Instead of killing Balnazzar right away—or portaling back to town and flying to Light's Hope Chapel—Gabryell led the group toward the Service Gate.
He Blinked ahead and tagged Magistrate Barthilas with Counterspell before the boss could get away.
Barthilas was a straightforward melee boss. As long as Carlos held threat and nobody ripped aggro off him, there was nothing particularly difficult about the fight.
As soon as the magistrate went down, Smooch eagerly rushed over to loot him.
Crimson Felt Hat (Rare)
Binds when picked up
Head
Cloth
68 Armor
+8 Intellect
+8 Spirit
+8 Stamina
Durability 50 / 50
Requires Level 54
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 30.
Smooch's loot luck was running hot. She had pulled the famous Crimson Felt Hat.
The item had always been controversial. Mages considered it a caster DPS hat and argued that it belonged to them, while Priests pointed out that the tooltip explicitly increased healing as well, so they had every right to roll Need on it.
Even years later, when WoW Classic rolled around, Mages and Priests would still argue over the damned thing.
Gabryell thought the whole debate was pointless. Once you had access to the Service Gate, all you needed was a few friends. Open the gate, Blink straight in, tag Barthilas with Counterspell before he got away, kill him, reset, and repeat. In a little over ten minutes, you could burn through all five runs and hit the hourly instance cap.
If you wanted a Crimson Felt Hat badly enough, you could simply farm one.
Danielly already had Cassandra's Grace, so she passed.
Gabryell won the hat and immediately equipped it. A bright red cap appeared on his head.
Unfortunately, the human model did not pull off the look nearly as well as a gnome did.
"What a waste."
Carlos sighed. "Why couldn't it have been a Fel-Green Felt Hat?"
At least then no Mage in Ironforge would want to touch it. Who wanted to run around looking like a bargain-bin Warlock?
Besides the Crimson Felt Hat, Magistrate Barthilas also dropped the Key to the City.
"Let me have the key. I actually need it," Gabryell said.
He would need the Key to the City for the two-Mage Stratholme farm he had planned, since it opened the Service Gate.
"Ogabs, take it," DeathScum said. "I'm a Rogue. That thing's just bag clutter for me."
"You take it."
"Yeah, grab it."
"Ogabs, it's yours."
Once again, everyone practically shoved the useful item into Gabryell's bags.
With the Key to the City secured, they left through the Service Gate and returned to Light's Hope Chapel to turn in The Archivist. Completing it was required before Balnazzar could drop the Head of Balnazzar, which started The Truth Comes Crashing Down, the next step in the chain.
"Back to the Scarlet side. We're killing Balnazzar."
The quest chain was a pain in the ass. Anyone who did not already know the route could easily end up running Stratholme at least three times.
They reentered through the main gate and headed back into the Scarlet side. The mobs along the route had not respawned yet, and once Smooch switched on Aspect of the Pack, they made it back to Balnazzar's room quickly.
"Snowy, Fear Ward everyone."
Gabryell did not pull immediately. Balnazzar used an AoE fear after revealing his true form, so having Fear Ward up beforehand would make things much easier.
Between cycling Fear Ward through the party and drinking back to full mana afterward, the preparation took around three minutes.
Three minutes of setup was a lot cheaper than a wipe.
"Carlos, pull."
Balnazzar had not revealed himself yet. He was still wearing Dathrohan's form.
"Watch your mana. Don't blow your cooldowns yet. Just keep steady DPS."
A lot of groups fighting Balnazzar for the first time had no idea the encounter had two phases. They saw Dathrohan, assumed that was the entire boss, and immediately dumped their mana and burst cooldowns into him.
Then Dathrohan transformed, and suddenly those same rookies were staring at Balnazzar with empty mana bars and every important cooldown unavailable.
That was usually when the wipe started.
Phase-one Dathrohan was a pushover, basically a tank-and-spank melee target. Steady DPS was more than enough.
"This boss is trash," DeathScum said. "I could probably solo him."
A well-geared Rogue really could solo Dathrohan without much trouble. Once he revealed himself as Balnazzar, however, that was a different story. A truly exceptional Rogue might still manage it, but an average player had no chance.
"Fine by me," Carlos said, tanking him comfortably. "Easier boss, easier run."
Smooch frowned at Dathrohan. "If he's this bad, does that mean his loot's trash too?"
She was already hedging in case her loot luck suddenly went cold.
Gabryell only smiled.
Once Balnazzar came out, nobody was going to be relaxing anymore.
Dathrohan went down.
