Weekend Fun

Talk about progression! As of last Wednesday, I hadn't been in Kara in something like 6 months, and that was the most raiding I'd done. Now that's all changed.

As I wrote earlier, I was asked to participate Thursday night in a Kara run. It went well and we got through to Illhoof. I intended to join up with them again Friday night, but instead had a nice long dinner with friends, so I missed the last part of the run.

Still, it was fun to be back in Kara.


Saturday night, I was goofing around when I got another request from my pally tank friend. This time they wanted to pull together a PUG for Gruul's. I'd never done a 25-man raid before, so I thought it would be a great experience. Firegrin and I took part.

It didn't start all that well. We took two tries at High King Maulgar, and wiped both times. At this point things looked bleak and we lost about 7 people from the raid. Firegrin and I hung in while the leaders tried to recruit more — including recruiting in trade chat. We weren't very hopeful, and I expected they would call the raid.

After half an hour of recruiting, they were able to reform the group, and we tried again. Trash had respawned so we had to redo the whole instance (not that this is a major hassle). Whether it was because of better gear or better players or just better efforts, we were able to get High King on the first shot. We then moved forward and also one-shotted Gruul. Quite impressive for us and a lot of fun too.


It was a ton of fun and we got very lucky too. Firegrin won his T4 pants from Gruul, and I won both my T4 shoulders ([Shoulderguards of Malorne]) and the [Cowl of Nature's Breath]. So quite a success for all!

Then on Sunday, four of us (me, Firegrin, Cargarios, and Wyrmm) joined another guild for a run at Mount Hyjal. So, wow... in one weekend I've gone from Kara to Hyjal! More than anything this points to how much the raids have been nerfed; they are a lot more accessible now. This guild had never taken on Hyjal before, so it was new to them. The raid leader (who used to lead our Kara runs, months ago) knew the fights and had a good sense of what to do and how to instruct us.

The good news is that after one unsuccessful attempt we were able to kill Rage Winterchill. Everyone seemed pretty laid back about it, but that's actually quite impressive for a first attempt. We took two cracks at Anetheron and couldn't really make a dent in him. I believe we had positioning issues and needed to individually learn the issues and tactics involved. It's one thing to know that Carrion Swarm is coming; it's another to recognize what it looks like and know how far you have to run. We were learning rapidly, but with the night growing late we called it a successful night and packed up.


So how did my healing go? I'll post a look at the Recount reports tomorrow, with the full details. In general though it's about what you expect. When I looked Alamein up on Be Imba (before the Armory went kaplooie with 3.0.2), she'd be rated to perform well up through Gruul's or Magtheridon. And that's exactly what happened. I was near the top for healing on Gruul's, with no serious problems. On the other hand, I was well behind in healing for Hyjal, coming in about 6th place overall on the meters. I'm pretty sure I was useful — I know I did about a hundred Remove Curses, and I still did around 2 million points of healing using mostly Lifebloom and Regrowth.

Spells worked pretty well for the most part. Wild Growth is not giving me a huge boost, but it's somewhat useful; I expect it'll be even better for 5-man runs. The main problem is that it's unpredictable, making it pointless to spam and not very helpful for widespread raid damage. Replenish is still not helping at all; I'm curious to see if that will get buffed, because I'm certain now I won't bother with it.

I'll post more detailed thoughts tomorrow. But for today, I'm going to enjoy memories of my first 25-man runs. Good stuff!