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The raid at last steps into the final room to face the last boss. She's legendary and you've been awaiting this fight for a while. What could this room have in store for the raid? What epic tales will you be able to post in the realm forums of your glory here? You enter with excitement and a hint trepidation...
You see her sitting up on a pedestal. She cooly stares you down. There's a black cat in her arms, which she gently pets as she grins wickedly at your raid. She whispers something to the cat. Something about new toys with which he can play. There's another curled at her feet with eyes so bright and alert as if he's daring you to come closer. He raises one paw, extends his claws and casually cleans his paw.
Your tank starts to walk in a little farther. Suddenly, he's hit upside the head by something from the back! You watch as a disc circles back around and nails a healer and a ranged dps. They're all stunned in place. Your raid is shocked. What just happened? You spin around to find another paladin catching the disc, which you now recognize as a shield, blocking your way out. What is it with this place and paladins?! And is this one female? Nice midriff...mmmm.
The off tank reacts quickest and charges. As if in slow motion, you watch the paladin lower her shield, infuse it with some great power, lower her shoulder and raise it into your offtank's face to send him flying and land on the ground flat on his back. Oh crap.
The next thing you know the paladin sprouts glowing wings and has raced into the midst of your clumped, unprepared raid group and dropped an aoe. Everyone's health slowly ticks away. Two tanks are incapacitated, one healer is still stunned when a second healer is hit with something that stops him mid-heal. The paladin continues to lay out people with her shield, drain health with her aoe, and crush faces with a big hammer that's nailing 3-4 people at a time. She taunts the raid. She has an awfully deep voice for a woman.
Finally, a tank is up and attempts pulls the paladin away but she seems to be targeting specific raid members and won't follow very easily. When she manages to kill one of each class present, you hear a little ding and cheer from her, "Yes, another achievement; I'm ahead again!"
The paladin is nearly down, this fight is won! You'd forgotten about the woman on the pedestal, so has the entire raid. Nobody's paying her any mind. But she chooses this time to rise from her seat, causing her cats to hiss in displeasure. The paladin is full health! Morale drops. WTF. She's a priest?! And her cats have entered the fray, too! One is jumping face to face, biting and scratching at the face, causing a blind effect and bleed damage. The second is racing around scratching at ankles and knee caps, which causing everyone's movement to be slowed. Every time somebody attacks the cats, the priest screams to leave her babies alone and does an aoe dot.
By now your own healers' mana pools are dwindling. This paladin can take a beating. And now has a healer. Quick, focus fire the priest!
"No," she yells! "I don't like tanking! Get these things out of my face!" She screams again, sending the melee fleeing in all directions. The ranged are unaffected. They continue to dps her. But then you notice something strange, the paladin is getting bigger and stronger. For every bit of damage done to the priest, the paladin's hit points and damage rise dramatically. Her shield seems to be thrown about more and more often, stunning more of the raid.
Eventually, the raid leader makes the call to ignore her except through a series of interrupts. You focus on the paladin, who gets knocked out first. Then it's a matter of dealing with fears and taking out the priest. She does a few mind controls but it looks like she misses that fairly often. Clearly, she lacks hit gear. But she gets one off and a melee takes out a healer. This is going to be close. She drops. Phew. The cats are easy, if you can ever target them. Squirmy little things.
But then the priest rises again. She's now a ghost, or angel...as much of an angel as evil raid bosses can be. What is she casting? The angel disappears but the paladin is resurrected! She only has 10% health from the rez but, wow, that aoe is taking out the raid in 3 ticks. DON'T STAND IN IT! And her attacks are swinging like crazy, almost as if she's frenzied at the loss of a loved one.
The tanks bounce aggro around the room to keep out of the aoe, melee is forced to give chase. Ranged pops any remaining cooldowns and exhausts their mana. She goes down with only 1/3 of the raid left standing.
Master looter goes to the bodies; all he finds are vanity pets. What a waste of a raid night!
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You think you have to be nearing the end of this dungeon. It sure has gone on for a long while now. Once again, you step into a new room.
You see two paladins, one on each edge. One is shorter and uglier than the other and you can't tell if the short one might be a woman. Is that facial hair or has she/he just not bathed in a long while? The tall one is splendid looking, very regal. Your eyes are drawn to him as the most glorious thing in the room. You guess these are the healers. You'd feel threatened by them if they didn't look like goofy mid-90s power rangers with their pointy shoulder pads.
