First Cata Dungeon

It was early evening for me. Just about that time when I usually call it a day with the game. I was in guild chat just casually talking about beginning the normal random norm dungeon thing, about beginning to learn how to pve. Next thing I know is my guild mate popped up a group invite and que'd us up, saying something along the lines that it was a good time to start learning. As good as any I thought, though I had many self-doubts about my abilities and being able to make worthwhile contributions to the group.


Earlier that afternoon I had spent some time at the training dummies pushing out as much dps as I could. I wasn't real happy with the results, the overall average coming out to around 5.7k. I didn't think this was acceptable, and wondered if I couldn't somehow do better. So, the sudden jump into a group and dungeon certainly had me concerned, but jump I did. I just hoped that I didn't get the group wiped or cause some deaths I shouldn't cause.

Halls of Origination, my first time. I must say right here though that I was surprised and pleased with the group. Especially after my bitter distaste for dungeon groups at the end of Wrath. The tank knew the fight, the healer was my guild mate, and the pally seemed to know the tank. So overall, the tank took time to briefly explain trash pulls where necessary, including CC marks. With each boss, he was brief but very precise about the abilities to expect, what to watch for and avoid plus any incidentals. I liked the tanks' delivery. Short, to the point, no long winded fluff. Though I did not know the fights at all, I later realized that what the tank did say was exactly everything I needed to know.

Now, I don't know where HoO stands in so far as difficulty compared to the rest of the dungeons. But for me tonight, everything from the trash to bosses seemed intense. The health pools on all my targets certainly looked very large to me, actually, somewhat bordering insurrmountable. The run went well though. A couple of deaths, three, as I recall, but no group wipes. At times, the tank actually showed joy at how well something went.

I wasn't very pleased with my own preformance, dps seemed rather low to me and a few other things I'm sure I should have done better on. Half-way through the run, I also got dis-connected from internet. You can imagine the words I had to say over that. But, managed to log back in quickly enough and was still with the group. After the last boss was down and I ported out, I realized that half my add-ons suddenly stopped working. LOL- I couldn't even log out of game normally! Once out though, I found that three of the mods where waiting for sudden updates.

All in all, I had quite a night and my first Cata dungeon is now history. I learned that movement did put a dent in my dps a little bit on some fights, but on others it wasn't that much of a factor. So it had more to do with rotation I think, and what I did/did not do during movement. I'm sure as the balance of this night progresses and my fragmented mind replays the scenes a few times over, I'll think of many other things I need to improve on. In the end though, I'm very happy that the group succeeded in downing everything.
 

1 down---42 to go!