This is a thread for people who are sick of the majority of bosses being your average tank and spank or survival, etc. and have some creative new ideas for raid or dungeon encounters. Ill start it off with one of mine, and feel free to post your own ideas below.

NAME OF ENCOUNTER: High Priest <Insert Name>

HEALTH: 10/25 man Lich King standard

TYPE OF ENCOUNTER: Race against Time

BOSS ABILITIES: ---Standard Shadow Priest abilities buffed up to boss standard

 ---Ritual of Sacrifice: Used frequently in Phase 2 of fight and onwards. After switch to phase 2, for the rest of fight the High Priest will cast this once every 1-2 minutes in 10 man mode, once every 60 seconds in 25 man. This ability is unsilencable and channeled for 10 seconds. Target of Ritual is teleported over to the Voodoo Altar near the boss and suspended just above it with chains, much like ability holding High Overlord Saurfang during Deathbringer Saurfang (ICC) fight. S

The Ritual lasts for 10 seconds and raid warnings appear stating: "<Sacrificed Player> screams in pain!" If the ritual goes on unstopped, the sacrificed player explodes with dark magic, hitting all players in the room for 75'000 shadow damage. THis cannot be resisted.  The only way to stop this wipe from occuring is for the free players to kill the Sacrificed Player before the 10 seconds are up.

Mojo Portal: High Priest <...> summons a Mojo Portal which spawns level -- elite Hexfiends.

Ritual of Oblivion: 4 Players are selected, teleported to form a square formation around the raid and are given a debuff similiar to Ritual of Sacrifice. However, the 4 are connected and at start of RItual of Oblivion, share a countdown of 10 seconds. Once one of the imprisoned Sacrifice-ees are killed, the connection to the other sacrificees is broken, and the countdown for all of the sacrificees is reset to 10 seconds. This repeats until all 4 sacrificees are dead.

STRATEGY:

Phase 1: Players start at the bottom of a spiralling ramp that goes up a small spire. At the top of the spire is the Boss. Level -- normal mobs are all along the ramp, and players must fight their way past. As players ascend the ramp, the High Priest will target a random location near a random player and shoot a dangerous Shadow bolt volley at that area. Players must avoid these. This continues until players reach the platform at the top of the spire.

Phase 2: Main phase. Every 60 to 90 seconds depending on the raid setting, the Boss will cast Ritual of Sacrifice. A random player will be held above the Altar, and unless the raid kills the sacrifice-ee, they will be hit by a dark magic explosion for 75k damage. This is the race against time. Your raid must have enough DPS to kill the Boss before your numbers are too depleted to kill the High Priest.

During Phase 2, between each Ritual, the High Priest will also open a Mojo Rift, and an unlimited amount of Hexfiends will begin to slowly spawn from it. Hexfiends are level -- elites which will attack the players with the LOWEST threat first. Once the portal is destroyed, however, all the Hexfiends are killed if the portal is destroyed. Therefore, players must be assigned to kill the portals quickly and effectively.

(Phase 2 continues until High Priest <......> reaches 5% health)

Phase 3: At 5% health the High Priest will teleport to centre of the platform and hover in the air, chanting. He cannot be harmed during this phase. 5 seconds after he begins to chant, 4 random players are instantly arranged in a square formation around the raid and are channeled with Ritual of Oblivion. One of these 4 players must be killed before 10 seconds are up, otherwise the raid will be hit for 100k magic damage and given the debuff "Hex of Oblivion", preventing them from entering the High Priest's Chamber for another 5 minutes. Once one of the sacrificees are killed, the timer for the other 3 resets to 10 seconds. Once another sacrificee is killed the timer resets to 10 seconds again and so forth. During this phase the boss will also use shadow bolt volleys and AoE fears at random locations near players. This continues until all of the sacrificees are dead, and the Ritual is aborted.

Phase 4: Once the Ritual of Oblivion is stopped, Phase 4 begins. A small event occurs. The High Priest begins to scream incoherent phrases at the players, and several shadow bolt-style special effects begin to swarm around him. Death Grip-style bolts of dark energy resurrect all of the players who were sacrificed with full health and mana. The boss continues to shout random quotes at players and pulse with shadow magic before he finally explodes, his soul flying around and becoming trapped in his now abandoned staff.

NOTES:-- Due to the fact that finishing Phase 4 is an instant win, players do not actually kill the High Priest. Once Phase 4 is complete a small event occurs where the priests own voodoo sorcery inverts on him and imprisons his soul in his magical staff. Therefore, players get loot from the staff, not a corpse.

--Also, to prevent players missing out on loot, players who are sacrificed cannot release spirit. Attempting to will result in the message "Dark magic prevents your soul from escaping".

--Due to the boss health, fight mechanics and moderately sized phases that make up this encounter, this encounter does not have an "Enrage" timer. Players will simply not be able to survive losing their players automatically if they do not kill the boss fast enough.

Please tell me what you think. I know its a bit long, but I think its a nice step away from your average encounter :)

Remember to post your own ideas below!

No just because I always hate when you control what happens. way to much randomness with players always at random literly dying, more or less. This for me is just to much control taken away from the players. I do like the ideas of the boss though, and I'm always for a race against time. I think its just the timing between these occurances though. But losing 4 players late boss is way to much, and far to out of the players control. Have defeating these 4 players instantly end the phase.

Phase 1 is great. Possibly have a kind of darkness creeping up the spire aswell. That way players are constaly pushed forwards along with the random AoEs.

Phase 2 is just way to frequent to basicly kill a random player. But I love how this forces the players to divide into teams. One to keep the DPS/tank on the boss, another to DPS the players who get chosen.

Phase 3, could work but again, once they finish off the players have it end the fight there.