Players still weren't used to bench duty, so getting substitutes to stay in Vent at all times was a pain.
There were two Warlocks on the bench. Gabryell called out several times, but only one was online. The other was nowhere to be found.
"Astral, you've already gotten some gear. Step out for now and let the Warlock in."
Garr wasn't particularly friendly to melee classes. His Firesworn exploded when they died, so ranged DPS would normally burn the adds while melee stayed on the boss. During progression, that made ranged DPS more valuable overall.
Swapping out a ranged player would slow down the add kills, and the longer the Firesworn stayed alive, the more chances there were for something to go wrong.
Rogues, meanwhile, had Sprint to get out of bad situations and avoid getting launched by an explosion. Vanish and Feint also gave them much better threat control. Overall, they were a little better suited to the fight than Fury Warriors.
And if someone had to sit, it made sense to start with a player who had already gotten loot. That way, the people who were still empty-handed wouldn't feel as bad about it.
Astral had already gotten the Obsidian Edged Blade, and losing one Fury Warrior wouldn't matter much on Garr, so he was the obvious choice.
"Okay."
Astral was more than satisfied with what he had gotten tonight. If sitting out for a while helped the raid, he had no problem with it.
"Lantern, head to MC. Once you're inside, we'll summon you."
Gabryell had the substitute Warlock make his way to the instance while everyone else waited near Garr.
The entrance to Molten Core was packed with players, which made summoning from outside a pain. It would be faster for Lantern to get inside on his own first.
Traveling to an instance wasn't exactly safe these days. While crossing Searing Gorge, Lantern got killed once by the Horde. Luckily, after rezzing, he ran into a large Alliance group and avoided getting corpse-camped.
Even following them, it still took him more than ten minutes to finally reach the instance.
"Desert, get a summon up."
DesertWanderer started the summon and pulled Lantern over to the raid.
That gave them four Warlocks, which meant the original plan needed a few adjustments.
"Let me go over the boss."
Garr himself didn't have many especially dangerous abilities. The real problem was the eight Firesworn surrounding him. With that many adds running around, the battlefield could turn into a mess very quickly, and players at this point in the game had a bad habit of panicking once things stopped looking clean.
"Garr puts Magma Shackles on the raid. It slows you by fifty percent. Priests, only clear it from Carlos. Don't burn mana dispelling everyone else."
Garr cast Shackles constantly. If the Priests tried to clear the entire raid every time, they would run themselves dry for no good reason.
A fifty-percent slow wasn't going to kill anyone.
As long as Carlos could move normally, the rest of the raid could live with it.
This wasn't some GDKP run where people were padding the dispel meter for a bonus.
In the GDKP runs Gabryell remembered, Garr's Shackles were practically bait for meter-chasing Priests. Some would ignore teammates who actually needed help and spam every harmless slow they could find just to win the top-dispel bonus. Some raids even excluded Shackles when calculating dispel rankings because of it.
"The Firesworn also use Immolate. That one matters. If it lands on someone, their health drops fast, so clear it immediately. Immolate takes priority over Shackles."
Especially on a tank.
If Immolate sat on one for too long, they could go down fast.
"Snowy, Carlos is yours. Heals, you watch Susie. BigHeals, David. DontPanicHealz, you're on Nightlord."
Then he added, "Victor, watch all four. If anyone's late on a dispel, cover it immediately."
Assigning one Priest to each tank made the job much cleaner and reduced the chance of a dangerous debuff sitting there while everyone assumed somebody else would handle it.
The one-click dispel addon had already made Molten Core noticeably easier.
Back in true vanilla, Priests had to manually keep track of their assigned targets instead of relying on one-click dispels. Now, as long as nobody was asleep at the keyboard, getting a dangerous debuff off a tank in time wasn't much of a problem.
"Everyone, stack every buff you can. Even Unending Breath."
That got a few confused reactions.
"Players aren't the only ones who can dispel. Garr can too. He periodically uses Antimagic Pulse and strips a magic buff from everyone. The more buffs you have, the better the odds that he eats something useless instead of something important."
That was one of Garr's most annoying mechanics.
The longer the fight lasted, the more useful buffs could disappear. If the raid eventually lost everything that actually mattered, the fight would become much harder than it had been at the start.
"Wait, the boss can remove our buffs?" Carlos asked. "Then weren't all those flasks a waste?"
"Flasks, potions, and food buffs can't be stripped like that," Gabryell replied. "He's removing magical buffs. Your consumables are safe."
If Garr could erase expensive flasks every few seconds, Blizzard would have had a player revolt on its hands.
Even if the company wanted gold sinks, there were limits.
Carlos visibly relaxed.
"Good. Because if he strips my buffs and somehow takes my flask HP too, what the hell am I supposed to tank him with?"
Losing several normal buffs would already cut into his survivability enough. He didn't need anything else making the job worse.
With Garr's mechanics covered, they moved on to the adds.
"On the pull, Susie takes two. David and Night each take one. Warlocks, Banish the other four."
