"I'm dead!"
"Me too!"
"What the hell? How did I die? Healers, where were the heals?"
The melee pile evaporated under the Onyxian Warder's fire AoE. With barely over two thousand health each, two ticks were enough to wipe the whole group.
"Your health was dropping too fast. I couldn't keep up." Danielly had never seen an entire melee group melt that quickly. By the time her Heal finished casting, her target was already dead.
"Damn it, back up a couple of steps!" SevenDays snapped. "You're out of line of sight. I couldn't even hit you with Lay on Hands."
The terrain in Onyxia's Lair was awful, full of small slopes and uneven ground. It was incredibly easy for healers to lose line of sight.
Lunatori said, "Scum, I blew Nature's Swiftness to heal you... Wait, how the hell did you die?"
A second earlier, DeathScum had been the last melee DPS standing.
Then he hit the floor too.
Melee was gone.
Gabryell watched the chaos in silence. This was the 2005 knowledge gap playing out in real time: even SevenDays and Luna, who had been running with him for ages, had just burned Lay on Hands and Nature's Swiftness on trash.
"A hundred and fifty-seven days to fully clear Molten Core, and sixty-nine days for the first Onyxia kill. Players really had it rough in this era."
And those were world-first numbers. The average player was in even worse shape.
"Carlos, I can't heal you. Pull it back a little."
Carlos was tanking in a terrible spot, forcing several healers to scramble for line of sight.
He immediately dragged the mob back, but his health bar kept yo-yoing wildly, plunging and shooting back up fast enough to make everyone nervous.
"Why the hell does this dragon hit so hard?" It was Carlos's first time dealing with health swings this violent.
Finally, someone spotted the problem.
"Carlos, you've got a stacking debuff on you."
Onyxian Warders stacked a fire-damage debuff on their current target. Let it build too high and no tank—or healer—could keep up.
ServerHeals had caught it. As usual, the whale had excellent game sense.
"I dispelled it. Top Carlos off."
With the melee dead, all their damage had to come from ranged DPS.
"Crap, another guard incoming!" Susie called out as a level 61 Onyxian Warder started walking toward them.
The patrol routes of the three Warders overlapped if a pull dragged on too long. Fight one in the wrong spot, and the next could wander straight into the raid.
Experienced groups with weak DPS pulled each Warder farther back to make sure the patrols never overlapped.
"I've got it!"
Susie immediately moved up to pick up the second mob.
Unfortunately, she tanked it in a terrible position and blocked the healers' line of sight.
No one could heal her.
Within seconds, she was dead.
"I'm dead! Why didn't anyone heal me?" Susie blurted out.
OldMan said, "I couldn't get line of sight on you."
"Then come up here and heal me."
"If I go up there, I'm dead too." OldMan looked at the floor covered in melee corpses.
Frustrated, Susie spoke before thinking.
"Couldn't you just pop Divine Shield and come up here to heal me?"
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized how ridiculous that sounded.
"David, Night, pick up the mob!"
David and Nightlord moved in to grab the second Warder.
With both guards stacked together, the result was immediate.
Double fire AoE.
The combined damage was brutal. Carlos, David, and Nightlord—the three main tanks still standing in melee range—all dropped at once under the double burst of flames.
All four main tanks were dead.
"Holy crap!"
More than a dozen voices shouted at once.
The tanks and melee were gone, leaving only the ranged DPS and healers barely clinging to life.
With every tank dead, the Warlock highest on threat became the next target.
"RUN!"
The two Warders charged into the raid and started blasting the entire area with AoE, instantly dropping a large chunk of the ranged players.
The survivors scattered in every direction, desperately fleeing toward the dungeon entrance.
"Divine Intervention! Divine Intervention!"
One Paladin and two Priests were still alive.
In a panic, Igor cast Divine Intervention.
The only question was who he had cast it on.
"What the hell, Igor?! Why did you Divine Intervention me?" OneShotCrit shouted.
As a Hunter, he had never imagined he would be the one getting Divine Intervention.
"What a scrub," Carlos muttered.
Igor had just used Divine Intervention on a Hunter.
For a Holy Paladin, that was almost impressive in the worst possible way.
"Just wipe." Gabryell had seen enough.
There was no defending a mistake that bad.
The Priests had no real mobility and were quickly chased down and killed by the two Warders. A few Mages saw the wipe coming, Blinked away, and managed to escape the dungeon alive.
Gabryell could have escaped too, but he stayed.
A raid leader could not tell everyone else to keep fighting and then bolt the moment a pull looked doomed.
He had seen hopeless pulls turn around before. In Blackwing Lair, he had once seen a Vaelastrasz kill come down to a single player still standing while stacked DoTs finished Vael after everyone else died.
If they had called the wipe the moment the tank dropped, they never would have gotten the kill.
Mages could not resurrect anyone. Even if they escaped the dungeon alive, once they went back in, all they could do was stare helplessly at the corpses covering the floor.
"Run back to your bodies. And Igor—seriously? Divine Intervention on a Hunter?"
"Igor really screwed that one up. On behalf of our school, I apologize. He's embarrassing all of us."
Igor's mistake could wait.
Gabryell asked, "Anyone still alive an Engineer with Goblin Jumper Cables?"
OneShotCrit clicked off Divine Intervention.
"I've got Jumper Cables."
Good.
Goblin Jumper Cables were unreliable, but if they worked, it was still better than making everyone run back.
"Pick a Paladin or Priest and zap them. See if you can get a spark going."
"Okay."
OneShotCrit hesitated.
"Who do I zap?"
SevenDays immediately volunteered.
"Zap me. I'm gay, so we're bound to have a spark."
"I'm not, so there won't be one. Next." OneShotCrit ruled him out immediately.
"Zap me," Danielly said.
Then Igor spoke up.
"Zap me. I screwed up. If it doesn't work, I'll pay a fine like Old did."
Igor volunteering to take the blame—and the fine—was enough to get everyone off his back. The wipe had much bigger problems than one terrible Divine Intervention.
"Fine. Zap Igor. If it fails, fine him a hundred gold."
Friends deserved special treatment.
Meaning harsher punishment.
OneShotCrit laughed. "Honestly, I kind of hope this fails so he gets fined a hundred gold. But he did save me a repair bill, so I guess I should root for him."
With that, he used the Goblin Jumper Cables.
Sparks crackled over Igor's corpse.
"Did it work?"
"Did it proc?"
Everyone was watching closely.
Nobody wanted to run back to their corpse.
Gabryell glanced over at Igor's screen and smiled.
"If you don't get up right now, I'm fining you a thousand gold."
The instant Igor heard that, he clicked resurrect.
"Hahaha! It procced!" OneShotCrit shouted, more excited than anyone.
"How clutch was that?"
Igor got back on his feet looking unbearably smug.
"See? I didn't DI the wrong person. I was testing the Jumper Cables and giving OneShotCrit a chance to show off."
Carlos had heard enough.
"Igor, quit bullshitting and start rezzing people."
Igor finally stopped showing off and obediently began resurrecting the raid.
Fearless Guild's first Onyxia's Lair progression ended with a wipe to two trash mobs at the entrance.
They had not even laid eyes on Onyxia.