This afternoon, after a scrumptious lunch of oriental buffet… relaxed at home and logged in… to see one of my favorite players (a hunter) say that she had just gotten her heroic Coilfang Reservoir key.
Someone else chimes in that they’d love to do a heroic Slave Pens run…. and we’re off!
Now, normally getting three or even four instance runs in guild going at the same time is nothing… but on a Friday afternoon, there were only 16 online… and so we got 4 guildies in a group.
We had the hunter, myself, a draenei Holy paladin and a balance druid playing balance/healer for the run… and after an hour went into the dreaded LFG channel for the last.
That’s right… a heroic run with a PUG member… roll the dice… sixes or snake eyes?
Well, this time it was sixes… we got a rogue that was totally geared out from Kara and SSC that wanted to farm Badges, and had done heroic SP a dozen times… always nice to have a skilled guide!
This next section is kinda fun… yes, I do have fun in game… from my posts, it might be hard to tell. It’s still an awesome feeling to pop my netherdrake and go for a spin… looking for ore, usually.
Anyhooo… we had some teething pains on the very second Bogstrok pull, but we got the mark concepts together and went on inside… and very shortly we ate Mennu the Betrayers’ lunch.
Seriously.
I mean, all together, it was a cakewalk. Having a hunter keeping a mob locked down on chain traps, and a solid kitty that only attacked what she was SUPPOSED to attack, having a rogue that DARN well knew how to sap, and frankly, having myself tanking made for a smooth, boat cruise of a run to that point.
We pushed on past Mennu, being careful the whole run to avoid whatever mobs we could instead of clearing, and reached a point where we were just coming up on the last pat before the broken bridge segment where you have to jump in the pool.
Now this last bit here is where having a good healer makes an amazing difference. And I am going to blow my own horn a little, because for a change I am proud of my performance.
The rogue was stealthing forward to mark and get in sap position, when the paladin clearly said “mana”.
We all know what that means, don’t we? Yes we do, and yes the team did, and everyone backed off politely from the pat so the paladin could regain mana.
And then it all went pie-shaped, as the patrol apparently got within aggro range of SOMEONE, I have no idea who or how, and went apeshit on the casters.
Now, I was actually at that moment talking to my wife in my office, and as I looked away from her to glance at my screen (which should have displayed an idyllic view of casters happily eating, drinking and possibly /dancing away) instead I see carnage erupting.
I move into action trying to grab aggro on anything that’s on top of a caster. By the time the situation stabilized, in a heartbeat the hunter, the rogue and the balance druid were dead, it was just me and the paladin, and there were still two mobs alive and at full health.
I settle in spreading my Lacerates around, swiping, keeping the second mob on me but mostly focusing all of my Mangles and Mauls on one target to land all my pain on him. I personally had no real hope of only two of us lasting long enough against two heroic elites to survive. But we were a far way in, and the only resurrection caster was still alive… and I refused to give up. (grin)
Someone in party chat said “Damn, a wipe”… but pretty soon the comments switched to “dammmmnnnnn…”, as I kept pounding on the two bastards and the paladin kept me alive.
I used everything I had, loving every second my Badge of Ferocity gave me of increased Dodge, holding my Frenzied Regeneration and Bash in reserve… and just before the first mob was dead, the paladin ran out of mana totally.
Someone said “Good try” in chat… and I triggered Frenzied Regen, holding on and pounding that bastard with everything I had. When he finally died, I hit Bash on mob #2, flipped to caster, popped an Innervate on the paladin, a Lifebloom and Rejuve on myself, and flipped back into Bear in time to pop Enrage and get back on top of him before the mob ever had a chance to move.
After that it was all over. The paladin had enough mana coming in to keep me going, I only had one pounding on me, and with Mangle and Maul going, pretty soon it was victory for us over SP trash… and my blood was pumping like crazy. The paladin came through alive and rezzed the rest of the party, and off we went.
You know, it was one of those kinds of moments for which I play this game. We had the potential for disaster, it looked real bad, but instead of giving up, we gave it our best shot and triumphed. We used our skills properly, thought ahead and anticipated the moment when our abilites would make a difference, and we kicked their ass.
And the fact that I had some spectators saying “That was damn beautiful” made it all the sweeter.
I spend many a time watching other players pull off sweet moves, and I congratulate them and tell them how awesome what they did was. I see a lot of skilled players, and I always take the time to let them know how much I admire what they do.
I get told I’m a great tank pretty often… or I’ll hear “Wow, we tried this with such-and-such as tank and we failed miserably… with you as tank this is easy”… but I usually take those kind of comments as not meaning much. If someone happened to have a BAD tank, or one with starter gear, or underleveled for the instance, or having the wrong spec for the task, and then I’m running with ‘em and it’s good, that doesn’t mean I’m good. It just means I’m better than the one bad tank they ran with.
But this was a lot different for me, because for a change I did something that I knew at the time was a good job. And it gave me a feeling of warm fuzzies to be told that the others agreed. :)
What a nice start to the weekend!
My favorite comment is “I did everything I could do to pull aggro from you, and I couldn’t do it. I’m adding you to friends.”
Fantastic job mate, doing exactly what a bear tank was made for: the unthinkable. =D
Haha, great story! Nicely done!
BTW I laughed at the part where you were talking to your wife and suddenly noticed the carnage. If I was talking to my wife and just abruptly stopped talking to her and started furiously punching keys and playing WoW I’d die from wife aggro WAY before I died from the trash mobs.
Two similar experiences, and my all-time favorite wow memories:
Shade of Aran – 10 people go in… sheeped first, elementals spawn, people are dying left and right. By the time the elementals despawn, he’s around 20% health and we only have 4 or 5 of us up. Someone goes down to arcane missles, a lock’s got CoD up, we’re just holding out and holding out. Only 1 healer alive, I’m shooting like crazy and trying not to take damage. 10% – EVERYONE’s out of mana, the 4th bites it. 5% – our friendly lock eats a fireball and lays dead on the ground. Only 2 of us up at this time, me and our druid healer who’s oom. A few more of the lock’s dots tick and he’s dying. I see little +’s going over my body and realize our healer is BANDAGING me… 1%, he’s soooo dead, and finally I throw an arcane shot into the rotation and take him down – 2 of us alive, neither of us above 3k health, and Shade lies on the ground dead.
And here’s another: heroic Sethekk Halls, Talon King… (his arcane blast SUCKS on heroic by the way)
I’m the healer on this one with my shaman. We survive 2 arcane blasts before people start dying, I’m on the far right side of the room and people are everywhere behind pillars – pillars which I personally can’t heal through but apparently the King can shoot arcane missles through >.<. Eventually, our 3 dps die, it’s just me and our prot warrior… and he’s at around 20%. Everyone claims wipe. I stay in there, I’m hold out and so is the warrior. Basically, for about 4-5 minutes it’s just him and I, I’m healing, he’s attacking, and randomly I get sheeped. Since I have no hots, I just have to do my best to keep him up. We took him down. It was sweetness.
Had one of these a few days ago in heroic Gundrak, on Gal’darah. Impales all over the place, dead tank, dead DPS. I rebirth the tank, he dies again, and it’s just me and the healer. I’m set up for DPS, but with nobody else to worry about, the healer was able to keep me up, and we won the fight. My Gored Hide Legguards even dropped. Being able to shift roles during combat is one of the things that makes druids so fun to play, especially when it works as well as it did there.