A sacrifice for the victory!
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 13th 2007 at 5:00PM
Xalit has a good question in the WoW LJ: which boss do you always die on? Being a Shaman, I'm pretty good at not dying (in boss fights where we don't wipe, at least)-- I'm far enough away from the battle to avoid crazy AoE, and the fact that I don't top either the heal or the DPS meters means I'm pretty far down on the aggro lists.But even more common than me dying every battle is our main healer. He always seems to bite the dust during a battle, whether we win or wipe-- even on a trash fight, he's usually the first to go. And our guildleader, a DPS Mage, was the butt of a joke for a while in the guild-- we laughed that he had to die for us to beat the boss. If he didn't die, the boss didn't get the sacrifice he needed, and we didn't get the loot.
I don't know that it ever got to the point where we were actually killing him during the fight just to make sure a down happened, but I'm sure it was joked about. Are there any fights you've been to where, even with a victory, someone just can't stay alive for some reason?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Instances, Humor, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Acariquara Sep 13th 2007 5:12PM
"I don't know that it ever got to the point where we were actually killing him during the fight just to make sure a down happened"
As a Warlock,
1. Cast Curse Of Elements
2. Mage overnukes (???)
3. One dead mage. (Profit!!!)
Urthal Sep 13th 2007 5:08PM
As a tank, I tend to die to Vaelastrasz every single time..
so2 Sep 13th 2007 5:09PM
In my previous guild, our best healer (a priest named Senk) had a thing with pulling agro while clearing trash, and no pull was complete without him pulling agro, dying, and the infamous Spirit of Redemption popping out above his corpse. It got to the point where my main tank and I both had vent binds for a TTS saying "Senk down!" which we would promptly hit when we saw the spirit form show up.
Even on trash pulls where everything was going smoothly, my main tank would deliberately drag the mobs to Senk and stop attacking to lose agro to him, and then we'd laugh as the Spirit of Redemption angel appeared.
Good times.
Annwn Sep 13th 2007 5:11PM
as a rogue I die on morose every time I get garroted, nobody ever heals a rogue.
Aello Sep 13th 2007 5:11PM
The big groups of party goers on the way to Moroes in Kara. A gnome mage always seems to get sacrificed.
Karl Sep 13th 2007 5:16PM
As my Warlock, I have never lived through the two-headed ogre in Shattered Halls (Can't recall the name). After the tank loses aggro, I am usually tanking it right up until the next fear AoE or up to just about the end of the fight where my drain life, siphon life and death coil just can't heal me enough to keep me standing. It seems I "almost" always make it.
Evil M Sep 13th 2007 5:19PM
Our raids always sacrifice our priests (all of our healing ones have Spirit of Redemption) to which there's always an immediate call out "Angel of Shame! Priest01 is dead!"
I think whenever we kill Big Bad Wolf I have to die. My ass never makes it around that house in time.
Domaci Sep 13th 2007 5:25PM
What's with all the death? Learn to use KTM. Healers don't heal too early, and don't overheal so much. It sounds like you are overhealing for the content you are on. If you have like 1900 +heal you are too good for Kara, take some gear off. If you are a mage in kara go frost or go home. Get iceblock to drop aggro. You can go invis too.
I had to sound like an ass, but this article just made me LOL for real. No need for all this stupid death if you've been through the content several times and know it. Even without knowing the content you should know how to read KTM. Do people fight that hard to be on top of Damage Meters in ur guild that they have to pull aggro left and right? I'm 75% of the time #1 DPS in Kara, and I rarely ever pull aggro. I know I can FD and it's easier, but FD means nothing if I don't watch it. I pull aggro much faster than every 30 seconds. I have to back off long before I can clear all aggro with FD.
l2play homies, seriously.
hyos Sep 13th 2007 5:30PM
We had a mage who was always boasting about his skills. So on one Nefarian fight, the priests had a small contest who woul heal him to death :-) We made this a tradition and each BWL clear ended not always with a rewarding victory over Nef but also with a dead gnome mage.
