So since we got to level 57 we are queuing up for the late Old World instances. Scholomance was our desire in particular.
We did the sensible thing and picked up a few quests and then started the queue. I mean - we were aware that this might take a while.
And it took a bit. I grabbed the first screenshot ... oh... see for yourself:
Nothing surprising there. We found the third DPS after almost an hour and only the tank/healer team were missing.
Ah well - time to do some quests.
Not that much later, a healer showed up. Excellent, said I. What could possibly happen. Someone is bound to trundle along in a tank spec soonish. I mean .. Tamarind did a few post specifically about how enjoyable the late Old World instances are.
Sadly, one of the DPS (and it wasn't Issy or me) had to leave a minute later. Maybe he had to go to the toilet. Or to bed. Or the timezone caught up with him. Or something.
And not too long after, our healer followed.
*Sigh*
Back to were we were. About an hour ago. Or 20 minutes, depending on which screenshot you keep an eye on.
But to be fair - it wasn't all like that. The following is the last screenshot I got before we had a full group:
Shortly after that - group complete.
An hour and fourty minutes. I'm just glad I was leveling on the side and not standing around Stormwind, admiring the scenery. Hell... I might have died from old age, or met lil' Timmy or something.
As it turned out, the group was not exactly favoured by the gods, though. I mean... we had the best rogue and an incredible arms warrior and the healer was totally ace. But ...
Well. There was a warlock who liked to stand behind the enemy. I hope this was because he played a melee DPS class before, otherwise the only reason would have been so he could pull more.
Not entirely weird, just not perfect. The tank was from another planet, though. His initial pull consisted of jumping off the balcony into the library of Scholomance and engage the group in the middle at the back. Remember the abilities of those mobs? Yeah, the necrolytes like to use their Arcane Blast. A shiny knockback. There was a reason you pulled those groups carefully.
First wipe commenced after roughly three minutes inside the instance.
So we started with the "You know, if you've not done this before, it's perfectly okay. We have once or twice, though, and we're glad to offer some assistance" spiel. It lasted two pulls (along the wall), then he again charged a group in the middle.
Wipe number two.
But at least we had mostly cleared the library. And even read a few books. And got one of the Deeds.
So I (maybe stupidly) said: "You know, the next room is going to kill us messily if we just charge in. Let me quickly point out why when we get there." And we walked up to the room with the 6 groups with summoners. And I (definitely stupidly) marked up one of the summoners with a skull and then proceeded to type.
And I typed too slow. By the time I had said "Those guys summon adds, so we need to silence them and pull them back" our bear had already charged in the middle.
And ignored the patrol.
And pulled two more groups.
*SIGH*
We tried for a bit more. We offered advice (both of us), we marked mobs that needed to die fast - and then proceeded to kill them without a tank. I think he wiped us once more in the room before the dragons (by charging a group diagonally across it *boggles*).
When we told him to please pull the hatchlings outside the room for us to kill his response (I kid not - I wish I was) was "I am the tank, I decide where to go and how to pull".
It wasn't even one of us who initiated the vote-kick right after he had said "Kick me then". It passed without a hitch, though.
Now, I don't like beating on new tanks. However, if tanks don't come with built in situational awareness, I expect them to listen to advice. Not just charge off. And certainly not charge off like it was a Northrend Heroic, where he probably learnt his "skills". That was just horrid.
So .. err.. we requeued.
And while we were waiting we decided to continue on a bit. We had a warrior in our group, after all. Cute one, too. She didn't have a tanking spec. She didn't have a one-handed weapon. She had, however, done her quests and got defensive stance. So we gave her a shield we had found (grey quality, but hey - it allowed shieldslams) and a sharpened stick.
And sent her off.
And our healer showed her true quality. She managed to keep Issie alive. Through odd pulls (Oh look: you got Rattlegore and one of his constructs) and strange situations (Hmm.. I think someone just mindcontrolled our healer). Mostly.
We did die occasionally. But hey ... the queue for more was not exactly filling with enthusiastic fans.
This is the second queue window. On top of our 1 hour 40 minutes before the start, it took us 1 hour 20 minutes with no one willing to fill up the remaining spots.
A bit longer than that, actually. I think the total time from first queueing to the end of the instance was a little more than four hours.
But we all learnt new things: our healer now knows that Entangling Roots only works on one target at a time (we wiped twice for that - Lord Alexei Barov and his two minions hit hard). Our little warrior has enjoyed tanking enough to actually get a tank spec - and learnt about millions of tank abilities she never used (like revenge and shield block and intimidating shout). And me? While I am usually perfect in every which way, I had to learn lots and lots of things about rogues.
When to use sprint, when not to use sprint (hint: overshooting your target is not good), what feint is for (might come in handy), that blind works on teammembers-who-are-mindcontrolled, that bombs might stun unstable corpses, but might also blow up many of them at once, etc. etc...
We did it, though. Only three of us, but it was a greater achievement in the end this way. What can I say, though - I'm glad I'm level 58 now and can go to the outlands. I don't want to do these instances with random people again. If was great fun with three, though.
Now where had I heard that before? ...
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