Arachnophobia... nah, we got it

We started Naxxramus this weekend and despite my misgivings about our gear level we did great. We started late and had some trouble getting a full group, which is not unusual. What was unusual was we were having trouble filling a dps spot. Had two tanks, two and a half healers, and all but one dps. After two mages came in and dropped out, Bob came online with his DK, which worked out real well. Jr was running the raid, since the guild rule is pretty much you want it you lead it, and that worked out really well too, except that he has a bad habit of interrupting people. Some of that's just a function of the headphones, but when I specifically try and talk to the other healer, butting into the middle of it will just delay things more.

We started out with the Plague Quarter. That did not go so well. We were having real problems with those two gargoyles guarding the doorway. We tried everything we could think of, even running me and Jag the offtank all the way to one side and the rest of the raid all the way to the other to try to mitigate damage. I had no problems keeping Jag up, but it still didn't seem to help. So after a few wipes we decided to try a different wing. There was a lively discussion of which wing the internet said was the easiest. I'm of the belief that "easy" and "hard" are relative to what your strengths and weaknesses are, not what the internet says, so I was getting a little antsy about the whole thing. Finally, they settled on the Arachnid Quarter.

I have to say, the Arachnid Quarter went really well for us. It went well to the point that I don't really remember if or how many times we wiped from start to finish of that wing. We wiped a few times on Widow, it just took a while to get the timing on killing the adds down. I was really impressed with the tanking abilities of the DK. I was able to stick to him like glue and didn't have any trouble keeping him healed up while the rest of the raid was alive. I even had time to keep PoM and Renew up on the tank as well. I really like that I can shield the DK whenever I feel like it. Of course, he was a good tank too who was adaptable to whatever strategy we wanted to try, which made it that much easier.

All the loot was taken and used, that was good too. I'd much rather see that than d/e fodder. It took us a good 2 hours to clear that wing, and there was some talk about trying to do another one, but some people had to go so we called it while we were ahead.

It was so nice to have two strong healers and an off healer for this raid. Since War's a drood he took over the main tank heals, I took the off tank and AOE, and Tran did Flash of Light top ups and dispels as needed. The hardest part for me, having done mostly 5 man heroics, was sticking to my own job. I'm so used to doing ALL the healing and dispelling, it was difficult not to go nuts healing everyone. There was a couple times I just had to take a deep breath and say "trust them, it's OK". Everything worked out great.