Since we cleared Kara in a day last Thursday, we ended up at ZA instead yesterday. Like G said, last night turned out to be a 100g run (well 60g for me) from the repair bill and the flask. But I haven’t had so much fun from a challenge for quite a while.
We managed to start the encounter with the bear avatar with 1 min left in the timer. Although we didn’t get to one shot him due to various problem with healer being DC-ed and threats problem, it was clearly an improvement from our first ZA run. I’m sure given a couple more runs, we would be able to get him within the timer. We were still getting owned by the gauntlet, although we engaged with the Tempest a couple times before we called it a night because one of us had to leave. Too bad really, I’m sure we could have at least try the bird avatar given a few more tries.
Last night our group make up was: warrior MT, druid OT, enh shaman, BM hunter, MM/Surv hunter, fire mage, shadow priest, holy priest, resto druid, and holy pally. Quite diverse right, but more importantly, notice that we don’t have much AoE action.
For myself, I had a share of fun doing MC on the last pull to Nalorakk. We had 2 warbringers accompanied by two medicine-men. We tried to burn one of the medicine-man fast using the enh shaman as the tank. That didn’t work out so well as the shammy went down awfully fast. Because of that, emergency MC was employed and it worked like a charm. The medicine-man has 2 spells that can be used when MC-ed: chain healing and lightning bolt. The chain heal has a cooldown while the bolt can be spammed. I love em. Since our tank get enough heal and no dps suffered any damage, I just chain lightning to assist the MT. When the warbringer dismounted, I immediately changed my target to the bear and grab aggro from the MT. What I wanted is to have the bear kill the mc-ed medicine-man, but I didn’t have enough time. During the middle of the attack, MC expired and now I have two mobs on me (remember that the threats done by your mc-ed mob transferred to you). O.o. But freeze trap saved me from the bear while I feared the medicine man. I re-MC the medicine man, grab aggro back from the bear, informed the tank when my medicine man was downed and tank grabbed the bear from me (while I run toward the tank hoping that taunt didn’t get resisted 
). Good stuff, I love when MC ends well.
MC is generally risky. Whenever I used MC, there are several things that I usually do to prevent my premature death. One, make your MC target your focus so you can re-target them easily when your MC broke. Two, check your MC timer regularly. And let your tank be aware on the time left as well so they’ll be ready to pick up your “mess”. Three, whenever possible, park your MC-ed mob so that your MT is between the mob and you. But remember that MC will break if you are too far away apart. Four, utilize your other CC-ers when they are available. I always remind hunters to drop trap in front of me (it’s generally easier to do that than asking them to look for my mob and drop trap in front of them). When I don’t have hunters available, I ask my paladin healer to stun them so I can do my MC. For casters, I ask mage to counter spell them. And finally, fear is a good last resort to use. Generally, all MC-ed mob is vulnerable to fear as well. I feared, shielded, repositioned myself so I can pick up my MC target when they are making a bee line straight toward me. It also gave time for the tank to decides whether they want to pick up the target instead.
Remember that we were light on AoE? We had so much problem with the gauntlet runs and we wiped so many times. The general problem was that we couldn’t down the elites fast enough to move along fast enough to not get overwhelmed by the birds which we couldn’t down with our aoE power. Also, our OT got “played” by the Amani Warriors, which kept repeatedly charging and stunning him and run toward the healers. We tried ignoring the birds, but targetting things in the middle of 15 and more birds didn’t work out quite so well. At the end, we resorted to this strategy that consistently reached the Tempest: (1) Always burn the wind walker followed by the protector. (2) Drop freeze trap on the back for one of the warrior. Also, we kept one of the hunter “below” the druid so that the warrior would charge the hunter instead. (3) For every “wave”, we try to focus fire to burn down the warriors and thin down the pack of birds before engaging forward. If you have any strategy, I’d love to hear all about it.
Well, during our last wave, a hex stick dropped and during the middle of chaos, I simply pressed greed and didn’t bother to check who won it. When we called it a day, after I zoned out of the instance upon ressing, G reminded me about my hex stick. It turned out that I’ve won it. But as I was heading toward the “frogs area”, I realized that couldn’t find my hex stick. Yes, my hex stick disappeared upon zoning out. Shucks…that’s so sad 
No Mojo for me
