85 and a shiny thing

Well, Pradzha has made it to 85. She actually dinged on like the second or third turn-in for the new arena in Twilight Highlands. On the way to 85, she utterly cleared out Vashj'ir, Ul'dum, and Deepholm and just scratched the surface of the Highlands. She's going to have to do a little more questing there at some point, just to activate the portal from Stormwind and back, but that's not very time sensitive.

I've now tried one 85 normal pug on her, a random which went to Grim Batol. The tank got itself killed on a trash pull, so I offered to CC and mark. The first boss is pretty straightforward (think Icehowl), yet somehow I was the only person in the party to move out of his charge. He dropped non-heroic Skardyn's Grace and I won the roll, which is absolutely unheard of. I used my Darkmoon Card: Greatness literally throughout the entirety of Wrath and I used the Hourglass of the Unraveller throughout BC. I'm serious: Illidan had to face the unmitigated fury of that trinket's proc. The danger here is that I'll be working on Deathwing in a year's time and still using the trinket I got yesterday.

Anyway, the second boss in Grim Batol pats and the tank let it walk into him without especially noticing. Even then it needn't have been a wipe, but when the yellow messsage flashed across the screen saying "THE BOSS HAS EQUIPPED A REALLY BIG HEAVY WEAPON IT IS SO BIG IT MADE HIM WALK SLOWER," the tank didn't think to kite and was of course squashed to paste. Not even my frantically typing into party chat "kite the boss kite kite kite" seemed to help. Although why I'd think he'd notice that and not the 93-point font in startling yellow in the middle of his screen I'm not sure.

On the run back we explained things and - I'm serious here! - no one was rude. It was all very understanding, this is a new expansion, here's the mechanic in play, let's kill the boss, shake it off etc. This somehow prompted the tank to run in, pull that same second boss again, and then drop group in an attempt to wipe us.

Sometimes the behavior of my fellow primates is just a mystery to me.

I'm hoping to convince guildies to play in some heroics this week, as I think skill and teamwork will be more than sufficient to compensate for not being utterly dripping with 333 blooz. Pradzha, for example, can CC two things at a time and has been anywhere from two to five thousand DPS ahead of pugs on any given boss. Some guildies have been neck and neck with her, but for the most part I'm averaging 40% of party damage done. Which is why I'm thinking that a party of people similarly shifted off to the right side of the bell curve shouldn't have too much of an issue running heroics even before we're totally geared up from normals.

Finally, some of my favorite people from our Wrath raiding team have returned, so I am super psyched to resume raiding on February second.