In one step is a hunter with a giant pet gorilla named Hugo on the right and a warlock with a mean looking imp on the left. The hunter looks exasperated with everyone else and mutters to herself, "Children..." The lock looks sulky, and angry. He's yelling at the others to keep the chat down. You watch as he cuts his wrist. You also notice it's not the first time.
Suddenly, in the center a giant freaking bird drops something on the ground. Your ears are assaulted by train horns and annoying choo-choo noises. The warlock cuts himself again.
Your RL sets tanks and healer assignments and it's go time. Things don't go as planned...
Someone attempts to crowd control the paladins but it's mistimed (a 3 rating if there ever was one) and one cleanses the other. Someone tries to poly the evil chicken but he just laughs at the raid and tells it to STFU. Out pop three giant trees that attack one side of the raid. Then the warlock begins to rain fire on the other side. Trees or fire...where to go?!
A tank charges in and interrupts the warlock's cast. But then the hunter reacts and sends her gorilla at the tank. The gorilla stomps, freezing the tank in place, and uses this time to scratch itself before it punches your tank in the face. Not only that but the hunter attacks your healers, casting a mana drain, as they try to save the tank from the gorilla.
No damage is going out to the bosses. The paladins are too good. You've never seen such amazing healing. They HOP the chicken when somebody attacks it. They shield everyone and keep everyone topped to full health. Their heals smell like bacon? They stun, they even do damage and their mana pools never empty. Bright, golden wings sprout from their backs as things get really interesting for the raid. They start casting faster and bigger heals, faster and bigger attacks. These are probably the best two paladins you've ever seen...ever.
The raid leader calls for split focus on the paladins. Interrupts and stuns are of great importance. The ugly one turns to stone and cackles at the tall one as damage done to him suddenly slows drastically. The tall, handsome, glorious paladin gives the short, ugly, stupid one a withering look when he suddenly is surrounded by a glowing bubble. He's immune! What's going to happen now, you wonder with trepidation. He pulls a stone out of his pocket and disappears. The short one grumbles about having to do all the work. The owl thing says something about Art needing to die in a fire with a broken spine.
The short paladin drops. The chicken owl looks like he's casting something on the body...an interrupt goes off in time and the cast is stopped. The raid focuses on him. The chicken cries out as he falls, "I'm really a nice guy, it was all an act. All I wanted was to be loved..."
The hunter drops suddenly after only a few hits. The warlock looks to be cutting himself quite drastically now. His health is dropping rapidly. The raid turns and focuses. The hunter is up again! She played possum with you. A tank runs in and is turned into an ice cube. Another chases and is surrounded by snakes. The hunter begins to pick off the raid one-by-one, stealing kills from the warlock. Your dps gets wise and focuses her down. She looks to be dead for certain this time. Her gorilla is gone, too.
That leaves the warlock. He's extremely sulky looking now. Like bad myspace emo kids. He yells, "I'm number 1!" He casts. You're covered in dots. Your health slowly trickles away. As it goes dark, you see the warlock knocked. Your gear suffers 10% durability loss. Frak, that's 15g!
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You finally make it to the next boss encounter to find the room rather busy. You can't tell what all is here as far as classes go.
You spot what you think are two paladins chatting. They both carry large two handed weapons. One keeps talking about class changes and randomly bursts into tears. The other tries to comfort him.
You watch as some tiny fellow goes racing and jumping around the room. He never stops running around and each time he runs into something, he makes a weird noise. He's carrying two weapons 3 times his height. You have no idea how he's not falling over.
There's another one that looks very much like the previous boss. He's just sitting there. He looks afk. Random other people keep poking him.
There's also one lonely priest in here. He randomly insults everybody in the room, the little guy more than anybody else.
Assignments go out and the raid attacks, targeting the priest (since he's probably a healer). The little one intercepts the attack, making his noises again. He then jumps into the raid as he yells, "WHIRLWIND! BLAAAAAAAAADESTOOOOOOOOORM! Post the damage!" He continues to bounce around the raid, jumping from member to member.
The paladins run in, dropping consecrate on the raid. One of them stops halfway towards the raid with her mace raised. She jumps forward a few feet, stops again, and suddenly she's gone. Nobody seems to find this unusual.
The afk guy is still afk. Nobody finds this odd either.
The priest isn't healing anybody. He's shifted to shadow form and starts dotting everyone and fearing people. The priest laughs at the insane, whooping guy as he's taken down by the raid.
The remaining paladin is going down. Somehow, he seems to be doing more damage to himself than to the raid. He yells at the priest to heal him. The priest yells back, "you're a paladin, heal yourself!" The paladin is down and you think he may have killed himself.
The raid focuses on the priest now and he goes down easy enough without any plate to run interference.
