Huntsman and the Fox

Allow me to being this post by quoting the renound Oscar Wilde (who according to wikipedia was an irish poet and playwrite). He once said and/or wrote:

“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”

That’s probably what Shannox is saying to himself right now. After laughing at us all Wednesday, he got his face pwned by reason and intellect on our first Thursday pull.
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We walked into firelands this week with everyone already distributing loot. They were talking about which boss we were going to do second, what we were going to do with crystallized fire drops, even preemptively clearing trash towards the next boss since Shannox was going to be such a pushover. By the time we were ready to actually pull the boss, nobody was listening to a single word I was saying. Avoid traps, move away from the dogs, stay away from rageface, kite away from riplimb. All of this was totally completely ignored.

The evening started with about 3-5 wipes using a proper tactic. We had two tanks, one on the boss, and one on the dog. The tanks were asked to trap the dog when the spear landed, and then once the dog broke free and recovered the spear, to kite the boss away from the dog. After all, this was the most logical way to approach the fight. It made sense. It was the easiest way to do it on normal mode. We failed miserably. People were getting hit by any and all traps. Hell even tanks were getting hit by immolation traps and getting 2-shot by the boss. It was a total uncoordinated mess. Clearly everyone had been so distracted by how faceroll normal mode was that they decided to ignore all mechanics.

And then the idiocy truly began…

Someone mentioned that 2-tanking the fight was not possible. WorldofLogs and 200 American server kills be damned, there was “no way” to reset the bleed stacks on the tanks using “this tactic” because “this tactic” – referring to trapping the dog with the spear down, and moving the boss away from the dog, was wrong. I tried to reason, and asked for patience and focus. I explained it logically. We have distances between the dog and the boss, the trap and the spear, and the spear and the boss, and then the boss and the offtank. We wanted to maximize the travel time between these points. Although it appeared logical, people disagreed. I started to bend, waver, and very quickly gave in. I was too clever; clever enough that I didn’t even understand a single word of what I was saying. I abandoned logic. I gave in to the mob. We were going to brute force the boss.

We took a third tank, and traded aggro on the boss. This allowed the Shannox tanks to drop their stacks. Since we had two tanks on the boss, some of our healers strongly insisted that the entire raid should stop moving. So the tanks refused to move. With the tanks not moving, the off-tank never managed to reset his stacks properly. He would run across the entire map and get smacked by an enrage. We weren’t even using traps for the dog at this point, people had found some retarded online blog which called the traps “unnecessary”. And so they became unnecessary, because some idiot had said so on the interwebz. Our new tactic became, and I quote, “When the boss throws the spear, just run the fuck away!” (referring to the offtank). And so he ran the fuck away, and the boss and dog enraged and starting killing tanks.

Well clearly the 3-tank tactic was working as intended. It was just that resetting the riplimb stacks wouldn’t be possible. Someone mentioned that they’d managed to tank it on 10 man normal resetting their stacks properly, but this cry to reason was quickly ignored. We were going to power through this boss if it was the last thing we did. “Obviously, since Riplimb has only 16 million hp, he must be meant to be killed.” And so the raid further devolved into madness…

A new tactic evolved, from the shambles of our previous (and embarrassing) wipes. By our 20th pull of the evening we were now dragging Riplimb through all the immolation traps and burning him down. Rageface was being reset on the crystal prison traps (fairly successfully at this point to be entirely honest). And the boss was being burned down in his stationary position between killing Riplimb with a combination multi-dot cleave damage and direct focus. And the craziest part, the ludicrous thing imaginable happened: the tactic appeared to be working. We had managed to survive for a full 7 minutes on one of our attempts. We dealt 140 million damage. Unfortunately we had killed the dog 3 times that attempt, meaning 48 million damage was wasted. In 7 minutes we had taken the boss down to under 25%, while killing the dog 3 times. People were talking about how this was the “proper” tactic, because it had worked. We had managed to reset stacks, to survive for some time. Only a few brave souls dared to speak and say we would have killed the boss had we not been conducting a choreographed ballad to idiocy. In fact, we had 3 attempts that evening where we would have killed the boss if the tank stacks could reset properly without killing the dog.

Brute force had lost. Shannox laughed at us. His dogs grew fat on our flesh. Intelligence and reason were shunned Wednesday evening; they had no place, found no home, in our hearts or minds.

And then, I had a dream. A dream that one day every noob shall be exalted with all factions, every boss and instance shall be nerfed hard, the tough instances will be made easy, and the crooked lines walked by tanks will be made straight, and the glory of the Designers shall be revealed, and all raiders shall see it together. That day may not be far off. But until that day, when all content becomes trivial, people need to stfu, stop QQing, and L2P.

The very next day we logged back online. I donned my paladin in all the panoply of war and we cleared the trash. We pulled the boss. We used our brains, and not our brawn. We pulled with our brilliance and not our backs. A rogue cleared some traps. The main tank moved the boss away from the dog. I pranced around like a prissy little ballerina* and reset my stacks before riplimb was even close to err…ripping my limbs I guess. And so the boss was downed, not by a display of brute force, but of brute reason. The logical approach we had so quickly abandoned and shunned proved to be the key to killing the boss with ease, a day late, but with ease none the less. So let this be a reminder to everyone that logic, reason, and strategy are how to succeed in life. Let us never again become the fool who rams himself face-first into a door hoping to break through it, rather than taking the time to find the handle and slide it open.

*Special thanks go out to Hyade who chased me around while prancing about like an idiot. <3

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