Oh my ... there are so many.
Black Morass
This was an instance on Warcraft that was challenging even in Normal Mode. Heroic Mode had eluded us and it was a critical final step in acquiring a key to access a 10-man raid, Karazhan.
To make matters worse, it was a timed event - so once you began, you had to finish or it would fail and you couldn't try again until the next day. The instance was also complex in that it required to Party to spot random spawn points, move into position, gather and control the mobs that appeared through 'portals' that culminated in a sub-boss for each portal, get them all down and be ready to move on to the next Portal - wherever it spawned. If you failed to control all of the mobs, they would swiftly make their way to a central area and start beating down an NPC we were supposed to protect. If you didn't kill the sub-boss, the portal would remain open and more mobs would continue to pour through. One or two missteps could very quickly get out of control - as mobs would swarm the NPC and eventually another Portal would spawn whether you can closed the previous one or not!
Once the set number of Portals were defeated, the final Boss would appear - a giant dragon ghost/spirit thing, basically right on top of the NPC we were supposed to protect. It was here that we would fail, time after time, beaten, bloody and expended from the portals.
We had been at this for weeks - with no success.
Myself (Tanking), Quielin, Koram, Gorguts on his pally (Healing), and I admit, I don't recall if it was Ojike or not, it may have been Litea as our fifth ventured forth to try to finish this once again.
Something had just clicked! We were spotting the portals quickly, gathering up all the mobs, hosing them down, dispensing with the sub-bosses and moving on the next portal. In short order we had cleared all of the portals and the instance actually gives you a few, 20-30 seconds pause to gather yourself before the final fight.
So we healed up, mana'd up, got ourselves set up and began to fight the dragon. Very quickly, it seemed apparent we were going to fail again. Our health was declining rapidly. I didn't recall the early moments of this fight being quite this punishing.
Was I out of place? Was I failing to hold the boss? I watched as all of our health was disappearing quickly ... all ... except for one of us ...
Gorguts!
Who, a quick glance informed me, was still back where we had been taking that brief respite. We were on Ventrilo, and I was asking if GG (Gorguts) had crashed. No one knew.
We were still alive, but our health was fading fast. It was down to a barely perceptible sliver of green when suddenly I see GG moving!
A rather impressive flurry of heals later and we are all still alive - just in the nick of time - and we managed to slay the final boss. At last!
There was much cheering and celebrating, but finally, of course, someone asked:
"GG, what happened dude?"
There is a momentary pause before he responds.
"Oh, I had to take the puppy out."