Velline Sep 13th 2007 5:42PM
I die on everything. I'm my guild's main healer and it never fails, I die on every pull. And to #8 you've obviously never been past kara then if you think ktm solves all your agro/death problems. I won't even be on ktm's top 20 threat and I will die from a mob peeling off to come hit me real quick. In the eye the banish/sheep targets will target me while they are banished/sheeped due to my healing and while the person is re-ccing it they take the second to kill me first. I don't tend to die too much on boss fights, but on trash pulls... if I don't die we don't seem to have a successful night. My raid group even started taking a betting pool to see how many times in a night I would die.
fauxbo Sep 13th 2007 5:43PM
@8 Ummm... You do sound like an ass, but not for the reasons you think.
1 Over healing causes no agro. If a Tank is full and I heal for 7k on top of that even if the tank is standing there not generating any threat I will not pull agro.
2 If you have 1900+ healing (which is more than achievable in Kara gear) Why would you remove it? Better yet what would you replace it with? Why not just cast a heal every 1.9 seconds instead of 1.5?
3. Fire Mages have much higher DPS then Ice mages, and they should be used in Kara especially if you are learning the instance.
4. Hunters have the best agro management of any class, if a hunter EVER pulls agro they are terrible and need to, as you so eloquently put it, L2PLAY HOMIES
Healers dying is a case of terrible tanks. Unless it's Hydross (god I hate him so)
sloegin Sep 13th 2007 5:45PM
Seems like anytime there's a raid call for the AOE boom-boom, me or some other mage is goin down.
Roleplaying a suicide bomber is as much a function of the mage class as making food and water. :P
spetsnaz123 Sep 13th 2007 7:30PM
lol, i'm a resto shaman too and i'm the main healer for the kara group. if it wasn't the earth shield+mail armor+shiled, i would be dead pretty often too.
btw, does it count as a death if ankhed? cuz it's kinda our shamans' aggro dump. sad but true.
Tiforix Sep 13th 2007 6:02PM
I rarely survive the fight against Blackheart the Inciter in Shadow Labyrinth. I *really* hate that dude.
Anon Sep 13th 2007 6:03PM
As a balance druid, I was healing SM runs (pretty well for the most part) so that I could go from 30 to 40 to get moonkin form...and invariably, the same hunter ended up in my PuGs. Nice guy and all, but both him and his pet (though more often then not, him) seemed to have a death wish. I managed to save him with a well timed regrowth more often than not...but not always. We often grouped with another hunter (BM with a cat) and that cat had the biggest death wish I have ever seen...it practically MT'd the entire instance. Between the 2 of us, we kept it alive, but it wasn't always easy. Those were some fun runs.
Junzim Sep 13th 2007 7:09PM
The boss doesn't go down if Junzim's in the raid and not eating some tasty floor.
Onyxia, Most of AQ20, Moroese, Maiden, Curator heck all of KZ. I'm the blue smear in priestly robes on the floor of every boss kill.
Skarlette Sep 13th 2007 7:24PM
One of our priests ALWAYS died on the lava packs in MC. Without fail. We still tease him about it.
As for me, a fire mage, I can count on dying a few times to those AOE pulls before Moroes. It's just a matter of how much DPS I can blast out before I go down. ;)
Ambril Sep 13th 2007 7:33PM
No point in playing a mage if you have a problem with dying. ;)
There is one trash pull in Leotheras' room that I have only ever survived twice. Usually right around the time I'm sheeping, one of the shield-bearers will randomly charge at me and kill me in one hit.
Alkahn Sep 13th 2007 7:51PM
@10 That's not really anything to boast about. The only healing class that has an excuse for dying that much is druids, since they can't drop aggro. Priests can pre-load prayer of mending, have a low-aggro shield (less than a similar-strength heal), and can fade if they pull aggro. Silent resolve should be a consideration if you don't have it.
If you're pulling aggro healing past the opening 5-6 seconds of a fight, your tanks need to learn how to play (more CC?) or they need better mitigation.
Prayer of mending gives the tank free aggro and if you do it early enough before the pull you can use 2 of them before you ever heal. In contrast, opening up w/ a big heal or pre-loading renew will get you killed every time, and as a priest you shouldn't die that much.
Alkahn Sep 13th 2007 7:53PM
@me: it occurs to me you never said you're a priest. My bad.
Earth shield for shammies and bubble for palis give a similar effect though. Druids.. um.. ./helpme