Well we finally remembered to grab a shot of Hobbes’s character panel. /cheerAs you can see, he has not broken the 170DPS tooltip barrier yet but he’s getting close.

We ran heroic Shattered Halls last night and remembered to stop off at Honor Hold and stock up on those Super Shells their quartermaster hoards. With those in our ammo bag, our character panel looks thus:This ammo is like buying 93-octane gas; it’s really expensive and can feel like you’re getting ripped off. But if you look at our previous character panel screenshot, you’ll see we had an increase of 7DPS just by getting the Super Shells ammo. Massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS, right? Right.

BRK’s problem is that he never remembers to go to Honor Hold before a raid. That’s gotta change.

So heroic Shattered Halls, right. Did we wipe on the first 6-pack pull? Yes; miscommunication about how the trapping was going to work. Once that was straightened out, though, we breezed through the place, except when the mage died.

Important Mage- Strategy Rant: Always run toward the tank if you get aggro. If you’re fighting the two-headed boss in heroic Shattered Halls and you get aggro, don’t run down the hallway towards the instance exit. It makes it much more difficult for your tank to Taunt and your hunter to Misdirect. Running away from your tank is Bad and you will Die a Very Squishy Death. /stopranting

If your tank is geared and your healer is paying attention and your DPS focus-fires on the tank’s primary target, this heroic is not so bad. Mistakes with aggro will cost you dearly, of course. Also, the instance pretty much picks certain times that you’re going to wipe and there’s nothing you can do about it, like fighting a 5-mob pack and the instance deciding to spawn not just one but two assassins. No sense in getting too mad about that; what ya gonna do.

But Blizz, there should be a bigger reward than a Badge of Justice for taking down a heroic boss. Dropping the gear that you needed just to GET to the boss is stupid. Your party should be fully decked-out in level-115 blues before even trying a heroic. Dropping more of that stuff in a heroic is really dumb. BRK would not be adverse to these bosses dropping two badges for each party member, some extra gold and just forget the blue drops altogether.

But we digress.

Can a BM hunter with zero bonuses to trapping chain-trap in heroic Shattered Halls? Sure. Coordination between hunter and tank is required. The party should know that the maximum number of trappings that a non-trapping-skill-enhanced hunter can do in a heroic without assistance is probably three, but that should be plenty.

What was the hardest part of heroic Shattered Halls? Line-of-sight healing. If the tank and healer aren’t communicating, it takes just a few seconds for the tank to eat it and cause a wipe. Our party died more on 3-mob pulls than the 5 and 6-mob pulls specifically because of line-of-sight healing incidents.

Finally, our old friend from Arms and Fury, his lovely and talented wife - their little boy is adorable! - and one of the best holy paladins we’ve ever had the pleasure of running with have all rejoined the BRK Family on Drenden.

People stink. Coworkers are, for the most part, tolerable. Friends and Family are what Life is all about. You want to know why World of Warcraft is so incredible? It’s not the graphics or the gear or the quests. WoW is special because of the Friends you make.

Welcome Home, Kelmar, Hipnatizd and Ironbelly.

/sniff