Trash, Glorious Trash

Although I had heard there was a lot of trash when you walk into Firelands, I wasn't quite prepared for the vast field of trash which greeted my view.  (And we thought BoT should be called "Bastion of Trash" . . .)

We spent almost the entire night on trash.

I'm not kidding.  We cleared trash to a certain point, progressing farther and farther into the fiery field, when Shannox finally spawned.  Then we cleared a little more trash to make some room for fighting the boss.  We got munched by the boss a couple of times.  Then we decided we didn't like our spot, but as we moved back to a spot we decided we liked better, closer to the entrance, we realized the trash was going to respawn.

Great.  Good time to take a break.

After the break, we cleared the trash (again) by the entrance.  There were a few, um, exciting pulls, when someone or another was knocked back or just wandered too close to another trash group.  But finally we were ready to seriously take on the boss.

After some discussion and plotting, we did manage to have some decent attempts on the boss.  The tanks figured out how to handle the stacks, which is definitely progress, so the night actually did end on a positive note.

The discouraging thing is knowing when we get in there tonight, we will have to face . . . the trash.  Again.

Considering I died about 7 times on the trash before we even faced the boss, you can guess my level of excitement and anticipation.  (I have really got to figure out why I was getting killed so often.  I wasn't pre-HoTing the tanks.  I wasn't on the top of the healing meters when they were reported to me, as Recount was out of order, so I couldn't look myself.  Why me?  Was it because I commented to the healers in healer chat that this place looked like a place where healing aggro might be a problem?  The very instance was trying to prove me right while having a laugh at my expense? /sigh)

On the bright side, a lot of people raised their reputation with Avengers of Hyjal to Friendly and picked up their new cloaks.  Also on the bright side, we now know a decent amount about what to do and not to do with the trash.  And I think four leatherworking patterns, including the leather hands, dropped and were picked up by our designated leatherworker.  (And a few purple pieces of gear dropped.)

The biggest bright sides of all:  my addons worked, and we had minimal lag problems!  I can't remember the last time a major patch came out and my important addons were all update-ready and operational immediately.  It was quite refreshing to focus on beating our heads against the trash and boss instead of beating our heads against addons and disconnects.  Yay!