“That would give us a little more time,” Gerald agreed. “However, we really need to burn that shaman down first. Can you flop from a second imp to destroyer easily?”
“Yeah, just takes a chunk of mana. I’ll toss my heal onto Tiny when we go in. Hopefully that buys us enough time to get the first shaman down quickly.”
“We could wait for another twentyish minutes for Gerald to get his area stun back up,” Marysue suggested.
“I’d use it once the mitigation buff wears off, that will help us kill the first shaman easier. During the mitigation buff maybe get your heal back onto Tiny. But hold off on a second destroyer until the stun has worn off.” Gerald took a deep breath, looking around at the others, “So does everyone agree?”
Everyone agreed that waiting sounded like a good idea, so the group decided to take the twenty minutes and do a thorough search through the huts in case they missed something the first time. Nothing came of the search though, so twenty minutes later they were outside the main hut and ready for the boss fight.
Chieftain
Once everyone was ready and all the buffs had been applied Alburet opened the door and stepped back. Gerald kicked it right after Alburet had stepped back, hard enough to rip the door right off its leather bindings. As the door crashed to the ground Gerald, followed by Tiny, rushed into the room. Gerald rushed at the boss and the two shamans as Tiny attacked the other adds.
A few steps behind the tanks the others entered the room, the Bobs taking either side of the doorway as Fluffball and Stacia rushed towards the shamans. Alburet was a step behind them. Marysue was the last in, standing in the doorway as she began to cast healing spells onto Gerald.
It took Tiny a bit longer than expected to grab the other adds. He had to physically strike many of them as he didn’t have an area taunt. Once he’d gotten their attention though, the Demonic Retribution helped him keep aggro.
All the damage dealers had jumped on the first shaman, laying into it with fury. Gerald had to taunt it after Alburet hit it the first time, doing enough damage to pull aggro. Two seconds later the Chieftain yelled in Orcish and all the orcs seemed to shine with a pale green light.
“Shield buff up,” Gerald shouted. “It lasts twenty seconds. As soon as it goes down I’ll stun. Kill the shamans first.”
Alburet knew Gerald was just making sure everyone remembered the plan, but it wasn’t a complicated plan to begin with. During the twenty seconds of the buff on the adds, Alburet darted across the room and hit Tiny with another Demonic Vitality. The first was about to drop off and his health wasn’t looking great.
Alburet made it back to the shamans just as the buff dropped off and Gerald used his stun. For five seconds the mobs were stunned, minus the boss who was immune. In that five seconds the damage dealers unloaded enough damage to drop the first shaman to 10% life. As the stun came off both shamans began to cast heals onto the damaged one. Before they could finish the first shaman crumpled under the barrage of attacks.
A second later the Chieftain used his own stun ability, which locked all of them up for five seconds. Worse, it followed that up with its big damage ability taking Gerald from 976/1100 to 426/1100. That forced Marysue to try using her instant cooldown heal, but as soon as she thought of using it the Chieftain used his area interrupt, locking casters out of magic for five seconds.
“Tiny!” Alburet yelled as he and the other DPS turned on the second shaman.
Tiny half turned and targeted the Chieftain, taunting the boss to him. Tiny was in really bad shape, though, already under half life. As the boss crossed the room to Tiny, Gerald waited until it was just about to attack Tiny before he taunted it back. The interrupt wore off during that ping pong, letting Marysue heal Gerald with her cooldown which brought him back up to 876/1100.
The shaman was cut down shortly after that as it was not getting double heals. As the second shaman dropped Alburet was about to run across the room when he noted Tiny’s life under a quarter of its normal. He quickly dismissed the second Bob as he crossed to Tiny. He then used his Copy ability to bring a second Tiny into existence. He frowned when he saw that the copy also was at a quarter life.
He renewed Demonic Vitality on the original Tiny to help keep him up as the women started to lay into the archer Orc. The second Tiny taunted the shield carrying orc to help his other self live longer.
By the time the rest of the adds fell Tiny was down to 5% of his life and the copy was at 11%. Letting out a sigh of relief, Alburet dismissed the second Tiny and brought up a second Bob again as the others all turned their attention to the boss.
“You will never crush me and my clan,” the chieftain roared, throwing back his head and letting out a long bellow.
Marysue’s eyes got wide as she looked behind her, afraid more adds were coming. After a couple of seconds she calmed down when nothing happened.
“We killed your pathetic clan first,” Gerald taunted the Orc. “You’re the last.”
The chieftain used his area stun again, in the five seconds the stun held them the chieftain began to glow red. His next attack took Gerald all the way down to 50/1100 as he followed up the stun with his big attack again, doing extra damage thanks to being enraged.
The stun wore off as the chieftain pulled back his axe to finish Gerald off. Tiny taunted the boss, causing it to turn on him as he closed into melee with it. Tiny’s shield met the attack, but enough damage went through to reduce him to a sliver of life.
“For my master,” Tiny rumbled as he slammed his shield into the Orc’s face, his last attack before the orc killed him.
Those few seconds bought enough time for Marysue to get some healing onto Gerald. Gerald reengaged the boss as the DPS kept up their attacks.
Bob was all but in hysterics as he kept throwing Fire Blast after Fire Blast with renewed vigor. “You killed my friend, asshole,” he ranted as he kept casting since he didn’t need to vocalize words for his spells. “I’m going to cut your nuts off and fry them up.”
Alburet raised a brow, surprised at the sheer depth of emotion that came from Bob over Tiny’s death. It seemed that Bob actually liked Tiny more than he had been letting on. As his mind half considered that he landed another blow on the chieftain, wondering how Tiny would react if Bob died.
They were making good headway on killing the boss, finally dropping it to 100/4500 when it stunned them again. As before, during the stun it followed up with its major attack on Gerald, which killed him this time. It turned on Alburet, hitting him for close to 200 due to his lower armor. The blow landed squarely on his leather covered head. As soon as the stun wore off they killed the boss, letting out a ragged cheer as they all sat down exhausted.
“So close to being perfect, too,” Alburet half complained.
“We’re a little under what level you should be to be in here,” Marysue stated. “Without Tiny taking the adds then sacrificing himself we wouldn’t have made it through.”
“It was a little unfair to have the boss using its high damage attack right after it uses its stun, though,” Fluffball mused. “I mean, how is a tank supposed to mitigate that?”
“There is an ability that will use your mitigation ability automatically for you if you are going to take fatal damage,” Gerald said as he came back through the door. “I didn’t take it, but now I might because other bosses are likely to do something similar and honestly it makes sense for the monsters to be smart enough for that.”
“So you’re not upset?” Fluff asked.
“Only that I didn’t take that ability at fifteen,” Gerald shrugged. “I had no idea they had changed the boss up to use those abilities as a combo like that.”