Careful What You Wish For...

So Nibulca you wanted to know about the speed run to Kara?

Ok then. The group was as follows:

Ulushnar - Protection Paladin (Main Tank)
Astjoem - Feral Druid (Off-Tank)
Vitality - Restoration Shaman
Messi - Restoration Druid
Kirali - Holy/Discipline Priest
Danae - Rogue
Hanumen - Enhancement Shaman
Raist - Frost/Arcane Mage
Rizzlakh - Affliction Warlock
Etynn - Affliction Warlock

Good balance between ranged and melee DPS. Feral Druids are my off-tanks of choice for two reasons:

1. They do better DPS than a Prot Warrior when not tanking, and they tank better than a DPS warrior when they are tanking.

2. There's a minimal overlap in the stuff we can use.

The first reason's important, because having two Protection-specced tanks can really hurt some of the DPS-race fights in the second half of Karazhan. The Prince in particular is a nightmare without at least 5-6 decent DPSers going all-out on him.

Anyway, up to Attumen, I just AoE tanked the trash. In my haste I didn't always mark the DPS targets and as a result, we lost a couple of our clothies. The raid leader then had the common sense to start marking targets. Attumen himself was a short fight, I AoE tanked him and the Horsie and we just burned 'em down. Loot was some cloth healing gloves and leather caster bracers that were sharded. And we all got one Badge of Justice too.

After that, we cleared to Moroes, who had invited a Retribution Paladin, an Arms Warrior, a Holy Paladin and a Holy Priest to dinner. Again, the fight was no real challenge, although there was a little bit of trouble when the Retribution Paladin Stunned me and proceeded to run to the healers. Luckily, our Melee DPS caught him and stopped him from causing too many problems. Loot was sharded, we gathered a further two badges each, and off we went!

After that it was onto Maiden of Virtue. More aoe Tankage in the corridor and then fighting the gargantuan bitch herself. This is, I have to say, one of my least favourite fights to tank in the instance. The continual silences from her AoE make building aggro a chore. Still she went down fast, we got badges and our first usable epic of the night (some healing item for the Resto Shaman iirc). Badge count was now sitting pretty at five. Another four and Ulu would be able to buy the leggings.

After that, it was Opera, for, it turns out The Big Bad Wulf-erm I mean Wolf. Unsurprisingly for the Opera boss who's plagued us the most, we downed him easily, although we did lose a couple of DPS when they got turned into Little Red Riding Hood, but he died never the less. The rogue looted his rifle, the tanking helm was sharded, and everyone got another two badges.

After that, we had our first break, with four bosses down within the first hour. Five minutes later, we started clearing the trash past Opera, including the Gold-heavy Philanthropists. Next stop was the Master's Terrace to summon and spank Nightbane. Through a combination of Ulu's new PVP trinket, the newly nerfed Fear Ward and our Shaman's Tremor Totems, he didn't prove to be much of a challenge. He died, he dropped a nice plate chest for Ulu and the eight and ninth badges of the raid. Ulu now had what he required for the Unwavering Legguards and everything else from this point was, as they say, gravy.

Next up was clearing to the Curator, and would you lookit that, more annoying trash! The elementals with the Manashield and the mana-draining fishes are an interesting encounter design, but ultimately a boring one. Me losing all my mana just makes things go slower! Curator wasn't much of a problem, we spanked him hard and, quell surprise, got moar eppixx and two more badges.

Every time I come to Karazhan, I find the trash clears some of the worst part. It always feels like there's about two packs more than there stricly needs to be in there. Case in point is the gruelling clear between The Curator and Shade of Aran/Illhoof. It's not tough, it's not complex, it's just dull and it makes even farm runs like this a chore.

Illhoof himself was fairly easily done. We had great DPS, great healing and me tanking nearly everything. He died and we got badges, there was some caster trinket I think and something else I can't remember.

Aran was a little tough, we were low on interrupters so it wasn't our smoothest kill. Still he died with about four of the raid left standing), we got badges and the loot was put to use iirc.

It was easy street from this point. We cleared to the Chess event, got our free epics (which were sharded) and two more badges, then cleared the half-dozen mobs before the Prince.

I would love to say we one-shotted the bastard, but it wasn't to be. The first infernal landed in the middle of our caster camp just as the first enfeeble hit. The resulting mess was a wipe. We pulled ourselves together though and killed him on the second attempt. There was a nice healing mace that dropped, a crappy DPS cloak and the Mage/Warlock/Hunter T4 helm token. Oh, and three more badges.

To be honest, I'dve been happy if we'd finished then. In three and a half hours, we'd cleared to and killed the Prince. But the rogue wanted the sword from Netherspite, so we backtracked and proceeded to wipe repeatedly for an hour before killing him. Some of the wipes were down to poor execution and some were down to bugs and bad luck (the Feral Druid disconnected twice immediately after a pull). There was a healing necklace and some other piece of crap loot I forget, and of course two badges for a grand total of 22 in a little over four hours. I couldn't have done as well out of running heroics over the same length of time.

So there you go, the reason I don't tend to write detailed reports on long instance clears? They're boring as fook to write and no doubt to read.