Today I decided to queue for Shadowfang Keep! It's a dungeon I've done a few times with my horde characters so I know it fairly well, and I know there's some nice caster drops in there. I think it's a nice instance; a creepy castle full of wizards and werewolves - the place is fun to explore.
I accept the group invite to find myself at the start with a paladin, mage, hunter and warrior. An argument starts over who's the tank, despite the paladin having the tank sign on his head. We convince the warrior he's dps, but the other group members get annoyed when they realise he's only come with a sword and shield and has no big 2-hand sword. I vote against the attempt to kick him from the group, thinking it's too soon and we should give him a chance. But after the vote goes around again I give in and let him be removed. He's replaced by another hunter. The mage then tries to trade me to enchant my weapon, but I realise I can't give him my weapon to enchant as we're on different servers and that's not allowed. After asking many times, the mage finally figures out how to trade me some water, but in all this confusion it seems the paladin tank got sick of his healer standing around trying to get water out of a mage, and he quits.
We start clearing trash using the hunters' pets as tanks, and it's not too hard to keep them up. Everything goes fairly smoothly and we're eventually joined by a druid tank - who I'm suspicious is the same druid tank who DC'd in Deadmines. Our mage also leaves and is replaced by a rogue.
We move along fairly switfly, with me managing to keep everyone and their dogs up. The druid doesn't seem keen to tank and keeps going into cat-form and just dps'ing, probably because the pets are doing a better job of tanking and there's not much point in him going bear. However, without the druid in bearform there's no-one to taunt and I'm often getting smacked by mobs. Luckily I remember to use 'Fade', and this often saves my life!
The group is fairly disorganised, but mostly effective. The druid seems to randomly switch around between forms, the hunters occaisionally disengage over my head, as if they're holding a backwards long jump competiton, I often have problems keeping everyone in line of sight, and I one point I get as low as 35 hit points left, before I manage to hide around a corner and shield myself with my last bit of mana.
Another hunter then leaves and is replaced by a mage, but at this point we're far into the instance and have to wait ages for the mage to get to us, and when he's almost there he seems to go AFK!! The druid gets tired of waiting and starts pulling mobs, despite the remaining hunter continously pleading with him to stop, and eventually he pulls a trash pack and a boss, totally unnecessarily. The mage still hasn't moved his backside into the same room as us, and although we desperately try to survive the druid's rapid and moronic pulling skills I just can't keep everyone up. I'm out of mana fast, the hunter and druid die, but luckily the boss is down and I manage to kite the last two mobs around while the rogue stabs them from behind. The mage arrives just as I'm rezzing the dead, and I resist the urge to make some sarcastic comment about his timing.
We move into the last room and kill the final boss. The mage wins the caster item that drops, but I'm not really that bothered as it's kinda low level for me now. In fact, I think the instance was a bit low level as I wasn't getting any experience points from the first part.
What did I learn from this dungeon?
I think many people are signing as more that one thing so they have a better chance of getting a group. For example, I think many people are signing as tank, but hoping that they are selected as dps. And I think the warrior in this group signed as tank / dps and then was disappointed and unprepared when he was joined up as a damage dealer. This is causing confusion and arguments. I have been signing up as healer or damage, but I know I'd be bored as hell if I was in a group as a damage dealer, cause I'd be stuck at the back causing agonisingly little damage by throwing the odd disease on things. So in future I'm only signing as healer.
Deadmines and Shadowfang keep down! I'm level 27 and still only one death to my name, and no wipes while I'm healing :)
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