Two Bosses Enter: The Curator vs. Archimonde

This week we're considering The Curator from Karazhan and Archimonde from the Caverns of Time. Interested in learning a bit more about these two bosses -- and letting us know which one you think would be the best? Keep reading!

At 15% health, he'll enrage, increasing his melee and arcane damage, but stopping the summoning of more adds. And after 12 minutes, he'll berserk, which results in a wipe for a typical raid.
For full fight details, check The Curator's page on WoWWiki.

- a 5-6 second AOE fear, cast every 30 seconds
- Airburst, which does some damage and tosses the target high into the air
- a very high shadow-damage DoT
- Doomfire, a trail of fire that does damage to anyone who's in its path (painful for feared targets)
For full details on the Archimonde encounter (though they're a bit sketchy), see WoWWiki.
Now, before you start to think this fight is just going to be an easy win for Archimonde, let's set some ground rules. While The Curator is a mid-difficulty boss in Karazhan and Archimonde is one of the hardest bosses currently in the game (with some guilds claiming he's a more difficult fight than Illidan), these fights wouldn't be any fun if we went into them always knowing the boss from the highest level instance was automatically going to win. Therefore, we want to assume that The Curator and Archimonde are the same level, and have similar health and damage capabilities. We're comparing their fighting styles, not drawing up a spreadsheet of hit points and average damage.
But that said, tell us what you think!
I hate to say it, but voting for this round is closed. But you can check the results of this round here and keep an eye on each week's matches as they occur here!
Filed under: Bosses, Two Bosses Enter






