Down with Gary

We finally killed Gary!

Garosh Hellscream is the final Raid Boss of the World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria expansion. You go about killing him by assembling a team of 10 to 25 players, entering an instance and throwing stuff at him, stabbing him and generally just doing stuff to make him really angry.

Our guild have had problems all of this expansion because we just haven't been able to get a full, stable team going. About halfway through the expansion a new function and difficulty level came out that allows us to group up with players from other servers. This allows us to now create a regular raiding schedule and kill stuff the way we all like.

A problem with this new system is that you tend to have about 40% of the group be players you have never played before. Usually experienced players fit right in, but some player are just really bad or can’t handle dying all the time, so they suddenly come up with excuses and have to leave early, leaving us sitting around waiting for an replacement player.

On Monday a another new player joined our group. He seemed to be pretty experience and said he was doing this on his extra character. He knew all the fights and had finished everything on a higher level already. This turned out to be very useful when we came to the aforementioned Gary.

See, Gary have been a wall to beat our heads against for a long time now. I don’t have the numbers, but believe me when I tell you we died many times to this a***hole and haven't managed to get even close to killing him.

The new guy in the group mentioned that he had a possible new strategy for us to try. Right of the bat the new strategy felt good (as long as he was talking us through it) and we went further than we had gone to date. Unfortunately the evening was drawing to a close and people needed to leave.

Last night, after all the resets, we made it all the way to Gary again. We finished the previous two bosses in quick time and thus had enough time to kick some Hellscream butt. 90 minutes and many deaths later we were still not victorious, but we had shown some impressive progress.

Time was up and one or two people left, but apart from them no one said anything about quitting. With an unspoken agreement, we continued. Each pull brought us a little closer. We even made it to 1% once. One attempt started really well until one of the healers disconnected. With another attempt one of our top damage dealers had the same problem.

I must note that we had to change to a strategy with only two healer, and believe me when I tell you it was stressful. With only two healers you have a limited amount of “Oh S***!” buttons you can use, and the number of priority decisions don't just become more, but also more difficult. Add to that the fact that I play a healing class that is not exactly good at bringing people back to life. I’m good at stopping the death and then I have to hope and pray the other healer manages to get the health back up. There are some big trust relationships going in all directions. One mistake can cause the whole raid to fail, and while I’m staring at everyone’s health bars, I still have to make sure I move to the right place at the right time and don't take damage that can avoided.

On the very last pull, the on which our raid leader said: “This is the last attempt, even if he lives with one single health point,” we managed to get him down. 4 hours of hell and we did it!

The life of Dhells is now complete, until next week, when I Gary is alive again.