by Zancarius » Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:07 pm
Well, if you didn't hear the story about Stratholme... I'll share.
Someone in-guild had an alt who needed a run through Strat (I don't remember who, and that alt may have been out of guild--it's been a while). Unfortunately, the PuG they were in started to fragment a bit, so they didn't have a chance to run through (they needed a tank, I think). So, I offered to help them out.
Now, as far as Strat goes, I can't really solo it because of the long duration diseases, and because one such disease actually prohibits you from regenerating health, including via food (bandages work, but it has a damage tick every 10 seconds). However, I can solo each of the bosses without trouble, including the Baroness. The Baroness can either be the first or second boss in the instance, being as she's very close to the entryway and adjacent to Nerub, the spider. During group encounters, she will periodically possess a member of the group, increasing their total hitpoints and damage by a significant margin. Groups must attack their possessed party mate until he or she reaches around 50% of their total HP, at which point the Baroness will release them and return to her banshee form. However, when the Baroness will only possess someone if more than one person exists in her threat table and is in combat. Whenever I have helped groups out in Strat, I tell them to stay near the door and NOT assist me in any manner, shape, or form.
Unfortunately, the group I was with didn't listen to my directions. I was insistent, too, and stated at least 5 times that I cannot be healed or helped. I even warned them that they would wipe if they did so much as step too close to me during the encounter. (I'll usually use recklessness, too, in order to help me take the Baroness down but held off on the pretext that they probably weren't listening.) So, during the first thirty seconds of the encounter, I had gotten the Baroness to around 75% and then noticed a heal tick--their shaman was healing me. Shortly after he joined the battle, one of their ranged attackers added a dot to the Baroness, and by the time I typed "STOP!" she had possessed me. I started laughing, too, because there wasn't a damn thing I could do, and they had just loosed a very angry Thalaria hell-bent on slaughtering every mindless noob who failed to follow my directions. Cackling wildly behind my computer, I barely mustered the effort to type a simple two word response: "You're boned."
The best part? They ran. Oooh did they run. They ran as fast as their little gnomish legs could take them (I killed the shaman shortly after he healed me, as he wasn't far enough to run). It was a slaughter fest, too, being as I was one-shotting each of them. Given the possession's increased damage output, my crits were around 3.5k for white damage alone, which was about the total number of hit points all but their pally had. Their pally even bubbled, but she didn't make it halfway out the instance before the bubble wore off and Thalaria chopped her down.
Fortunately, they were well-motivated to listen to me very closely for the second try.
A little bit of interesting trivia: After the Baroness has possessed someone and that person slaughters their entire party, she releases them and resets, dropping out out of combat. I had never seen that happen before, so I assumed I was going to have to fight her. As it turns out, that wasn't the case.
I gave that lich a phylactery shard. Liches love phylactery shards.