Make Lemonade (and Other Musings)

This weekend, our raid encountered something that I would like to dub as a "2-faced" instance.

The OMGROFL KARA face

a.k.a. Day 1. Undergeared, underprepared, unsynergized. A few people were having their first runs through the instance with the guild, and many of them needed substantial upgrades. So I came in expecting a few wipes. Oh, I also aimed to not die. Those two didn't really coincide, but in the end, both expectations were fulfilled. On two or three wipes, I managed to slap on Invisibility at the right time. On AoE pulls, I managed to deal considerable damage without dying at all. I only died once the entire night. ONCE. On a wipe.

On Moroes, I kited the Retribution Paladin. I forget his name, but I did it with my spec, and survived, even after getting manaburned TWICE by the Shadow Priest. I had to Ice Block in the process, but I was lucky to not get hit by Garrote. Either way, I had Cold Snap just in case.

On Maiden, I had Quagmirran's Eye Proc DURING Heroism. I popped Icy Veins, and somehow I was doing 1.3s Frostbolts. Cold Snapped back Icy Veins, and I was doing 1.7s Frostbolts for about a whole minute. Hells yeah.

I almost died in Opera. Well, pre-Opera. You see, my raid has an Opera tradition, where we run the event while standing in the room before Opera, on the farthest wall. We have one person start the event, and have the rest of the raid dance naked in place as the encounter starts. Think of it as a Russian Roulette of sorts, since someone usually ends up dying to Dorothy's Frostbolts, Roar, or Julianne.

I died on an AoE pull leading up to Curator, but everyone else ended up wiping, so that doesn't really count. It doesn't help when the tank pulls when all the mages are still drinking. >.<

The WTF WORST KARA EVER face

Day 2 Kara was blah. Maybe it was the high expectations. Maybe it was because half the raid was cloth. Maybe it was 3 mages in Shade. I don't know. There were too many wipes, and we didn't get anything done.

I believe that some sort of twilight zone effect was looming over us. While recently we have been struggling with Illhoof due to a lack of Warlocks, we've been doing other bosses fine, even with an undergeared party. But this week was completely opposite; having pugged a warlock, we simply destroyed Illhoof after our "get used to playing with a warlock again" wipe.

But afterwards it got ugly. Fast. Numerous wipes on Shade meant that we ended up clearing trash respawns twice, even wiping on a few of the repeated pulls. We were simply too careless overall. I'm not going to blame any specific roles, but I'm just going to say that people need help each other out. If DPS learns to take less damage, then Healers will be able to keep up with heals, and will have an easier time doing their job properly as well.

Regardless, a few good things to note. We ended up recruiting the pugged warlock, and our Holy Pally got both healing drops off of Illhoof. This is a wonderful thing, because we desperately needed a Warlock for Kara, and our Pally has been aching for gear upgrades, and was often in that position where gear dropped whenever he wasn't in the raid, and vice versa.

All in all, Kara gave us nothing but lemons, but we came out of it with a nice glass of lemonade.

Other Random Thoughts

- Got onto the 3.0.x PTR for the first time ever. I am now officially excited for WotLK. I didn't think that something as simple as a talent tree revamp could get me so pumped up, despite not having training dummies available, or any other world server except for Eastern Kingdoms available.

- I have a resto druid. Yep. That means I have a non-gnome. If gnomes could become healers, I would roll one as my alt, but as it stands, I have no choice but to branch out into other races. She hit 50 on the weekend, and picked up Tree of Life. It's so amazing. I can see her listening to Marley while smoking her own leaves. I guess that would make her...

...a restofarian.

Yeah, I cringed too. It's ok. Something to wake you up on this lovely Monday.