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The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: What's the closest you've cut a boss kill?
by Chris Clow 
Aug 4th 2011 at 8:00AM
We've all heard the horror stories of 1% wipes on tough raid encounters. It's one of the most painful occurrences in the game, to have come so close yet to fall by the slimmest of margins. I find that the most exhilarating moments in this game for me lie in the moments where the wheels are beginning to fall off, and everyone in the raid pulls out all the stops to try to bring the beast down before it can finish us off. Just as the 1% wipe is such a painful experience, the opposite -- snatching victory from the gaping maw of defeat -- is the most rewarding.
In my guild, we've made a habit of living on that razor's edge for many of our progression kills this tier, but none were as close as our first Nefarian kill. We handled the fight cleanly until 20%. The second-to-last Electrocute killed the healer assigned to me, the add tank. As I blew my last cooldowns to survive, the 10% Electrocute came up. I put my raid wall up to protect the raid, and the Electrocute took me down.
As the adds began to run rampant, the raid performed brilliantly and sold themselves dearly. Our mage landed a perfect Ring of Frost to buy time; our healers burned every tool at their disposal to keep the adds at bay: and our Nefarian tank timed his cooldowns flawlessly. With only two DPSers left alive, our hunter launched himself across the room on his rocket boots in a desperate attempt to give our enhance shaman another precious second to finish off the dragon. Nefarian died with two DPSers alive, both of whom were at less than 25% health. Nerdscreams ensued.
What's closest you've cut things on a boss to get that first kill? Which boss pushed you to your limit?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 8)
Trilynne Aug 4th 2011 8:19AM
I was like, I know what I'll post! *reads article* wait a second, that sounds familiar... that's pretty much how our first Nef kill went, too. xP And I was also the add tank. :P
TheBearMonk Aug 4th 2011 8:22AM
One time when we were doing a Mag run we missed the interrupt and basically all but 2 people died. So the tank and the healer that were left proceeded to 2 man the boss for the next 30 minutes. I believe we managed to battle rez a dps and a healer (we had lots of druids in the group back in BC), but Mag went down eventually and we all had a really good laugh.
Hierakles Aug 4th 2011 8:22AM
My closest ever was a Kel'thuzad kill back in Wrath. Things had gone well until the last 20% or so where our add tank died. We'd been losing members steadily throughout the fight and it came down to myself (a hunter) and a pally tank and healer. By this point everyone was cheering us on in vent.
Around the 5% mark, disaster struck. My bow broke! I think this was back in the day of volley causing extra damage to your weapon, I'm not sure. Anyways, the result was that we ended the kill with just myself and the tank left alive, with me doing the best melee/trap/pet dps I could. It easily takes the cake for my closest cut kill.
Windswept Aug 4th 2011 11:25AM
Sounds like something my best friend and I did back in Naxx 20. He tanked, I healed. Took us about an hour or so of 'dancing'.
Revnah Aug 4th 2011 8:22AM
That would have been our first Marrowgar kill back in ICC when I was still playing my kitty druid (and raiding in a 10man group). It looked like one of those painful last-percentages-of-boss-health wipes and I was the last cat standing, so to speak. As he rounded on me, I knew I had 4 combo points so I popped Barkskin which prevented me from getting one-shot, and landed a Ferocious Bite. And suddenly he collapsed in a heap of bones!
Biggest adrenalin rush I've ever experienced :-D
Sunae Aug 4th 2011 8:23AM
Festergut. Our main tank was the only person alive and killed Festergut right as Festergut managed to kill him. We were all stunned for a couple seconds there.
lepus Aug 4th 2011 12:02PM
I remember that it was our first guild kill of festergut
Sunaseni Aug 4th 2011 11:55AM
Similarly, my guild's first Festergut 25 kill occured JUST after he had enraged. For those not in the know, Festergut constantly has an AOE, and after the enrage, one tick of the AOE will kill every single person in the room, barring immunities. If we had literally been half a second slower, we would have lost the kill.
Also my guild's first Elementium Monstrosity kill came down to me. I was the last one alive, Mirror Image had been popped, and by the time I was left, most of the other raiders' DoTs had expired, and I was on a dry spell of crits, so no ignite business. I launched a Pyroblast, but it didn't crit, so all that was left was my Pyroblast's DoT and the bear tank's bleed. I Ice Blocked cause he was all up in my face, and during the 10 seconds of immunity, the DoTs killed him. I like to imagine that I had dealt the killing blow, but a bear tank's bleed taking out a boss would be pretty badass too.
plop Aug 4th 2011 8:25AM
In recent memory... chimaeron, of course. Everybody' s answer should be chimaeron. The end of the fight just lends itself to that.
In my case, I think the enhance shaman must have died and ankh'd, because he soloed the last percent or so.
Calicia Aug 4th 2011 8:40AM
This. Even though it's designed for things like this to happen, to rogue tank Chim and survive *after* evasion has worn off is a rush. I gave myself style points for making him do the Killing Spree shuffle as he died.
