I'd spent a large portion of Friday night trying to get to revered with Argent Dawn (it turns out that I can solo a 45 minute Baron run because I can stealth large portions of it) so I could get a cheaper attunement for Naxxramas because I'd seen a PuG run advertised on the forums. The raid starting time came and went and none of the three toons who were the post said to contact were on at the time. So I decided to do my own thing. And... Wonder of wonders... Slave Pens was the daily heroic.
There were two groups looking for a tank and one of them had already downed the first boss. I looked up the person who was asking in the armory. He was a holy priest with 1900 healing. With my tanking stats, his healing and the relative easiness of the instance AND the fact that they'd already done one of the bosses promised a really quick run. So I whispered the priest and away we went.
I nubbed up one pull and I tried to pick up the sheep target (although some might argue that a good mage would never let a sheep break in the first place - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep) when it got loose and hit it again after the mage had resheeped it. It was a MCing mob and I ended up killing the mage. We also had another wipe near the end but they were pretty easy going about it because their previous tank was really, really bad. But I did get to turn in my quest. Not only did I complete the quest but I picked up 4 quick badges and got two bag slots back. On the whole, it was a good night.
About 10 minutes after that instance was over, I got a tell from one of the leaders of Band of the Hawks asking me if I wanted to tank Mag. It's like he'd been watching over my shoulder. Hell yeah I did!!!
I've done one other Magtheridon PuG and it fell apart after about 3 attempts. I'll never understand who people can give up on a PuG raid after one attempt. It's a PuG people!!! Most of these people will never have seen the fights before. We're going to wipe a time or two... And these petulent people don't have the decency to leave the raid. Instead, they mysteriously disconnect immediately after the first wipe while everyone else is running back. I'll never understand that... But I digress... My point was that I'd never completed Magtheridon's Lair and now I was being asked to main tank it.
I also convinced his holiness, Pater, to join us as one of the five healers. He ended up dying on the first two trash pulls. Whoops... Good thing there are only 4 pulls total.
The first attempt was a pretty quick wipe while the clickers got things figured out. Then we had a good attempt. Then a huntard pulled early on the third attempt... That one ended pretty quickly... Although we did down the adds and get Mag to about 80%. We were having a little trouble timing the clicking of the cubes because Deadly Boss Mods seems to be a little off so a decision was made to pretty much eat the first blast wave to make sure we interrupt the majority of them.
By now it's getting close to midnight. Two people (which was strangely low... weird... No one was bailing on a PuG...) had to leave - including the person who formed the raid originally... An off tank who didn't have vent. We replaced them and made another attempt. By now we had 6 paladins... 3 tanks and 3 healers... I'm serious. We had EVERY pally buff.
I was tanking the third add and the boss. On the fourth attempt, a hunter died during the first two adds. After my add went down, I had a couple of seconds between my add going down and Magtheridon releasing so I battle rezzed the hunter. Normally, I wouldn't rez a non-tank/non-healer but I was the only druid and I was the main tank so I wouldn't have a chance to use it later.
This time felt different. The clicking was going well. Yeah... We took one blast wave but _only_ one. It was going well... But at 60% one of the clickers - a paladin healer - went down. But we communicated it and someone else took over their cube. We got to the cave-ins at 30%. The raid was weakened. A couple of people died. We lost Pater and another clicker. But we adjusted...
At about 8% everyone was OOM. There were no heals to be had and our casters weren't doing any damage any more. I got down to 4k health... It was looking bad. I've used my frenzied regeneration and my potion macro - so I had about 20 seconds left before I could use it again.
And then... Miracle! I got hit with a 15056 heal. A paladin hit me with a clutch lay on hands... Probably a tank from the size of it. We're back in it!!! Then another lay on hands... And another!!! We had 6 paladins in the raid and 5 were still up and they were chaining their one hour cooldown, instant cast, drains all their mana heals to get this done... 3%... Healers are regenerating a little mana. Heals are trickling in. 1%... Come on... Come on...
And... Finally... He was down. At the end, only about 14 people were still standing. I was below 30% health (that's still 6k with raid buffs though). All of the healers were under 500 mana. It was an absolutely epic fight. I'm sure that it was a first kill for 20 people in the raid so to have _that_ fight being your first... That's a fun memory. People were very excited.
We rezzed the dead (including Pater twice... Who managed to stand in a fire after he was rezzed). Loot was given out. Pater even got the 20 slot bag. He seemed happy. But not happy as I was...
I first went into Karazhan in October of last year... And that was on my paladin. Hiahotah didn't go into Karazhan until Arena season 3 started (because our then main tank repecced Boomkin) so I had to take over tanking... Which, incidentally, was when we really started having success in Karazhan...
But to get into Karazhan, we had to run Shadow Lab, Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Black Morass. It took us months to get to a point where we could down Shade of Aran and loot his book so we could move on in the quest line to get the urn to summon Nightbane. We did a heroic Shattered Halls without a paladin tank, without any CC and a paladin who had 27 point in prot healing because that was who was on. Then we did heroic Sethekk for someone's epic flight form quest. I'd already done mine, but I tanked it so I could do this quest and be able to summon Nightbane.
Then came the PuGs... Somewhere along the line - maybe in August of last year, I'd done the Cipher of Damnation quest line - including the 5 man group quest at the end - which unlocked the heroic dungeon "Trial of the Naaru" quest lines. We'd done Shattered Halls as a guild but that still left Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth.
We tried heroic Steam Vault one day but couldn't finish because we had two healers and couldn't down the tanks on the last boss fast enough. I ended up helping a PuG once for that one. They skipped a lot of mobs by going along the right wall of the first area... But that led to a few wipes because you had to be careful about where you fought and where you got feared.
I did a PuG heroic Arcatraz. I remember that one going pretty well. For Shadow Lab, there was one day when a group was looking for a tank for one of the heroic Tempest Keep instances. But I only had Shadow Lab left for the Trial of the Naaru lines... They wanted to do a heroic and there were no other tanks on so they agreed to do Shadow Labyrinth. We wiped quite a bit to start. People went AFK for 5-10 minutes at a time. But... People stuck around and we found a rhythm. The priest didn't quite get that he had to be in the circle for the Murmur fight on heroic. So we wiped a couple of times. We actually got lucky and downed him on the second attempt - even though the priest hadn't learned.
All of this... Plus countless hours to get gear (including about 8 hours single pulling Mobs in Steam Vault to get my Earthwarden)... Numerous runs through Karazhan for badges... Culminated in this:
Hiahotah, Champion of the Naaru... I haven't been this excited about a title since Gifteye got to Lt. Commander. I've been pecking away at this for a year now. I've endured horrible, horrible PuGs (I've also met a few people who aren't horrible). Yeah... They nerfed Magtheridon... But I'm still ecstatic. Hell... I'm writing about it on a Sunday morning instead of doing dailies.
Plus... Now I don't feel like I should go for the "exalted with all battleground factions" title... At least... Not with Hiahotah...
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