This week marked the return of one of our Level 70s, who’s been on a school-induced hiatus (graduate school, electrical engineering). To celebrate his return I led him over to Karazhan to pick up the initial Kara-attunement quests. When we finished those, we put together a good group to hit Sethekk Halls and get him his Shadow Lab key.
Our group consisted of four Level 70s: Warrior (Aggye – tank), Priest (healer; yours truly), Frost Mage (Katika), Hunter (our returning guildie, Charlez), and level 66 Warlock (Haleon). Plenty of crowd control, and plenty of DPS.
We haven’t run with a ‘lock much in instances (our only Level 70 Warlock isn’t really into them), so I don’t have a ton of experience playing with them in large groups (despite the fact I have a level 22 ‘lock, and regularly group with a level 50+ lock as we level up alts). However, it would seem Sethekk is admirably suited to the lock: I know Haleon pulled out at least 3 different minions (Fel Hunter, Imp, Felguard) in different parts of the instance, depending on what we were facing.
We had no real difficulty going through. There was an ugly body pull, another bad pull when half the group got feared into another bunch of mobs (just an oops of not pulling the original group far enough back to preclude such a happening) and another couple deaths here and there. (Including me dying once and not being bubbled–we forgot, after heading out to repair at one point–the hunter’s gun was at 0.)
For the most part, however—and by that I mean >90 percent of the pulls—things went pretty much flawlessly. Aggye generally did the pulling, and the square almost always hit the freezing trap. Sheep & shackles went off as planned, and generally held. The couple times the wrong mob (usually the skull) hit the trap, Aggye was right on top of it, hollering out "Switching targets!" We never broke the trap by accident.
We did wipe the first time on Darkweaver Syth, the first Boss. We simply didn’t handle the elemental adds well: Some folks kept trying to help take down Syth, instead of the adds. Second time through, we let Aggye tank the boss, while the DPS handled the adds exclusively. Amazing how simple it is when you get it right. 
Syth dropped the Bands of Syth, which got sharded as they weren’t an upgrade for Aggye.
We one-shot Ikiss. The four of us who’d seen him previously are familiar with his tricks, and it’s safe to say he is one of our least-favorite Bosses. But Aggye gave good directions to our novice on how to survive, and we all stayed away from him. I love my Prayer of Healing in that fight!
I’ve been pretty fortunate with Ikiss, as well. On an earlier trip, we convinced him to part with the Avian Cloak of Feathers. Last night, I finally got rid of my last green when he dropped his drawers: Hallowed Trousers. With some Silver Spellthread I made, I think I have Osprey just about ready for Kara. The only thing I need to do is replace most of his gems (in Primal Mooncloth Belt and Robe) with +Stamina gems. At under 6K health, I feel just a bit anemic. I’d like to get that up to at least 6500 Health by the time I first go in there.
All in all, last night was a very successful run: Group coordination continues to improve; our tank is feeling much more comfortable and confident (always a good thing) and we advanced another member. Today, we’ll be going into Shattered Halls, many of us for the first time. Can’t wait to see how that goes!
