Though that is the reason I hate that instance. XD
CC´s last blog ..Raid For The Cure, or: I Love Male Tauren in Pink

It was the most fun we have had in a long time.
Millea´s last blog ..Night Owls FTW

Well blow me down with a feather, but the death knight hadn’t ever tanked as a death knight before, said, “Uh, ok” when I asked if she was tanking, and didn’t really know what to do or even that she should use Death and Decay. I certainly don’t think it was stupidity or even wilful ignorance – she just honestly didn’t know what to do.

We didn’t get anywhere but for some reason this is the instance that sticks in my mind the most. Our repeated attempts to get past the first boss were of course all doomed to failure. I pointed out that “drop Death and Decay” meant “use Death and Decay”, not “stop using Death and Decay.” I tried making sure everyone else waited a few seconds until she had built up threat. (Unfortunately this was about where my knowledge of DK tanking ran out.) And all throughout I was doing my level best, healing my little twigs off and trying to keep everyone alive as best I could. Did I buy everyone a bit more alive-time? I certainly hope so.
Sukugaru´s last blog ..World of Warcraft ravings

Not really knowing what to do I pulled open my inventory and frantically looked for a replacement. My options included my blacksmith hammer, which was the first thing i saw and tossed it on. Apparently, it didnt count as a melee weapon, and then i saw my mining pick. Not the standard issue mining pick, but the fabled pick of Brann Bronzebeard, a silithus quest green I had kept and enchanted for beastslaying (+2!) because i had hoped it would glow while mining. I managed to regain threat and pull it out, but in the panic we had lost a warlock to the demon chains, two rogues, and kilrek had mauled a priest to death. The priest soulstoned, the holy pally dropped consecrates and holy wraths and managed to keep me alive while tanking all the imps and it was, in a word, a gloriously awesome clusterfuck. We’d wiped for far less in the past, and the resulting vent cheer was like a guild first. One of my fondest memories.

(I’m speaking from a bit of experience here, too… I played a Shaman, a Druid and a Rogue in separate ten day trials over the years, and none of them really clicked in the low levels because they all pretty much played the same. I *think* I’d like a Druid in the endgame because of some offline analysis, but until I get my grubby little paws on it and start trying to play, I just don’t know if I’ll be a Stradivarious, a Mark O’Connor, or a danger to everyone’s hearing.)
Tesh´s last blog ..Happy Birthday To Me

Yeah – things went off the rails in a hurry, but our DPS changed targets on the fly since my threat was useless, healers switched it up, our Hybrids started tossing heals my way (instant CH and FoL from our shaman and retadin), and when I finally went down at about 10%, our bear tank snatched her up faster than Miss Piggy nabbing Kermit.
adgamorix´s last blog ..The moments that last

We amazingly made it to Loken with only a couple of deaths thanks to smart heals and sweet tanking from our resident tankadin.

Of course telling these guildies to stay close to the boss instead of far away resulted in immediate deaths so I didn’t bother trying to keep them up while they refused to listen to the tank and my urgings to come closer to the boss (2 hunters and a mage). Once they died the encounter became so much easier to heal. The Prayer of Mending kept bouncing back and forth to myself and the tank while keeping a Renew up on each of us and using Binding Heal to keep us both topped off while tossing in some DoTs to help the tank. The fight took about 10 minutes but with careful mana managment and alternating both tank and priest cooldowns we were able to down Loken with not a lot of fuss other than the AoE blast.

Then along came dual spec when I was about level 60. I grabbed a boomkin spec and wow. Just wow. I mean, I thought I was doing all right when I soloed resto, but man! So this is what blowing things up really feels like? Awwwwww yeah! Bam! Bam! BAM! I wasn’t even sure I wanted to play the cat anymore. Big-critting Starfires are just so freakin’ cool.

But my story about how things can “click” is more about watching it click for a feral druid in Sethekk Halls. It started shakey. The priest who organized the party was missing a lot of gear. Not just bad gear, but like, missing. No trinkets, rings, shoulders, weapon or wand. Apparently she’d been on and off WoW and was just coming back again. She was dual specced though and we worked out between us that I’d heal.
Which ended up being good, because the Paladin tanking for us had issues. I don’t know what they were exactly, but I had recently hit level 67, picked up a few Northrend greens in the AH, had been levelling up enchanting and had some decent ones on everything that could be enchanted . . . and I still found healing the Paladin a challenge. His health just dropped so fast sometimes. On top of that, the cat druid really wanted to tank. He and the Warlock only had mediocre DPS and of course the Priest’s was way, way low. Which meant long fights. And worse, the mind control totems that get dropped in SH weren’t being killed fast enough. So I’d help DPS ‘em down when I could . . . but being in healer spec, my dps was as bad as the undergeared priest’s.

No one died, but it was pretty close a few times. After the first hallway (about 3 groups of trash), the Warlock dropped out. We nearly cleared the first room, still touch-n-go, before the Paladin noticed and decided to drop out, too. Our cat dropped into bear form declaring, “Oh hell no. This instance will not kick our ass.” And proceeded to pull the next group.

It went soooo smoothly. No wonder this guy wanted to tank. It was his calling. Pull, swipe, growl at all the right times, bash the casters and his health barely fluctuated at all. Healing him was easy peazy. So I suggested to our priest that maybe things would go faster if we switched our roles and let me dps in moonkin. And sure enough, even totally undergeared, she could handle all the healing the bear needed and I jumped to about 3x the dps she was doing. I was easily 1.5 times the dps the tank put out, but he still managed to hold aggro. No more touch-n-go. We breezed through to the first boss and downed him like we were still a five man team . . . only better now that the two losers had abandoned us. I mean, seriously, they left despite us having no deaths.

Next pull after the first boss was tough. We pulled more mobs than even super-tank could stand up to. But geez, a three man PuG through the first boss in Sethekk before wiping is better than I’d expect. Still we picked up a hunter & shaman and had a blast, an honest to God this-is-why-I-play blast, from there to Ikiss and then the story gets even better.

Ikiss does this AoE blast. There’s a “Ikiss is channeling” warning, you can hide behind pillars to avoid it and if you don’t, you take about 5K damage. Which is a lot in the mid to late 60s range. Our tank was a little shy of 10K. I had about 5500 at the time. The priest had 3500. First blast, she was still figuring out where to go and we lost our healer. So on the way back from the wipe we decide that for Ikiss we’d switch roles back to me healing. Ikiss often teleports before he channels his blast. My turn healing, I misjudged positioning around the pillar after the teleport and ate the damage. He immediately follows up the aoe blast with a volley of shadow bolts that hit everyone regardless of LoS and it caught me mid heal for just enough to kill me. He’s a challenge for appopriately levelled characters. I bet this Thanksgiving there will be level 80s thinking they’ll solo Ikis their badass selves and get their butts handed to them when they walk in missing some key pieces of gear. I mean, I know I’m gonna’ try it, lol.

Anyway, IRL, my 1 year old started crying so returning from the wipe, still about two rooms back from Ikiss’ chamber, I BRB to go get my daughter a bottle and put her back to bed. I returned from AFK just in time to see the priest typing “you started without any healers!!!” BOOM! Arcane Blast hit, she died. Cat form, sprint, tree, heal, heal, heal, find the hunter’s corpse, rez, heal, heal. FRANTIC! But we beat Ikiss. The bear must have blown his whole set of “Oh shit” cooldowns to stay alive long enough for a healer to get there, but man. He did it. And it was pretty awesome.