Fresh from my Nathanos kill, I giddily decided it was time to properly skill up my new weapon skill a bit before I actually needed it for more than being a stat stick. For once I knew just the place to go.
In the ass-end of the Eastern Kingdoms there's the Blasted Lands, home to the Dark Portal. It sits menacingly inside a crater with various demony things standing silent vigils or generally skulking about the place, lowering property values. Around the rim of the crater, mixed in among felguards taking their felhounds for felwalkies, are Servants of Razelikh. What makes them special is that these level 57 thingies can only be killed when you have some quest gadget I have yet to see. For my purposes, they are immortal target dummies that hit back.
The execution was ridiculously simple: pull a Servant and let Fluffers tank while I swung every 3 seconds and change. Periodically heal Fluffers. When mana is nearly completely gone: dismiss pet the pet, get another couple of hits in, and feign death to reset. All total over 35 minutes were spent fighting the same mob and I only had to reset twice. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a warrior wandered up and tipped me a gold to shoot it for a while himself to raise his bow skill. Periodically he'd stun the mob and throw a bandage on my pet, so that helped keep things going.
The only sour moment was when I realized in my haste to make with the slashin' I had forgotten to buff my intellect, which would have helped out a bit. Still, I was pleased that I had gone from 1 to 240 and change with very minimal effort. About ten minutes after my warrior buddy skedaddled, I left to join an Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) raid a guildie was organizing. Oh boy, a chance to progress my Onyxia attunement!
I made my way to Blackrock mount, climbed a giant chain suspended over molten lava, scurried along a narrow ledge, then hopped onto a balcony mere meters from the portal. As a paladin and I awaited the arrival of the rest of the team, I joined our Discord and mused at our party composition. Out of ten people we had no mages or warlocks and I was the only hunter. It was Plate Mail Central with a couple of priests healing. Blinkers, our raid leader, said that we'd be making use of my trapping skills, since we had no other form of crowd control. This set me into a panic.
You see, I've never actually "trapped". Although I bought the skills, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever actually used the ice trap to any effect. Worse still, I could only place the trap at my feet-- I couldn't throw them like I could in retail. I hastily alt-tabbed to see if Trap Launch was a thing I'd forgotten to pick up, if it was a talent in the Survival tree or what. I could find nothing. Well, maybe they wouldn't REALLY need crowd control? We'll see.
It started off very rocky for me. The first section of the dungeon is fighting in very close quarters, which was fine for everybody else-- they were all melee. My damage was horrifically low as I tried to edge myself into a firing range without "butt-pulling" other packs of hurt. The next sets of mobs were worse as they constantly charged and knocked back ranged players. I steadfastly resolved myself to be a good hunter regardless. Growl off. Passive pet. Dismiss the pet before trying to sneak around mobs or drop from ledges.
We avoided a couple of bosses. Our prize was at the end of the dungeon and we were focused on getting there in more or less one piece. By the time we had made it to and downed the next-to-last boss (which thankfully was cake for ranged DPS), we had had only a few deaths and I was breathing a sigh of relief.
"Ok, Magrom", the raid leader said. "I'm going to need you to trap square." Oh, God.
"You are aware I can't throw traps right?" There was a brief pause and then laughter. "Yes!"
"The thing is... I've never trapped before." There was a pause and then a lot less laughter. "Well, not in Classic at any rate."
The raid leader responded matter-of-factly, "Ok-- time to learn, I guess."
Turns out, it's cake. Place an ice trap out of the area and when the tank pulls, use Distracting Shot to peel the marked target off and run it over the trap. Flawless execution the first time and every time afterwards. W00t! I'm now more useful!
Impressed (and likely surprised) by my quick uptake, Blinkers then asked if I was ok to kite the boss. "Never done it before, but I'm willing to try!" A person who used to main hunter years ago explained and it was close to what I imagined it to be. Set your Mark to speed boost, distracting shot to aggro the boss, run like the freakin' wind, and shoot it a couple time along the was to hold aggro. When the adds are death, feign death.
I buffed. I shot. I ran. I shot more. I ran like a freakin' schoolgirl on fire. Then I got caught on the dungeon terrain for a moment and then I was really on fire. The boss had caught up to me, stunned and then engulfed me with flames. As I ran around uncontrollably seconds from a fiery end, the raid leader called out. "Ok! Adds are down. You can feign death now."
"Ok. I'm not feigning."
"Oh? Oh. OH!"
The rest of the team finished up the fight and I was the only casualty. As I lay on the cold stone floor, I mused that this is how Fluffers must feel as the usual Noble Sacrifice. My UBRS trial by quite literal fire was complete.
After a quick resurrection, I scooped up some blood from the boss. We called it a success, hearthed out and disbanded. I returned to Winterfell to do the final series of corpse runs through the Cave of Draconic Hell and turned in the blood to the quest-giver.
She smiled and handed me a necklace in return.
Magrom triumphant! I'm now attuned to Onyxia's Lair.
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