If I Were a Raid Boss

I enjoyed reading some of the blogs responding to Blog Azeroth's shared topic of "What kind of Raid Boss Would You Be?" Somehow that idea got really stuck in my head and after thinking a lot about the different possibilities, I came up with the following encounter. It gave me the idea that maybe it was possible to to connect WoW with environmental education, and maybe I should make a blog addressing those seemingly disparate subjects. Here's the boss I'd be!

Phase 1 is a lesson on ethnobotany.
- 2 minibosses, Fungicide and Herbicide, who must be killed within 10 seconds of one another or the one killed too soon will respawn.
- Fungicide has an aura that reduces armor and Herbicide has an aura that reduces HP, so they must be tanked 15 yards apart.
- Phase 2 will start when both are killed or after 4 minutes, so they must be down before the 4 minute mark.

Phase 1 Miniboss: Fungicide
- Casts "wild fungal growth" every 30 seconds, which spawns mushrooms all over the room that rapidly grow in size for 10 seconds.
- Mushrooms can either be Morels or LBMs. Morels are safe to stand beneath, but the LBMs have a 70% chance of giving players within 5 yards a stacking poison debuff that will quickly become too much to heal through.
- The mushrooms won't have titles/enemy health bars, so you'll have to recognize which ones to avoid by seeing what they look like. Morels are pretty distinctive-looking edible mushrooms, while there are thousands of species of Little Brown Mushrooms that look indistinguishable and may or may not be poisonous, collectively referred to as LBMs by folks who study mushrooms.
- This illustrates that there is a chance eating a random little brown mushroom won't hurt you, but it's much more likely to be poisonous so it's best to stick with a mushroom known to be safe.
Morels:




LBMs:



Phase 1 Miniboss: Herbicide
- Casts "wild berry growth" every 30 seconds (30 seconds off from Fungicide's ability), spawning 3 types of berry bushes that rapidly grow around the room for 15 seconds: snowberry, salmon berry, and salal.
- Clicking on the salmon berry will allow you to eat one of the berries, which were traditionally eaten with salmon to help with digestion, and this will give your character a 100% boost in critical strike chance for 15 seconds. Buff does not stack with salal berry.
- Clicking a salal berry will reduce your damage taken by 10% for 15 seconds, as salal was traditionally used as an appetite suppressant when food was scarce. Buff does not stack with salmon berry.
- Snowberry is poisonous to eat, so do not click on this bush to eat its berries - but since the berries were traditionally used to treat wounds, standing within 5 yards of it will heal you 5% every 5 seconds.


Salmon berry: Eat it for healthy digestion and 100% crit chance!


Salal: Eat it to suppress your appetite and reduce damage taken by 10%


Snowberry: Stand close, but don't eat the berry if you want to get its healing effects!
 

Phase 2: Pesticide This is a lesson on native and invasive species (of the Pacific Northwest).
- The boss doesn't hit hard, so most attention can be focused on his adds
- Spawns critter adds in waves of 6 at a time every 15 seconds. There are 6 possibilities for what the adds can be; the combination will be random for each wave:
- Native: 1) beaver 2) tree frog 3) quail, or
- Invasive: 4) nutria 5) bullfrog 6) wild turkey.
- Adds will spawn at half health with neutral health bars.
- Once they spawn, the invasive species will start killing the native species, and once those are dead, the invasives will attack the raid.
- Native species will do nothing until they are healed to full health, at which point they become un-attackable allies that attack the boss.
- Dps must quickly kill the invasive critters before those kill the native ones, being careful not to kill the native critters (so no aoe).
- Healers must quickly heal the native critters to full so that they will help kill the boss.
- This phase of the fight depends somewhat on luck since the choice of what kind of adds will be random, but basically the faster you heal native species and kill invasives, the sooner the boss will die.
- No enrage timer, no "dying heals the boss" bullshit, just a matter of identifying which critters to kill and which to heal.
Beaver

Nutria

Pacific Tree Frog

Bull Frog

California Quail

Wild Turkey


Pesticide Loot:
Tasty Morel Mushroom - caster offhand
Cloak of Many Croaks - strength-based dps back
Nutria Pelt Mittens - cloth healing gloves
Preserved Salal Berry - Tank trinket with armor and on-use effect reducing damage by 10%