The Great Thief

He was the top mage of the Stormwind kingdom. At the same time, he was a renowned member of the Council of Tirisfal. In the reign of King Landen Wyrnn, he happened to encounter one of the Guardians of Trisifal at the time, Magna Aegwynn, and even successfully led her into his hands. But actually, from the very beginning, Aran and Aegwynn’s meeting was a scheme set up by the latter. In order to successfully produce an outstanding child, the experienced Aegwynn charmed Aran. Aegwynn took advantage of the situation, finally getting Aran onto bed, and she gave birth to the later Medivh.

The plan worked as expected. After Aegwynn had her showdown with Aran, she left Stormwind City. After the child was born, Medivh was sent to Aran’s hands, but she herself escaped to the ends of the earth.

Anger and shame filled Aran’s heart, but Medivh was his own flesh and bone, so he rarely turned showed anger and hate onto his own child.

Karazhan was like Medivh’s dream that radiated out of his own powerful spirit.

That father who he could sometimes not look up to, an Archmage of the royal court, sacrificed his own life for him. It was only then when Medivh, raised with a silver spoon, realised what he had lost.

Many years later, when he woke up from his slumber again, and the Shade of Aran was in Medivh.

‘This old dog still has some teeth!’

This line from Aran made him one of the most famous Bosses in Dawn, as memorable as ‘Arise, my champion’ from that odd couple.

As the father of Medivh, Shade of Aran was 100% a full Archmage, proficient in the three talents and extremely powerful. Only when all three of his magic skills had been silenced at the same time would he use his physical attack that wasn’t worth mentioning. His attack target was completely random, not related to aggro at all. But when any player’s HP got low, there was a really high chance he would keep attacking that player to finish them off.

Frostbolts, Fireballs, and Arcane Missiles— these perfectly summarized what the three Mage skills were.

His Ice Bind was able to freeze his target to stop them from moving for ten seconds, doing no damage, but they could be dispersed. It could be removed with all Root removing skills and those that removed physical objects. The effect looked like a Priest binding the Undead.

There was also the silencing of his surroundings, as well as a speed reduction effect. These were all conventional skills.

Apart from the conventional skills, there were special skills that gave people a ‘pleasant surprise’, such as Blizzard, which did 1700 damage every second, that covered half the field with a slowing effect. It was a bit like C’Thun’s Red Beam, which worked two seconds faster than Blizzard. There would be a single Cone of Cold that would come down and let you know where it was beginning, and you had to hide, otherwise you’d definitely get hit.

Teleporting + speed reduction + extremely strong arcane damage— a powerful three combo attack. The Shade of Aran teleported everyone to the very middle of the room, and at the same time, casted a speed reduction debuff on the whole group, while the Arcane Explosion began to cast as well. After ten seconds, 9000 – 11 000 arcane damage was done to players within 30 yards – the radius of the room was only 35 yards.

The only way to deal with this was to move next to the wall within ten seconds. If your reaction time was fast enough and you began to run towards to edge before the teleportation started, then even if the speed reduction speed hadn’t been removed, you could still escape the explosion in time.

This skill was really easy to handle. You just needed to try your best not to get Iced so that any Invulnerability or other emergency measures wouldn’t be wasted here. The only place where there might be a problem was someone getting Ice bound. Because of this, healers had to make sure they could cleanse anyone caught by it, or it would not end well.

The Shade of Aran had so many skills. This was pretty much the first Boss that players had come across with so many skills. There was another, Flaming Hoop, which would randomly be used against three players. If there weren’t any others near them, then it wouldn’t be casted. However, if there were other players around, then it would produce a Flaming Hoop that lasted for 15 seconds. Anyone that tried to get through it would make it explode, doing 3000 – 4000 fire damage to everyone there. So when Aran was about to cast this skill, everyone should immediately stand still— even if they were in a Blizzard.

All they could do was wait for death, at least that way they wouldn’t get others damaged.

When Aran’s HP fell to 40%, he would summon four Elite water elements. Each one had about 10 000 HP and they would automatic disappear after 90 seconds. Their main skill was that they would keep sending out Frostbolts that did about 1500 damage.

Ice, Fire, Arcane, and summoning— that wasn’t all.

Nope, there was also transformation magic. When Aran’s mana dropped down to 20%, he would make an exaggerated expression and turned everyone into sheep, except for Druids since they were immune to polymorph effects. Then, he would make a stream for everyone to drink from. Ten seconds later, he’d fire an Impact wave, doing 5000 fire damage to everyone.

If they hadn’t killed Aran within 15 minutes, he would summon a shadow that would One Shot the whole team.

Just like that, the whole team would be One Shot. In the opening stage, this made Shade of Aran an extremely hard Boss to kill. Only after being weakened a few times in later patches was everyone finally no longer stuck here.

As for now, though…

Hard was a word that the team had heard too many times before.

Everyone in Ruling Sword’s three way alliance was stuck here. Even for other clubs, quite a few teams would’ve gotten here. After all, the Bosses before just tested their cooperation or output ability.

Shade of Aran couldn’t be taunted so a Main Tank was simply not needed. Indeed, even if they took two Main Tanks and chucked them into the Instance Dungeon it still wouldn’t help.

Again, the water elements needed someone to pull them, otherwise they’d recklessly attack players. If the healers got killed, then there was no point in continuing the fight anymore.

Lu Li even wanted to chuck the close combat units out. However, he needed to leave some people to tank the Boss’s skills. Moreover, Aran was a Mage, so those who could truly do damage to him were still the close combat units. If Mages fought Mages, it’d be a waste of a whole bunch of DPS.

But with the close combat units, they needed to move quickly to avoid the Blizzard. Ranged units stood relatively far away, and they could just take two steps back and they’d avoid the 30 yard zone.

The thing that led to the team getting wiped the easiest was the Flaming Hoop. From the description of the skill, it could be seen that the condition that triggered it was that there had to be other players within 5 to 8 yards of the target. However, since they brought too many close combat units, it was super difficult to completely avoid the Flaming Hoop from appearing.

When the Flaming Hoop and the Blizzard came out at the same time, it would lead to the death of a few members and sometimes even the death of the team.

“We need to think of a way to beat this,” Lu Li had been racking his brain for about less than a minute. Then, he had thought of a new idea.

“Who here still has Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, that chicken leg staff?” Lu Li recalled. He wasn’t sure of this would work. Since when he was fighting this boss in his last life, Shade of Aran had already been nerfed a few times.

On some relatively earlier guides, there was a small note at the top, if you entered the Dungeon with ‘Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian’, it would reduce the difficulty of the Instance Dungeon.

Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian, was Aegwynn’s and Medivh’s weapon, which meant it was something that belonged to the Archmage Aran’s wife and child. If he saw something that belonged to his own wife and child, maybe he would go easier on them.