Straz Aug 4th 2011 10:33AM
First Mother Sharazz kill, I ended up rogue tanking her from 58% down to 0. I miss Ghostly Strike :(
Bogoradwee Aug 4th 2011 11:09AM
Our first chimaeron kill ended with our holy paladin bubbling himself and finishing the boss off.
Jeremie Aug 4th 2011 8:25AM
The guild I am in is a group of friends that are casual about raiding. We don't spend hours pouring over combat logs. We don't go for optimal group. We play the class we want to play unless we really need something specific.
We had a 0.6% wipe on Al' Akir before we downed him the first time. Just about every person in the raid group has had their chance to shine as last man standing on a first time kill of a boss, tanks, healers and dps included.
The running joke in our guild for when we run progressive runs is two words, "last attempt." It seems when the raid leader calls last attempt, something kicks in and we manage to down the boss. And it has to be the true last attempt of the night for it to work, can't say last attempt before break or something like that, it has to be the last attempt before calling it a night.
sandbergk Aug 4th 2011 9:30AM
Our guild does this frequently. We usually say last attempt of the night and something clicks. We have downed cho'gal nef al'akir as well as the lich king on last attempts. We also joke and will say it at in the middle of the raid, but that never works.
Kay Aug 4th 2011 8:26AM
Far worse than the 1% wipe is the 0% wipe. Back in ICC my guild was learning Professor Putricide, the wheels started to come off midway through the last phase, everyone nuked as hard as possible, but he beat us. I don't remember the exact remaining health, but it was something ludicrous like 12k.
And his health bar sat there mocking us at "0%".
Como Aug 4th 2011 8:30AM
Heroic Iron council. We had been on the burn phase for 4 wks then and were getting close. During one of our attempts we were getting close but as usual were just not making the redic dps requirement. Our tank blew up early and the rl called a wipe over vent, I yelled over him no keep going, popped evasion and cloak of shadows, yelled over the rl and the idiot who went with the wipe call to keep going, got yelled at and while was doing it downed the boss with my evading/ resisting bad ass rogue self.
That or major domo last week literally down to one person after kiting him (those kitties will make sure you don't last too long anyway) and killed him (domo, not last player) with 596 hp left on our last dpser. That's the stuff I die for, it's great.
Bob Aug 4th 2011 8:40AM
In one of our first downings of Heroic Northrend Beats we had a very sloppy worms phase and were down a couple folks. Icehowl wasn't much better, either. In fact he hit the enrage timer and did the knockback aoe he does before charging a wall at like 3-4% and killed everyone but a tank who had used every cooldown left to stay alive. Our enhancement shaman promptly ahnked, blew his bloodlust since his death cleared his Sated and we finished off an enraged Icehowl just barely before his wall-stun phase had ended.
bryanscotthill Aug 4th 2011 8:33AM
Most recently, the Alysrazor encounter, we were doing great, until one of the add tanks dies with the boss having less than 5M health left. The free roaming add begins to annihilate everyone in its path, one painful kill at a time, and there I was... Firefoxing my way through ring after ring as I heard raiders scream, "It's on me! I'm down.". One by one, they dropped, as I darted in and out of the clouds on the wings of hope. Alysrazor now has 2M health as I heard the last of our ground forces go under, I heard them all chant, "Kill it Willard! Kill it!", and "You got this, kill that ___________!". 1M health and I'm still airborne, watching the hungry adds menacingly stare at me from below, anxiously anticipating my landing, I managed to pull it off, circled around the air above in my spiral 'victory' landing, and then mass rezzed everyone. It was truly heroic, not in the sense that everything went as planned, but more importantly, because it didn't.
Microtonal Aug 4th 2011 8:33AM
I remember killing Thaddius once (at 80) where the only people left alive were me and two other hunters.
razion Aug 4th 2011 8:35AM
Sindragossa. Back in ICC, we were neck and neck with the top-end guild on the server for realm-first for that boss. We missed the realm first by three minutes, but downing Sindragossa was particularly interesting our first time around--all our tanks and all but two of our healers had died, and DPS were dropping like rocks. At the time I was a Moonkin, and we had Sindragossa to I kid you not, a mere 70k when the third to last DPS had fallen. At that instant, when Sindragossa turned to its next DPS victim--myself--our other DPS shouted over vent that he was tanking, and that he damn well better get heals.
Our Feral druid growled and strafed his way to the wall to prolong the next auto-attack. I let out a Wrath just before I was devoured (and my pathetic magic betraAAAAyed me) Sindragossa was at a mere 20k, and a healer dropped. 14k. It was our Feral druid and the healer. Then the feral druid dropped. 7k. Then the healer dropped. 4k. Everyone had died.
Sindragossa meandered her way back to the center... and collapsed dead from a combination of an Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Lacerate, and giving the killing blow was a measly healer's Shadow Word: Pain tick. Vent had exploded, and we had all cheered. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.