The lava packs were what decided whether an MC run stayed clean or turned into a disaster.
If you'd never been one-shot by one, could you really say you'd done Molten Core?
Even with the Firewalker faced away and tanked cleanly, Fire Blossom could still suddenly delete someone.
"Keep Incite Flames off the tanks."
Both Firewalkers and Flameguards came with nasty debuffs.
The Firewalker used Incite Flames, reducing nearby players' Fire Resistance by 50 for one minute.
The Flameguard had Melt Armor, which reduced the armor of nearby enemies by 1,000 for one minute.
Incite Flames could be dispelled, so Gabryell wanted it removed from the tanks immediately. Melt Armor simply had to be endured.
Either way, once those debuffs started stacking pressure onto the tanks, the chance of someone suddenly falling over went way up.
"Good. Just like that. If Incite Flames lands on a tank, clear it immediately."
Fearless's healers were doing a great job.
Bringing all twelve had definitely been worth it. During progression, extra healing gave them much more room for mistakes.
Losing a few people wasn't enough to stop them from killing a lava pack.
That was what made these pulls so annoying.
They didn't necessarily wipe the raid.
They just had a habit of randomly killing people.
Of course, a lot of their success came from Gabryell calling the fight from start to finish.
A raid going in blind would get absolutely wrecked on its first pull.
"Melee, get away from the Firewalker's corpse."
The moment it died, Gabryell ordered everyone nearby to back off.
A dead Firewalker erupted into a patch of flames.
Anyone standing in it kept taking heavy Fire damage.
"Death, too slow. You're the Rogue lead. I expect better reactions than that."
Several players had been late moving out and got burned, but Gabryell singled out DeathScum.
As the Rogue lead, he was supposed to set the example.
"Why are you still standing there? Your healer's about to start swearing at you."
DeathScum still hadn't moved.
He was planted right in the flames.
If a healer hadn't been spamming him, he would already have been dead.
"I think... I disconnected!" DeathScum said over Ventrilo.
Gabryell had no words.
Connections in 2004 were unreliable enough that this kind of thing was painfully common.
Someone would suddenly freeze in the middle of a fight, and by the time anything started moving again, they were staring at the login screen.
"Stop healing Death. Let him live up to his name and actually die."
Then Gabryell added:
"Get back online as fast as you can."
"Right away."
"Everyone on the Flameguard. Stay behind it unless you want Cone of Fire in the face."
Once the two fire mobs were dead, the remaining rock elementals were much easier to deal with.
"Keep the Lava Elemental Banished. We kill the Lava Reaver first."
Pyroclast Barrage was too annoying to deal with while the rest of the pack was still alive.
It stunned people and kept dealing damage, so leaving the Lava Elemental until last meant the healers would be free to focus on whoever got caught by it.
"David, you take the Lava Reaver."
Carlos and Susie were still wearing their Fire Resistance sets.
Against a Lava Reaver, David was actually sturdier than either of them.
He had spent most of the pull standing around with nothing to do.
The moment his turn finally came, David stopped chewing his nails and moved into position in front of the Lava Reaver, waiting for Banish to expire.
The Flameguard died barely a second before the Reaver broke free.
"Shadowlord, keep the Lava Elemental Banished. Everyone else, switch to the Reaver."
At this point, the two lava mobs could be treated much like the Lava Annihilators and Lava Surgers they had fought earlier.
As long as one stayed Banished, there wasn't much that could go wrong.
"FirstDate, what the hell are you doing?"
David stared in disbelief as he prepared to pick up the mob.
This time, the problem wasn't the trash.
It was one of their own players.
FirstDate apparently hadn't been listening to Ventrilo and had somehow Banished the Lava Reaver again.
Great.
Now both mobs were Banished.
The entire raid had nothing to do but stand there and stare at them.
"Sorry. Got distracted for a second," FirstDate typed.
"You bastard. You were definitely daydreaming about some girl," Seven declared.
OliveDrab immediately sold him out.
"Seven, you actually got it right. Yesterday FirstDate wrote a love letter to the prettiest girl in the class next door. She hasn't replied all day, so that's probably what he's been thinking about."
Some friend.
Always ready to throw him under the bus.
"Seriously?"
