So, last Wednesday I had just finished my usual round of Icecrown dailies (Argent Tournament, Shadow Vault, and the bombing runs) and figured I may as well queue up for a random heroic group and get a couple frosties. Of course, the Dungeon Finder tool—as it is wont to do—decides that my queuing choice of tank/healer is just a result of me being unable to choose tank/tank, and it chucks me into Heroic Old Kingdom as a tank. As it turns out, the group consists of:
- myself tanking,
- a freshly 80 Druid healer,
- a Death Knight,
- a Hunter,
- and the unluckiest Warlock ever.
We get inside and start working our way through the place, and for a while everything is going pretty normally (with the exception of a Frost Presence mishap, but that was quickly resolved). We defeat Elder Nadox with relative ease and continue on down the steps to start on Prince Taldaram trash only to find that the Warlock isn't with us—she'd gone AFK after the first boss and was still upstairs.
'Eh,' I think to myself, 'it's just Heroic Old Kingdom trash right? We don't need a 5th for this.' Heck, there's an achievement for defeating Taldaram with only 4, and it doesn't seem like anyone else is too worried about it, so we press on and clear the 3-4 trash packs up to the first platform. As we engage the platform mobs, the Warlock comes back from AFK and starts making her way to us...only she goes up the wrong platform. Oops. Sadly, the rest of us are just a bit too late to save her (although if I'd had another second, I probably would have been in Lay on Hands range). =\
We clear the trash and start looking to resurrect her only to find that she's released and we can't seem to find her corpse. Well, waiting for someone to make that run is just a fantastic waste of time (if only we'd had a Warlock to summon her to us... >.> ), so we decide to press onward, and since the trash has all been cleared, that meant engaging the boss. We pull, Taldaram knocks over one person who is immediately freed, then a second with the same effect...and then he disappears. The four of us just kinda look around in confusion for a few moments. What happened? The boss shouldn't have been dead yet, so where did he g—Oh. That's where. "Warlock has died." /facepalm
Apparently, Taldaram doesn't have a range on his blood sucking ability, Embrace of the Vampyr. Any player in the entire instance is a valid target and the Warlock, unfortunately, was running past Nadox's room—close enough to be on our minimaps, but far enough to be effectively out of range of any timely help. Sadly, as it turns out, while Taldaram's Embrace of the Vampyr may have infinite range, the rest of his abilities do not, so rather than run back and resuming the fight, the coward despawns. He may or may not have said something about it not being his time, the rest of us were too busy laughing to take notice. >.>
Oh well, it's a PuG, things of this nature are to be expected, right? So we start running back to the Warlock to go resurrect her before she dies again. At least, I thought that's what we were doing. However, "we" did not include the Hunter, who had run to Taldaram's spawn point when he vanished, and hadn't moved. At all. I'd managed to take three steps or so on the way back towards the Warlock when the boss respawned. Ding! Round 2!
Well, guess there goes that plan. The Warlock can just hang tight for a couple minutes while we kill off the boss and run back to resurrect her, right? It's not like we had much of a choice at that point, so I turn around, grab aggro on the boss, and we begin to repeat the fight. Bite 1, no biggie. Bite 2, hey that tickles. Bite 3...guys where'd he g—Oh hell. "Warlock has died." Yes, when I said we repeated the fight, I meant it literally. The only difference was where she died—this time it was at the bottom of the initial ramp. You know, where the Ahn'kahar Watchers spawn for the All Things in Good Time daily? There.
It would have been a complete waste of time it it weren't so damn funny. We run back, safely escort the Warlock back (and even past, if you can imagine it) the second boss, and we're still laughing when we start pulling the trash at the Amanitar/Jedoga/Volazj split.
