My shadow priestie has been 70 for long enough that I’ve maxed out my gear except for raids, heroic Magisters’ Terrace, and Badge Rewards.

Everything is properly gemmed and enchanted, and I float around 1050 shadow damage unbuffed. I’m pretty darn happy with that.

The Sidhe Devils has our own Kara run scheduled for the morning of Saturday, May 31st, where two of our powerful Feral Druids will be tanking away, and neither of them will be moi.

Instead, I’m gonna play mana battery, ranged DPS, and Shackler.

Now, I’ve only ever soloed as a shadow priest before. You guys know me; that leaves me nervous about my ability to properly perform my role, and not let the rest of the raid down.

So, I’d been keeping my eye out for two weeks now for a Kara PUG in the makings, to join and go in and learn my place and practise rotations and thinking on my feet, and mainly seeing what things look like from the back of the pack for a change.

The funniest part is, with my current gear, there are all of three upgrades I could get from Kara, and they’re all from the first two bosses. I’d be looking mainly for badges, and for fun. How often would you expect tha from a Kara pug? Someone that wasn’t out to be a loot whore?

As a shadow priest, I knew that my Shackle would be welcome, but it might be hard to find a pug that felt secure enough to take a non-healer priest.

Well, last night I was giving Alex a bath, and Cassie calls out that someone in Trade chat was asking specifically for a shadow priest to fill the last slot in an all-guildie Kara run.

WTF? Are you kidding me?

I looked at Cassie with my beseeching kitty-cat “can I haz kara run?” eyes, and she not only said yes, but she even finished up Alex’s bath for me so I could scurry off and log in. Yay!

The guild was Essence of Grandeur on Kael’thas, and although they usually run two Kara groups, I got the impression the US Memorial Day weekend had left them short one for a badge run.

They welcomed me quite warmly, asked if I could join Vent, and once I ran off to get my raid mats and consumables, threw me a summons.

The run was completely unlike any Kara run I’ve ever done before.

We started with an untouched Kara, took down Attumen, and kept rolling without pause until we reached the large room at the top of the huge ramp past the library just after Curator. We didn’t STOP there for the night, I just had all I could take without a bio break. 

So a pause to put Alex and cats to bed, and a bit of bio regen, and it was back in business. We started back up and kept on until Chess was cleared.

That was the longest single run I’ve done in Kara. Every Legatum run I’d been on, there was usually an acknowledged stopping boss about halfway through. And that was typically Curator. When we 7 manned Kara we went further, but we still bypassed Aran and Illhoof when we went on and cleared Chess.

This one, we went until we just got too tired, and in our case last night it mean we rolled on until 2 AM.

So, Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Romulo and Juliette, Curator, Shade of Aran, Illhoof and Chess, dead.

That guild has a great sense of fun and playfulness on vent. Definitely a nice group of folks to play with.

Let me talk a bit about some of the things I learned as a shadow priest in Karazhan for the first time, when I thought I was completely prepared.

1) Bring twice as many sacred candles as you think you’ll need. You’ll probably run short anyway. I brought about 40, needed a fast trip to snag 20 more. Next time, I’m bringing 80.  Why? When someone dies, I found it easier to redo the whole group buff for the full duration rather than just a ghetto buff of 30 minutes on one person. So they got used a lot more than I expected.

2) Don’t freak out if you have the cookie-cutter priest spec, that gives you +102 Stamina from your Improved Fort buff, and when you buff people, it displays a tooltip saying they got a +79 stamina buff instead. It’s a known bug that I was previously unaware of. I did the math, and after I did the buff, the tooltip showed the +79, but I really got +113 (from the +102 Fort and +10% stats from Pally buff).

3) It is vital to use a shackle focus macro that allows you to continue to provide ranged DPS uninterrupted to your target while keeping a second one shackled. Allow me to show you mine;

#showtooltip Shackle Undead
/clearfocus [modifier:alt][target=focus,dead][target=focus,help][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus]Shackle Undead
/s Shackling %f

I did not create this. I am, despite all that Kirk could do with his series of posts on how to write macros, still macro-creating illiterate.

BUT, I now understand better what to look for IN a macro. So I went to the Shadow Priest forums and did some searching. 

In a thread about Moroes and Shackling Macros, way towards the end, a player named Acererak wrote that macro I listed above… and another player named MnilinM came by and helped explained what it did, an explanation even I could understand, so I will share it with you here.

