Grim Batol Heroic

Last night DraNgNon and I decided that we wanted to have Mornara and Kuanchichi finish up the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achieve. This was not a trivial undertaking because the only heroic we had left was Grim Batol. Grim Batol was the first heroic we'd ever gotten from the random dungeon finder. And just barely meeting the requirements to do a heroic was not actually enough for us to get the first boss down then. We're better geared now, so we thought it was time.

I asked around in guild if anyone wanted to join us, sadly people were busy or needed their daily random heroic. So, with more than a little trepidation, I queued just the two of us for Heroic Grim Batol.

Roughly 2.3 seconds later the dungeon popped. I guess tanks really are the missing link these days...

We zoned in with a hunter, a fury warrior, and a pally healer. With the hunter and Kuanchichi that meant we had good crowd control options. I was upfront about never having done the dungeon on heroic. And then off we went!

The first pulls were a bit rough. I didn't die, but it was clear the pally was struggling to keep me alive. I was mentally buckling down to pop every cooldown as it came up every fight.

Then the hunter says "brb", and when he gets back mentions having smoked a bowl. Inwardly, perhaps even outwardly, I wince. Here we go, I think, time for Huntard and The PUG From Fail. The hunter's guild name was even <THAT Guy>.

But before I can say anything in party the dialog box for requeueing after a member has left pops up. The pally has abandoned ship. I requeue and someone (the warrior I think?) says the pally must not like smoking. The new healer joins us and zones in.

It's a troll druid.

Named Ganjja.

Kuan laughs and points out that Ganjja isn't likely to have that issue. We all laugh, and tell Ganjja what had happened. He laughs too. And then off we go again, but this time with much stronger heals. I certainly wasn't afraid of dying on the trash pulls unless I did something very dumb.

Side note: I'm really loving having a druid healer behind me in heroics. I've heard that druids are not doing so hot (pun not intended), but every one I've run a five man with has been super. I really like how the constant stream of heals from their hots mean I rarely plunge in health.

Back to Grim Batol: we oneshot the first boss, and wiped only once on the second boss. The third boss took us 6 or so tries to get down. The fourth boss took about 10 tries to kill. Stupid faceless dudes are a pain in the ass. The grand total of deaths for the instance was 15 for the two lowest people and 18 for the highest person. Through it all the group as a whole discussed strategy prior to every boss pull, and updated that strategy if it proved to not work. There were no recriminations and people admitted it when they messed up thought there was something they could have done better.

And when we finally killed Erudax the achieve popped up for all of us. No one in the group had completed Heroic Grim Batol before. There were cheers and congratulations and compliments all around.



It was a pretty excellent pug. Maybe I am having phenomenal luck. Or maybe I just don't pug all that much. Regardless I want to give a big round of applause to Ganjja, Faragorn and Pez. They were awesome and a pleasure to run with.