Tuesday we had another one of those nights that are really the highlight of a raider, well for me at least. The first night of tries on a new boss. Although in this case "boss encounter" would be a more fitting name, since the fight consisted of us facing off against 4 enemies at the same time, the infamous Illidari Council. I had already read a multitude of strategy guides (some might call them "spoilers"), prepared fully with flasks, potions, and food and weapon buffs. As we had more signups than usual, it's safe to say that the whole raid was anxious with anticipation for the fight. Probably the fact that if we beat these guys, we would have our first glimpse of Illidan Stormrage, the last boss in Black Temple, had something to do with it as well.
Unfortunately, the guild I'm in has a reputation of struggling with this type of fight, where you fight multiple enemies at the same time. It took us a whole evening before we were able to nail the High King Maulgar encounter, despite having cleared Karazhan multiple times with 2 raid groups at the same time. And it took us several weeks before we managed to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress.
But this time, things went a lot better. Although we had a slow start since we had a lot more people than are allowed to go inside the raid instance and we lost some time deciding who got to raid, we made steady progress and even managed to bring them down to 7% on what looked like it would have been our penultimate try. So everyone was really pumped for that last try, 10 minutes before our usual end time of the raid. All soulstones were used, the druids all had their battle rezzes ready, all important cooldowns could be used.
And the attempt went really well. Everyone did their job flawlessly, although we did have a few deaths. But anyone who knows the encounter, knows that sometimes a death is unavoidable in this fight. They went down really nicely - 10%, 5%, 3%… almost there … I was just in the middle of recasting a curse on one of the off-tanked mobs when the dreaded sound of the boss mod informing you of a tank death came. Aaargh. Since all the other tanks were already fighting the other enemies, there was no way they could pick up the loose mob and it went on a killing spree, one-shotting players left and right. Those that were still alive gave it their all to finish the fight anyway, but to no avail. The boss went down as far as 1% health, but we didn't manage to kill it.
What a horrible feeling, to come so very very close, but to ultimately fail anyway. I bet a lot other players in my guild were swearing just as hard as I was at that point.
At this time, it was already 10 minutes past our usual end time, so what to do? Usually we would just end the raid here, but damn… this is a new boss and we were so close. We can certainly beat the encounter, that much was clear, but we are a more casual guild and lots of us have jobs and classes to go to in the morning. I know the vast majority of the raid wanted to keep on going for one more attempt, but in the end we held a vote and it wasn't unanimous. Some people wanted to go. So the raid went to bed and we all went to bed frustrated.
Was this the right decision? Although at the time I was quite disappointed that we didn't go for that last attempt, in retrospect I have to say that this probably was the right decision. We can beat the encounter, we know that, and although it didn't happen this week, it'll certainly happen next week. We still are a more casual raiding guild, and it was past the official end time of the raid. I think it's a still fair to ask the raid if they want to go for another try, and if everyone agrees then go for it.
But if someone, just one person, can't make it, then the raid should be stopped, without any hard feelings. After all, the schedule was agreed on and while you agreed to commit to these raiding hours, anything extra should be entirely optional.
Anyway, in the mean time we had another reclear of the instance and we're all ready to go again on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll manage to kill the boss then. Stay tuned for more info next week for sure!
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