MnlinM described the macro as doing the following;

Show the tooltip for Shackle, instead of just a random macro icon/name
then:
Clear the focus target IF I hold alt, OR my current focus is dead, OR my current focus is friendly, OR if my focus doesn’t exist anymore.
then:
Set my current target as my focus, only if I don’t have a focus target set
then:
Cast, using my focus as the target, Shackle Undead
then:
say “Shackling [target’s name]”

So… it’s a nice macro. Works great. Kinda does everything I can see that I would need in the heat of battle. In actual use, it kicks ass. I target the mob that has been marked for Shackle. At the pull, I hit that macro, and it makes my target my focus, and Shackles him. I then can target the Skull or X and begin blasting away, and I have a dot-timer mod that shows me Shackles’ duration even if I don’t have that mob targeted. And every ten seconds I just hit the macro button and it recasts Shackle on my focus, without changing my current DPS target.

So.. I macro-Shackle the purple diamond, retarget on Skull and mana dot death dot blast death flay mana dot blast reShackle death flay mana dot… you get the idea. As long as I keep my eye on the Shackle in case it breaks before the ten seconds I give myself to reShackle, I’m good.

Now, a few lessons learned from the run itself.

Essence of Grandeur seems to have always used a Paladin Tank as their main tank. As most of you are well aware, I am used to a warrior and feral druid, or mostly the two feral druid tanking combo.

I have only once ever played with a Paladin Tank, and that is when Gerolan the incredibly awesome tanked Steamvault and I was on my Hunter.

A paladin main tank in Kara was a very, very different experience.

I had heard before that a Paladin using Consecrate and AOE tanking, especially against undead, is an amazing sight.

That is an understatement.

Basically, if the healers could keep the pally alive, the team wins. No matter what else happens. It was shocking.

I made a mistake early on, body pulled a group on the run to Attumen while trying to back up to make some space/LOS to the fight we were on… I died right away as the three mobs came charging me… the Pally picked them up, and they kept right on trucking. No other deaths.

The group did have a warrior as well, for off-tanking, but the bulk of the fight was on the Paladin, and the first thing that surprised me was that he did not use pulls from the hunter’s misdirect to bring mobs to him, instead he charged in face to face to body pull.

In hindsight, it’s obvious why, since if you don’t have a ranged pull or Linkin’s Boomerang, you must get into the habit of running up and saying “hi” all nice and personal every time.

But what that does is bring all the mobs automatically into the range of your Consecrate, making Shackle useless. Shackle/break, Shackle/break.

They used Crowd Control, don’t get me wrong. But it became clear they used it only on those fights where they had problems in the past with the ‘pally rush in’ technique.

I’m just used to always walking up to every fight wondering how to apply the crowd control we have on hand to the given fight to break it up into bite sized pieces…

So I was there in a cautious mindset looking for things to CC, and they were there in a ‘blast the doors down, matey’ mindset.

Their way is much more fun.

But there were not as many chances to Shackle as I was hoping for. I practised it a lot, damn it!

But yes, I have seen firsthand now, what people mean when they talk about Paladins being awesome tanks, especially in Karazhan. No question.

What came to my mind was to wonder, if a newer guild started out for their very first raids with only a paladin tank, would having that incredible threat generation holding a group of mobs cause the new raiders problems in higher-progression fights?

Some fights are very CC dependant in other raids. Do you think having players used to NOT being able to pull aggro easily would cause problems in the learning curve?

These guys didn’t have that kind of problem, Moroes is a CC issue and they had it locked down, the hunter chain trapped very well, and BRK would’ve been proud. but it did make me wonder, seeing as how I’m going into Karazhan in one week with a group of my own guild’s, many of whom haven’t been far inside… if the Tank is that good, does it prevent your other players from having to stretch and struggle to master their own abilities to get the job done? And can that hurt a guild in the future, if they are used to success, and then suddenly hit a brick wall in progression?

Oh, and as long as I’m talking about the Hunter… this is hilarious…

So, we down Illhoof last night. And we have a very strong boomkin in the group. She stayed locked onto number one on the DPS chart from minute one, just great DPS output. Very cool. In case anyone cared, the DPS chart looked like this;

1. Boomkin
2. Warlock
3. Me
4. Rogue
5. Hunter

Considering the Hunter was in a lot of blues and even some greens, it wasn’t his skill, it was just his gear. And he got some damn nice upgrades. That Steelspine Faceguard, for example.