And the fight is over even though the afk guy is still up. The raid can still loot. It's all healing gear.
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As the raid proceeds to the next room, you spot a bear druid sitting on his rump. He's happily sitting there, humming some song and waving his paw in the air.
Another druid, this should be pretty easy. The raid engages.
Nothing out of the ordinary happens for the first 25%. But at that time, he changes forms. Not to another druid form, but to another class. He changes into a shaman!
Nothing unusual about the shaman either. Seems like a tank and spank so far. But after another 25%, he changes into a rogue. He suddenly pauses, "Where's my gear?" The raid looks at him and realizes he's not wearing any gear. The raid takes advantage.
You get him down easily but you don't drop combat. Instead, you watch as he rises again. You see another change coming over him. He has gear again, big beefy gear. He now has a big two-handed ax, plate armor and full health. He blows a horn and yells, "You're all dead...I like it!"
He engages the raid. You're standing in something: death and decay! He's diseasing the raid. It's hard to keep it cleansed. He can somehow spread it to all nearby targets effortlessly.
His ax crashes against the tank, and the tank drops. He somehow reaches across the room and pulls a healer to him. The ax flashes again and the healer is down. He roars, "I'm number 1!!" He turns the body of the healer into a ghoul that fights beside him.
Somehow, the raid manages to get him down. You hear a little girl's voice pipe up, "Congradumations!" You're not sure where that came from and you're not even sure what he was. You do think you found his rogue gear - you loot and it's all leather dps.
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The next boss encounter is just through the very next door. You see a very short individual. He's wearing a horned, steel helm that reminds you of something out of mythology and has bright pink pigtails poking out of the helm...somehow. He's also got a pet. A little thing with a large shield that keeps rubbing his back on walls like he's got an itch. You're not certain what class this boss is.
The tanks engage the fight. It's simple enough. The boss seems to be a priest. He smites the raid, heals himself and heals his pet. He shouts at the raid, "Is this all you've got? I can handle more than this. Pull more! More, more, more!"
The pet is an annoying little bugger. He's difficult to damage and has a "chew" debuff he keeps applying to the tank. The higher the chew stacks, the slower the tank moves. The pet pulls the tanks along the walls, not in any real pattern but a sort of drunken weaving. The boss and pet taunt each other constantly about who's who's better, who's doing more damage, etc.
The fight is moving slowly but steadily. You notice a third meter on the boss's portrait. It's red, like rage. But why would a priest have rage? As the fight progresses, the meter fills. Finally, the meter is full but the priest is at 50% health. The priest mind controls the entire raid as he yells, "Your pathetic attempts give me strength! I'M SO ANGRY!" Suddenly, he transforms. The helm isn't just a helm, it seems to be real demon horns growing from the boss. The pet, too, turns into a demon.
The raid is utterly confused. During the transformation members had been attacking each other, a few have dropped, but now the MC has dropped. Both boss and pet are doing massive amounts of damage. The boss is throwing up dots everywhere. One, labeled "seed," explodes over everyone. He even tosses curses everywhere, not just the debuff type, but anger coming from his mouth is not meant for young children. "Haven't you learned to NOT STAND IN THE FIRE," he yells as he casts brings fire down on the heads of the raid.
The pet drops quickly now. Without his pocket healer, he's not so tough. The boss is going down quickly, too, but his damage is so much more powerful than anything you've seen before. The rage meter is dropping. Maybe if it empties he switches back to priest form? You're not certain your healers have it in them to manage through the length of that fight. Burn him, you call, burn him now!
They do. You manage to down him just as he transforms back to his priest form. He makes one last comment to the raid, "Roll for offsets!"
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The raid has moved on. You now enter a room with four mages sitting around a table arguing with each other. Occasionally, one will start crying and a little water elemental will stop by that mage and collect the tears in a jar.
You can't tell what they're discussing. Three don't get to speak much as each time they do, the fourth answers with what looks like a dissertation on mage mechanics. You do catch a bit about fruit flies from him, also. One is a female who seems more fascinated with the water elemental than the discussion at hand. At one point, she gets up and chases the elemental, squealing, "I'm going to catch you, and love you, and squeeze you and name you George." You fear for any pets she may have. The other two remain mostly silent, though one looks very different from the other three. Almost like he's chilling the very air around him. You suggest crowd controlling him since he's obviously unique here.
The tanks approach and aggro. All the mages turn and before the CC can get off, each mage splits off 3 copies of themselves. SIXTEEN MAGES! You don't know which to target. And, ZOMG, the lag!
