This WoW player who clicks their skills is probably better than you—hunter Durendil solos yet another raid boss armed with a spreadsheet and raw grit

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Alexstrasza
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

In the sacred traditions of MMORPG players, there are several heresies you must not commit. You shall not ninja loot, you shall only camp someone's body when it's funny, and you shall not, under any circumstances, click your skills.

In case you're not sure what a "clicker" is, or have never so much as glimpsed an exclamation mark above a quest giver's head, let me explain. In MMOs, specifically ones where you have a hotbar flush with a couple dozen skills, general wisdom says that the mouse is for controlling the camera and the keyboard is for using your abilities.

There's plenty of wisdom behind this. In most high-end MMORPG content, making use of every possible second for damage or healing (often dubbed "keeping your GCD rolling" or "always be casting") is important, but movement is also vital. Basically, you need to be able to dodge flexibly without missing a beat in your damage rotation.

Which makes it all the funnier that this incredibly impressive feat, performed by hunter mastermind Durendil, is accomplished with a copious amount of clicking.

Hunter solo - Durendil vs Tindral Sageswift - YouTube Hunter solo - Durendil vs Tindral Sageswift - YouTube
Watch On

Killing Tindral Sageswift on Normal difficulty is, typically, nothing to write home about—being a step up from raid finder, but designed to be (as most Normal raids are) a stepping stone to the harder Heroic and Mythic difficulties. That's assuming you have at least 10 times the amount of manpower Durendil has brought to the fray, though—so killing him on his own is a tremendous achievement.

"This was my most technical and most fun solo in 14 years," Durendil writes in the video description. "This boss deals immense damage, so I kept trying to survive for longer and longer, having no idea if it was possible or if I could manage the dps for the enrage."

Just to survive, Durendil stacked their character with a toolbox of defensive cooldowns, such as Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart, while making use of everything else at their disposal—even their dwarven racial came in clutch, dispelling a run-ending damage over time effect: "I spent 20% of my time on this boss analysing my tries and theorycrafting the RT note on the left on an Excel spreadsheet. And it was fun."

Durendil's history of solo achievements goes way back, though. He's contributed soloing guides to WoWHead before and (with thanks to this historian on the game's subreddit) caused some controversy about a year ago when he stumbled into a hidden mount that a secret-finding Discord had been agonising over for ages because, quote, "Then they all got big mad because he is a clicker and they didn't think he 'deserved' to be the one to find it because they tried (and miserably failed) for so long."

It just goes to show that a poor artisan blames their tools—while a skilled artisan solos a raid boss armed with nothing but an Excel spreadsheet. Who needs story mode raids? Not this guy.

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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