But he had a green for a weapon… and a certain Staff dropped off of Illhoof…

And since the balance-specced Druid didn’t want it…. well…. that’s just awesome. Yes, yes he did. The Hunter won the roll on Terestrian’s Stranglestaff.

And he had a great time emoting ‘the tentacles brush up against xxx leg’ and similar for the rest of the fight… oh, it was priceless… the jokes about all the people that would be seeing him with that staff that would QQ in Ironforge were perfect.

If you live and play in Kael’thas and happen to see Essence of Grandeur around, give ‘em a /salute, they’re a damn fun, and mature, group to play with.

lol.

Yes. We sure are hot for progression in the ol’ Sidhe Devils guild, aren’t we?

Oh yeah, we’re hot… you can have your Gruul’s Lair, your Karazhan and your BT. Sunwell Plateau? Noobsauce.

Heroic Underbog is where it’s at, baby!

…… someone that takes this game way too seriously just had a stroke, somewhere.

Okay, all joking aside, I’m quite proud of Sidhe Devils. We had what I consider our first Heroic run as a guild, and we cleared the place out.

Last week we took on Heroic Sethekk Halls for Nasirah’s Swift Flight Form, but it wasn’t really an instance run in my eyes. We originally planned on being sneaky, bypassing everything we could, and just getting to Anzu to get the quest complete.

Along the way, we fought a whole lot more than we expected we would, and in the end we ran out of time and couldn’t finish off the last boss. I got the bird mount (yay! still stoked) and Nasirah got her Swift Birdie, but it wasn’t a planned instance clear.

Last night, we had planned ahead of time to form up at 7 PM and go in to clear Heroic Underbog to the end, and that’s what we did.

The original plan was for Cassieann and I, and Nasirah and Squirrelz (her hubby), and Daxe to go in. Three Druids, one Rogue and a Hunter.

Dax got wife aggro, so naturally he couldn’t go, but we did have a pretty fresh Tree Druid, Dionket, that was happy to go. His gear wasn’t maxed out, but he was willing, so what the heck? And he did a great job on heals, and freed Nasirah up to do a tno of booming, so that was cool. We all went on in and had a great time.

Nasirah called us Team Sneaky in chat, and we certainly had the capability to stealth, but as some folks could use the rep we just cleared like normal.

Let me tell you, having multiple Hibernates, a Sap and two tanks that can swap into DPS on the fly makes for a pretty fun run. Almost too many options per pull, to be honest. The temptation on every pull to try something different just because we could was hard to resist.

I somehow managed to keep myself from asking Nasirah and Dionket and Squirrelz from chain-Cycloning one with me just to see if diminishing returns from Cyclone applied to Cyclones from different casters. I think it does, but we can play with Cyclone some other time.

The last boss, the Black Stalker, caused us some problems, I’ll admit. The many adds, and the amount of pure magic damage proved to be our achilles heel. We wiped twice before we got into a groove, and finally just focused on positioning and burning the thing down and ignoring the adds, just eating the damage, and three of the group went down anyway before we got him dead.

Laughingly, it seemed like we struck the loot pinata when we checked the body, because the boss gave us two Trinkets (including the Argussian Compass), an epic Mail piece nobody could use, a Primal Nether, a Badge, an epic Gem, AND an Ace of Lunacy.

End result, we set a goal, we gathered together, we accomplished the goal. We encountered adversity along the way and overcame it. We tried different things on the pulls to feel our way into what we liked, and found our ‘comfort level’ on the pulls.

My favorite technique on the Naga pulls had to be to have Cassie Sap one of the caster/healers, while I targeted some of the guys for tanking and Squirrelz tanked the others. Then we just burnt down in order, nice and fun. One tank didn’t get overwhelmed by mobs, Dionket didn’t have to work extra hard keeping one tank alive against high spike damage but just keep two going on medium damage, and everything worked out fine.

On the trash rays on the way to the hunter/bear boss, the ones that can’t be Hibernated and that have their Psychic Scream fear effect, Squirrelz and I would each pick a target, then stood side by side and tanked our main targets while overlapping Swipe. If one of us got feared, the other generally stayed put and kept aggro on the whole bunch so the casters didn’t get eaten. I can only recall one time that we both got feared at the same time, and we picked ‘em up again fast.

Just… fun. I like trying new things, even if i get clumsy while doing it.

So… I know we’re planning on doing Heroic Slave Pens next, since Nasirah has the Daily Quest for it on her books. I’m thinking that, again, with so many humanoids to Sap, and plentiful Hibernates, and two tanks, I’m not seeing any potential chokepoints. In fact, I expect it to be laughably easy.