Feeling a bit bad for the Warlock now, we went straight for the Herald. The trash was cleared without incident, no one stood in the Shadow Crashes, and we pulled the boss. Insanity 1 passes without too much incident, so things are going pretty good, right? Insanity 2 starts up and things are going well. I clear my adds, others are clearing their adds, the Warlock is dead. Wait, what? Yep. Old Kingdom really, really hated that Warlock. Not just normal abhoration, but complete and utter "with passion rivaling the heat of a thousand suns"-level of pure hatred. Or perhaps it was karmic retribution. She was a Warlock, after all. XD
Needless to say, once Volazj was down she didn't stick around for the optional bosses. Sadly, neither did the Hunter nor Death Knight, but the Druid healer was up for them, so we just duo'd the rest of the instance.
'Eh,' I think to myself, 'it's just Heroic Old Kingdom trash right? We don't need a 5th for this.' Heck, there's an achievement for defeating Taldaram with only 4, and it doesn't seem like anyone else is too worried about it, so we press on and clear the 3-4 trash packs up to the first platform. As we engage the platform mobs, the Warlock comes back from AFK and starts making her way to us...only she goes up the wrong platform. Oops. Sadly, the rest of us are just a bit too late to save her (although if I'd had another second, I probably would have been in Lay on Hands range). =\
We clear the trash and start looking to resurrect her only to find that she's released and we can't seem to find her corpse. Well, waiting for someone to make that run is just a fantastic waste of time (if only we'd had a Warlock to summon her to us... >.> ), so we decide to press onward, and since the trash has all been cleared, that meant engaging the boss. We pull, Taldaram knocks over one person who is immediately freed, then a second with the same effect...and then he disappears. The four of us just kinda look around in confusion for a few moments. What happened? The boss shouldn't have been dead yet, so where did he g—Oh. That's where. "Warlock has died." /facepalm
Apparently, Taldaram doesn't have a range on his blood sucking ability, Embrace of the Vampyr. Any player in the entire instance is a valid target and the Warlock, unfortunately, was running past Nadox's room—close enough to be on our minimaps, but far enough to be effectively out of range of any timely help. Sadly, as it turns out, while Taldaram's Embrace of the Vampyr may have infinite range, the rest of his abilities do not, so rather than run back and resuming the fight, the coward despawns. He may or may not have said something about it not being his time, the rest of us were too busy laughing to take notice. >.>
Oh well, it's a PuG, things of this nature are to be expected, right? So we start running back to the Warlock to go resurrect her before she dies again. At least, I thought that's what we were doing. However, "we" did not include the Hunter, who had run to Taldaram's spawn point when he vanished, and hadn't moved. At all. I'd managed to take three steps or so on the way back towards the Warlock when the boss respawned. Ding! Round 2!
Well, guess there goes that plan. The Warlock can just hang tight for a couple minutes while we kill off the boss and run back to resurrect her, right? It's not like we had much of a choice at that point, so I turn around, grab aggro on the boss, and we begin to repeat the fight. Bite 1, no biggie. Bite 2, hey that tickles. Bite 3...guys where'd he g—Oh hell. "Warlock has died." Yes, when I said we repeated the fight, I meant it literally. The only difference was where she died—this time it was at the bottom of the initial ramp. You know, where the Ahn'kahar Watchers spawn for the All Things in Good Time daily? There.
It would have been a complete waste of time it it weren't so damn funny. We run back, safely escort the Warlock back (and even past, if you can imagine it) the second boss, and we're still laughing when we start pulling the trash at the Amanitar/Jedoga/Volazj split.
Feeling a bit bad for the Warlock now, we went straight for the Herald. The trash was cleared without incident, no one stood in the Shadow Crashes, and we pulled the boss. Insanity 1 passes without too much incident, so things are going pretty good, right? Insanity 2 starts up and things are going well. I clear my adds, others are clearing their adds, the Warlock is dead. Wait, what? Yep. Old Kingdom really, really hated that Warlock. Not just normal abhoration, but complete and utter "with passion rivaling the heat of a thousand suns"-level of pure hatred. Or perhaps it was karmic retribution. She was a Warlock, after all. XD
Needless to say, once Volazj was down she didn't stick around for the optional bosses. Sadly, neither did the Hunter nor Death Knight, but the Druid healer was up for them, so we just duo'd the rest of the instance.
The End.