The raid attempts to aoe the multitude of mages but are continuously interrupted or polymorphed. One of the poly spells turns raid members into a giant taco. They're quickly broken as the mages pelt the raid with arcane blasts, missiles, and the occasional frostbolt.
As the numbers begin to dwindle on the mage copies, one of the mages begins to aoe. It's the strange looking one. A blizzard engulfs half your raid that'd clumped up. They all freeze into giant ice blocks. He's frost! The other mages focus flamestrikes and blizzards on the unfortunate souls.
The other odd part of this fight is that healing spells are not working in this room. The healers try various things but all their healing spells are completely locked out. One of the mages laughs in some sort of accent, "If you won't heal us, you can't heal anybody!"
Luckily for the raid, they're just mages. They have no armor and low hitpoints. The melee tears in and their health drops quickly. Even the healers dps, since they have nothing else to do. The mages try to iceblock but that allows focus fire on one of the other mages. The mages drop like flies and more people survive once the raid stops standing in the blizzards.
Loot is worthless. A couple of tear stained vests and some hearts of darkness. Nobody even knows what those are.
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After clearing through trash, you reach the next encounter. So you think. The room looks empty. Quizzically, the raid enters the room, slowly looking around. Must be a bug. Or rushed development, someone suggests.
Your tanks continue to inch forward. With a hiss, one is stunned, and the second is being attacked by a cat druid who'd been prowling behind the raid. The tank is dropping fast! When the raid attempts to target him, he transforms into a giant bear...crap.
His name is Sdrawkcabemanym. You have no idea how to pronounce that or what it means. This reinforces your opinion that druids are a crazy bunch.
The bear continues to tear into the tanks. You begin to notice that the bear is talking and that each time he talks the raid is given a debuff. It's stunning the entire raid for a moment, as if they're shocked that those words actually came from somebody's mouth. It's also lowers intellect of the raid with a stacking debuff. Not only is the bear physically beating on the raid, he's messing with its head!
As the fight progresses, you notice a rotation in how the druid operates. He goes cat, then bear, then humanoid (which is the ugliest form you've ever seen). He's dpsing, tanking and healing! AT THE SAME TIME! How can you defeat such a monstrosity?
After a while, the raid manages to drop him while in humanoid form by interrupting his heals. Yet, nobody drops combat...what gives? Impossibly, he battles rezes himself! What can't he do?!
The pressure's on. That debuff is getting out of hand. He switching forms faster than ever. But the raid pulls it off as the last healer loses the last of his mana.
All he drops is a pair of leather pants.
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The raid walks into the first boss encounter. You're loose, spirits are high. Trash was easy, nobody died. Shamans with bows, what kind of joke is this place?
You encounter a woman. You target her. Her name is Mother. Mother of what? The raid doesn't wait for you to ponder. She's very friendly. She welcomes you to her home, offers you some biscuits, and she goes so far as to offer some free gear enchants. The moment somebody approaches to take her up on this offer, not all raidmates are bright, the fight starts.
The fight is pretty smooth. She casts fireballs, and scorch but not much else. The occasional silence or polymorph and, oddly, random portals in the room that lead to arbitrary places throughout the world. Somebody comments how the raid leader's mother isn't this easy. You all laugh and question his ability with women.
You notice as the fight goes on that Mother's voice gets deeper and screechier. Her pleas to leave her alone get more demanding. At 15% health, everything stops. You question the raid, "anybody else lagging?" "Yeah, we're all stuck," they reply. GG, you think, a wipe to lag.
But it's not lag.
Mother is changing. She surrounds herself in a giant flaming ball that expands quickly. The ball explodes, dealing massive damage to the entire raid. In its place is a giant, pissed off, red dragon! She's Mother of Dragons!
She bellows at you, "I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE!" Followed by a great flame breath. Her tail swipes the melee standing behind her and smashes them all into the wall. Your fire casters are suddenly pissed off. She's immune.
Your tank manages to turn her around from the raid but gets more people killed by her tail. She scratches at his shield and his armor. That's going to leave some dents. You can smell his flesh cooking as he bakes inside his plate. The dps pull out that last 15% of damage and she falls, transforming back into her human form.
An epic fight to the start of this raid instance....
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1. Shout box! 2. Blawgs! 3. Shiny new colors! 4. Updated item links with spells, quests, and all that fancy jazz! 5. Shout box! 6. Updated raid calendar where months actually have last days! 7. Better photo albums! 8. Fun hover menus. Can entertain for hours! 9. Updated forums for Art to totally post too often in! 10. Because Breue spent so much time on it and Breue Roxors the intertubz!
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