I want to throw it open to you guys, though. We are Team Sneaky!

Give us your suggestions on Heroics that can be stealthed, and we will take them on!

Ok, BBB is having a horrible day at work today, so he asked (ok, made) me write the post for today.   Last night, we went back into Kara for part 2 with our group from last Wednesday (minus 1 player and the addition of a new mage).  It was a very successful and smooth run (at least that’s what they all said and since it’s only my 2nd time in there, I’m going to believe them).

We started out doing Maiden.  We had skipped her last week while doing Attumen, Moroes, Opera and Curator.  We downed Maiden the first time with no issues at all.  Very smooth and fast fight.

Then killed all the trash on the way to Illhoof.  Again, downed him the first time with BBB tanking BOTH Illhoof and Kil’rek on his own.  Our mages kept getting sacrified and were excellent at using ice block to quickly stop that and get back to the fighting.  And yay, Illhoof dropped the Xavian Stilleto that only I could use (which was an upgrade from my Felsteel Whisper Knives.

Then it was on to Shade of Aran.  I personally hate this fight because there’s so much to remember (and the pressure of not moving during flame wreath which would lead to never-ending ribbing from the rest of the party is terrible) and instead, I died within the first arcane explosion.  Almost made it to the wall when I exploded. :-(  However, a few moments later, BBB took a quick pause from fighting to rez me. Yay, I was back in the fight and ready to take him down.  Got him to about 50% when suddenly BBB said “oh shit” and was dead himself.  The rest of us kept up the fight and we were down to 1% when Gerolan and I saw another arcane explosion coming and both made the unannounced decision to just keep whaling away on him instead of running for the walls.  And he went down!  He did not drop any rogue loot, but I did get Medivh’s Journal which I needed for my quest.

On we went to more trash and then the Chess event.  Now I have to say, I played Chess a long time ago (but don’t remember much), but as Teysa said when explaining it to our new mage - “do you know how to play chess?  Well, this is nothing like that.”  lol  I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.  This time I was a horsie and had finally gotten within range of the Warchief when I got killed and moved a few times with a new pawn when the rest of the team got the win.  And yay, more rogue loot.  I got the Girdle of Treachery to replace a horrible old green belt that I was still wearing (my last green piece).  BBB generously let me have it when it would have been a really big upgrade for his kitty set.  Thanks dear!

Since we had no offtank, we decided to bypass Netherspite completely (and the guild always bypasses Nightbane - however, I’ll have that quest soon so they’ll have to give in for one night and do it) :-)  So it was off to Prince.  Remember, how I said above that I hate the Shade of Aran fight?  Well, I really hate the Prince fight.  As with last time, I quickly died when I got enfeebled.  I ran and ran and my poor corpse showed my sword hand literally almost touching Gerolan’s foot.  I was this close to safety when I died with my back to Prince.  Turned my view and watched as the team took him down on the first try (and I have to admit, I did feel slightly better when Teysa, the other melee DPS, died a short time after I did).  However, after being rezzed by BBB at the end of the fight, I watched with glee as the Ring of a Thousand Marks dropped and I was the only one who could use it (that didn’t already have it).  Yay, again the rogue got lovin!  3 epics in one night!   Woohoo!

BBB then escorted me to the library to turn Medivh’s journal in since the instance would be resetting tomorrow.  We got down there and ran in only to find out that there was one anomaly with the 3 mana worms (can’t remember the technical term for those guys) that we had bypassed before and they were standing right next to the NPC that I had to turn my quest in to.  First, BBB said it just wasn’t going to happen for me to turn my quest in and then a devious plan sprung to his mind.   So I stealthed over to the NPC and BBB taunted the anomaly the group over to him (preparing to take the fall so I could turn my quest in).  However, the mana worms decided to stay right where they were.  I did manage to turn my quest in just as all three of them ganged up and killed me.

Ran back from the graveyard and then it was off to read the journal at the master’s terrace.  Teysa still had that quest in his log, so we all watched the dialogue between Medivh and the dragon (forget his name too) and got our quests complete together.  BBB and I headed outside to turn my quest in, ran and got the bone from behind the summoning stone and then realized the next part of the chain, after a quick stop in Netherstorm, would be to do a heroic Shattered Halls and heroic Setthek Halls run.  Decided that will probably sit in my quest log for a bit, especially with the patch coming out soon and lots of new stuff to do.

