The picture says it all...

So this weekend I got my first taste of the wonderful world of pugging (Pick Up Group) and I can now see why this isn't the method of choice for raiding. I got to heal in Ramparts and Blood Furnace, and this was my first time in either of them.

Ramparts - I need the quest in here to get the three boss' body parts. (Head, hand, foot) It took all of 3 mins. to find interested people on a Sunday afternoon. We headed in and things started out ok. With healbot up things were going pretty good. The only problems we ran into are when our tank would "pull" without actually pulling things back away from approaching patrols. All of a sudden, 4 mobs jump to 8 and we wiped pretty darn quick. But through it all I think we only wiped 3 times during the entire instance, so overall I felt proud that I was able to keep most of the group alive at all times. I got my quest turned in at Honor Hold and then was led into the Blood Furnace with the next set of quests.

Furnace - This wasn't a complete PUG as my good buddy Koreth came with his bad ace pig pet BossHog! I think we ran this we four people (and two pets) and it didn't seem to take long at all. This group was a lot more organized and we only had one wipe. (again not pulling far enough away from another group) This was my first time in the furnace and it was a ton of fun to say the least. During the marathon fight (before the floating eyeball boss) things got a little hairy as I was running out of mana, but a well placed mana potion and an innerveration got us through the fight. The only other time that we wiped was at the last guy, but that wipe was due mostly because of spacing. (or lack there of)

All and all I really enjoyed doing these two instances, the first two that I had really run complete since Deadmines. I had been in a couple of others like sunken temple and zal'furak but never had I run the all the way through. Partly was because they take soooo long. These two at Hellfire Citadel went real quick, especially when we stopped dying! Also, I had never really tried to PUG before this weekend, but it wasn't as bad as I had heard. I don't want to make a habit of it, but it got the job done. I can't wait until our small (really small) guild has enough high level characters to manage a 5-man run and I know who I am dealing with a little better... until then I guess it is pugging for fun!!!