs.
- BoT lords

3. Next comes true raid mobs that very high level players might kill with extremely small numbers, but takes a full on raid of lower level players. This is probably the category where the gap in strength between very well equipped top raiders and newer raiders can be most seen.

- Higher Velious content (doze, key dragons, ntov, dain, etc)
- Lower ssra/luclin bosses (Creator, Glyped, THO, Itraer Vius)
- Seru (very, very easy for his loot quality)
- Some lower PoP mobs- Terris, Behemoth, Grummus, and so on.
- Zun Muram Votal
- Vex tuned LDoN raids (takish, rujark)
- Most Vex bosses
- Ikkinz end bosses, for glorification at least
- Primals in Yxtta
- Some easier elemental minis (the mighty pyronis)
- Barindu event
- Kod'taz skull event (first house)
- Kod'taz pit event
- Msha's of qvic (and tempted to rank them even lower, which is pretty funny considering they drop best-of-slot stuff)

4. Next is the category where you start to see the real powergap between numbers and gear of medium to large raiding guilds, and where most nonraiders just start to (imho incorrectly) call everyone high end and you'd see lower turnout guilds have problems in some cases.
- Harder elemental minis (esp dust ring, arbitor of earth)
- Mith Marr, Bertox
- Elemental tuned LDoN raids (miragul, butcherblock)
- Emp Ssra, hardest luclin content
- Ring of Vulak and Tunare to a degree that they are hard enough for their audience where they are left alone
- New Inno in hate
- Mindrider
- Summoner Ring
- Probably Ikkinz Transcedence
- Some Time stuff
- Iqthinxa/Cynosure of Qvic

5. There's some exceptionally harder mobs that usually mark transitional periods for guilds, and ones that most raid guilds have some struggle with when they encounter them. For some guilds these are huge stoppers, and while this again is broad (some of the mobs are significantly stronger than others), very very few guilds can engage these mobs with low numbers on a whim.
- RZ
- Most Time gods
- Elemental Gods
- Synarcana/Valdoon LDoN raids
- Uqua mini bosses
- And for sheer pain and agony, a lot of single group GoD events

6. Finally, there's the bleeding edge that changes often, and when nonraiders throw out the top 5% figure (and they mean all raiders), really they should be talking about this category. This is typically pretty buggy, very often frequently retuned, and tends to be very difficult at the time it's attempted.
- Barxt of Uqua
- Ikkinz Antechamber in general now
- VZ, Innoruuk in Time. Quarm depending on your makeup. All more belonging to the last group really, but are exceptionally hard for that group.
- Guk, both Rujark, Takish Time level LDoN Raids. To note, the vast majority of servers have never beaten these.
- Inktu'Ta, I hate cursebearers
- Trexvu
- Tacvi

Feel free to add your comments, flame me for atrociously misjudging something, mention I forgot something, and so on. I'm always curious to read it.

"- Ring of Vulak and Tunare to a degree that they are hard enough for their audience where they are left alone"

They are left alone due to the fact that the loot is crap compared to the time involved to complete the event. I would drop this to #3. If you can beat TT or Grummus, you can kill Tunare if you want to clear the plane. Vulak is a joke these days also.

But what about the fire beatle raids?

Crush was a push over, but that ******* DE Ambassador can swing on deez nutz.