But overall, a wonderfully successful evening.  I got lots of loot (which is always nice for an undergeared person), and a few other teammates got pieces they had either been wanting for awhile or could really use (as newer Kara players like myself).  And even better, I’m starting to get a much better sense of all the different bosses and what abilities work better with some than others.  I’ll definitely be back to Kara again (esp as I still have a helm, gloves, a chestpiece, boots, and a trinket on my wish list of rogue goodies).

Anyone else have a successful raid in the last week that they want to share or make others jealous with the cool loot that dropped for them?

Cassieann

The last week, we had our ups and downs in the guild, but I think we ended on a strong note.

We have some great new people, and I’ll get to that soon.

We are also still having a little bit of adjustment period going on.

Let me ’splain.

(Digression: How many other people grew up with I Love Lucy being one of the only choices on the TV, in black and white, as a kid? I can still remember Ricky Ricardo pronouncing explain as ’splain’, and hearing the laugh track that tells me I’m supposed to think it’s funny. Our generation sucked for TV. When I think of the shows you get to grow up with now, I want to destroy all cable and satellite broadcasting, melt your VCR tapes and DVDs, and force you to watch Gilligan’s Island and I Love Lucy for a month straight to make you understand my generations’ bitterness better. Oh, and another word for nostalgia? CRAP. Damn you. Damn you all. And get off my lawn!)

Okay, so at the start of the game week, we took a look at the sign-ups on the guild website for Karazhan, and Gerolan and I started inviting people. We got our ten, and in we went. We were timely, and we were going to go straight in and clear everything up to and including Curator.

The group was a mix of seasoned regulars and new guild members, with two of the folks entirely new to Karazhan.

Begin soapbox:

A word of advice, folks. If someone says they haven’t been to Karazhan before… don’t assume they are going to either suck, or be undergeared. I’ve said it before, and I reserve the right to say it again… there are many ways of getting gear upgrades, and raiding is not the only one. And having ten or more friends to play with does not mean you are a good player any more than having 4 friends or less makes you a bad player.

That’s a point I think that gets lost, a lot, in talking about the game.

Just because someone is in a largely populated guild that always has enough people online for 10 man, or even 25 or 40 man raids, does not mean that every person in that guild is a good player.

I have seen, oh so many times, someone ask “Is that [insert class here] a good player?” and see the reply be something along the lines of “He was in OOB and raided The Eye, so he’s really good.”

Oh, bullshit. I have seen from personal experience that folks with end game raid experience can suck, and then some. Sure, their gear may be great. But great gear will carry an idiot only so far, and no farther. Even worse, because they were in a guild that raided the Eye or higher, they often have a massive chip on their shoulder and talk down to others in less progressed guilds. Yeah, if you are so awesome, why not go solo the Eye? If you can’t then shut the hell up and acknowledge the part teamwork played in your progression. Asshat.

Anyways, just as there are poor players in high end raiding guilds, likewise, there are plenty of folks I know that never get to do group activities, or if they do, it’s very infrequently. And yet, when I do see them in a group environment, I get blown away by how on top of their game they are.

My friend Melpo is one such player. He has a ton of personal responsibilites, his work and his family life pretty much preclude him from ever coming online earlier than 10:30 at night, even on weekends. And he has a vicious early start time for getting the kids ready for school.

But on those times when there are still lots of folks in the guild on late at night, and I’ve been able to get into a heroic 5 man with him, it’s always the same. He plays a Rogue, and he kicks ass; he manuevers and saps and stunlocks and generally plays havoc with our targets, and he puts out ungodly DPS without ever pulling too much aggro, and his gear is damn good, without being able to go on Kara runs.

He wanted gear upgrades, he knew he wouldn’t be going into Kara anytime in the future, so he went and found one way Rogues can get great stuff solo… he ran Battlegrounds until he could get his Season 1 Arena swords. He knows he won’t be getting rolls on void crystals off Kara D/E, so he does his dailies, makes his Alchemy transmutes, and is saving for his dual mongoose enchants. In fact, he may have them by now.

When we chat, he has smart advice to give Cassie on setting up macros for pickpocketing on the Sap, and positioning for distraction prior to Sapping, and generally has spent a great deal of time thinking about, analyzing and playing his character. And he never gets to raid. It’s a damn crime, is what it is.

Soapbox temporarily off.

Sorry for the mini-rant, but it is pertinent to todays’ discussion.

We had ten people for Karazhan last Tuesday, and two of them had never been in Karazhan before, and a third, as far as I know, had only ever gone on our raids on his shadow priest, not his bear tank. So I would have a new bear tank as my off tank.

