Talk:Boss

Real Boss
What is a 'REAL' boss? How are they different from lower level bosses? --Zootsko 11:59, 3 April 2006 (EDT)
 * The distinction should really be made between mini-bosses (named quest targets and elite named mobs before the end of an instance), outdoor raid bosses (like end-of-instances bosses but outside), instance bosses (end of instance bosses) and city bosses (skull bosses of cities). Some might even distinguish between end-game raid bosses (those where you need level 60/70 raid groups to get to) and regular end bosses of 5-man instances. --Fandyllic 4:24 PM PDT 12 Jul 2006

Skull Bosses
In Reality their level is 0, I tested it on a Private server and when you do .setlevel 0 that will add the "skull Bosses".--Malexe 10:57, 12 July 2006


 * A private server doesn't prove anything. I know of a server, where you can set the level and the boss flag independantly, so I can create a "Level 1 (Boss)" (which will always be shown as a skull-boss) as well as a "Level 73 (Boss)" (which will also be a skull-boss). Privatekey 21:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

It might be worth mentioning in this page that skull or ?? bosses will scale with the player's level (playerlevel+3) for the purposes of hit table generation. Here's the official post stating as much. This has been a topic of some discussion amongst guilds/groups looking to see some of the lvl-60 raid content. --Anaea 10:21, 31 January 2007 (EST)

pre-TBC: Bosslevel = Level 63
Executing the GM command ".npcinfo" on a pre-TBC "skull boss" would return "Level 63", that's also what's on the serverside database. In the beta phase of World of Warcraft some API function returned "Level 500" for skull bosses, which was confirmed to just be some "randomly chosen" number the beta server gave the client for these NPCs to make sure the level will never be displayed to the player. A true "Level 500" mob could never be hit by a player because the chance to hit a NPC drops dramatically if the NPC's level increases. Also the level of a player and NPC is stored inside an (unsigned) 8-bit integer value, which cannot store any number greater than 255.

After beta phase, the level sent to the client was changed to the real level, (which, at least for pre-TBC, was "Level 63" for a skull boss) along with a "boss flag", which made the client hide the level and display the skull instead. At high latency situations, however, bosses sometimes revealed their true levels ("Level 63 (Boss)") to the players, although this was a very rare case. As for the later time, I've never heard of such a case again, so it seems this bug is fixed now.

From then on, "boss flagged" mobs or NPCs never revealed their level, even if they were of a friendly faction (for example "Highlord Bolvar Fordragon" is friendly to alliance players, but is displayed with a skull instead of a level), while a "Level 1" alliance player can see the level of the "Level 72 (Elite)" NPC "General Marcus Jonathan" for example. This also indicates that boss mobs don't have the skull displayed because of their high level but only because of their boss flag.

As of Burning Crusade, I'm not sure if the bosses which were added post-v.2.0.0 are now "Level 73" rather than "Level 63". The only thing I'm sure about is that bosses of pre-TBC instances and pre-TBC world raid encounters are still considered "Level 63".

Finally, the level of a boss does not really matter, since the level of a mob only changes the hit/crit/miss-chances, which are (concerning boss flagged NPCs) always considered as three levels higher than the player. The level of an NPC does, contrary to popular belief, only affect the hit/miss/crit-chances and not the Hitpoints, DPS or Mana, which are stored as seperate attributes in the server side database. (Also note that HP/DPS/Mana are different between NPCs of the same level, which also shows the independance of these stats from the mob's level.) And since the only level-dependant parameters for mobs are based on player level for bosses, the boss' own level does not affect anything. Privatekey 13:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, the "GM command" .npcinfo is just a command made by the creator of whatever private server that command was used on. If I am correct that it was used on a private server, than it used an unofficial database, and those do not necessarily correspond to the databases on live servers. --Maceman 09:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * True, but in the early days of WoW, there were also situations, in which the actual level was revealed to players on official Blizzard servers. This bug occured especially during high-latency situations and caused the client to show a number, which is considered an "actual level" of the boss, which was always 63. This bug seems to have been fixed some time ago. Since then, I haven't ever heard of a boss revealing it's level to a player again. After Burning Crusade, all bosses are expected to have a real level of 73, but this cannot be confirmed anymore since the bug which caused the server to reveal the level of raid bosses was fixed long before the release of BC. Privatekey 21:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I have experienced the latency bug revealing the level of a boss. This was after the Burning Crusade was released. At the Emerald Dream portal in Feralas there spawns one of the four green dragon world bosses from the AQ events. Before the boss was in my visual distance, I used an Ornate Spyglass. This did cause the boss to load and become visible to me. When I clicked on the boss after he loaded, he did display a "63" as his level, then it switched to the standard skull of bosses.(Zeneroth (talk) 04:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC))


 * The GM Command is a global thing, you can use it on anything and any server (being a GM though) and most private servers use the offical database.Also in regards to the Skull flags, i think its actualy a faction setting. however im not totaly clear on this i need to check, i just recalled something like that when reading this so will have to take a look 2moro --KingStoph 00:55, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No. Private servers don't use the official database. (Most private servers use the 'Silvermoon Database' which is very close to the official one though.) The official database is stored on the official Warcraft servers and is kept secret by Blizzard but I guess you can "derive" a database from session data sent from an official Warcraft server to the game client since the client needs to know about mobs and their levels and stats. Your database will then "inherit" the properties of the official one. Privatekey 13:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Clarification
So is there a minimum to the scaling? If my girlfriend battles a boss with her 70 Hunter it will scale up to 73 when she fights it. When it hits my level 1 Warlock, will it hit as a level 4 mob? --Anfini (talk) 22:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no minimum, but the scaling only applies to certain things: resistances, armor, hit/crit rates, etc. So a boss will have the same chance to hit your level 1 warlock as a level 4 mob would, but it will still hit like a ton of bricks and have a ridiculous amount of health, because stats like that aren't changed. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Grandmaster's Training Dummy
Grandmaster's Training Dummy is a skull-type boss? I think they are around a level 80 mob. Rolandius ( talk  -  contr ) 10:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)