Pit of Saron sure is buggy

Just when you think you might be growing tired of running the same instances over and over again, one of them bugs out and thereby creates an exciting new experience.

Last night I was in normal Pit of Saron with my night elf priest. It had been a smooth run until we got to Scourgelord Tyrannus. Have you ever thought that it's stupid how he jumps down to melee people when he could just stay on the back of his giant dragon and blast everyone into oblivion from a completely safe position? Well, apparently Tyrannus suddenly had the same thought and immediately jumped back up after holding his speech and dismounting. Then he continued to circle us and ordered Rimefang to blast ice at us every so often, while we milled around on the ground feeling slightly lost. The following conversation went something like this:

"Bah, stupid bug!"
"Yeah, I heard about that. Apparently it's got something to do with attacking him too early."
"So, what do we do? Can we reset him without wiping up?"
"I don't know, I've never had it happen before."
"Maybe if we can hit him from down here."

So people started to run around and clamber onto nearby rocks to see if they could get in range. As it turns out, they couldn't get into range of Tyrannus himself (though apparently he could be hit with multi-target abilities that were targetting Rimefang) but yeah, Rimefang himself came close enough to have a dot put on him every so often if you timed it right. I commented that Rimefang had over three million health and that we should probably just wipe up, but people persisted and I would have felt bad letting them die so I kept healing them as well. (Though there wasn't a lot of damage to go around anyway. I guess that's why the Scourgelord usually comes down, because he knows that Rimefang's damage is pants.)

After about ten minutes the tank asked if we shouldn't wipe up after all, against which I protested by then, proud that we had already shaved off a million of his health. I continued to dot him and our two elemental shamans and our hunter did the same by casting one flame shock/serpent sting at a time whenever he got in range.

As we worked our way through the last million of his health I got excited and already started to picture us posing proudly in front of Rimefang's corpse. As if he was reading my thoughts and wanted to disagree, one of the shamans asked if we were all ready for the inevitable anticlimax. We laughed and said yes. Good that we were, because as it turned out Rimefang can be brought down to exactly one health but no further, which effectively renders him unkillable. Boo.


Somewhat disappointed, people hurled themselves at the skeletons fighting the NPCs to commit suicide, and I levitated off the platform to see how far I'd have to run to make him reset. When I reached Garfrost's area and was still in combat I shadowmelded, and fortunately that was enough to do the trick. DBM announced helpfully that combat against Scourgelord Tyrannus had ended after thirty-one minutes and eight seconds.


Fighting Tyrannus the proper way afterwards felt almost ridiculously easy after we had just spent half an hour taking down Rimefang's three million health one dot at a time. Is that the pure antithesis to efficient badge farming? I guess I was fortunate that the other people in the party also valued the idea of trying something new over ruthless but boring efficiency.


That said, bugs aren't always fun. I tried to run the same instance on heroic right afterwards and it bugged out again, but in a slightly different way. Our somewhat inexperienced tank struggled with gathering up all the skeletons in the tunnel so we wiped just as we got to the top, though one person apparently still ran far enough to aggro the boss as well. Again he ended up riding around on Rimefang's back the whole time, but this time with the additional problem that we couldn't get up the tunnel anymore because the mobs that usually keep the NPCs busy had already spawned and were blocking our way. (There are a lot of them and they can gib anyone within a second.) Oh, and since dying did not work to reset the encounter this time, we just had to give up and call it a night. Though at least the bug had once again got us talking, and despite of the defeat we disbanded the party in high spirits. Players really do shine most when faced with true adversity.