Enraged, Balnazzar tore away his disguise and revealed his true dreadlord form.
"Holy shit, he transforms?!" DeathScum shouted.
Smooch stared. "How'd he go from a human to a demon?"
"Focus," Gabryell said. "Take this phase seriously. Nobody dies. Snowy, keep everyone topped."
Balnazzar's Shadow Shock could hammer everyone in range with Shadow damage, putting constant pressure on the healer.
Any Warlock watching him throw around a proper AoE Shadow nuke would have cried.
Blizzard really was unfair. Why did a dungeon boss get one while Warlocks didn't?
Still, Balnazzar's Shadow damage was not the worst part of the encounter.
His crowd control was.
Psychic Scream was an AoE fear. Fortunately, their healer was a Dwarf Priest. With a Restoration Druid instead, the fight would have been much more annoying.
"Snowy, refresh Fear Ward on Carlos."
As long as the main tank did not get feared, the fight remained manageable.
Carlos sighed appreciatively. "Dwarf Priests are ridiculous. Fear Ward is straight-up broken."
As they encountered more and more bosses with fear mechanics, players were beginning to realize just how valuable Dwarf Priests were.
Plenty of people who had picked another race regretted it.
That did not mean they were willing to reroll, though. Some could not stand the thought of abandoning the characters they had already invested so much time into. Others simply could not get past the dwarf model.
So Dwarf Priests remained relatively rare.
"I'm asleep!"
Danielly had barely refreshed Fear Ward on Carlos when she cried out.
Balnazzar had hit her with another crowd-control ability: Deep Sleep.
It put the target to sleep for ten seconds, though taking damage would wake them early.
"Carlos, Shield Wall!" Gabryell called immediately.
Ten seconds without a healer was more than enough time for things to go wrong, so the tank had to cover the gap himself.
Carlos activated Shield Wall at once and drank a Major Healing Potion, bringing his health back up.
Shield Wall lasted just long enough to bridge the Deep Sleep. The moment Danielly woke up, she immediately threw a Rank 7 Flash Heal into Carlos, whose health had already dropped to around one-third.
Once he was safely out of danger, she went back to using Heal.
"Sleep me! Sleep me!" Smooch called. "Pick me next!"
She seemed entirely too enthusiastic about getting tucked in by a dreadlord if it meant taking some pressure off Danielly.
Balnazzar's group damage really was nasty. Danielly had been healing almost nonstop, and eventually she was forced to drink a Major Mana Potion.
And this was after they had deliberately conserved mana during Phase 1.
If they had blown everything on Dathrohan, this fight would almost certainly have gone badly.
Psychic Scream.
To conserve mana, Danielly was now keeping Fear Ward only on Carlos and herself. Fortunately, Balnazzar did not cast Psychic Scream often enough to prevent her from refreshing it between uses.
"Ha! He slept me!"
The second Deep Sleep ignored Smooch's request and landed on DeathScum instead.
DeathScum sounded so delighted about it that everyone immediately started wondering why he was so happy to get tucked in by a dreadlord.
"Burn him. Everything you've got."
They popped every offensive cooldown they had.
There was no way they were letting Balnazzar get a third Deep Sleep off. If Danielly got picked again, Carlos might not survive another ten seconds without healing.
The party unloaded everything.
Balnazzar finally fell.
Of course, killing the dreadlord here did not mean he was gone for good.
If it did, the Headless Horseman would have had a serious continuity problem—and The Horseman's Reins were far too tempting for players to lose.
Balnazzar would not meet his final end until much later, during Legion, when the defenders of Netherlight Temple fought him alongside Lothraxion and reinforcements from the Army of the Light.
For players, though, his most memorable legacy was still the Headless Horseman he had helped create, who returned every Hallow's End with another chance at those coveted reins.
"Let me loot him! Let me loot him!"
Smooch's favorite moment had arrived.
Star of Mystaria (Rare)
Binds when picked up
Neck
+8 Spirit
+9 Intellect
+9 Stamina
Requires Level 58
Equip: Improves your chance to hit with spells by 1%.
Crown of Tyranny (Rare)
Binds when picked up
Head
301 Armor
+20 Stamina
-10 Spirit
Durability 70 / 70
Requires Level 58
Equip: +40 Attack Power.
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Not bad at all.
Pattern: Truefaith Vestments had not dropped, nor had Book of the Dead, but Star of Mystaria had.
Gabryell's attention immediately locked onto the necklace.
"Looks like Smooch really does have the lucky touch."
He was feeling very good about letting her loot the boss.