Seven's gossip instincts immediately kicked in.
Gabryell smiled.
Most of them were still at that age where one crush could take over your entire brain.
Seventy or eighty percent of the raid was around that stage of life. Only a handful had already finished school and started working.
With both mobs Banished and nothing else to attack, everyone naturally started discussing FirstDate's love letter.
"You actually wrote her a love letter? Damn, you've got guts."
"She hasn't replied after an entire day? Yeah, you're probably done for."
"Do you people have no sympathy? So what if she's the prettiest girl in her class? It's not like she's Miss World. Back in high school, I dated at least five girls like that."
"Holy shit, Cold. So you were a ladies' man? Respect."
"You're obviously full of shit. I bet you got rejected by five girls."
Cold refused to back down.
"Don't believe me? Seven, get on webcam with me tomorrow. One look at me and you'll never feel handsome again."
Hugo, sitting in the dorm, couldn't resist adding:
"Who cares about the prettiest girl in one class? Snowy was the prettiest girl on campus, and she still made the first move on Gabryell."
Danielly was right there in the raid.
Hugo wasn't stupid enough to say that over Ventrilo.
He only said it out loud in the dorm.
Gabryell ignored him.
His eyes stayed fixed on the Banish timers.
"David, pick up the Reaver. Shadowlord, keep the Elemental Banished. FirstDate, touch the wrong target again and tomorrow Snowy's personally telling you, 'You're a really nice guy.'"
Apparently that threat was enough.
FirstDate kept his hands off the Lava Reaver this time.
One mob by itself was easy.
Even if David somehow lost aggro, the other three tanks were standing right there.
Surely all three of them couldn't be daydreaming at the same time.
Once the Lava Reaver died, David said:
"If I were that mob, I'd go straight for the Warlock too."
DesertWanderer's voice came through Ventrilo.
"That's why I'm already on the floor."
He wasn't the only one.
Eight players had died during the pull.
For their first real lava pack, losing only eight people without wiping was already an excellent result.
What surprised Gabryell most was Seven.
Somehow, he hadn't died once all night.
"Seven hasn't Blinked even once tonight, has he? Take Blink away from him and suddenly he stops dying. That spell really is cursed in his hands."
With only one Lava Elemental left, Pyroclast Barrage was no longer much of a threat.
Everyone piled onto it and quickly finished the mob.
Gabryell looted the crafting mats.
"Rez everyone and rebuff whoever died. Death, you back online yet?"
"I'm back."
"Good. I was worried you'd take too long and get dumped into the login queue."
If that happened, Gabryell would have no choice but to bring in a substitute.
"There are still several more packs like this ahead. Don't relax. The dangerous thing about these mobs is how easily they can one-shot someone."
From this point on, the trash came in tightly packed groups.
Some were four-mob lava packs.
Others came in groups of three.
Either way, they were much nastier than the earlier trash.
Pull one extra group by mistake and the raid could wipe instantly.
"Smooch, keep pulling. You handle the markers this time."
Once everyone had recovered, Gabryell added:
"And keep an eye out for Geddon."
Smooch marked the lava pack on the left exactly the way Gabryell had shown her.
She waited a few seconds, made sure Baron Geddon wasn't coming back on patrol, then pulled.
With the experience they had gained from the first lava pack, the later ones went much more smoothly.
People still died, though.
That was just how lava packs were.
If nobody died, that would have been the weird part.
As long as they didn't wipe, Gabryell didn't care if they lost a few people on each pull.
Once they had cleared every lava pack that could interfere with the Geddon pull, Gabryell called:
"Rez everyone. We're heading back to Garr."
That last pack had gone pretty well.
Only two people had died.
And somehow, Seven was still alive.
After all those lava packs, the Floor King hadn't hit the floor even once.
Something was clearly wrong with the universe.
Unfortunately, none of those packs had dropped another BoE epic either.
Gabryell was starting to wonder whether the Cloudkeeper Legplates earlier had burned through all their good luck for the night.
Maybe they were paying for it now.
"We really should sacrifice Seven."
For a moment, Gabryell genuinely wanted to build a bonfire right there, make Seven strip naked, force him to circle the flames, then offer him up to Baron Geddon in exchange for the Left Binding.
...
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