I had spent Sunday working through the Love Fool requirements, including a trip to Arathi Basin. I mentioned before I wanted to actually contribute and maybe finally manage an Arathi Basin Victory. The starting strategy while awaiting the gates to open suggested an early Blacksmith grab, which was fine with me. So I followed the few that went that direction. There was a short battle and suddenly we had it! In the lull that followed I dropped my fool, ran my pity macro and I Pitied The Fool was mine! Alliance still lost in the end. Still, I don't think I embarassed myself too badly. I did manage my share of HKs.
Now all that was left was to get the Red Roses. A fresh 85 fellow guildie also had a few bits left to finish. I made a couple level 1 Hordies for him to shower with rose petals, but I couldn't easily make the Orc Death Knight he needed to finish. Then we grouped up to run a dungeon. We got another guildie to join us to Grim Batol where we saw the Roses drop. I lost on the roll. We had a gogogo Hunter with us who would annoying as all heck, but we kept good practice of using crowd control even where we might not have needed it. We might have been a little slow, but we were methodical and made it to the final boss without too much trouble. First try on Erudax was a wipe though. I didn't get to the safe zone of the vortex quickly enough. The hunter dropped and we noticed despite instructions, he wasn't hitting the Faceless Guardian adds. We got another guildie to finish for us and this time I managed to find the right places and I did focus damage on the adds. With all the movement, I'm sure my DPS was lousy, but still, we completed Grim Batol.
My Guildie was willing to help me finish my run for the roses before returning to complete his holiday achievements and switched to an alt. I hadn't realized until then just who his alt was. Well, I knew, but wasn't really reminded until the switch. He was one of the tanks in the prior day's Black Temple run and when he joined a queue, there was zero wait for anything to pop! I thought healers were the critical link in Cata dungeons, but not on Sunday. While Grim Batol had been slow and methodical, we zipped through Lost City of Tol'Vir.
A real blizzard moved in and while we didn't lose power, we did have a few flickers to the lights. Unfortunately, my laptop has ZERO battery support, so the least flicker meant I was rebooting. I'm glad my Guildie was patient with me and the pugs were patient, too. Then I realized part of that when one puggie asks "So what's such a well geared tank doing slumming in the normal dungeons?" He was there helping me, thank you, thank you! OMG, average equipped gear score of 351? I guess I can understand the PUGs patience better.
While he didn't need it, he reminded the Pug about teamwork, assigning CC duties and teaching us what we'll need to do. He often admitted he knew the heroic version of bosses and politely asked for information from others about differences. When items dropped, folks asked and received permission to need on off-spec items. It was a good experience all around.
After a Halls of Origination run, we were told that the roses don't drop from all cataclysm dungeons, but only Grim Batol and Stonecore. So we next went to Stonecore. We actually had a wipe on trash when we aggro'd three patrolling packs together, but that settled us down to take the dungeon seriously. My experience said everything else flowed pretty smoothly after that. Even when we had one other accidently pull, we were never in danger. It just was a little messy.
By this time, I was way late for getting to bed. I worried my friend wouldn't have the time to finish his own holiday, but he managed some how. Not only did I get my Red Roses and Fool For Love achievements, but a couple new dungeons and some good drops! Excellent!
