Apologies, Instances, and Deaths

So much for my insistence that I would actually keep up with this blog.

But I have an excuse. Really. It's been busy for me, both in game and out.

Monday. Tanked Heroic Ramparts for Justin, the mage from the previous post. He was on his shadow priest, I was (clearly), on my druid. I was quite rusty on the tanking aspect of my spec -- having oscillated between not playing as a druid, not playing period, and playing as a DPS class for my raid. This, I blame, as the cause of a few of our wipes. That, and Justin was unaccustomed to not having salvation, pulled aggro on the stuff I was focus tanking, and died a bit. Oops.

That was followed with Heroic Arcatraz (for the daily) with the same group (which consisted of me, a mage, the shadow priest, a priest, and another feral druid). The other druid and I had decided to switch off tanking -- with me tanking Ramparts, she tanking Arcatraz. We died... three times up to the first boss (yeeey. And she was whining about her repair bill after the first instance). Three failed tries on the boss, the other druid leaves.

Gee, awesome. LFG gave us a druid that was "SSC geared". Not really. Two pieces. Didn't actually count. But whatever. She was feral and could tank. Yeeeey for me not doing anymore tanking that day! Few more deaths, otherwise it went well. First time going and completing Herioc Arcatraz, and I'm not scarred for life. Go me.

Tuesday: Heroic Mana-Tombs. Pain in the rear instance. Hate it with a passion. I was on my mage for it. The group comprised of a feral druid (tank), a tree, a warlock, me (mage), and a hunter. The first tank -- a bear, that... well, you'll see -- only lasted the hallway and one pull in. The healer is finding that she is eating through through her mana to keep him up on trash pulls.

Uh-oh. Not good.

So, me, having a feral druid and being worried about the group, I stood up and questioned him. "How much armor do you have?"
"14K"
[in whispers with the tree, with whom she had been conversing with before] "We're screwed."
[aloud] "Please tell me you have 415 defense (or at least a mixture of defense and resilience)..."
"407"
"..."
[whispers] "He's not even uncrittable!"
[him] "wut?'
"Er. Our healer is blowing through all of her mana to keep you healed on trash. This isn't going to work."
"ive tanked this before without any problems but if you think i cant, ill leave" [leaves]

Fine. My guild leader, Sol, a warrior, had signed on a few minutes ago. I whisper him and ask him if he wanted to come. "Not really but sure" was the answer, and off we went. The healer mentions to me that he is a lot easier to heal (he MT's our Karas, or, at least, used to before he promoted his second banana to MT so he could bring his mage, so I knew he could do the job).

First boss. Three wipes. After the first one, the tree mentions that she's going to go grab the priest, who is in full arena healy gear. She does, two more shots. Nope.

"Okay! So I'm going to go grab Losse to help heal!" I do that. We get him down. (He didn't drop anything useful -sigh-). We both switch back to our respective characters. Every few pulls, there's a wipe.

Hm. We stop and look at this. Oh, lookie! The hunter isn't retrapping all too well and the one he trapped went to smush the tree, which, in turn, made the tank die, then usually me. Well, golly. We give it a light mention and move on. On the second boss, the hunter pulls aggro from our warrior (I have no idea how... except that he doesn't have a threat meter, but neither the affliction warlock nor myself ever pull aggro, and I was kicking his arse on the DPS meters as well.) Instead of feign deathing, he allows the boss to go to him and kill him.

Wonderful.

Other than that, we got him down smoothly.

By that time, there was a lot of restlessness by the three of us (Sol, the tree, and myself) that are on Vent (the other two bothered, then hopped off of it) about the hunter. Sol mentioned that the hunter KEPT PULLING AGGRO. The tree mentioned that the hunter DIDN'T RETRAP. And I, being myself, mentioned that he really needed to find his feign death button.

Few more pulls on. He pulls a blueberry when the warlock and I were getting mana, the healer was AFK for a moment, and Sol wasn't ready. We made an valiant effort, but died... all except the hunter.

Who had magically found his feign death button.

The healer makes a comment to Sol in the party chat, and Sol tells her that it was the hunter that pulled (mind, without a misdirect either). Was the last straw. Justin had logged on and we were talking, and I was moaning about this idiot hunter, and he volunteers to bring his shadow priest. Lovely! Told the hunter that he wasn't doing his job (retrapping, not pulling aggro, letting his healer die) and told him that we had a replacement.

"i cant retrap"
[on Vent] "He can't retrap? He's spec'ced traps, so he says and so says the talent tree!"
"can we kill one more ----" [---- is the type of mob that I don't recall]
"No. We have a replacement."
He leaves.

We bring in Justin. We had a few rough spots on learning how do deal with group pulls of four mobs with only one CC -- MC doesn't work on these guys, as we found out with another repair bill -- but made it to the last boss.

Try one. Fail. Sol died.
Try two. Tree became the priest again. I went to get Losse. Fail. Sol died again.
At that point, Sol needed to go make dinner. So he left.
We got a really good mage from our guild (he has fantastic gear and kicks everyone in the DPS meters) and I was to tank.
Try three. Fail. Adds still didn't go down fast enough, and I died.
Try four. Justin went to get his holy priest (yes. He has both a shadow and a holy priest). He was to heal everyone else and the what-once-was-a-tree was to heal just me. Fail. I still died.
Try five. Cross healing all around. Success! Finally. Stupid boss. Hate him.

Oh. And we got absolutely nothing useful as a reward. A shield dropped. Shield. None of us could use it. Joy.

And thus ends that tale. I made a friend (the tree) on the way, who happens to live up in Colorado Springs, not too far away at all, and acquired a massive repair bill. Yeeeey!

That night, I had Kara with my guild, with whom I haven't gone to Kara with in a few weeks. I brought my mage, as I've been on the druid all day. One-shot everything up to Aran (including Attumen). Nothing useful dropped, but we made good time. (It felt so nice not to be 10% behind on DPS as a number two, which is what occurs in my usual raid. I oscillated between one and two the whole raid this time, with the other only a few fractions of a percentage behind).

It was then that I had to go, much to my raid's disappointment. (I did tell them beforehand that it might happen, so Vese was prepared for my announcement).

Apparently they got a "mage that was crappy and had horrible gear" to replace me, and had a few wipes on the remaining bosses, but got them down anyway. OH. And. They failed Chess. I don't know how they did it, but they did. First time I had ever heard of anyone failing at the Chess event. They're special... But they did get it the second time, so congratulations.

Wednesday. Got on, did dailies, tried the quest in Blade's Edge with the Crystalforge Darkrune, failed as is my wont (I still don't have the hang of it), and hopped on the hunter to try to level her a bit more. Saw an advertisement to Underbog.

I could use that! And it would give me xp. I'll come! Pick me!

The group comprised of two seventies (a ret paladin that was our tank and a hunter), a holy paladin, myself, and a warlock. Piece of cake. Got through just fine... except for one part, where, for some reason, auto-shot stopped working. (Which, for Cir (and any other hunter) is an absolute catastrophe.) I reloaded my UI. Nothing. Restarted. Fixed. Gave me such a fright though...

Afterwards, I had to go. Chinese New Year party to attend and all. (Lots of food... and I ate too much. Ah well. Real Chinese is amazing.)

That reminds me. Anyone have any suggestions on how to work "Kill Command" into one's bars? I don't like to click that much, and it just seems to not fit anywhere else...