Ye Olde Hillsbrad

So, last night, in our newly commissioned Thursday Night Fights, the Sidhe Devils get a little group together to run an instance.

A couple of different dungeons were discussed including Steamvaults (my pick), Underbog, and Crypts. So we went to CoT: Old Hillsbrad. Yeah, that's logical...lol.

One of the reasons for going to Durn was for Wulfa and Ishvi (both lvl 68) to come along, which was great because both of them need Durn done for the Kara key quest chain and there's some good upgrades for them as well.

At first, we were going to 4 man it with me healing, but Doodle showed up, and I switched to DPS. We really didn't have any issues - one wipe on the gauntlet due to being feared into another group, and several wipes on the last boss due to Ishvi dying on the trash before the Epoch Hunter. But, in the end, we successfully freed Thrall and completed the instance.

Because I knew the instance fairly well, and the others didn't seem to know it as well, and two of them having never been in there, and because I have a big mouth and like to talk, I appointed myself as Group Leader. Ishvi did the marking, but I ran the show. Yes, I just sort of took over.

What follows is a flogging of myself that I would like to keep for posterity; IT...IS....NOT!!!!!!....A PUBLIC FLOGGING OF ANYONE BUT MYSELF!!! So, teammates, this is all about me and my performance; if you get any good information out of it, so much the better. But, I am critiquing myself here; no one else. Enough disclaimers? Ok, let the flogging begin.

The good:
I provided MQoSRDPS. Period. At the end of the run, I had almost twice as much damage as number 2.

While I did pull aggro once or twice, for the most part I Feigned Death before my threat got too high or pulled aggro as the mob was nearly dead.

I provided decent leadership in keeping the group moving, informed, and on track.

I used Misdirect to do several LOS pulls that can be tricky.

The bad and ugly:
If you don't practice you get Rusty (hahahahah, inside joke). It had been several weeks since I had played my hunter in a higher level instance (say 65+), and I must say that my skills were not very fresh.

My sloppy play was encouraged by my attitude about pally tanks (I lurves them) and in my confidence in their ability to hold aggro. There is a big difference between a level 68 and a level 70, and I am amazed that Ishvi did a great job in keeping ahead of me. That should not have been the case; I should have watched my aggro more closely so that he didn't have to burn a taunt on account of me.

Other ugliness? I FD'd right in front of Doodle, the healer. Now, you'd think that a tree could take a lot of hits, but it turns out that they're pretty squishy...good job, mail wearing hunter.

As RL, it was my job to get the right strategy for the fights. There are two parts to this, planning and execution. I did a pretty good job up until wiping twice on the last boss, for which I will flog myself here.

On the execution part, I screwed up a self assigned job of taking down the casters by pet tanking. I recovered to take down the last one on the third group, but the second group caster didn't get pet tanked at all, so they were nuking the healer....good job, hunter.

On the planning part...I totally forgot the options we had at our disposal, namely, two ice traps. It would have been easy for Wulfa and I to keep those casters on ice until the cows came home or Thrall broke it. Either way, I neglected to use all the tools in my toolbox. I'm fairly confident that, had we used those traps, we would have avoided at least one of the wipes and possibly all of them.

So, there you have it. A mediocre performance that was sloppy, undisciplined, and caused unnecessary wipes. I need to do better.

Oh, and yes, I am intentionally being hard on myself to reinforce the lessons that I need to learn; I did a passable job, but I don't want to be just ok. I want to be the best; I want to perform at the high level I know I'm capable of.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand....flogging off.