I survived an encounter

Helm, check. Armor, check. Gloves, check. Boots, check. Weapon, check.

All dressed up and good to go. Checking myself from head to toe. All buffed up and natural. I'm feeling beautiful.

There we were again, standing inside Gruul's lair for another attempt to bring down the highly feared gronn overlord. Twenty (20) eager guild members were present in the raid. Armed with knowledge and experience from the past encounters, we marched forward.

Today, I am a damage dealer. With my great two-handed mace, I engaged Gruul, hammering his two large feet. I have successfully maneuvered myself away from other players in each ground slam that Gruul did. I smiled with satisfaction, I have avoided death in the first few minutes of the fight.

As the fight dragged on, Gruul grew to a total of 13 and with one powerful swing, he totally obliterated the powerful warrior who was occupying his attention. Luckily there were 2 backup warriors ready to take over for this kind of situation. However, with about 1% health remaining, Gruul easily disposed off the two backup warriors. With death in mind, I continued to swing my mace, throwing a few hammer of wraths everytime I got the chance. Gruul didn't make it that long, with spells and bullets hitting him from every direction, he fell to the ground headfirst, screaming in pain.

The guild erupted to a series of cheers and shouts. Drinks were tossed around as the sexy fighters danced away the victory. We have defeated Gruul once again. And this time we did it with just 20 people and in only 1 try. The best part of it is that, I survived the encounter...

Next stop, Magtheridon.

The art of fleeing (paladin style)

There are battles which you know right from the start that you have no chance of winning but still you engage it just for fun or you have nothing else to do :P. I myself have engaged in such battles and have miraculously lived to boast about it. Do you want to know how I did it? Before I tell you though, I'll list down some memorable battles where such technique owns :P. Enjoy!

1. I was merrily flying over the Hellfire Peninsula searching for mining nodes when I noticed a level 69 rogue Horde player (undead) trying to capture The Stadium (for the pvp daily quest Hellfire Fortifications). Upon seeing that he is a level below me, I immediately maneuvered my gryphon to land near this Horde player. The rogue backed up a bit after seeing the powerful gryphon land in front of him. He then just stood there looking at me, unable to move, unable to flee. "RAWRRRR!", the gryphon rawred (lol), it became restless, I had a hard time unmounting from it. Then at that moment I smelled something fishy (was it coming from the undead rogue? :P)... I closed my eyes and concentrated on what the eye could not normally see. After a second my mind cleared, perception activated. There standing behind me was another Horde rogue (this time a bloodelf), level 70 and is under stealth. It was an ambush! They were waiting for me to strike first and get flagged :O. I then turned around and /slap the stealthed rogue. After he noticed that I saw him, he unstealthed and laughed. Three other Horde players then landed and I was surrounded. 2 mages, 2 rogues, and a druid vs a paladin. One of the mages challenged me to a duel. I laughed, I'm not falling for that one :P. He then performed a chicken dance (/chicken) to taunt me. "KEK", the rest of the Horde players laughed. I stood there helplessly watching the mage do the chicken dance... then... a smile spread across my face, I grinned an evil grin >:). "You want chicken?" I thought to myself, "Then take this!". I grabbed my Gnomish Poultryizer from my bag and aimed it at the dancing mage. "Pewpewpew!" I fired, he turned into a chicken, I laughed, laughed some more, laughed so hard that I didn't notice the other Horde players charging towards me. Want to know what happened next? Read on... :P

2. We were in Karazhan, trying to kill the final boss Nightbane. We wiped out so many times that we gave up trying (also since it's already way past bedtime for some of us, 3AM :P). Anyway, most of the raid members had already hearthed back to their respective inns and only three were left. A crazy, addict warlock named Mayotta (:P), a noisy, addict priest named Sealtiel :P and of course yours truly, a great paladin :P (though I forgot if another member was also there...). These crazy people then had some crazy idea of trying to kill Nightbane with only 3 people. Since I was always craving for great challenges, I agreed (crazy I say :D). The noisy priest then summoned the enormous flying beast. Little did I know that they were planning to run outside right from the start (lol), and little did they know that the doors leading outside will close once the great beast is summoned (double lol, no make that triple, lol :P). The sky darkened as Nightbane, king of the skies, flew overhead. The two crazy people then started running towards the exit leaving me behind. The beast landed and I ran... I sprinted as fast as I can towards the door. After the two crazy people realized that the doors were closed, they stopped and prayed lol. Nightbane flew past me and cleaved the crazy people to death (lol again). I laughed while saying "I see dead people!" lol. Did I survive the encounter? Read on...

3. We were in Gruul's lair, we just killed HKM and decided to have 1 attempt on Gruul just for the experience (after all we were only 18-strong). After we got wiped, we called it a day and some of the members ported back to their respective cities leaving behind the usual addicts, a crazed warrior named Zinghyi, a warfreak, addict rogue named Adik, the usual crazy fellows Mayotta and Sealtiel (see number 2 :P), the innocently addict druid Naerwen (innocent since she had no idea what's about to happen :P) and of course yours truly, the adventurous paladin (see 2 for another great description :P). As usual, we were planning to take on Gruul ourselves. While we were laying out our plans, an imp suddenly dashed towards Gruul (it was the crazy warlock's pet :D). I saw this and slowly backpedaled towards the door knowing that it's going to close once Gruul is disturbed. The imp fired, Gruul lurched forward instantly killing the poor imp. The door closed and luckily I made it outside, "whew" I sighed thinking it was over. It was when I saw an enormous hand reaching out from the door that I realized that we are done for. Gruul CAN get out of the door even when it is closed :O. 3000 hit points gone, 7000, my health was slowly thinning away. Gruul then struck the druid which was just standing by the door minding her own business :P. The warfreak rogue was on the other side of the door, luckily he stealthed just as Gruul was about to get him. Running for their dear lives, the crazy warlock, priest and warrior, raced towards the cave's exit, with Gruul right on their tail wildly bashing anything on his way. Sadly though, the poor crazy fellows didn't make it to the exit, Gruul had decimated their bodies :P. Meanwhile deep inside the lair, the lone rogue happily announced that he was alive and Gruul wasn't able to get him. This however was short-lived for when Gruul returned inside... need I say more? So why did Gruul not finish me off? or did he? Read on...