Others in the run may remember things differently, but during Tuesday’s run, we kicked everythings’ butt really good, and had no wipes that I can remember. The only times we had some excitement was a few times where I body pulled on the walk to Attumen, and some problems with our bear off-tank acting like who was tanking a mob was a  competition instead of a team effort. You know, the whole “Are you taunting them off me? WTF?” kind of thing. There was one really cool moment, when as we approached the corridor leading to Maiden, someone pulled the 4 Elites near the last AOE group. Usually that would mean wipe, but the team pulled through awesome. Whatever, it went okay, and we blasted through Kara until we reached Curator.

At Curator, we ran into a problem where one set of Arcane Anomoly and Worms were bugged, they were stuck in a wall in Curators’ room. We cleared everything else, but had problems with the last set Evading.

We decided to take on Curator anyway, and about 3/4 of the way through, he bugged, focused on the off tank to the exclusion of everything else, even though it showed me at the top of the Threat list by 200,000 points, and then after the off tank died, came after me… and healed himself to full. We wiped in disgust to reset, and came in and wiped again just getting that damn trash mob dead despite the Evade. But our last fight on Curator went off without a hitch. All in all, a good if undistinguished run.

Begin discussion of the problems the rest of the week.

Our group, the one full of people that signed up, went off as planned. But there were other people in the guild that wanted to get their own Kara run going also. So they worked on it for a while, and eventually got enough people together to get in and get going. And although they skipped a few things, they did get through to Curator and cleared him also.

And for the rest of the week, we were screwed.

First, our bear off tank had an issue the very next day, where he violated our Guild Charter, and passed the bounds of decency by being unbelievably rude and crude to a guildie. Just, way, way over the line. It was not the first time he’d done that kind of thing, but this time was just amazingly bad. So the officers, including myself, decided it was time to boot him. And we acted on it immediately.

This left our group without a second tank. That’s cool, no big deal, right?

Well, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal except that, with a second group forged, almost everyone in the guild that is active was saved to one of the two teams. And each night for the rest of the week, we could only get 7 people on. And every night I got to field the questions of “Are we going to Kara tonight?”

Having two teams just really screwed the week. Instead of knowing what night to come back to finish, and being able to grab someone if one person wasn’t able to make it, everyone had to come back every night in the hopes that we’d be able to go, but the guild just doesn’t have enough active players to keep two full teams, with alternates, going. A fact that most of us knew full well from prior attempts, but whatever.

Anyway, things came to a head Saturday night, when the questions about Kara were surfacing, and one of the guys in the other Kara team was telling people that my team wasn’t gonna be able to go because we didn’t have enough people, but their team was going in to finish, so hop on alts and join them. I offered my help to their team on my Hunter, and then did a quick look at the guild roster, and thought, “Wait a fucking minute… we have enough to get going. What the hell is he talking about?”

I compared notes with Gerolan, and as close as we could figure, we had 7 people ready and able to go into Karazhan… two of those being the guys that were in for the first time. Well, maybe we couldn’t do any bosses, but could we get to the Chess event? And make damn sure that the guy we booted couldn’t ninja the event? Let’s give it a try.

We started with 7 people, on the trash after Curator. We had;

• Windshadow (me) - Tanking Feral Druid
• Gerolan - Healing Paladin
• Kellas - Healing Priest
• Caladorn - Healing Paladin
• Solarae - Mage
• Malkil - Mage (and first time in Kara)
• Jimboton - Survival hunter (and first time in Kara)

We went in, and I’ll be perfectly honest with you. It was one of the smoothest Kara runs on trash I’ve ever seen. We went in, we took it nice and easy, one pull at a time, not slow and not rushed. We cleared one pull at a time with no issues or even confusion that I saw all the way to the first big chamber with all the Magical Horrors and Mana Warps. 

Now, we were just looking over the chamber, deciding how best to control the pulls, since you get one Magical Horror and two Mana Warps per pull, and three Mana Warps on the middle pull, when Occulus logged into game.

I bullied him unmercifully to get on his Warlock and come help us. After that, Kara was a bullies’ lunch, and we were hungry. And just like a pack of outcasts looking at a bully, we ganged up on it, beat the hell out if it, and stole it’s lunch.

What, didn’t you guys do that in High School? 

Anyway, with our team bolstered by Doc Occ, we were just too overpowered for the trash. Eight man team in Karazhan? Pffft. Too easy. lol.

