Carlos took Lucifron, while Susie and David each picked up one of the Flamewaker Protectors.
"Melee, kill the marked add first. Watch your positioning—these things Cleave."
"Susie, David, spread them out as fast as you can. Give the melee some room to work."
Gabryell followed with another call.
"Nobody touches Lucifron until both adds are dead. If I catch you padding on the boss and you wipe us, that's minus five DKP."
Carlos, Susie, and David settled onto their targets, while Nightlord stayed with the raid as backup in case something broke loose.
Lucifron himself did not hit particularly hard.
The real problem was his two debuffs.
Impending Doom was a magic debuff that detonated after ten seconds for roughly 2,000 Shadow damage.
Lucifron's Curse doubled the mana, Energy, and Rage cost of abilities and spells.
With the raid's current health pools, letting Impending Doom go off would take around sixty to seventy percent of everyone's health in one shot.
And if Lucifron's Curse stayed up, casters could burn through their mana in less than thirty seconds.
"Mages, decurse. Nobody casts Frostbolt until the curses are gone."
Gabryell stopped attacking and started clicking through the raid frames at ridiculous speed.
Apparently, twenty years of being single had finally paid off.
"Healers and tanks first. After that, caster DPS and Hunters."
Physical DPS came last.
A Rogue with no Energy could still auto-attack.
A caster with no mana was just standing there holding a weapon.
The nine Mages tore through the raid frames, clearing the tanks and healers first before moving on to themselves.
"Priests, Dispel Magic. Tanks first. If you can't clear every Impending Doom in time, prioritize anyone who isn't at full health. Don't let them die."
He watched the tanks for a moment.
"They're fine for now. Paladins, help the Priests dispel whenever you get a chance."
The Priests alone were a little too slow, and since the tanks were not under heavy pressure yet, Gabryell had the Paladins help clean up the magic debuffs.
"I'm mind-controlled!" DaVinci suddenly shouted.
"Snowy, dispel him."
Danielly reacted immediately and broke the control.
"Good. Snowy, you're on mind controls from now on."
Gabryell was pleased with how quickly she had reacted.
Lucifron was basically a dispel check.
Handle the debuffs cleanly and the boss died.
Fall behind, and the raid fell apart.
The Flask of Distilled Wisdom Gabryell had given the healers was already proving its worth. That extra 2,000 mana gave them far more room to keep dispelling without sacrificing healing.
Madhouse had not gone in with the same flask setup, and the gear gap was already working against them. No wonder they had struggled so badly.
Mages at least had plenty of ways to stretch their mana.
Mana Gems.
Evocation.
And if things got desperate, Ice Block could even clear a curse off themselves and save another dispel.
"The dispels are still too slow."
It was their first pull, and everyone was still learning the rhythm of the fight.
Even with Gabryell calling things as soon as they appeared, the raid simply was not clearing the debuffs fast enough.
"Next pull, the Resto Druids help with curses too."
Three more people decursing would take a lot of pressure off the Mages.
If the Druids ran low on mana, they could pop a Major Mana Potion or use Innervate.
The Priests had a different problem.
At first, the Paladins helped dispel whenever they had a free global, but someone still had to keep Carlos, Susie, and David alive. The three Druids could not carry that healing load by themselves.
After two rounds of helping with dispels, the Paladins backed off and focused entirely on the tanks.
The pressure on the Priests immediately spiked.
They started falling behind.
Whenever an Impending Doom slipped through, more than a third of the raid took the hit.
Before long, the Priests were buried in dispels, and Snowy was having trouble finding time to handle the mind controls as well.
"Seven got mind-controlled!" Coldhands shouted.
OldSeven had already burned both of his Ice Blocks.
One had cleared a curse.
The other had removed a magic debuff.
Now he had nothing left.
"Dispel me! Hurry!"
OldSeven really did not want to die again.
Gabryell checked the raid frames.
The healers were running dry.
Half the melee were already dead.
Three ranged DPS were down too.
They had only killed one Protector, and the second was still sitting at fifty-eight percent health.
There was no way they were finishing Lucifron like this.
"Seven got mind-controlled?"
Gabryell laughed.
"Then we're good. Kill him."
"Hahaha! Finally! I've wanted to kill this idiot all night. He's mine!"
Coldhands was the most excited person in the raid.
He immediately fired a Fire Blast into OldSeven.
That was all the invitation everyone else needed.
The raid piled onto him like starving wolves.
OldSeven disappeared under the barrage.
Another death.
At this point, nobody even knew what number they were on anymore.
His title as Floor King was looking safer by the minute.
The longer the fight dragged on, the more debuff waves they had to survive.
When another round of Lucifron's Curse and Impending Doom hit the raid, everything finally collapsed.
More players dropped.
Gabryell called it.
"Wipe it. Healers with Soulstones, stay down. Once combat drops, pop up and start rezzing."
Gabryell knew he was no raid god.
He was an ordinary player with years of future knowledge.
That was all.
Knowing the strategies ahead of time did not mean he could drop into 2004, walk into Molten Core with a fresh raid, and magically one-shot the entire place without a wipe.
He was not some world-class monster who had cleared Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas back in vanilla.
Part of the chaos in that pull had come from his calls.
Part of it came from the raid itself.
And that was normal.
Years later, when WoW Classic arrived, the entire player base effectively had hindsight.
Everyone had better addons.
Straightforward guides.
Optimized strategies.
Years of accumulated knowledge.
And even then, nobody could guarantee a completely wipe-free Molten Core run with forty people wearing nothing but pre-raid dungeon gear.
This was 2004.
Even the top guilds that first cleared Molten Core still wiped on later runs for all kinds of stupid reasons.
That was simply where the player base was at the time.
One player with knowledge from the future could not instantly change that.
Combat finally dropped.
"Healers, get up. Priests and Paladins first."
Everyone with a Soulstone resurrected, and they started bringing the raid back.
Avoiding a corpse run saved them a good chunk of time.
Once everyone was alive again, Gabryell started reorganizing.
"Drink, rebuff, and get ready. Melee and Hunters, use your damage consumables this time. Let's try to finish this on the next pull."
Lucifron had no complicated phases.
The strategy itself was simple.
Handle the debuffs.
Kill the two Protectors.
Once the adds were gone, Lucifron himself was practically free.
"Heals, you and Snowy handle mind controls together."
One weak point at a time.
Both Protectors could use Dominate Mind, and leaving the job to a single Priest made it too easy for one to slip through.
"No problem," ServerHeals replied.
Gabryell continued.
"Resto Druids, help the Mages decurse. Same priority as before."
Three extra dispellers would make a huge difference.
"Priests, if you get buried, prioritize groups that don't have a Priest."
There was always a way to work around a problem.
"Groups with a Priest can eat one Impending Doom. Pop Inner Focus, then Prayer of Healing and bring your group back up."
He continued adjusting the plan.
"If we're still falling behind later and Inner Focus is already gone, stop dispelling the Druid groups. Let the three Druids use Tranquility."
Their goal was simple now.
Stay alive long enough to kill the two Protectors.
This time, all of the physical DPS would be using their consumables, so their damage would be much higher.
As long as nobody died early, the adds should go down twenty to thirty percent faster than before.
Every second mattered.
The sooner one add died, the easier the fight became.
And once both Protectors were down, they could grind Lucifron into the floor.