Picking up steam

Last night was Alts and Newbs night... Again. We went through a few weeks where I just threw the idea out there in case people showed up... But last night... We actually had 11. One person wanted to level their paladin so that made the decision pretty easy. Our "other" paladin (we have 2 level 70 paladins and I have the first) got 4 drops last time out so he's becoming a passable healer, so for healing we just brought him and our godly resto druid.... Man.... What a difference that one extra DPS makes. Normally we bring 3 healers and we get to Opera at around 10:30 pm (starting some time after 7:30) - ending at around 11. Last night we plowed through Curator and downed him at around 10:30pm.

I'll admit that I felt the loss of the healer because it seemed like they were playing fast and loose with my health... But I only died when I was trying to stealth to open the back door and another druid pulled aggro and dragged them right past me so I can't really complain. I think the extra DPS shortened the fights to a point where extending mana wasn't a problem. In fact, I looked for someone to innervate during a vanish and neither healer needed one so I gave it to the shadow priest. We set new guild records for Moroes (4 minutes, 40 seconds) and Curator (4:20 - 2 evocates)... And that was with at least one person in quest reward greens.

Speaking of the shadow priest (Mustela)... He's played by a guy with one year old twin boys. Playing WoW is pretty much his only social/recreational outlet. In fact, he's the reason why I started the Alts and Newbs run - so we could get him into Karazhan, get him acclimated to out play style and maybe get him some loot. He's been kind of shortchanged on the loot lately. But last night he picked up three healing items and the Staff of Infinite Mysteries - which we have taken to calling the Staff of Infinite Drop Percentages because that thing drops just about every time. We've downed Curator maybe 10 times and we've had about 7 of those drop. People have started taking them for offspec PvP. It was good to see that go to someone who could actually use it and who, quite frankly, really deserves it.