When your luck turned bad, even the simplest thing could find a way to screw you.
The opening Tranq missed.
Magmadar frenzied, his attack speed shot through the roof, and even with the healers spam-healing him, Carlos only lasted about eight seconds before getting mauled to death.
Fortunately, having two backup tanks ready paid off.
David stepped in next. He popped Shield Wall and Last Stand, trying to buy enough time for Susie to take over after him and hopefully hold out until Tranq came back up.
"Spam-heal David. Keep him alive as long as you can."
"Crit, Tranq the second it's back up. This next shot decides whether we wipe."
The moment Shield Wall ended, David was living on borrowed time. The extra health from Last Stand wasn't going to keep him alive for long against a frenzied Magmadar.
OneShotCrit's palms were sweating.
The entire raid was counting on him now. If the next Tranq missed too, Carlos and David would be dead with Susie next in line.
"Two seconds."
He counted down in his head while furiously clicking Tranquilizing Shot.
"I'm done. Susie, take him!"
David finally went down.
Susie immediately took over. Her gear was a little better than David's, so she didn't need to blow Shield Wall right away.
"Tranq!"
Gabryell was tracking the cooldown in his head.
Twenty seconds after the first shot, he shouted, "Now! Now!"
OneShotCrit's frantic clicking paid off.
The instant Tranq came off cooldown, he fired.
"Holy shit!"
At that exact moment, Magmadar feared the melee, sending players running in every direction.
Several Mages who had crept too close got caught as well.
A few healers had also drifted forward without realizing it while desperately trying to keep the tanks alive, putting themselves inside the fear range.
"I'm burning to death!"
Someone typed in raid chat after getting feared straight into a patch of fire.
The healers could barely keep Susie alive. They had no time to rescue everyone else.
Anyone feared into the fire was basically dead unless they were a Mage who could Ice Block out of it.
"It worked!"
This time, the Tranq landed.
OneShotCrit finally breathed again.
If he'd missed twice in a row, he never would've heard the end of it.
Magmadar shrank back to normal, and his attacks slowed down with the frenzy gone.
Susie's health bar, which had been bouncing all over the place a moment earlier, finally stabilized.
"Refresh Fear Ward on Susie and Night. Night, get in there and stay second on threat."
With Carlos and David both down, Gabryell had no choice but to send in Nightlord, their fourth tank, as backup.
"One... two... three."
That last fear had killed three people.
Two had burned to death, while the third had been feared directly in front of Magmadar and roasted by his breath.
"Having only one Hunter with Tranq really sucks."
One miss was far too dangerous.
Those twenty seconds of emergency spam-healing had drained the healers fast, and several were already running low on mana.
"Healers who are low, use Major Mana Potions on cooldown."
They still had two tanks, twelve healers, and twenty-one DPS alive.
As long as Crit didn't miss another Tranq, they still had a real chance.
"I already used one," DontPanicHealz said helplessly.
She had been spamming Flash Heal to keep the tank alive, and her Major Mana Potion was still on cooldown.
"Luna, Innervate Snowy. Mushy, give yours to Heals. Rosy, yours goes to SevenDays."
The Dwarf Priests couldn't afford to run dry.
With only two tanks still standing, two of them were enough to keep Fear Ward refreshed where it mattered.
"Snowy, refresh Susie. Heals, keep Fear Ward on Night."
"DPS, pick it up. You're killing this thing way too slowly. At this rate, the healers are going to run dry before the boss does."
Magmadar was still at seventy-nine percent.
Their damage simply wasn't high enough yet, and the healers' mana might not last at this pace.
Gabryell's warning worked.
Everyone pushed harder, and Magmadar's health finally started dropping at a noticeably faster rate.
"Crit, get ready. The second he gets bigger, Tranq."
They got about thirty seconds of breathing room before the next scare.
Magmadar frenzied again.
His body swelled up and his attack speed shot through the roof.
"Tranq!"
Gabryell called it the instant he grew.
Crit fired.
"Nice!"
Gabryell didn't even try to hide his relief.
"Perfect. Keep that up."
The shot landed again.
Magmadar barely had time to bulk up before the Tranq shut him back down.
Gabryell finally had enough breathing room to mess with OldSeven.
"See that, Seven? If you were half as good at calming things down as Crit is, maybe your girlfriend wouldn't have dumped you."
Then he immediately went back to calling the fight.
"Fear coming. Healers and ranged, max range."
His timing was almost perfect.
A few seconds later, Magmadar feared the raid again.
This time, only about half as many people got caught.
Of course, OldSeven was one of them.
As usual, he had been too busy chasing the damage meter to back out in time.
"Hah! That's Mage power for you. Don't get jealous, Rogues."
OldSeven got feared straight into the fire.
He Ice Blocked the fear, then Blinked toward the nearby wall like he thought the whole thing looked incredibly cool.
Showing off always came back to bite him.
OldSeven had learned that lesson over and over again.
It just never seemed to stick.
And his cursed Blink struck again.
This time, he didn't Blink into another patch of fire.
He didn't land in Magmadar's face either.
Instead, he Blinked straight into a bugged section of the wall.
There was a glitch on the wall to Magmadar's right. If a fear or movement ability sent someone into exactly the wrong spot, they could fall straight through the terrain and into the endless void below.
Eventually, they would fall to their death.
Worse, nobody could rez them down there.
The only option was to release and make the corpse run.
Naturally, OldSeven was unlucky enough to hit the exact spot.
His Blink carried him straight through the wall.
Then he started falling.
"Aaaaaah!"
OldSeven screamed over voice.
"Leader, save me! I fell into some nightmare place! Ah—shit, I'm dead!"
His health bar vanished from the raid frames and immediately turned gray.
"Holy shit, Seven. Where the hell did you die?"
Coldhands always kept a close eye on him. The two of them were constantly neck-and-neck on the damage meter.
"I fell into another dimension," OldSeven complained. "This game is bullshit."
Gabryell knew exactly where he had gone.
"Don't release yet. Wait until we finish the fight."
OldSeven's Blink really was cursed.
At this point, they should just take the damn ability off his bar.
He'd probably die less often without it.
"Keep it together. We've got this."
Magmadar was down to forty-eight percent.
Gabryell was starting to believe they could actually finish him on this pull.
"Any Resto Druid with enough mana, Rebirth Carlos."
Getting Carlos back up would give them another layer of insurance.
Even if Crit missed one more Tranq, they would have three tanks alive again—enough bodies to bridge the gap until the next shot came off cooldown.
"I've got it."
RosyCheeks drank a Major Mana Potion, giving herself enough mana for Rebirth.
That finally made Gabryell take a closer look at the Resto Druid who had joined the raid this week.
ServerHeals had strongly recommended her, and now Gabryell could see why.
RosyCheeks was good.
Her healing output was roughly on par with Lunatori and MushroomHunter, but she still had noticeably more mana left than either of them.
Her mana management was better, and she was wasting less healing on overheal.
RosyCheeks brought Carlos back.
"If you've got spare mana, rebuff Carlos."
That was one advantage of bringing twelve healers.
There were always a few with something left in the tank.
Isenor still had plenty of mana, for example.
He had been using his consumables aggressively—two Major Mana Potions and two Dark Runes already—and immediately put the Stamina buff back on Carlos.
To save healer mana, Carlos stayed where he was and bandaged himself back up.
"BigHeals, refresh Fear Ward on Carlos."
With three tanks alive again, they could survive one more missed Tranq.
The handful of dead DPS could stay down.
They still had twenty damage dealers alive.
That was more than enough to burn through Magmadar's remaining health.