This was where the lack of raid markers became a nightmare.
With only two adds, like on Lucifron or Gehennas, it was manageable.
Eight identical Firesworn were another story.
Without skulls, stars, moons, or any other raid target markers, everyone had to identify their assignments manually. Tanks could grab the wrong add. A Warlock could Banish one a tank was trying to hold. Someone could attack a target meant to stay controlled.
One mistake could snowball into five more.
In his previous life, Garr had stonewalled plenty of early raids for two big reasons.
The first was the lack of raid markers. Once all eight Firesworn started moving, target assignments could collapse into chaos almost immediately.
The second was dispelling.
Without one-click dispels, a dangerous Immolate could sit on a tank for too long before anyone noticed, and by the time a Priest reacted, the tank could already be dead.
They had already solved one of those problems.
Now they were just missing proper raid markers.
"If we had one more Warlock, this would be even safer."
Unfortunately, the other substitute was still offline.
Banish could be resisted. With a fifth Warlock available, someone could immediately cover a resisted cast instead of leaving a loose Firesworn running through the raid.
"As for the exact pull and Banish assignments, we'll probably need one or two attempts to get everything clean."
Expecting a first-pull kill without markers would have been unrealistic.
They needed to practice the handoff between the tanks and Warlocks until everyone knew exactly which Firesworn belonged to whom.
Once those assignments stopped falling apart, they would have a real shot at Garr.
Looks like I'm adding raid markers.
Blizzard hadn't implemented the feature yet, so Gabryell decided he would simply add it to his addon ahead of schedule.
He had already introduced one-click dispels.
At this point, he might as well completely destroy the so-called authentic vanilla experience and speed progression up even further.
"Kill order is Night's first, then David's, then Susie's two."
He continued laying out the plan.
"After that, we'll break one of the Warlocks' targets and kill it too. The other three stay Banished."
Killing one of the controlled Firesworn would free a Warlock to act as backup.
If somebody else had a Banish resisted later, the free Warlock could immediately pick up the loose add.
"Why not just kill all of them?" Susie asked.
"Because every Firesworn that dies makes Garr more dangerous," Gabryell replied. "If all of them die, he ends up fully enraged. With our current gear, Carlos isn't surviving that."
Even raids capable of pulling the whole pack together and AoEing most of them down would usually keep one or two Firesworn alive rather than push Garr as far as possible.
There was no reason to fight the hardest version of the boss when an easier strategy was right there.
"When we pull, all melee DPS stay on Garr. Ranged handles the Firesworn."
He paused.
"And remember, the adds explode when they die. Once one gets low, back off before it drops. Don't let it launch half the raid across the room."
There was always someone whose reactions were half a second behind everyone else.
All Gabryell could do was make the warning clear.
One explosion usually wouldn't kill anyone outright, but getting blasted around would create extra work for the healers and could easily wreck positioning.
Two explosions going off together was a much bigger problem.
That covered almost everything.
Talking it through only went so far.
They needed to see the pull in action.
"I'll pull."
He looked across the raid.
"Tanks, Warlocks, be ready. DPS, hold everything until the tanks have their adds and the Banishes are out. Nobody hits anything until I call it."
Garr had eight Firesworn around him.
If Carlos ran straight in to start the fight, there was a very real chance the entire pack would pile onto him before the other tanks and Warlocks could split everything up.
A Mage with Ice Block was much safer.
"Mages can pull bosses?" Smooch asked in surprise.
Gabryell laughed.
"Mages, watch this. On a boss with this many adds, a Mage pull is safer. A tank can get flattened before everything is split, and a Hunter pull can scatter the pack."
He pointed toward Garr.
"Ice Block keeps everything stacked long enough for the tanks and Warlocks to grab their targets."
He intended to demonstrate the pull himself so the other Mages could see how it worked.
"Healers, don't touch me."
The last thing he needed was someone tossing a heal onto him and immediately sending Garr and eight Firesworn charging toward the healer.
"Nobody else does anything either. Tanks and Warlocks are the only ones moving when I pull. Wait until everything is on me, then take your targets."
The raid finished rebuffing.
Health and mana were full.
Everyone moved into position.
Then Gabryell stepped forward.
He entered Garr's aggro range.
The boss and all eight Firesworn immediately turned toward him.
Just as the pack started closing in, he cast Ice Block.
"Holy shit, Mages can actually pull like that?"
OldSeven stared at the frozen Mage in disbelief.
The move had completely changed the way he looked at his own class.
Among the Mages, Coldhands was the only one who didn't look surprised.
He regularly solo farmed the Zul'Farrak graveyard and had already spent plenty of time using Ice Block to gather mobs together.
The moment Gabryell announced that he would handle the pull, Coldhands had already guessed what he was planning.
"Take the adds!"
Ice Block wouldn't last forever.
Carlos and the others rushed in to grab their assignments while the Warlocks started casting Banish.
Gabryell watched the mobs split away from him.
He definitely didn't want to be standing there when Ice Block ended with anything still unclaimed.