Back in the Instance Swing

Well, I'm back running instances again. My guild was helpful enough to drag me through Nexus and Drak'Tharon Keep. It got my instancing feet under me. Ran Old Kingdom last night with a pick up group. Had a brand new to tanking paladin. She did pretty well... only died, I think a total of five times? That and I don't think anyone in that group at 2 AM was familiar with the instance, so none of us even blinked when the paladin died for the second time. But when she did, I took Ruka off passive.

I know I wanted to snarl at the other hunter at least twice. Ruka is a large lavander powerhouse when it comes to damage. I know this, and with a tank that is new to tanking, even with growl off and cower ON she was consistantly # 2 on the threat list. He told me to turn growl off... I only flipped it back on when the tank hit the ground or picked up a few too many mobs. So, growl was off except when I needed it to either attempt to redirect an elite to her instead of the tree, or to try and tank with purple fluff.

The other thing that made me want to smack that hunter was he snarled at me at one point to put the pet on passive. While in the middle of a boss fight, where I was reacting on instinct, since nobody knew what they were doing. I left her on defensive for a reason - new tank. The pet running back to me also wastes time when the tank seems to have issues switching from one mob to the next.

I probably have better pet control than a lot of hunters out there... you don't go from two mobs to eight on a pet overnight. Especially when its a pet that cannot do multi-threat without dancing it at every mob for a few seconds. I also was running Kara when Blizzard changed pets to attack from behind. You either learned how to control a pet in there, or it wiped your raid. Pets will still try and run down the wrong ramp to get behind a mob. That wouldn't have mattered for passive or defensive, once sent, you have to read and react. I did that for a good solid 6 months.

This was an instance I was unfamilar with, at 2AM, with people whom I did not know, I'm going to run in a way that I'm most comfortable. I know that I did not wipe us with a defensive pet. When I'm more familiar with these instances, maybe then I'll fall back into passive pet mode.

I did have a lot of fun with the instance though. Even if the paladin became a rug a number of times, we did manage to clear the instance, wiping twice. Heck, it was so chaotic both times I didn't get the chance to hit FD. A good run over all, with only a few minor thorns. I'd run again with any of them.