Returning to Shadow Labs
As I have mentioned before, I have had a rocky time in SL. Back when I was tank spec before hitting 70, we never made it past Vorpil. When I was healadin, we often had rocky runs, wiping once or twice clearing before Blackheart and then again dying to Vorpil at least once. Murmur I had actually only seen twice in about 6 months or so, because the rest takes too long and everyone wants their sleep.
I was mining and herbing in Terokkar last night, and suddenly comes the call “need tank for shadow labs”. I pick my next flower, watch the time, ponder a few seconds, and then I remember that despite having S3 chest for my healing gear, there’s still plenty of drops in that place which could complement either my healbot or tankbot kit.
A couple of minutes later and off we go, rogue, hunter, boomkin and, a rare occurence these days, a proper holy priest to keep me alive.
We enter, they give me marks, and after the first pull when I tell them I’m a bit rusty and that they should pipe up if I mark skippable stuff, they want a full clear (rare enough worth mentioning) for rep. This better be good or the group will fall apart soon, was the thought crossing my blonde toon’s airhead.
We had a total blast.
At the end of the opening hallway, while we were engaging the summoner group on the last side, a runner aggroed the left side. One consecration and we just cleanly killed 12-14 mobs on that single pull.
The first boss was a pushover as expected. Blackheart’s room? I screwed up the far away benchwarmer group on the right side (7 mobs) because like a newbie I was getting in range of avenger’s shield to the skull… until I noticed I still had the one I had blue-squared for a trap targetted (level 70, still a noob. I should have called this blog The Eternal Noob or something), which made the whole thing a body pull.
Consecrate, discipline from the group, not even the hunter’s pet died in the process.
The rest was all of the same. Blackheart worried me when we actually killed him a split second before a 4th incite chaos, which could have wiped us, but sometimes you need a tad of luck on your side too 
The bastard kept having me use all aggro regaining abilities at the wrong times, so after the second incite I was really wishing for an intercept, but this particular fight has always been among the more challenging 5-men for tankadins. Vorpil died just before the second teleport. I spent some extra time making perfectly sure we were all on the same book for kiting the elderly orcish gentleman bastard to his untimely demise, since it was the first time I actually did it on Doomhammer server, and miscommunication about this fight has caused more wipes than anything else on my experience.
The first pull before Murmur was the only serious screw-up, as I had totally forgotten what pain the summoners are and took about a minute or two before getting with the program, so a 4-mob pull ended up as a 10-mob one. It cost us our boomkin, the only death in the run. Murmur finally saw us, put on a little show then just folded and handed over his loot.
From Blackheart to the Key Fragment guardian, according to my mana oil timer, we took 48 minutes, definitely a record for me. Everyone got loot they wanted, except that the spelldamage plate which dropped was a downgrade for all my equipment sets so it went the way of sharding. Pats on the back happened, everyone congratulated each other on a job well done, I again plugged the CC= Constant Consecration joke when the rogue said he was a slacker on his sapping (0 on the run, I never marked even one sap). I managed to again give good reputation to tankadins, and given I still consider myself rusty from 6 months of healing, it was definitely good to hear.
I need to take my own advice and make a macro to mark my target with the skull whenever we switch, doing it manually was a pain in the arse (they were uneasy about the “just kill the skull” thing at the first pull because I didn’t mark anything else, but definitely loved the system after that).
My only regret is that with Constant Consecration we almost missed that the hunter in the group was actually damn good at chain trapping ( I think I must have marked 4 traps in the whole run). But then, you can’t have it all…
I love when five random people can group up and just meld really well together like that. It is rare…but makes for a great instance, even if there is one or two deaths. Everyone keeps pushing forward and playing to the best of their ability. Really nice to read about you experiencing such a thing. I havent…in a long time. But long ago – I’m sure there were groups like that. Then again, I havent pug’d in a while also.
We did a guildie group for SL last night. We did a minimal run as we’re trying to get the Sonic Spear for one of the hunters. I think we’re finally geared to the point where a good SL run is expected. Our only wipe was on Murmur’s room where the mage’s sheep of one group pulled the next group when the sheep popped.
[...] 7 months as a healbot. Well, going in there with your random PUG, I didn’t expect too much but that flawlessly executed run still stands out as one of the great moments I’ve had in the [...]