We cleared the trash, we moved on in, and not only did we have no wipes on the way to the Chess event, but we only had one death… Occulus. Poor guy.

It was just smooth, baby. Mark, pull, tank, trap/shackle/banish, heals, next. Like clockwork. Extremely good individual playing on everyone’s part.

We got to Chess, we explained the battle, and boom! We won. Kinda hard to build that one up.

I did have fun playing the Caster in Chess for the first time. AOE and direct blasts in Chess are fun!

After we finished Chess, we looked around, and decided to at least give Shade of Aran a shot. If we could take him down, we wouldn’t have to clear the trash on Monday when we came in to finish it. Were we feeling cocky? Yeah, a bit. Especially since we were running low on DPS.

We managed to get a ninth person into the team, a Mage named Darrez, so now we really were close to having a full group.

Sadly, we did not succeed in taking down Shade. And we only got one shot at it before Occulus had to go back to studying for an exam and writing an essay paper.

On that one shot, with new people and short one, and only me for melee DPS, we got Shade down to 12% health.

It was pretty obvious we weren’t going to get ‘er done on the first whack, though. We never did get his health under his mana, his health stayed 10% - 12% above his mana the whole fight. Well, with three powerful healers, and short one person, it was pretty clear where the team was lacking, and even without DPS, I think we came amazingly close. If we’d had Rynadur, our resident Rogue who was gone all weekend, it would’ve been doable even with our original eight and him, I think.

I am very proud of everyone that went on that run. We could have sat back, and said “We don’t have ten, so we can’t go”.

Instead, we said “We have seven people here, we can see how far we get. Let’s go for it.”

And the moral of the story, for me, is don’t be scared to take people into a freaking raid just because it’s their ‘first time there’. Everyone has a first time everywhere, and that has no bearing on their skill at playing their character.

It just means that raid leaders need to step up and do a solid job of explaining what to expect on the next pull.

Grats guys, you all rock!

I thought I’d seen it all.

At least, I thought I’d seen every darn thing people could do to throw me a curve ball in this game.

Last night I was forcibly reminded that I am a casual player, because I’m sure every other tank has had this happen to them before, but I was totally without a clue when it happened.

“When WHAT happened?” I hear you ask?

Well, let me tell you a little story… [grin]

So there I was, in Karazhan again. This time, it was gonna be different. Group 1’s main tank Joppers was going to spend the week straightening Group 2 out, and he had plans for us. Big plans.

“We’re going straight in to Attumen, then we’re going to take down Moroes and after that we’ll take down Maiden.”

Pretty bold plan for one night, considering he’d never run with Group 2 before. A Group that still has yet to down either Moroes OR Maiden due to what I like to call ‘10% issues’*.

I was pretty excited though. Seeing as how none of us had any prior experience in Kara, having someone along to drive us forward that knew how the flow should go could make a massive difference.

So in we go, and from the first it is clear that the tank is going to have none of this ‘coddling the casters’ crap. He does a quick run down of what he expects, Blue Square for ice trap, star for shackle, x for off tank (me), Moon for fear, burn such and such down first, etc. Then he says “Everyone when you need mana get it on the run and stay on your toes we have a lot to get done and I’m not sitting around”.

BOOM! With that the first pull begins and it’s just pull pull pull after that.

Attumen was downed in about 21 minutes from entering the instance, and I had a blast the whole way. As a main tank, I usually pretty much stayed bear and did my thing.

But here I had a clear agenda. The main tank was marking, and if there wasn’t a red X, then there was no off-tanking. That meant that when the tank started a pull, I could be in cat form and gear for DPS on the tanks’ targets, switching to bear only to grab broken traps and such, or shift into caster for spot heals and innervates, etc. I got to actually feel like a versatile class helping out all over the place. Lots and lots of fun.

Like I was saying, we downed Attumen in record time. We were gratified to hear that we pretty evenly matched Group 1 for time to progress to this point. Then we got the next surprise, as instead of heading for the ballroom, the main tank said we’d be taking the shortcut through the pantry to Moroes. Shortcut? Okay, cool.

Well, I don’t know that it was shorter, but it was fun to do something a bit different.

We blasted through at top speed, and it was great seeing the Group come together. The main tank was pushing as fast as he thought right, and the group rose to the challenge. He clearly expected everyone to be on the ball and do their own jobs without coddling. There was no babying, none of the “Is everyone sure you’re ready?” stuff that I tend to do. He treated everyone with respect, with the expectation that they were mature and skilled enough to do their jobs without being told, and most of them responded by damn well doing them. I was amazed and gratified. If there was a pull he thought might be difficult, he’d stop for a second to caution us that so and so would hit hard, and to be on top of things, and he’d pop a Ready Check and then boom! off to another pull.

