On Sunday evening, it finally happened. After a mere 388 pulls, Ragnaros finally met his end on Heroic for a Guild First, Realm First, and US 93^rd kill for Monolith. Since joining the Horde and moving in with the folks of Monolith, this was the first boss that I’ve experienced from (almost) first pull to finality.

Over 10 pages of strategy discussion, many links to motivational and inspirational videos, sign outs, maternity leave, no-shows, recruits, numerous composition and spec adjustments, and mediocre (but hilarious) celebrity impersonations. A fight this hard runs the gamut of emotions for a team this large, and looking back, it all makes sense that it would play out in exactly this fashion.

Stage 1 – Denial

While preparing for a difficult encounter you look at the logs, parses, and post-mortem blog posts of those that came before you. Your goal during all of this is to ultimately learn from the mistakes of others. You don’t want to make the same silly mistake someone else did, so your first thought when starting is “it won’t take us nearly as long to kill him!”

We have the strategy, we know the benchmarks, and we know that it will be hard, but 400 pulls? C’mon. By this point you might have spent two or three nights in Sulfuron Keep; seeing deep into phase 2 with possibly 1 or 2 clean seed clears. Your confidence is high because “the seeds are the hardest part, right?”

Wrong.

Stage 2 – Anger

By this point you are a couple weeks into the encounter. Your previous farm content is taking almost no time since Ragnaros has made the earlier bosses in the instance seem like child’s play (nerfs aside). This means that 90% of raid week is standing in front of Ragnaros.You’re starting to get a lot of good “looks” at Phase 3, but tweedle-dee, tweedle-dumb, and tweedle-really-dumb keep exploding at some point.

Sometimes it’s a lava wave. Sometimes they moved too far into one section of World in Flames. Sometimes they moved a little latelagged and got crushed by falling seeds. Whatever the reason, everyone is ready to reach through their Ethernet cord and strangle them. Seemingly perfect attempts are being thrown away when someone “misses” a heal, forgets to stun, or runs blazing heat all over the place.

It’s no surprise that Blizzard named a boss in this instance Rageface.

Stage 3 – Bargaining

Progress is being made! Your raid is on the precipice of Phase 4 progression as you start moving faster and faster through Phase 3. Despite the shenanigans involved with knocking back meteors and people running the wrong way, you have seen Phase 3 end. Never in your life have you seen such a beautiful pair of legs made of fiery magma.

But that’s all the further you get. The tweedle-triplets (and they are different almost every attempt) keep eating your battle rezzes before you even leave Phase 2! Those extra deaths are costing you valuable time so that’s when the bounties start. You mess up, you pay. Conversely, if you meet this goal the guild will pay you back! With this incentive structure in place, the chances of getting further have increased greatly…

For now.

Stage 4 – Depression

More weeks have passed. More resets of barely seeing Phase 4, or seeing Phase 4 with an immediate meteor explosion have passed. Even worse, there have been nights where it seems like the raid is trying harder to keep Rag alive than help kill him.

You sit for a half hour after the raid and just look at the logs; a list of 5-7 minute attempts that were just utter disasters. How are you ever going to kill this boss? It takes over 13 minutes! The attempt tracker is counting up like the national debt with no end in sight. The bounties and rewards haven’t done much and the only progression that seems to happen is one or two attempts a night…at most.

The biggest indicator that you have reached this phase is when seemingly small errors or missteps get blown out proportion. Raiders start sniping back and forth about mundane things, the cracks in everyone’s sanity start to widen. Little does everyone know that just beyond the hardest of all stages lies the one reason we keep coming back for raids night in and night out.

Stage 5 – Acceptance

Nobody ever knows when it’s going to come, but they know it when they see it. I like to call it the “click” moment. It’s the moment when working on an encounter that it just feels like it’s over. For some reason the panic washes away and the entire raid just gets it. As you can see I’m using a lot of things in “quotes” and italics because none of this is tangible.

The entire group just finally accepts, internally, that it’s time to finish the fight. The entire raid will hinge on one glorious, sure to be tight, attempt. The 1% wipe is damaging to a raid group’s psyche. The mental difference between a kill and a wipe on a boss the magnitude of a heroic Ragnaros is huge. Maybe I was over-confident or maybe it’s because I’ve been doing this so long, but I could feel that “click” last Sunday when the percents starting ticking down.

15% became 9%. 9% became 5%. 5% crawled down to 1%. You start gripping your mouse so tight that you feel like you might crush it if the fight goes any longer. Your eyes are trained on the boss’ hp bar…and suddenly…

Achievement Spam

Bring on the Dragon Soul.