Took a break from heroics and raiding to run some almost-Outlands instances as my Disc priest. It was a trying night that saw us go through FOUR different tanks, despite an utter lack of player deaths, loot drama, or bad attitudes.

I was somewhat excited when a load screen I didn't immediately recognize popped up. I did some quick mental math and figured that the only instance at this level which this could be was Lower Blackrock Spire. I was excited to do it, but at the same time uneasy because I had absolutely no idea where to go, or what to do.

We ended up with a ret pally, a warlock, a hunter, and a pally tank. Nice, both Kings and Wisdom, I thought while tossing out Spirit and Fortitude buffs. Guess what I ended up with? NOTHING. Despite asking after the first pull for EITHER. Not a good sign.

We started clearing the trash and after determining that the tank was decent, and that my shields would hold up fine, I started to examine the hunter like I always do. However, my heart sank as soon as I turned to click on her, as she had Hellreaver equipped. Disappointing, but honestly? Not surprising! Using the LFG tool has really demonstrated why hunters have such a bad reputation as huntards. On the other hand she was cheery and nice, and had a boar pet (I love boar pets!) named Porkie.

Nonetheless, we were doing fine and were clearing the various cells and guard groups when the tank suddenly and abruptly left the group. We asked the ret pally if he also had a prot spec, but he didn't, so we re-queued and waited. After about 5 minutes the hunter said Porkie could tank if the ret pally could take some hits too and split the damage around. We decided to give it a go, and carefully finished clearing the landing and various cells. It was a little more intense healing, and I was tossing a lot of shields around, but we were managing. Then the warlock left group without a word.

/cue proverbial throwing of hands in air

We grumbled and re-queued. The three of us were also at a bit of a loss where to go, as there seemed to be a big door with NPCs behind it that we didn't know how to open. After about ten minutes we got two new people, a DK dps and another pally tank. The pally tank announced he had never done the instance (which is fine) and was really drunk (sigh).

We proceeded on, the tank holding aggro fine for the most part, but stumbling around a bit. He apologized for being drunk but we carried on without any real difficulty, and killed the first ogre boss. We all grabbed his skull but didn't know where we'd use it, nor where the Roughshod Pike was. Some random loot dropped that nobody needed, so we headed back to the bridges to continue when this tank suddenly dropped group, too! What the hell? It's not like we were wiping or bickering or anything.

After re-queuing we went back to our "tank" method of the ret pally running in and consecrating, Porkie grabbing a mob, and the DK deathgripping a different enemy, so no one was taking too much concentrated damage. In this sense, Discipline worked PERFECTLY, as I could just shield everyone and refresh them or toss out a Flash Heal here or there.

We proceeded like this for a while before getting our third tank of the night, a DK this time. My memory started deteriorating into a haze here, but what I know for certain is that we joined up, started crushing our way through the instance, and then the tank left without a word. AGAIN.

Not even surprised at this point, we went on, tank-less, and killed a few bosses on our own. One such boss was Mother Smolderweb, which was very annoying because everyone kept getting randomly webbed to the floor. And even after killing her, this continued happening! Everyone was completely confused and just chalked it up to strange vanilla dungeons. I later noticed a debuff on the hunter causing the random party snaring, which was because she was on the Mother's Milk quest. I didn't have the heart to bring it up though.

Finally we reached the pile of skulls, but still had no Roughshod Pike to use on it. The hunter announced that her bow was at 1 durability, so we waited while she teleported out and repaired. While she was doing this I had a brainstorm and started looking for the pike by chaining Mind Vision around the huge open cavern room, jumping from various mobs we had left alone, to the Lunar Event elder, even to some rats running around.

The hunter came back in as I was doing this, and luckily for us, I spotted the stand of pikes against the wall just as she was running past. She grabbed the pike and got back to the group, and just before we started the event our FOURTH tank joined the party, another DK.

I was able to cast levitate on him all the way across the ravine, so he was able to float down and skip a lot of the running, and join us fairly quickly. He ran up and immediately got webbed to the floor. /sigh

We summoned the boss and killed him, but after I turned in the quest Urok Doomhowl, we discovered that only one person was allowed to turn it in. Epic fail, Blizz. Epic fail.

Mercifully we reached the final boss shortly after that and took him out, and there was much rejoicing and thanking each other for sticking with it. Overall, one of the strangest instance runs I've had yet.