I mentioned a while back ( though I cannot find the post) that I always end up getting shiny things when I just head along to help people out. “Can someone come help Q do his Kara attunement in SLabs?” “Sure, I’ll bring my hunter, y’never know I might be lucky.” So, the huntard who breaks sheeps, leaves aspect of the pack on and had to take a tank pet into an instance (no dps pet high enough level) gets the vaulted [Sonic Spear] on his very first trip to Shadow Labs. I hear the howls of furious decent hunters baying for my blood… *ahem* (At least, I know Softi seemed to be - she told me I should blog about it!)

Learning!
However, I did not only come away from it (and the other instances, we ended up doing the whole chain) with just a shiny new spear! I done had me a learning curve. The last time I’d instanced was in Ramparts - that was about it in the whole 1-70 grind except when I was being boosted. I had to suddenly contend with dps cycles, crowd control, misdirects, pet management and watching where I was standing all at once! I had warned my guildies of my nubbishness before we went in and they were forgiving of the couple of big faux pas’ I made (hitting a sheep, leaving wrong aspect on). They lol’d at my weedy dps (I was doing less than the tank - our t5/6 equipped feral druid) but were generally helpful - we had two hunters with us - one as their hunter and another on his mage alt - who I asked quick questions of (do hunter’s marks overwrite one another? was one I remember).

By the time we had gotten a little ways into Shadow Labs I was getting used to the dps cycle so I could free up my concentration to do other stuff - I had a go at misdirecting the tank on the ‘Time For Fun’ boss and was managing my pet well enough that it only took one sonic boom on murmur. *ahem* A quick blistz through the first half of arca and then onto Durnholde. Ok, I’m getting into it, I can chain trap, misdirect and my dps has increased a bit.

Into BM we go. Lets start! Oh, wait, where’s the other hunter? The one taking care of the adds?! Ohcrap he’s not even in the instance yet! Well, I learned very quickly how useless I was at kiting multiple mobs. However, I managed to hold most of them off until he had scooted into the instance and took up the job. I got into the habit of laying a frost trap at each portal to slow the mobs more for him and happily pulled a few off the healer which had gotten loose. By this time I was feeling a lot more slick (yes, I know I’m still a nub) and a little more confidant in my huntering.

In the end I gained 200dps just by getting less flustered about all my buttons (and, my goodness, hunters have so many!) and I learned some valuable lessons for if/when Dryn ever instances again. One of the hunters also let me copy his BM spec auto/steady/kill command macro (he’s surv at the moment) and recommended some others I should go get if I wanted to do more instancing.

Still can’t believe I got that spear first run. On my grind-auto-shot-bot. *cackle*