Groupmates

Well, last night I ran 3 instances. Heroic Steamvaults, normal Shadowlabs, and the first boss of Shadowlabs again (I count this as a separate instance, you'll see why in a minute.)

Not only did I get the Pontifax Kilt to drop (epic leggings in Steamvaults), I also snagged the Bishop's Cloak with 25 of my Badges of Justice. This means that the only items I have that aren't epics are my necklace, my wand, my chestpiece, one of my rings, and both trinkets (one is epic 60, the other I probably wouldn't replace with anything epic even.) So I'm laying in bed thinking about how lucky I am, when I thought back to the night's runs. Let me review them again with you.

Heroic Steamvaults was with Rubix (mage), Nermal (moonkin druid), Wynri (warrior), and Proteus (feral druid). All of these people have really good gear, mostly from Karazhan and other assorted things. You can check on armory if you don't believe me. Other than wiping twice on the same pull, we one shotted each of the bosses handily (I say handily, but we got lucky on that first boss a little.)

Normal Shadowlabs was with Proteus, Rubix, Jerrik (rogue), and Jhalyn (hunter). Jerrik and Jhalyn raided MC with us back at level 60, and are looking for their key for Karazhan. They have a mix of greens and quest item blues for their gear. Thankfully, the dagger from Murmur dropped for Jerrik...congrats Jerrik! Anyway, I felt that this instance was significantly harder than heroic Steamvaults. Why? Possibly because Jerrik and Jhalyn have been away from their characters for a while. But I think a lot of it was gear related.

This brings me to my last run. Proteus needed 141 rep with Lower City to be revered. So I decided to run down there, along with Xytras, a rogue from the guild, to kill some trash mobs. It was so easy, that we ended up clearing to the first boss and taking him down. The only reason we wiped twice was because the pathing on one of the felguard-looking things got stuck, and we had no choice but to pull him along with the 3 humanoids. First time we got the felguard down to 26% before we wiped. Second time, we got 2 humanoids down first, and then the third time was cake again. The boss took a little longer, but was incredibly easy.

What do all of these runs have in common? You can do anything with a combination of skill and gear. I personally feel that almost all of my guildmates have great skill. They know how to play their classes. However, some of them just don't have the gear yet.

It's made me think a little bit. Usually when I'm running an heroic instance, I'll grab Wynri to tank because he has great gear. How does that help anything? He already has amazing gear. Why not grab a tank who has decent gear to help him gear up? I really need to start impressing this on people. We won't get Gruul down unless we have 25 well geared people...not 10 amazingly geared people and 15 mediocre-geared people. It just doesn't work that way. From this point on, other than always trying to make room for my friends in RL, I'm gonna try to include the people who have never done a heroic and the people who could benefit most from the gear. (Look at me being all admirable and stuff)

Just as a quick note, I apparently spend around 60% of my time in the FSR. It's been pretty consistant throughout most of my runs. I want to try to get this number a little lower...50% I could accept. I'll be working a little harder on that.