Things were going so well, that before we knew it we were at the first pull from the chamber where Moroes and his dinner guests reside. That doorway is guarded by two stewards, and the main tank warned us that they hit hard, and he marked a red x and skull, then pulled. I dutifully shifted to bear with bear gear, grabbed my x and dragged his ass off to the side so everyone could see the skull clearly.

Now it was at this point that something went wrong. I don’t know what, but people started panicking as if there were a horde of adds or something among the casters. As far as I could see, as I spun my views around, there were still just the two stewards. Then the main tank went down and all holy hell broke loose.

I still don’t understand what happened to cause the complete panic that I heard on Teamspeak. It’s not as if we were strangers to wipes or uncontrolled chaos. Our previous runs should have taught us to be adaptive and prepared for the worst.

At any rate, when I saw the main tank go down, the skull he was tanking broke for the casters in a straight line. I Feral Charged, picked him up and spun him around on me. Seconds later he died and I still had my original X on me.

Absolutely no worries, right?

YES, there were a couple players dead. But we had three paladins, me and a resto druid, and a priest. We had so much rezzing power that we ALMOST could wipe scores of times and jump right back up.

And thats when IT happened. IT.

Let’s recap… a couple players down, including the main tank, and one steward well and truly focused on me.

Well, what happened next is partly my fault. I still do not know by heart the moves and special abilities of every mob that I will be facing in Karazhan. If I did, I would have reacted a lot faster to find the reason for what happened to me, and I could have fixed it before it was too late.

This is what happened. As I began lacerating the steward to keep aggro firmly rooted on me, my buttons stopped responding, and my movement keys and mousemove stopped responding, EXACTLY as happens when stunned.

And here is where I made my critical error. I assumed that the steward could stun, and had stunned me, and that it would break in 3 seconds. And instead of looking away from the action to check the timer that should have been counting down stun duration next to the minimap, I kept my eyes on the screen, spamming my growl hotkey in anticipation of the stun wearing off so I could stay right on top of things.

And stun didn’t wear off. And still didn’t wear off. And as I waited and waited it STILL didn’t wear off. And I continued to wait in growing panic as the mob finally took off from my still, unresponsive form, and went to go tear the group a new one. And I could only watch in horror as it took down every single other player, and then, instead of coming back after me, it left the room to go back where it came from!

I just couldn’t believe it! I still stood there stunned and unable to move… except, now that I wasn’t surrounded by spell effects of casters and swipes and special effects and heals, I could see there was some sort of glolden glow around me… almost like…

And someone announces in guild chat that they DI’d me so I could rez the group after the wipe.

Someone… cast Divine Intervention on me… without saying a word in Teamspeak… so I could rez the party after the wipe… when we had a soulstone up…. and when we HAD NO WIPE INCOMING!!!! I was on top of that one lone mob so hard it wasn’t even funny. It took FOREVER for it to break off of me and go after the rest of the party.

At this point I gently put my headphones down, and swore bitterly at the screen for two solid minutes.

After getting the swearing out of my system for the moment, I calmly went looking through the 20+ buff icons in the upper right portion of my screen… and sure enough, there was the Divine Intervention icon, with a timer showing about two minutes left.

I gently right-clicked it to shut it off, just as I could have if I’d been smart enough to know that it wasn’t the mob that stunned me… it was one of my own teammates.

Honest to god, that is the very first time ever that anyone has cast Divine Intervention on me, as the main tank, in the middle of a fight, no matter how bad things looked. Ever.

I remained calm as I typed into my friends’ chat channel, to my buddy Jay, who was on the run with me…

“Someone DI’d me in the middle of the fight when we were in no danger. That is SO going in my blog.”

He lol’d

* 10% is a phrase from my Marine Corps days.. back then we took it for granted that we Marines were the ‘best of the best’**… but that even among our ranks, there was that “10%” of worthless asshats that would never do anything right if they could help it. From boot camp on, anytime we’d talk about a situation where one person screwed it up for the rest of us, that person was a ‘ten percenter’, or the situation would just be referred to as, “Well, there is always that 10%.”

** Of course, we also took it on faith that the Navy had 40%.

Just kidding, folks. Just kidding.