Fun Runs

One of the many "fun-runs" our guild would do on offnights. A fun run was a quick run through a dungeon that a guild had already completed and totally out-geared. The purpose behind such runs was to either help guild members gear their alternative characters or to build a set of gear for a main character's alternative specialization. My paladin was mainly a damage dealer but I also loved being a tank when needed. Here I am preparing for this raid boss creature.

Magtheridon's Lair was one of the early raids for the Burning Crusade expansion, if not the hardest of the three Tier 4 dungeons. Defeating the boss here would yield you one of the currency tokens to the Tier 4 chestpiece of your choosing. This boss required extreme amounts of raid coordination as raid members had to manage their time and damage dealing in order to prevent the boss from totally demolishing the raid.

The boss required three tanks to absorb the split damage cleave attack this creature possessed. Healers assigned to the tanks remained close by while the raid healers would spread out. Every minute or so this boss would prepare to unleash an extremely devastating attack that dealt pulses of heavy damage for a few seconds. Letting it go off for at least two pulses would kill the entire raid as the healers would not be able to out-heal the damage. The trick to countering this was to have ten assigned raid members (25 people was the new limit for raids after this expansion) click one of the five floating cubes to channel the beams you see in the picture above. Ten people were needed because a de-buff would be placed on the person who last channeled a beam from the cubes that lasted 90 seconds, so alternating players was a must.

This process would be repeated until the boss was defeated, as the tactics wouldn't change much until the last 30% of the boss' health, when falling debris from the ceiling adds another element of danger.