alternate title: Lich King: 40ish — Phank: 1 — Woap: Freeloader

The Lich King is pretty brutal. He’s about as tough, if not tougher, than the hard mode versions of most bosses – and that’s before you actually put him on hard mode. He has four phases; the last one is a freebie, and two of the transitions are sufficiently difficult so as to qualify as phases themselves. So we’re essentially talking five phases here. There’s lots of stuff going on, and for pretty much all of that stuff, you only have a couple seconds to react. Sometimes lag takes up those couple of seconds, so you have to anticipate and be moving before the stuff happens. You have to be playing on the edge, with your A game, the entire fight (which is something like 10-15 minutes long). It’s harsh, but so crazy and interesting a fight that the frustrations are kept to a minimum.

SPOILERS AHEAD, though you probably don’t care.

So we wiped at 11%.

But DoTs brought him down to 10%, and lo and behold he did not reset!

Apparently, when you get him down to 10%, the Lich King decides that, yes, you have finally proven yourself. He then thrusts Frostmourne into the ground and unleashes its full, unbridled power, killing you all instantly. He begins to raise you as undead… being the only people who were able to stand up to him, you will make fine champions of the Scourge indeed. So I’m calling the fact that we wiped at 11% pure, incontrovertibly mad skillz. It’s like we stole kills from the Lich King… sort of?

This is the moment Fordring was waiting for. With Frostmourne unleashed and vulnerable, he strikes it with Ashbringer, and Frostmourne’s power goes wild, the souls within freed. Terenas Menethil’s ghost then uses Mass Resurrection on your raid, and while the Lich King struggles against the freed souls, you finish him off.

From Ner’zhul in Warcraft 2, to Arthas in Warcraft 3, to the Lich King in World of Warcraft, beating this (very challenging) villain as a team, and having a cinematic and interactive epic finish is immensely satisfying. I for one was bouncing up and down in my chair gleefully We convene to commemorate the event with a screenshot:

Left to right:

• Jaslm wants her belly rubbed
• Gormahn ties his boots
• Vasata’s underwear slips down his ankles, but he luckily is wearing a robe anyway
• Nobby lost a contact lens
• Woap makes gangsta gestures to fresh beats only he can hear
• Teslo grabs his crotch
• Snookims has gone AFK until expansion
• Tomoo is doing the Elunewalk
• Hooraybeer is probably drunk
• Phasen is screaming in agony because he just found out he was in Unholy Presence for THE WHOLE FIGHT omg

That being done, Phank was not content to rest. We moved on to making fun of Phasen.

The legend continues.