Lo-Quality WoW

Ever since Wrath came out, our guild has pondered the questions “how many do we need for Kara now?” It has always been rare to have anything like 10 of us on at any given time so our usual Kara runs had been 4 or 5 of us and the rest as pick-ups. But it would be interesting to see how few we needed now that we’re 10 levels higher. Some of my guild was thinking two, a tank and a high-end dps. I felt at least three because no matter how much damage that dps is doing, it wouldn’t be enough to kill something before the tank died. So my minimum was three, the regular configuration of tank, healer, dps. (We were both right in a way as you’ll see.) I also was thinking that Morose and Netherspite would be difficult even then with so few.

Now I ended up logging on late when the guild went in with the three man configuration I proposed, protection paladin, retribution paladin and restoration druid. And they took on Huntsman and Morose with no problem. I joined them with my survival hunter in time for Maiden. Now to make this more interesting, neither paladin had ever done a full run and we weren’t using vent. And I was also a bit…drunk. But we always do things the hard way.

Maiden was actually rather easy. Because our healing could handle it, I actually setup inside her aoe range. That meant I was stunned briefly when her repentance went off, at least until the aoe pinged me. So she went down quickly. For Opera, we lucked out and got Romeo and Juliet. Since both paladins were familiar with Skarvald and Dalronn from Utgarde Keep, they had a general idea. I just had to make sure my damage was never too heavy on one particular target while I kept flipping between each.

Nightbane was more funny than anything else and the main point, the transition from air to ground, I was well familiar with. We did warn about the charred earth though. So we do the first transition no problem. On the second transition, we group on the tank and I notice our healer wasn’t grouping. In fact, the tree was standing in the middle of the charred earth. And naturally, the healer died.

Fortunately, the ret paladin was able to switch into backup heal mode and of course the tank paladin also could do healing and bubbling and all the other fun stuff I can never do with my warrior when tanking. It also helps that our paladin pair is one of our married couples so they’re used to two-manning things and that has them coordinating their healing, shielding and what-not, down pat. Nightbane goes down and we find out our healer had to leave his computer since his son had managed to lock his mother-in-law out of the house. And of course, he thought he was in a safe spot but Nightbane naturally lit the ground under him on fire as soon as he stepped away from the computer.

Curator was fast as well. I was far enough away that between myself, my cat, and the ret paladin, the astral flares were dying well before they reached me. We skipped Illhoof but did Shade where I somehow managed to get my cat stuck outside the door for the fight. I had a brief heart-attack moment when the ret paladin triggered the flame wreath but we just healed through it. We also took out the elementals but we probably could have healed through that as well.

Netherspite was also skipped since I couldn’t quite figure out a good way to deal with the beams through the fight. We did chess where we lost the first time since the two paladins took a little bit to figure out the controls and I myself didn’t realize I could hop out of the King and into something else to fight once the game started. Even then, chess took quite awhile with only four of us hopping in and out of pieces.

Now came Prince where our lack of vent almost spelled disaster. I had just finished warning about the enfeeble and was about to mention his shadow nova when the healer said “go” and the tank went. And the tank was tanking Prince by the door which meant I had to run out in the open, which felt a little odd but effective. But because of the closeness, the ret paladin and healer went down after the first shadow nova. So that left myself, my cat and the tank. No pressure at all. Or maybe it was all the beer at that point.

Fortunately, our paladin tank is good with his bubble and self-healing. I also turned my cat’s growl on to temporarily grab aggro here and there. I even grabbed aggro myself for a few brief seconds, but I managed to survive the first whack and feign death. This also gave the tank enough time to heal back up. Even then, I was near the very bottom of my mana pool, with my cat dead, when the tank went down. Fortunately, it was right around my kill shot cooldown recycled and a kill shot, explosive shot was just enough to finish Prince.

Unfortunately, when the other two went down, the tank thought it’d be a wipe and told his wife to release. Oops. So our tank and healer got the nice Karazhan achievement while our ret paladin didn’t. Guess we’ll have to go back in next weekend.

The rest of the weekend was mainly spent amusing myself with dailies. Enough so that I finally got the Honorary Frenzyheart achievement. It’s still going to take awhile to become Exalted to get the Mercenary of Sholazar achievement. But that’s alright, I still need to get my monkey to 80.

We also did a Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle run. For that run, our shadow priest was with us. Making me the only clown in the group who couldn’t really act as a backup healer. Okay, I could wrap a bandage on someone but by the time I ran forward to do it, more than likely they’d be dead.

That run went pretty well. We had one wipe early on, although I can’t really remember the details as to how or why. We also messed up on the gauntlet when we accidentally reset Skadi in the middle of it. But we were quick on our fight rotation for Ymiron that I believe we were forcing him to the point of doing Scream of the Dead before he could kick off any Banes, and we netted the King’s Bane achievement.

So that’s it, I still need to figure out how to work the beams in Netherspite, although I’m almost positive we can clear Illhoof with little trouble. Guess we’ll find out soon.