Strike One, Strike Two

I'm not sure what the deal is, but had two failed runs at Shadow Labryinth this weekend. Helping out some guildies to get a kara key frag. Both groups had me and the guild leader/tank in common. I don't know what the deal was, but just couldn't get'r done.

First group was perhaps doomed from the get-go. Two prot warriors, both wanting to tank. The first is our guild leader and party leader, and normally serves as our main tank. The other was another guildie who just respec'd to prot that day. The run was supposed to serve as a bit of tanking training in addition to getting 3 of the guys their key frag.

We did somewhat ok on the trash, pretty much having each tank take one mob, me trap another, and when possible, have our rogue sap a fourth. This worked reasonably, until we get to some 5-pulls. Nobody would tank the fifth and the healer would get spanked. He died on almost every other pull. It was embarassing, especially because he was a priest from a different guild. Wish we had protected him better. I tried off-tanking a mob with my pet, but that became a bit too much for me to handle, between trapping, pet off-tanking, and providing basically all of our DPS since we only had 2 DPS'ers and the rogue was outputting less than 200 DPS according to my meter.

Group morale stayed high which was really nice. Even the priest had no problems dying over and over. He said he actually likes the 10 seconds of free heals he gets during death, so its actually fun for him. Ok, probably not fun for me, but to each his own. We skipped Ambassador Hellmaw (sp? first boss), and wiped 4 times on Blackheart the Inciter before calling it quits. Just not enough DPS. Fun group of people so not too bad an overall experience.

Then the real fun.

Second shot through slabs. This time all 5 from the guild. Better class distribution with a prot warrior, holy priest, me (BM hunter), another hunter (random spec, mostly MM), and a mage. This one had some loaded dice in that (A) the warrior said he wanted to experiment with dual sword tanking and put his shield away (B) the priest was formerly shadow and had just re-spec'd immediately before the run and (C) the group was in total chaos.

The main tank was again our guild lead. He normally serves as party lead too, but we wanted the priest to give it a shot. So you start off with the two of them having a bit more discussion about pulls than we'd normally have. Ok, I'm a big fan of communication, so that's good. Then you've got the other hunter chiming in loudly and aggressively on voice chat about what's wrong with their plans and any time it went sour, he'd be all "i told you..." It really ended up being a run from hell that ended up with a variety of whole and partial wipes leading up to the first boss, and then 3 wipes on that guy before the group disbanded in an angry huff.

On a lighter note, I did help another guildie with runs through scenic Old Hillsbrad and Black Morass. The run through OH was awesome, we had only a single death the run. Nice group of people, good knowledge of their role in the team, fun time. I was lead and marking. I don't really do that very often, so it felt like a lot of pressure at first, but ended up being no problem. Only a little issue during the Thrall escort when I was trying to focus the team on the Mages that really cause problem, but that whole sequence is supposed to be chaotic, and the team did well.

Black Morass, not quite as successful. Same group, just not enough DPS. I reset my damage meter for the fight at the end of hillsbrad. We did fine and one-shot it, but the Mage did less than 150 DPS, the other hunter did around 300, and I had 583. In Black Morass, we made it to portal 12 before the lack of DPS was just too much to overcome so we disbanded. Everybody was cool about it though, which is always nice to see.

Fun too, because this was the first time I've been running BigWigs addon AND remembered to enable it for a boss event. Nice to see the portal counter and how much of Medivh's shield is remaining.