"Tranq!"
Having only one Hunter with Tranq was nerve-racking. Every time Gabryell called for it, he was on the edge of his seat, terrified the shot might miss.
"Nice!"
Another hit.
Gabryell finally breathed a sigh of relief. One more Tranq should be enough to get them through this.
OneShotCrit let out a breath. "This is way too damn intense! My palms start sweating every time I fire. I'm always scared I'll miss and ruin everyone's hard work."
Gabryell chuckled. "Next lockout, we'll kill Lucifron again and get another Tome of Tranquilizing Shot. Then you won't have to carry all that pressure by yourself."
"Next lockout?"
"Aren't we just going to leave later, reset the instance, and have the boss respawn?"
"Yeah, but UBRS is a raid too. Shouldn't this work pretty much the same way?"
No one had ever killed a 40-player raid boss before, so the idea of a raid lockout was completely new to them.
Gabryell patiently explained the difference between raids and normal dungeons.
"Check your raid info. Molten Core has its own lockout timer. Until that expires, the bosses we kill stay dead."
"That's why it's better to run 40-player raids with a fixed guild group. If you pug it and only kill one or two bosses, people start dropping out. Once you're stuck with a partially cleared ID, finding replacements gets a lot harder."
He went over the rest of the basics as well, making sure everyone understood why raid lockouts mattered.
"So Lucifron won't be back until the reset?" David asked.
"Right. That's why we want to push as far as possible before this ID resets. If we're going to clear the whole place, everyone has to work together."
Now that they understood how the lockout worked, they also realized just how valuable raid gear was.
One run a week.
Who knew how long it would take to get everything they wanted?
Nobody wanted to waste the lockout, and the raid pushed even harder. Magmadar's health began dropping fast.
"One last Tranq!"
Judging by his remaining health, this should be Magmadar's final frenzy.
Now that Crit understood how much was riding on every shot, the pressure only got worse. He focused completely and fired the instant Magmadar swelled up.
And sure enough, this was the one that missed.
"Susie, pop cooldowns!"
Magmadar stayed frenzied.
Susie immediately hit Shield Wall and Last Stand.
"Night, you're next. Pop everything when you pick him up."
Gabryell put Nightlord second and saved Carlos for last.
"DPS, go all out! Potions if you've got them. If not, just fucking burn him!"
Everything came down to whether their DPS could finish Magmadar before the healers ran dry.
Susie didn't even make it to the end of Shield Wall.
With the healers running low on mana, a gap opened in the healing and she went down.
Nightlord rushed in and immediately popped Shield Wall and Last Stand.
Only Carlos and Susie had Greater Stoneshield Potions. Nightlord wasn't nearly as durable as Susie, so he probably had only a few seconds.
"Carlos, get ready!"
Carlos had died the first time without using any of his cooldowns.
For once, that turned out to be a blessing.
The moment Nightlord dropped, Carlos picked up the boss.
He was their last tank.
If he died, they were finished.
"Healers, dump everything into Carlos! Don't let him die! Crit, Tranq the second it's back!"
Magmadar's health kept falling until there was barely anything left.
Gabryell absolutely did not want to suffer the most painful wipe possible.
A wipe at one percent.
"Out of mana!"
"Me too!"
Within seconds, several healers announced that they were completely dry.
With nearly half their healing suddenly gone, Carlos's health bar started bouncing like an elevator.
Twenty seconds.
Tranq was back.
But just as Crit was about to fire, Magmadar feared the raid.
Under all the pressure, Crit had crept too far forward and got caught.
"Holy shit!"
Their only Hunter with Tranq was feared.
Now they were really screwed.
Carlos finally hit his limit and went down under Magmadar's jaws.
The moment Carlos died, Magmadar went straight for the next person on threat.
"Rogues, Evasion! Druids, Bear Form! Get every DoT you have on him! One percent—just keep him busy!"
They could not wipe at one percent.
That kind of wipe would crush the entire raid.
Against a level 63 raid boss in a frenzy, even Evasion barely helped. Magmadar breathed fire across the melee in front of him, dropping nearly everyone at once.
One of the Resto Druids shifted into Bear Form and lasted maybe a second.
But one second was still one second.
And that second was enough.
Crit fired.
This time, the shot landed.
Magmadar shrank back down.
"Kite him, ranged!"
Almost all the melee had died to the breath. Only one Fury Warrior was still standing, so the ranged DPS had to finish what little health Magmadar had left.
"Leave my teammates alone! Come at me!"
DaVinci, the last melee player alive, used Intercept and charged straight at Magmadar, buying everyone another precious second.
Even without the frenzy, Magmadar only needed two bites to kill a Fury Warrior.
With the healers completely dry, DaVinci went down almost immediately.
With the melee dead, Magmadar turned toward the healers, whose desperate overhealing earlier in the fight had pushed them high on threat.
They had no mana left and no way to fight back.
All they could do was run and buy the raid a few more seconds.
But Magmadar wasn't limited to biting people.
Another blast of fire tore through the group.
"Ten thousand HP! Come on!"
Those final ten thousand were the most dangerous.
The first ranged player Magmadar caught was a Warlock, who went down immediately. The remaining Mages bought time with Blink and Ice Block.
"Seven thousand! Six thousand! Five thousand! Come on!"
One Ice Block after another forced Magmadar to run back and forth, somehow dragging the fight out for another thirty seconds.
"He's frenzied!"
Magmadar frenzied again.
Several Mages were badly positioned, and he caught them before they could get away, roasting the group with another breath.
"He's still got over a thousand HP! Holy shit, we're not seriously wiping with a thousand health left, are we?!"
Gabryell's stomach dropped.
He had never seen a Magmadar fight this insane before.
No.
No fucking way.
They weren't wiping here.
"Coldhands, let's split up."
There wasn't enough time left to stand still and cast Frostbolt. Their only hope was to survive a few more seconds and let the remaining DoTs slowly finish Magmadar off.
Coldhands immediately ran toward the boss's original position.
Gabryell had more threat, so Magmadar stayed on him.
Gabryell had no Ice Block left—he'd already burned it twice. With death closing in, he barely managed to squeeze out one last Cone of Cold for a little extra damage.
Then he died.
Now Coldhands was the only player left alive.
Instead of continuing to run, he stopped.
And hard-cast Frostbolt.
The spell left his hands just as Magmadar charged him.
The boss breathed fire.
Frostbolt hit.
Crit.
At the exact same moment, one of the remaining DoTs ticked.
Then the impossible happened.
Magmadar's last thousand health vanished.
"I'm dead!"
Magmadar collapsed.
So did Coldhands.
The breath emptied his health bar almost at the exact same instant.
All forty players were dead.
Not one person was left standing.
Technically, it was a full wipe.
Except Magmadar was dead too.
For ten full seconds, nobody said a word.
Then raid chat and Ventrilo exploded.
"That was fucking insane!"
"Oh my God! That actually counted?!"
"No fucking way! We actually wiped with the boss!"
Gabryell stared at the grayscale death screen and Magmadar's corpse lying on the ground.
It felt as though every ounce of strength had suddenly drained out of his body.
The rush felt better than going a hundred rounds with a hundred of Seven's exes.
"That actually worked!"
Those were the only three words left in his mind.
He had run Molten Core hundreds of times in his previous life and had never seen anything like this—an entire raid dying at practically the exact same moment as the boss.
Now he really had seen everything.
...
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