Shattered Halls Shenanigans

Last night Lal and I (as Salthier) logged in and were trying to decide what to do. With being newly 70 there are a lot of options. Quests and dailies for gold (epic flight ftw). Quests for item upgrades or dungeon chains (Arcatraz in particular for my Verdant Gloves), or instances for drops and reputation.

Lal was oddly in the mood for a dungeon run, so we asked the guild for volunteers to run Shattered Halls where she had some quests to do, and Salthier is always happy to earn Honor Hold reputation. We got some interest and a little bit later we were inside Hellfire Citadel with two warlocks and a mage. I've done Shattered Halls a few times with Elionene. I had tanked it once just this last weekend. The one thing I make sure and have when I go to Shattered Halls is crowd control or a Paladin tank. Since I was tanking, it was glad to have mage and two warlocks with Succubi.

We made our way to the first boss without a hitch. The warlocks had some targeting issues while keeping up seduce along with puting damage on the main target and asked for some advice. I suggested a focus macro, similar to the one we made for Lal to Shackle Undead. It turns out they had not used a focus macro before, so I took a minute to help them set it up. They were quite pleased with the results, and it made CC for the remainder of the time a breeze. Maybe I'll post on Focus in an upcoming post. The more I learn about it, the more uses I think for it. Of course most of my information comes from other blogs and wow sites that I read or search for. But I digress.

After the first boss, one of the warlocks had to leave, so we got a mage from the guild to replace him. Yay! More Sheep! (or pigs, whatever)

The DPS of this group was outstanding. I was able to keep aggro on everything, but they always went down fast. We were tearing through fel orc gladiators no problem when we ran into a bit of a hitch.

The third group of gladiators was a little buggy. When they started to fight each other, they would run out into the center of the room. Now normally you would wait for the 4 gladiators to beat on each other to half health and then pull them. This is what I did. But since they had run out into the middle of the room to beat on each other, when I pulled them, 3 other mobs came with them. Instantly we have 8 mobs on us, 4 gladiators, 1 champion, and 3 other orc guys from the hallway. My first thought is that it's a wipe, but I'll try to make the best of it.

I grab as much attention as I can and the mages and warlock start laying down area of effect spells to kill the half dead orcs. I'm swiping and lacerating everything I can get in range of, but with 8 mobs I can't keep them all and one of the mages, and the warlock go down. Thankfully, the AoE seems to have dispatched the 4 gladiators at this point, and I start to think that maybe we can pull it out. As long as I keep the rest of the mobs attention, and Lal keeps healing me.
And that's when Lal got ambushed by one of the loose mobs and died. I grab the loose mob, and our other mage is somehow still alive, but I don't know how much longer I can last. And Lal says to me, "Should I use the Soulstone now? Or wait?"

Soulstone? Soulstone!

I tell her to wait for a second as I make sure all mobs are on me, but my health is going down fast. I say Now! and Lal pops up and starts healing, the mage and I kill the last 3 mobs, and it's not a wipe. 8 mob pull? No problem. Lots of fun, and everyone was having a good time. Props to that mage. I don't know how he avoided death! I think he was even surprised he survived that.

Exhillerated, we continue on and put an end to the Ogre boss. A few dead ninja orcs later and we're preparing to engage Kargath Bladefist.

I've killed Kargath succesfully twice. Each time, I had the group stand on the stairs and the tank focus on Keeping Kargath in the middle of the room. This time I tanked him in the middle, and the group spread out to the corners. One of the mages was on add duty at the stairway. The fight starts and things seem to be going well. We make it through the first Blade Dance just fine. Not too long after though, our mage on adds went down. I don't know the reason, maybe she couldn't keep on the adds, or maybe she got hit by too many blade dances, but our second mage picks up the adds and we continue to DPS on Kargath. It's going a little slower, and after another blade dance, it hits me. I can battle rez! So I wait for Kargath to go into his dance, pop out of Bear form, and throw a rez to our dead mage. She revives as I go back to bear, and Kargath finishes his dance and comes back to me. Within a few seconds, he's dead, and we are cheering!

That was my first battle ressurection and it was a lot of fun. It's amazing to get through a pull or boss fight gone bad by pulling out all the stops. We had a great group of people, and I'm looking forward to going back with them again! It's also incredible how well Lal and I can do as a team, communicating in real time without having to type things.