Now ... how many times have I been in discussions about the importance of researching before you go on runs and how much difference this actually makes.
My woody little druid has had two experiences recently that illustrate the worth and meaningless of this advice.
We had a guild run ... our second officially organised as a guild run type event. It was into Dire Maul for a guildies Warlock mount. We'd convinced her that it would be more fun to run the quest line rather than just train it. It lead to our first ever guild run where ten people registered for a run through Stratholme. Two level 80 tanks and a collection of other high level characters made this a walk in the park. It helped that they also KNEW WHERE TO GO! We used the raid function to sort two groups then degrouped to form the two groups for the run. The only people online were the ones who were in the run. We rolled through the place having had plenty of chatter in guild chat between the two groups. The positive feel in guild after was palpable and only made us more enthusiastic to tackle the next part of the warlock quest ... leading us to Dire Maul. I had not bothered reading ... I am ashamed to admit ... assuming that the two or three runs I'd done 20 levels ago on my furry kitty druid would be sufficient and hey ... someone else would know ... wouldn't they ... ahhhh no. Again we used raid to build the groups so every one knew who was with who then split to form two running groups. The first group went in with the warlock for its quest and got to the busy part of the group. My woody druid's group went in and we all turned to each other and went ... soooo ... Who knows the way? One moment of the experience saw the five of us running around one of the rooms in confusion as we could not even see the door to the next section right in front of our noses. Much tabbing in and out got us to a point where we knew what to do for the first section when the main group announced that they had what they needed to do and we should all come and see the newly aquired horse ... ahhh if only we'd read strategy notes on Dire Maul ... even just looking at a map would have been good!
Last weekend the same woody druid had an opportunity to go on a guild run to Halls of Lightning. She'd been hinted to that this event might be coming up and spent an evening reading Halls of Stone and Halls of Lighting strategy notes as the hint had not been clear about which of the two we'd been able to go on. Friday night dawned and saw us in HoL. A very nice place, the run went slickly, again tanked by one of our level 80 tanks admirably supported by a level 80 shadow priest, a 78 shadow priest and the woody druid at 77 ... yup ... we had a 4 man guild run through HoL that was smooth and slick. ... The only problem my woody resto druid had? Despite learning from the Dire Maul trip and spending time doing 'homework' so that she would be 'prepared' ... she did not recognise a damn thing in the place until she's cleared the final boss and was running back to the entry (why she did not hearth I am not sure) when she went 'hmmm I wonder if these were the ramps and platforms the notes were talking about?'
sooo .... does she keep researching before runs, or is she better to suck it and see then go read the notes to work out what the goodness was going on?