---

Now here's what happened on each of the three encounters above:
1. When the Horde players started firing at me, Divine Shield fired up (I was immune from all forms of damage for 12 seconds :D) then I hearthed back to my inn :P. Yes I survived and was laughing so hard.

2. When Nightbane was about to strike me, Divine Shield fired up and I hearthed back to my inn leaving the crazy fellows behind, dead :P.

3. When my health was very low, Divine Shield fired up and I hearthed back to my inn making Gruul change target and hit the innocent druid instead :P.

So in all three deadly encounters, I survived :D. The technique I used is widely known as Bubble Hearth. Something that all paladins should learn... and enjoy to the fullest. :P

Warning: Do not do this at home, unless if you're a paladin of course.

High King's revenge... or not

High King Maulgar (HKM), the lord of the ogres in Blade's Edge Mountain, serve's as Gruul's right hand and is the guardian of his lair. Every week we (the guild) raid Gruul's lair and have to face this oversized ogre before we could reach Gruul himself. This week was not an exception. With an 18-strong raid, we seiged Gruul's lair.

I was assigned to hold off Blindeye the Seer, one of HKM's merry men (there were 4 of them). Blindeye hits slow so my threat generation was not so high which made the task of holding him quite challenging. I popped my wings from the start in order to deal more damage and thus more threat. I also had to use full level consecration to keep the threat coming. After minutes of pounding and slashing, Blindeye went down, dead, I heaved a sigh of relief. We then proceeded to the next target. While we were hammering the poor fellow, one of our great mages tanking the enemy mage Krosh (only a mage can hold him off), drained all his mana which cost him his life. The whole raid panicked since without someone occupying Krosh's attention, he could easily kill us off with his deadly fireballs and blast waves. Out of nowhere, a brave druid ran towards our mage's corpse and resurrected him. This desperate act caught Krosh's attention, filled with rage he burned down the hapless druid.

Healers went down one after another, upon seeing this, I ran towards the mage tank and the warrior tanking HKM. I reached for my libram and read the lines which activated my healing ability. I threw a couple of heals to our mage bringing his health back up to about 90%. Our hunters, shamans and druids (moonkin form) then threw everything they got on Krosh and he went down in just a second (or two).

Now there's only HKM left, every surviving raid member turned and charged at him. At 50% health he started his intimidating shouts which sent chills down my spines that in pure instinct, made me run away from him. He then suddenly charged towards the other raid members. Our main tank had a hard time catching up to him (I believe HKM stunned him for a few seconds), to prevent HKM from killing more of our raid members (especially the healers), I taunted him (I didn't exactly know how, shouted profanities perhaps? :P). He saw me standing right there in the middle of his lair then came charging right at me. I fired my holy shield then tried my best to hold him off until our main tank can recover. He was slowly whacking away my health until my armor and shield gave way. The next thing I know, I was lying face down eating dirt :P. "HKM finally got his revenge.", I thought to myself, thinking that HKM had also killed the rest of the raid. After about a minute I felt a familiar tug on my spirit, someone is trying to resurrect me. "Someone made it? Then this must mean... we won!". I then heard the cheers and laughter as my spirit slowly returned to my lifeless body.

Gruul... no more

I was in Ironforge bidding on auctions when I heard a summon from our guild. I then remebered that we were supposed to raid Gruul's Lair today. I headed to the bank to withdraw my equipment, potions, food and reagents then answered the summons. I felt the familiar tingling sensation as my body was transported from Ironforge to Blade's Edge Mountains where Gruul's Lair is found. Wow, a lot of people are already there. This is the first time that we totalled 25 in a single raid. I felt confident, tonight we'll dine in Gruul's blood.

We started the preparations, weapons were dipped in poison, sharpened and enchanted with magic. Magical buffs were casted, auras fired up, scrolls read. I adjusted my gear, today I deal damage and not take it.

Our main tank then charged towards Gruul. "Come... and die!", Gruul's voice echoed through his lair. We proceeded to our designated positions and then engaged the Gronn overlord (Gruul). Bam! Gruul hit the ground so hard that we were thrown all over the place. At this point, I remembered that we were supposed to stay away from each other since Gruul has a "shatter" ability where you will receive damage which is inversely proportional to the distance between you and your teammates. I ran towards the outer wall to avoid getting too close to the others. As luck would have it, one of my teammates landed right beside me. I fired up my Divine Shield in order to dispel the movement-reducing debuff. Alas, for some reason the spell failed (silence perhaps?). I saw a brief flash of light... then darkness... When I woke up (someone resurrected me), I saw Gruul lying on the floor, mouth open and saliva flowing out of his mouth. It was over, we have killed Gruul! Wooooooot!!!! (I was dead in most of the encounter though lol).