The Great Thief

Lu Li received a T5 Shoulderpad from this Void Reaver Boss. Everyone was currently trying to get the best equipment, and professional players took priority as usual. After all, the

professional league had reached a critical time.

Ruling Sword was currently among those in the lead. They had acquired winning scores in their two games of the top 32.

Lu Li was not satisfied with his current equipment.

Thieves were not even good enough to be put on teams after the most recent patches. In the next patch, they would be nerfed even further. In contrast, the Paladins had been treated like they were sons of the System.

As such, this meant that Lu Li had to get some exquisite equipment and some powerful Skill Books.

Instructor Garona likely had many good items, but he just didn’t know how to get them. There was also the Gnome that previously fought his mentor. Perhaps there was an angle there he could leverage.

Once a person stood at the top, they wouldn’t want to come back down.

Lu Li didn’t want to be defeated by players he had beaten in the past during the individual rounds.

After the mobs nearby had been cleared out, they travelled to the location of the third Boss.

The third Boss was High Astromancer Solarian. She was a Blood Elf High Astromancer under Kael’thas and studied Demon Magic at The Eye. At this point, Prince Kael’thas had been driven almost completely mad with his desire for power, so he didn’t mind who he worked with to achieve that goal.

This Boss’ strength was far beyond Lu Li’s imagination.

After they were wiped here for five days straight, he no longer thought the problem was with Sky Moon. He later learned that there were other clubs who had been stuck here for almost two weeks.

If this was the Game Company’s way to recovering gold coins by forcing the players to continually repair their equipment, then it was working almost too well.

There was no doubt that Lu Li had faced an inferior Boss in his previous life. This meant that this version of the Boss was a new experience for everyone and they just had to work it out slowly.

Lu Li, Sky Moon and Wandering decided to analyse this Boss.

The main reason that the Boss was really difficult was because their overall damage output wasn’t high enough. They also didn’t have enough HP, nor did they have enough Mana regeneration. These defects didn’t matter much individually, but their combined effect was the reason why they couldn’t defeat the Boss.

“We need to adjust the ratio of melee and damage output players. There needs to be a balance between the melee damage output players and the area of effect magic casting players. There should be at least seven to eight magic damage output players to make sure we get to the second stage. High Astromancer Solarian has a lower Armor value when in humanoid form, which is good for melee damage output players. We can’t have too few of them either.”

Lu Li had no option but to give some of his own advice.

This was not a strategy he had read from his previous life. This was simply the result of his analysis.

He couldn’t just let Sky Moon bang his head against the problem and continually be wiped.

One the one hand, it was because of the second professional league currently going on. Since many of the First Clearing team were also professional players, being wiped like this was bound to take a physical and mental toll on them that would affect their performance on stage.

On the other hand, Lu Li also had to consider Sky Moon’s mental capacity.

He hadn’t been able to defeat a Boss after getting wiped for five days and likely didn’t see much hope left. No matter how talented he was, he was still a newcomer and not someone who had been reborn like Lu Li. Too much pressure like this could be unproductive.

“We lack a bit of healing. I think we need at least seven healers and three of them should be Paladin Healers. When a group gets wiped, you need to determine the root cause of why the group got wiped and not just point fingers at whose fault it was,” Lu Li continued.

“Yes, I understand. Not all mistakes can be avoided,” Sky Moon nodded as he listened.

“Not all mistakes can be avoided? Who told you that?” Lu Li frowned.

“You told me that!” Sky Moon was surprised that Lu Li had forgotten as Wandering nodded beside him.

“Then I take it back. Deduct points from anyone who makes a mistake,” Lu Li unashamedly declared, then continued boldly, “Make the damage output players compete and bench the one that deals the least damage. If anyone runs out of Mana or dies a lot, bench them too. We have a three-guild alliance doing this Instance Dungeon; we have the players for it.”

They didn’t really care about weapon durability anymore. They had been wiped so many times that it was now pointless to care.

“Uh… okay, I’ll get them to wear equipment that has more Arcane Resistance,” Sky Moon said. Now that he had the boss’ authority, he could kick whoever he wanted.

But why did they only get the ranged magic damage output players to compete? Couldn’t the same be done for the melee players?

Sky Moon didn’t want to ask.

“As for your resistance equipment, you can render the Boss’ Arcane Missiles harmless by stacking resistance, but that would negatively affect damage output and healing. You need to find a balance where you resist some of the damage without affecting other factors too greatly. This balance can only be found with some calculation and experimentation,” Lu Li said.

Lu Li had basically said everything he possibly could have before finally asking Sky Moon to take over commanding once again.

The first 20% and the last 20% of the Boss’ HP was not that difficult. The hardest part was the middle where you needed high damage output and high healing. They also couldn’t afford to splurge on mana consumption and they had to remember to be in the correct positions.

Wrath of the Astromancer was the most troublesome skill. When Lu Li fought this Boss in his previous life, they had removed the Contagious effect from this skill.

While they were doing this First Clear, this Contagious effect was the most painful effect to deal with.

The worst part about it was that it increased Arcane damage taken by 50%. If you had that effect active and you were hit by Arcane Missiles that dealt 3000 damage per round…

It was hard to even consider not dying.

They had two Main Tanks with Arcane Resistance for the very purpose of tanking this debuff. However, since this effect was stackable, they had to fight quickly as their equipment wouldn’t hold up forever.

Every 2 minutes or so, the Boss would disappear. Three pillars of light would appear and there would be mobs spawned within each pillar. These mobs weren’t powerful, so they would just pull them together and fight them all at once.

After about 30 seconds, they would clear the mobs. However, the Boss would then bring in two Priest mobs from the pillars to help him.

The Priest mobs would then single-mindedly heal the Boss. Fortunately, these mobs were susceptible to crowd-control, otherwise, there was no point in fighting this Boss anymore.

After Lu Li’s fine-tuning, Sky Moon found that everyone’s capacity to resist the Boss had actually increased.

It took some time to work out the critical point of Arcane Resistance where everyone could still dish out the high damage and healing required to complete this Instance Dungeon.

This was the combined strength of the three guilds. Lu Li had basically replaced half of their equipment with equipment that had been collected from other players.

Those that were more suitable for PVP were removed.

Having said that, the real professional players basically had two sets on hand – one for PVE and one for PVP that provided more mobility options.

Lu Li also intended to organise his equipment in this way. His innate advantage was becoming less obvious, and the circumstances he faced on stage were becoming more of a struggle.

However, losing was still not an option.

Even if you had no more resources stemming from being reborn, you still couldn’t lose in a one on one fight.