Faith in Karazhan

Last evening I logged in, fully expecting a quite evening of farming, fishing and an early bed. Solidstate already has both T4 pieces from Karazhan, so I wasn't expecting to be invited to the raids (we have 2 going now).
But group 2 was missing a priest and I happen to have Solidfaith, a Holy Kara-Attuned Priest. So a few tells, a quick relog, and Solidfaith was on his way to his first ever Kara run :)

I was a bit nervous, I've only had experience healing in 5-mans up till last evening, so I wasn't sure if I was good enough. To help me out, I popped over to the AH and bought a Flask that gives 20 MP5, still had mana problems during the longer fights but was okay otherwise.

My +heal with raid buffs was +1250, give or take, so my GH do about 4k and crits for ~6-7k. I don't crit a lot, so by myself I would have failed as MT healer, but luckily I was just there for buffing and backup healing. The two raid paladins had most of the burden of healing.


Attumen was a snap. Moroes was harder since I had to keep one add shackled all the way to the end of the fight. This being my first time I had to use shackle so extensively, I messed up and the add kept getting loose and going after the close-by pala. Luckily for the raid, the pala is harder to kill than a squishy like me and I managed to re-shackle with no serious harm done. Later a hunter helped with Freeze Trap so once when my shackle broke the trap got him :)

Moroes down, although a bit messy, and we continued to Maiden. We made good progress on the trash, but wiped on our first try, not enough healing on MT :( (yes, partially my fault)
But we quickly pulled ourselves together and managed to take her down, this time with only 2 people down.
From Maiden we went to the Opera event, got "Romeo & Julianne". I prefer R&J over Big Bad Wolf, I hate getting turned into Little Red o_O
Jul got a couple of heals through but otherwise we did the event by the book, very clean and no deaths. Even better, Jul dropped Masquerade Gown, a very nice priest chest. Actually it wasn't that much of an upgrade over what I had, but the proc happens often enough that I think it makes this a good chest.
We were very pleased with our progress so far and decided to continue to The Curator.
Trash was actually easier than usual as we had 2 locks and 2 mages, so plenty of AoE on the eel packs.

I was assigned to heal the MT by the RL (pala), luckily for me the other pala /w me and told me he would keep his target (the OT) topped up and help me heal the MT, that made me a lot less nervous.
During this fight as a mage I usually stand far away from the Curator so I have a clear view of the entire fight and how everyone is doing, as a MT healer I was standing in line with him, next to Curator, so I didn't see the rest of the raid at all or how the DPS were handling the adds. I was okay with healing but pala helped a lot since I was running low on mana during the entire fight and even drinking mana pots like crazy barely helped. In any case the MT never got too low and we managed to down the Curator without any problem, which made us all very happy :)

We had originally planned to get only to Curator, but we had made such good progress we downed him early and after voting on it decided to continue to Aran. I was actually a bit skeptical, lots of new ppl and at least 2 alts (me and a lock) were in the group, and Aran is a fairly hard fight for Kara.
Aran, as a mage, is bloody annoying. I don't have a lot of health, so if the healers aren't quick enough to top me off and he targets me, I have a good chance of dying. I've spent many an Aran fight dead on the ground mid-way through... Furthermore, mages need to stand in order to DPS, and Aran sure likes to make you run around...
This time though, I was the healer, so keeping me topped off wasn't a problem. With 2 locks, the adds weren't as much of a problem as they usually are, and from my perspective, the fight was not that hard - just keep alive and stay ahead of the occational Blizzard. Again mana was a problem, but I guess that can't be helped, I'll have to get used to chugging mana pots :)

Well we got Aran down and tired but happy broke off to sleep. Today the guys will only have Illhood, Prince and the 2 dragons left, a challenge but I'm they will be up to it. Alas, I already know I'll be logging late today so I couldn't register for more Kara fun with my priest.

Maybe I'll get that fishing done... ;)

The only other thing to note is that the other Kara group, having dropped Attumen, got the Fiery Warhorse's Reins. Our GM, who was in that group, bid 100 DKP and won, and I was really happy for him, he's worked hard for our guild and I think deserves such nice rewards. But later when I saw him in Shattrath I was a bit disappointed. At a quick glance the horse isn't very different from a warlock mount. Also, the horse is scaled to human proportions, like a regular horse. So a Night Elf riding it looks a bit like a human riding a pony in RL... I think all Blizzard have to do is make the horse bigger and that alone would make it more drool-worthy. Giving it a speed boost over 100% would make it even more epic. As it is, it's not something I personally would spend 100 DKP on. However, our GM goes to practially every raid and so has a lot more DKP to spend... :)

All in all I'm very happy, got some nice new gear (forgot to mention the new ring from Violet Eye) and better yet had a fun time doing it with people I like, chatting and joking around in TS. Life couldn't get much better... (cue the Swedish Bikini Team... :))