i < 3 Kara

Yesterday afternoon some guildees started putting together a ICC run that ended up falling through. I was still in a raid with two offline members, so i decided to make the most of it and attempt to solo some BC raids.  I had been debating with myself of a couple of days on whether i wanted to go BM and tame a Spirit Beast.

Why?  Well a couple of days ago i was trying to solo UtP again (my choices of where to go next for mounts are getting thinner now that i'm exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard) and i still cannot solo the first boss.  I always die, usually with Kill Shot up and with her at about 5% health.  The braziers and phase 2 are what do it to me.  Maybe if i feigned death at the right time...but i don't know what that time would be.    Bandages and pots are insufficient, i need to have heals, just one or two would be enough.  So the question become survivability.  Iorek doesn't do enough damage to get me out, with Sneux it's a close thing that doesn't always happen.  So the only thing i could figure was Spirit Mend.  Then i discovered that Chimera Shot heals.  I haven't been MM since BC, but i ran as that for a long time, a lot longer than i did as BM (even when that was "the" raid spec, i opted to be the SV hunter, even though i didn't really have "enough" agility for Expose Weakness to be a viable raid buff).

So yesterday i went duel spec finally (last time i had checked it cost 1k g to train!  When did it become 10g?) and built a soloing/pvp build.  Which is crazy because i always thought that SV was the pvp build with its trap bonuses that i never spec into, but apparently MM and BM enthusiasts are insistent that their way is best.

I no longer have any t5 and i'm still getting raid geared for Cata.  I couldn't survive Mag and couldn't get past the High King in Gruul's.  Kara, however, was a completely different story.  I one-shot everything up to Netherspite.  I couldn't solo NS because Sneaux can't take the beams so NS would heal to full while i had fatigue.  I don't have the burn to take her down before the second phase 2.  The only thing i can think of at this point is to try tanking in melee range.  This seems ludicrous, but if i'm taking all three beams at once...i don't know.  I tried to solo chess, but the first cheat (fire on the floor) occurs while i'm still stuck behind pawns that have yet to be slaughtered.  So i can't solo that, either.  Basically it looks like i can clear Kara up to NS.

Later in the evening the ICC raid was rebooted and i now have a LK kill under my belt and some achievements to boot.  My dps is lame compared to everyone else in the raid, but we beat the rocket ship with only two jet packs (yeah i accidentally started it when i went to the wrong npc and didn't read the text fast enough...it had been a while since i was in ICC once before /facepalm).

Screenshots are forthcoming.  I really gotta feed the pets and myself.