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cenario Aug 4th 2007 7:32PM
I think Archimonde wins, if he focuses on Astral Flares. With his Soul Charge on Astral Flares he will so own Curator :D
Mats Aug 4th 2007 7:30PM
Archimonde hands down. The adds are mostly a problem due to them chaining. Once 4-5 of them have spawned, Archi would have to kill 1 and the rest would die, and his flame trail would kill them off kinda fast, when you say "decent amount of HP" you man 30.000 hp, not much at all. Thats 2-3 hits from Archi. His dots along with his ability to all out nuke for 20 seconds during his evocate will take down Currator in no time at all, grats archie on some T4 gloves.
Wildhammer Aug 4th 2007 7:41PM
A giant, arcane robot versus one of the two apprentices of the greatest demon of all time.... Hmmmm... I'm really going to need to think about this one...
Baluki Aug 4th 2007 8:31PM
So, we're supposed to ignore each character's place in the lore and just assume they're a lvl. X character? That should probably be spelled out, since Archimonde is more powerful than all but 2 or 3 other characters in the WC universe, lore-wise. And those others aren't in the game yet.
Cairnehoof Aug 4th 2007 11:06PM
thats like asking who would win, Kresh or Onyxia?
Walterion Aug 4th 2007 11:38PM
Archimonde hands down, if Archi does Finger of death right when Curator is on Evocation....Ouch..let's say 50k dmg in a sec and without counting the Debuffs by death.
yassarian Aug 5th 2007 12:04AM
I think those match-ups are just plain silly. I mean, seriously you simply CAN'T have them "at similar level and with similar HP/whatever"
that doesn't even make sense -- some boss are caster type, some are melee type -- are you saying that the caster type should have the same HP/armor as the melee types? that's just retarded...
I mean, by that extension -- Might as well make Hogger part of this -- give him as much HP as say Illidan and magnify his abilities to that of a end-game boss level, he'll probably do pretty well. lol
You can't just arbituarily decrease a bosses level or HP or whatever -- how does that make it fair? Some boss NEEDS the HP, and some NEEDS the extra dmg...
Anyway it's inconceivable that some robot can beat Archimode...
robodex Aug 5th 2007 12:35AM
Curator spawns ten astral flares, evocates, and archimonde threeshots him.
CaffeineRage Aug 5th 2007 4:00AM
This Curator is no longer op... er... ation... al.
crapton Aug 5th 2007 4:59AM
this fight is even more infuriating than the others that have been posted.
"I mean, by that extension -- Might as well make Hogger part of this -- give him as much HP as say Illidan and magnify his abilities to that of a end-game boss level, he'll probably do pretty well. lol"
that's exactly what I always thought. equal levels etc my fucking anus. what a joke of a feature.
still though keep up the good work wowinsider - less crap posts like this and more interesting things please.
Sacktacular Aug 5th 2007 9:29AM
voted for the curator, cause I felt sorry for him.
But I think his astral flares would win him the bout if him and archimonde were the same level.
Matt Clemson Aug 5th 2007 9:30AM
I'm not sure it's necessarily quite so clear-cut.
The whole "comparable damage" thing means that that huge shadow damage DoT becomes irrelevant if it does the same amount as an arcane flare - but the flares mount up, whereas I don't think the DoT can stack. I assume the flares cannot be feared, so that's irrelevant. I need to take a moment to figure out how doomfire is placed, because that's important...
Seems to be a trail of fire that wanders around semi-randomly, which makes it very hard to take into account. Okay, take this hypothesis:
Both bosses play dumb, and just whack one another, using their skills whenever they become available.
Damage and health are balanced to Curator levels:
Melee for 3000; assume 1 swing every 3 seconds
DoT (arcane flare, Grip of the Legion, Doomfire) for 600/ 2.5 second tick
Health is 660,000
Quickie: Do enemies take fall damage? If they're fighting in Hyjal rather than the Curator's room, that means there's nothing stopping the Curator dying instantly on impacting the ground, but I'm not sure enemies can fall to their doom. Anyone able to verify?
Having said that, instant kill effects have generally been discounted in this discussion, so if it *is* an instant kill, it ought to be disregarded as such. Still, it could potentially happen to the flares - but then, they're floating, so surely fall damage should be irrelevant there, too?
Finger of Death is only applied if no-one is in melee range; since they're going toe-to-toe, that's irrelevant.
Hand of Death is only applied if he gets too close to the Well of Eternity. Have we even established if the WoE is available in this fight? If it's not present, then that skill, too, becomes irrelevant. Even if it *is* present, it could be regarded as an instant kill.
Grip of the Legion is the big one, 250,000 shadow damage over 5 minutes. It can be decursed, but we know Curator's too dumb to decurse stuff. However, it may be cast on the flares rather than the Curator. Scaling that damage down to be equivalent to the damage of an arcane flare - Flares do about 600 damage per tick with their lightning.
I will assume Doomfire is permanently on the Curator. We could potentially modify this theory by allowing the Curator to be smart enough to move away from Doomfire, but I won't go with that currently; toe-to-toe is easier to calculate.
Nerfings for the curator:
Hateful bolts just become irrelevant; there is one mob alone in this fight.
So now, let's break down the maths for a single round of flares then evocation, first of all making the assumption that no flares die (I'll address that later)
140 seconds of flares
20 seconds of evocation
Flare phase:
Each melees 3000 per 3sec = 140,000 damage
Doomfire: Assume one of those on Curator = 600 per 2.5 sec = 33,600 damage
Grip of the Legion: Assume it's permanently on Curator, 600 per 2.5 seconds = 33,600 damage.
Flares:
For the first 10 seconds: 600 damage/tick
For the next 10 seconds: 1200 damage/tick
For the next 10 seconds: 1800 damage/tick (etc)
At the end of the phase, there are 10 flares up, dealing a total of 6000 damage/tick
It becomes easier to calculate if we work in 10-second blocks:
Total damage dealt by one flare in ten seconds = 2400. Total damage dealt overall = 2400 * 14 + 2400 * 13 + 2400 * 12 (etc, etc)
= 2400 * (14 + 13 + 12 + 11 + 10... etc)
= 2400 * 105
= 252,000
So after one flare phase:
Curator has gone from 660,000 health to 452,800
Archimonde has gone from 660,000 health to 268,000
Evocation phase (20 seconds):
I believe Curator takes triple damage under evocation (can someone confirm? It may just be double). Let's see if this extra damage can cause the fight to be turned around:
Curator stops melee; Archimonde deals 20000 melee damage, tripled to 60000.
Doomfire does 600 damage per tick, total of 4800, tripled to 14,400.
Grip also does 14,400.
Curator creates no new flares, but the existing flares are still up, dealing 6000 damage per tick: 48,000 damage.
Curator has gone from 452,800 health to 364,000
Archimonde has gone from 268,000 health to 220,000
It's looking inevitable by now, but let's cover the next flare phase anyway:
Flare phase:
Each melees 3000 per 3sec = 140,000 damage
Doomfire: Assume one of those on Curator = 600 per 2.5 sec = 33,600 damage
Grip of the Legion: Assume it's permanently on Curator, 600 per 2.5 seconds = 33,600 damage.
Flares:
Total damage dealt by the ten *new* flares: 252,000
Total damage dealt by the ten *old* flares: 336,000
So, by the end of the second flare phase:
Curator has gone from 364,000 health to 156,800
Archimonde has gone from 220,000 health to -368,000
To be fair, Archimonde has probably died long before this, as his WoW has crashed owing to the large number of entities now onscreen.
If Archimonde is too dumb to deal with the flares - and since he's a mob, he's going to be focussed on the tank - it looks like it would actually be a win for the Curator.
Dierle Aug 5th 2007 12:19PM
Archimonde without a doubt. flares move around a lot, they'd get into, or be feared into his doomfire, or just air bursted up and die from fall damage, giving archimonde lots of soul charges. at which point victory is assured for him. I think the only way another boss could beat Archimonde is if they either don't summon any little adds, or if they have a way to keep the adds healed.
Troy Aug 6th 2007 4:30PM
I take it that the rules have changed and adds are no longer excluded? It would be really helpful if you were more explicit about this issue. Right now, half of these posts contain a "Remember guys, adds are not allowed!" statement, and the other half of the posts discuss how the adds will be influencing the fight.
Having said all that, the Curator is a joke (with or without the adds). He wouldn't even win a fight against a same level, same hp, etc. murloc. ;)
Matt Clemson Aug 5th 2007 1:19PM
Pets don't grant Soul Charge. Should we count the flares as pets?
Nic Aug 5th 2007 4:13PM
Well, i believe its Archimonde.
Curator summons the flares. However, doomfire would surely take care of them easily, activating the effect when someone dies, so Archimonde wins
Sane Orange Aug 6th 2007 12:55AM
He's fecking Archimonde.
It's like pitting Captain Planet against Mankrik's wife.
Satarus Aug 6th 2007 10:23AM
His AE will easily handle the flares. Then he just beats Curator into submission during evocation stages. Not a really fair fight if you ask me.
Karl Aug 6th 2007 1:46PM
Archimonde has this one without a problem. My little warlock landed a 25,640 pt Curse of Doom on Curator during an Evocation. Sure, the astral flares are a problem if you (a mere mortal player) does not have some healing, but that doesn't mean that one of the biggest, meanest beings in Warcraft can't simply wade right through that. I would expect Archmonde to stop the fight mid-way just in an effort to scratch the annoying "itches" from the Astral Flares and them 1-hit Curator during his Evocation.