So, the other night, I was invited into a partial-PUG - one of my friends has brought up his second healer toon in the form of a Shaman, and has only recently hit 70 and is running regular 68+ instances for reputation and gear upgrades on his way to Heroics, and had teamed up with a PUG tank from the night before in order to head into Botanica.

Since it was a Regular and not a Heroic, when my friend invited me to come along to DPS, I switched from my Mage that I had been doing some PvP with, and logged into my Hunter, who is less geared and also isn’t topped out on Sha’tar reputation.

I joined in the party, and flew from Shattrath and met my friend there and we started the Summoning process, then headed into the instance.

Right off the bat, everyone starts to buff, the Soulstone is discussed as to who should get it (SPriest got it as the Shaman can ahnk back to life if required), and we get ready to go.

Then, the Pally tank gives my Hunter her buff - Greater Blessing of Salvation.

*blink*

I ask if I could get Might instead, with my standard inquiry that also includes “I’ll feign regularly”. Pally tank tells me no, he’ll keep Salv on me because then I can “go all out”. I ask him if he has Omen and he doesn’t respond. I say Hunters don’t need Salv because they can Feign Death (which is a complete aggro wipe) every 30 seconds, and there’s no response.

The first battle starts, and I see *everyone* has Omen, including the most important one on there, the tank, I took Salv off, and went without a Pally buff.

He re-applied it later on when someone else’s buff wore off, and I took it off again. I think he re-buffed me a third time when he noticed the buff wasn’t there a couple of minutes later, but I took it off again and I don’t think it was re-applied.

Did I pull aggro? Once, with an immediate Feign (but the aggro went to the SPriest, which is why we don’t like DPS pulling aggro - when dumped, it doesn’t tend to go back to the tank more than another DPS or the healer). The rest of the time, I paid attention to Omen like a good little Hunter does, and practiced some of my Hunter skills by feigning death regularly, especially after dealing out my first bit of massive damage by using all of my cooldowns.

It’s kind of like what I have to do on my Mage - cause a lot of hurt for a short period at the start of the fight, then use Invisibility to drop my threat to 0 and start dealing out hurt again from the lower threat position on the charts.

At any rate, In the middle of the run, I hit Revered with Sha’tar, yay!

The run itself went pretty quick and there was only one wipe, and that was mainly due to miscommunication between the tank and the rest of the party when the tank decided to handle High Botanist Freywinn differently than the standard “line of sight” technique that myself and my friend were familiar with, and instead wanted AOE when the Lashers come out and Freywinn starts his channelling of Tranquility. Unfortunately, the SPriest and Warlock in our group hadn’t ever been in this instance before and therefore the Warlock didn’t know “when” to AOE.

I think our tank nearly had a stroke he was freaking out so much on the Warlock… but once the fight was explained a little better to the people who had never seen it, the next attempt went much smoother, still using the AOE-down-the-Lashers technique instead of the regular Line of Sight one that many other tanks use.

The tank still, however, felt extreme frustration that he channelled towards the boss as Freywinn lay dead on the ground… said something that labelled him “young” in my book, using the “C” word in his profanities. I thought about saying “mixed company, not appreciated” but instead I just marked him in my Karma tracking addon as an A-type personality tank (ie: one who knows a lot and runs quickly but freaks out on group members and says inappropriate things that don’t endear one to others).

That’s not to say I wouldn’t run with him again, but I would at least be able to warn my friends that while the run will be sucessful and fast, he’ll probably be quite a bit of a jerk during the process.

We finished with no further mishaps after that first wipe, and since I’m an Enchanter, there were three Large Prismatic Shards to divvy out at the end, after a couple of people got some nice blues as upgrades.

The tank asked if we’d like to run it again, only “this time without bothering with marks”, but I’m pretty sure all of us declined, as it was 1-2 in the morning depending on where we all were, and I know I was pretty tired.

When I headed back to Shattrath, I hit the Quartermaster for the Sha’tar to see what might be waiting for me now that I was Revered in reputation - and I got a great one that I can use on my Healing Priest’s weapon - Formula: Enchant Weapon - Major Healing - rock on!

I like being able to enchant myself :)

I just got back from a week’s visit with my parents and older brother, where Brother and I did a whole bunch of business together, Mom and I caught up on the family happenings, and I helped Dad set some playing goals for the time he gets to spend on World of Warcraft (which is mostly on rainy days).

Dad’s got a level 52 Blood Elf Hunter, and because he doesn’t type quickly, he doesn’t socialize much on the game and therefore he’s one of those wandering bumblers who you might think didn’t actually level his character all the way from level 1. But he did, and he’s having fun with it.

He’s started a second character, a Blood Elf Mage, and I found out she was at level 16, which is right where my little Shaman and Pally are sitting at. Cool!

We took some time to look at his Hunter after he asked me to get some advice on it, and after a bit of chatting he visited the Auction House to upgrade some of his gear, not having realized he could use Mail instead of just Leather. Then, he did some fishing in Tarren Mills to get some Raw Sagefish to level his cooking, and headed over to Hammerfall to complete the 225 First Aid quest that then unlocked his First Aid max to 300.

The First Aid quest took him a few tries, and I would imagine with the inherent lag of a 56k connection it was even harder than for the rest of us doing it the first time, but I left him with it and he patiently kept plugging away at it until he was successful.

We had a chat about some skills he could work on improving, specifically the skill of freeze trapping, since he’d never really used his traps very much. I told him some of the tips I’d learned personally while levelling up my Hunter, and shared some that others had shared with me, too.

Then, I turned to his computer, and confirmed that Ventrilo was set up (it was, from a previous visit), and then I got a mic and some earphones and tested it out, and got Mom’s confirmation that it would be okay for Dad to talk to his computer sometimes (she’s normally watching TV), and showed Dad how to use it. I also got a Fonts addon that makes the default fonts much easier to read, even for my 35 year old eyes.

Dad told me on my way to my car as I was leaving to travel the 6hr journey home that he was going to be online “with the thingy going” that night.

We didn’t end up playing together that night, but he was on Vent when I got home, and we got to chat a little bit - him talking on vent and me typing my responses in the game. He left for dinner and had intended to come back, but I was tired from the drive and went to bed early, before he returned.

But in the mean time, I did get my Shammy to where his Mage is sitting. It’ll be fun to play with him when we DO get a chance.