First, I’ll say that after I was stalked by a certain someone in the game itself, I have gone ahead and let peer pressure push me into doing this naBlOWmepop thingie…

What does this mean for you? Basically, no real change, since I already post every week day. Now, instead of sometimes blowing off a Saturday or Sunday cause I didn’t do much except farm ore, I’ll be boring you with the tales of the farming.

Lucky you.

Now, on to the fun!

At the start of tonights’ run, we had three bosses left in Kara… Prince, Netherspite and Nightbane.

I can’t remember if I posted about Thursday nights’ Shade and Chess clearing. I don’t remember. We cleared em, lets leave it at that.

Anyway, I was left out of the Prince battle, since I had died in exactly 36 seconds on our second attempt Thursday night in cat form. Enfeebles just caught me out too far. Damn it.

Tonight though, they decided since I wasn’t up for T4 on the DKP rota, and I don’t need any of Princes’ other drops, I could sit this one out while a mage came in for more ranged DPS

So I got to have fun playing with Mrs. BBB in Arathi Highlands while the group killed Prince first try. Yay! (P.S. Mrs BBB is now level 35. WooT!)

After that, it was into group I went, as we set up for Netherspite.

I was in the tanking rotation with Joppers, and we set up so that one of us was on red beam while the other was on green, alternating, every time stage 1 was up. No healers used green beam, since it drains mana so hard.

We went into it, Jopps and I did our dance of the beams, and we kicked Netherspites’ ass first try, like it was easy. Loot dropped, and cheers were made. Funnily enough, this was the guilds’ first sucessful attempt. On to Nightbane!

---

This time, it was a different story. The nightbane fight is fairly complicated. The tank must maintain aggro, stay unaffected by Fear, and keep the tail away from party… and when stage two hits, the tank loses aggro because Nightbane takes to the sky and starts raining skeletons down on the party. A hunters’ Misdirection shots are great for making sure the tank maintains aggro after stage two, but the Fear needs some special lovin’.

Now, I was in the group with a nice multi-role task. The casters all stand to one side, the melee dps get on top of Nightbane, and the tank is in front for stage 1. I get to be in tank gear as a DPS cat in this stage, applying Mangle debuff and shredding like heck.

When stage two begins, I am supposed to shift to bear and pick up aggro on all skellies that spawn.

Rinse and repeat.

The problem we run into is that Joppers, the prot warrior, doesn’t get to be immune to the Fear that Nightbane continuously throws up, case we have no drainei or dwarf priests on the run. So, no Fear Ward.

Now, Prot warriors can shift stances to berzerker to be immune to Fear, and then shift back.

But the first two tries, it just doesn’t quite work out, and Joppers gets feared. The biggest problem being, he has to rely on Deadly Boss Mods warning that Fear is about to hit so he knows when to shift stance. And our Deadly Boss Mods was out of sync, NEVER showing Fear cast time accurately.

So we tried twice, and died twice.

The third try, we just kept trying the same tactics… and I enjoyed the fight a lot.

I started out in cat with tanker gear on… let Jopps build threat, then hit FFF, Mangle and Shred, Shred Shred… Rip… Shred… Mangle re-debuff… Shred… Shred…

Stage 2 begins when Nightbane hits 75% health, Nightbane flies into air, I shift to bear, pick up the skellies, we clear them out and Nightbane lands.

I shift to cat, repeat DPS process.

At 50% health, stage two begins again. Now, we have one man down, but I couldn’t rez him cause I’d used my combat rez at attempt 2. But now, it’s getting close to cooldown being up. I hit bear, I pick up the skeletons, we burn them down, Nightbane lands, I shift to caster, rez him, fire off some HoTs on Joppers, pop an Innervate on the Priest as long as I’m there, and shift into cat…

Nightbane hits 25% health, another stage 2, same as before. When he lands, I’m in cat form doing my DPS, and I see Joppers suddenly go down stone dead. I instantly pop into bear form, land my Mangle, Growl, Lacerate spam, you name it. I grab aggro before anything bad happens to anyone, wheel him around and we’re still in business.

For the rest of the fight, I either resisted his Fears, which I know I did at least three times, or managed to regain aggro after the Fear with Feral Charge before he wrought too much damage.

End score for the evening…. Nethespite dead on first attempt, Nightbane dead on third.

Two guild firsts, and I got to have a nice warm fuzzy feeling for doing my part as well as I could.

---

I want to give a shout out to Sevek of The Art of War guild on Kael’thas, for coming into our group and giving us the lowdown on what we could expect on these fights. He coached us through what we could expect very well, and I honestly don’t think we would have succeeded if he hadn’t been willing to use his weeks’ Kara run ID to go with us and help us out with tactics and pointers. I think the results speak for themselves! Thanks mate!

Kara cleared. Can you believe it?