Jun 16

I’m desperately grinding up my Cenarion Expedition reputation in anticipation of grabbing that sweet mace, Earthwarden. I went on a heroic UB run as DPS, grabbed some rep, badges, and fell off the bridge at the second boss. Nice.

As soon as I’m out of the portal the mage created for us at the end of the run, I get a whisper from a raiding friend of mine, who I met while he was leveling an alt in Hellfire Peninsula. “How is your gear?” he asks. “Uhm, average I guess?” And I read him the stats. “You’re geared enough. Want to offtank for a boss in Kara? We’re just before Chess, gonna do Prince and Netherspite.”

So a billion things run through my mind. The first, and foremost, one is, “Holy cow, I’ve never been to Kara, I don’t know any of the enounters, I’m gonna screw something up.” I share this with my friend, he says “Don’t worry about it, I’ll explain it. Do you want to come?” So I say “Sure, I guess.”

Within moments I’m in a raid group and summoned to some room where things are going on, namely raid members are bashing on mobs. Right into the fray, it is, and I have no idea what’s going on. So I do the only thing I can think of: I switch to Cat Form and start DPSin.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that these guys are way overgeared for Kara. One dude is pumping out 1,500 DPS. I’m pumping out a little under 400. We get to chess, and I’m like…. I don’t know what to do. So the guy who invited me, also the raid leader, says “just control a piece and use it’s moves.” Uh, okay, great. How do I do that?

Well, I run up to the pawn in front of the King and talk to it. No option to control the guy. The raid leader says “Good choice, he’ll need to be moved.” Coincidence. Been forever since I played chess. So whoever does their thing to start the encounter, and all of the sudden I can control my pawn. Pretty neat little encounter, thankfully easy–gives me time to organize my thoughts, which include “Holy crap I’m in Kara.”

So we finish with Chess, I loot my badges, and we head on upstairs, to Prince. Pretty simple, my friend tells me. When you get enfeebled, run over there to the squishy type folks. Push out your pitiful DPS and don’t die. (He didn’t actually say that part.) We one-shot the bugger and then comes the loot. Up pops Helm of the Fallen Defender. Now, being a random n00b invite to an obviously geared run, I was gonna pass on everything. But hardly had I rolled my mouse over it to see what classes it was for before the leader whispers me, “Roll on it!” He starts the shpill over vent, saying something about only being so many people in this particular raid that could use it, do any of the regulars want it? During this, I reply, “…are you sure?” The immediate response: “YES!!!!” And I quote. So I roll, the other people who could have used it didn’t want it anyway, and I get my T4 helm token. Wow!! First time into Kara and I got a tier piece. I whisper to a good friend of mine with a link to the item and he says “Grats!!”

It doesn’t take long when some of our other friends start whispering me, from “Grats” to “I hate you. I’ve never gotten tier gear and you got it in your first trip in.” At any rate, we head on to Netherspite.

On the way to Netherspite, the raid leader whispers me, and I almost quote: “Netherspite is very confusing and a little difficult if you’ve never done it before, but you have a very important role.” Great. So he proceeds to explain beams and portals and tanking–

–wait, what? I’m supposed to hold aggro against a guy putting out 1,500 DPS? Oh, they can’t pull him off me. OK, that’s alright. So they go on about beams and such and who’s in what color and I’m picturing giant colored moonfires from the sky or something. The encounter starts and I quickly learn what a beam is and how to pick it up. I’m green first (”Make SURE to get green it’ll heal him”) and no problems are to be had. Then the next phase starts and I see the red portal. I hit dash, rush over to the portal, and switch to bear. In two seconds, out two seconds, just like I’ve been told.

About 10 seconds into it the leader says “One healer is down, DPS bandage if you need to.” Someone else says “The other healer is disconnected.” We wipe shortly after.

On our run back, my friend tells me “Good job.” Well, that’s a good sign I guess. The healer reconnects (”WoW crashed!”) And we try again; things to swimmingly, I get to “tank” twice, and he’s down, and the run’s over.

After the fact, back in Shatt, I whisper a friend of mine (not the same one who invited me), “You know, I just DPS’d for like two trash pulls, did Chess, DPS’d (not very well) on Prince and ‘tanked’ Netherspite. Overall, nothing spectacular, tons of people have done it, but I feel like I’ve crossed some sort of threshold.”

He replies: “Well, if you’re doing Kara now, you’re in another league. It’s certainly no five man. Welcome to the shallow end of the big kids pool.”

I seriously LOL’d.

Related posts:

1. The Slightly Deeper End of the Big Kids’ Pool
2. New Stuff in Kara
3. Even a Single Kara Pugger
4. A Day of (Mostly) Good PuGs
5. Patch 2.4: People are Far Too Optimistic