Desolation

While the rot group ran Kara2 last night (everything after Curator) I was watching my beloved New Orleans Saints get...

HURT

by the Colts. The camera kept switching to Archie Manning in the stands, his noble head held in his hands.

CRAP. 41-10.

Ah well. Life sucks, get over it, wtfomgbbqpwnd. Run back and rez for the next week.

The rot group, in the absence of the most magnificent Mabd, wiped "at least 10" times against the shade. ("Melvin, what do you mean, at least 10.. aren't you keeping track?" sez I... "No." replies Melvin.) No bosses down, no l33t treasure gained. Mabd will run with them this weekend, and see what we can do. I don't know who was in the crew last night. (Besides Melvin's shammy... sigh)

So... watching the squeekie priest answer mail reminded me of a vicious anti-cat attack suffered in the first ever Mabd Kara run.

We're on Maiden... and I ask for a briefing on the fight. Ex laser turkey tells me... "stay spread out... you'll get stunned every so often... you might wanna heal yourself, the healers will be taxed... oh and I'm NOT HEALING THE CAT. So you might wanna just keep it next to you, cuz otherwise it'll die."

I think we've addressed this before.

They come to kill the kitty. And we all know... he ain't gonna die.

Mend pet up... and enough PoM frisbees flying around for a loyal (or not so loyal fish slurping furry bottomless pit) companion... cat was just fine.

Combat log tells the story...

Cat resists
Cat resists

But still... rampant pet hatin going on in the guild. I blame the shortage of decent hunters. And, of course, unacceptable levels of bigotry against feline-azerothians.

So.. one boss wipe on the first ever Mabd Kara run. And all the fault of Melvin's shammy.

This is like, a quarter of the shaman post I been meaning to write.
Melvin plays a mage. Melvin raids with his shaman. His shammy is elemental, and is played just like a mage. As a result...

He will end up switching from dps to healing. Or rather... not even bother dpsing... just healing. Cuz with all that +damage gear, his heals are "AWESOME!"

Some backstory on human nature. We are little ducklings. We IMPRINT. The impressions we gain when we first play stay with us. Melvin is so overwhelmed with a class that can nuke like a mage, and heal like a priest, that he doesn't realize that he can't really do either... and fails at both. My PET almost beat him on the damage meters. Does he respec resto? No. Does he equip +heal gear? No.

Then there are the totems. It took me two months to explain that in arena... You can use BOTH grounding and tremor totems. Cuz one is air, and one is earth. I had to tell him several times.

This is a college graduate, and professional researcher people.

Anyway, he doesn't bother keeping track of the totems. So on long fights... the totems go away, and aren't recast. There was much grumbling over the lack of mana totems...

We do a misdirect pull on those mobs before opera that spam sleep. Melvin has fought them several times. (One of his chars is exalted with violet eye, the other revered) Melvin doesn't see fit to drop a tremor totem. WIPE.

"It happened too fast!"

"It was a misdirect pull, Melvin. You had 30 sec to get ready..."

God help him if totems weren't instant cast...

So we hit romeo and juliet. And melvin has been mostly backing up the two holy priests and the resto druid in healing. With a little dps. (very little)

"K.." goes the ex laser turkey. "We don't have a rogue. We're gonna need Melvin to keep earthshock on Juliet when she tries to heal. Everyone ready?"

Raid ready check

We begin.

Juliet...
heal
heal
heal
heal (stopped by mage)
heal (stopped by warrior)
heal (stopped by warrior)

dead juliet.

Romeo... (and warrior has to tank romeo, cuz pally tank sucks...)

dead romeo (to shouts of PURGE THE DAMN BUFF)

Juliet back
heal
heal
heal
heal
heal

WIPE

K... Melvin... whats going on?

"Oh, I didn't hear you..."
(checks vent... he's still connected...)
Er... you on vent, tho...
"Oh... yeah... but I turn down my speakers at 11. I don't wanna disturb the neighbor."

Why did watching squeekie remind me of this? HEADPHONES!