Professional Hunter of Trolls

I said in my post from a week ago that my highly successful Zul'Gurub pug really made me want to go again, so it shouldn't surprise you to hear that I spoke up when I saw the very same warlock forming another group early on Saturday afternoon. It's interesting how much more confident I immediately felt, now that I had a clue what was going on. On Hakkar I even did the fetching of the sons - not exactly voluntarily, but nobody spoke up when the raid leader asked for volunteers, at which point they asked me personally and I agreed.

I did okay on it too - on our first attempt my timings were a bit off in that I pulled them too soon and they ended up whacking people for a bit before we killed them. Several people said this shouldn't have been an issue as they don't hit that hard but I couldn't disagree that it wasn't optimal (though it wasn't what caused lots of people to die, forcing us to reset the fight once again). Still, on the next attempt I was pretty much spot on and everything else went much more smoothly too. I only died once during the entire run and that wasn't really my fault as I got the Mark of Arlokk and got mauled to death by approximately a million panthers.

I also got insanely lucky with loot again, upgrading no less than seven gear slots this time around. Max-level loot in Classic can be a bit unintuitive, which is how you end up with things like warriors wearing leather to optimise their dps, but I didn't need a best-in-slot guide to know that everything I got was a huge upgrade from the green levelling gear I was still sporting. Specifically I got:

Blooddrenched Mask from Arlokk - I'm generally not a fan of wearing leather instead of mail, but this was just such an insanely obvious upgrade that I didn't feel bad for rolling on it, especially as the only other person I figured might have wanted it was a reasonably well-geared gnome rogue.

Eye of Hakkar - not sure why you'd make a necklace out of an eye... but I wasn't going to say no to 40 attack power and one percent extra crit, especially when what I was wearing at the time was some blue levelling neck that only had some intellect on it (I'm not 100% sure now but I think it was this one from an Uldaman quest)

Might of the Tribe - from Thekal, again just a nice upgrade from some crappy old green

Zandalar Predator's Bracers - ok, so these weren't a drop, but the run as a whole raised my reputation from neutral to friendly, meaning I could finally hand in the bracer token I won last time to equip these lovely bindings. Before that I was still wearing Ironaya's Bracers from Uldaman.

Belt of Shriveled Heads - this was a quest reward from a one-time quest to kill all five of Hakkar's priests (and which I had missed before). I was a bit torn whether to choose this or the leather version, which seemed quite good with its extra hit too, but in the end I couldn't abide the idea of wearing a belt with that much strength on it.

Bloodstained Legplates - these dropped from Jin'do, and I was sure they were going to be mine as the only other hunter already had better, so I was very surprised when I lost the roll to a warrior. Was that agility and crit really so good for a warrior that it made up for the amount of the stat budget lost to (useless) intellect? It seemed a bit dumb, but I figured that I really shouldn't complain considering that I'd already won three items before that. As it happened though, the warrior who won them approached me on the way to Hakkar and traded me the legs after all, saying in whispers that he had misread the stats when rolling. Win!

Mandokir's Sting - this was a lovely surprise as I had actually browsed the overall Zul'Gurub loot table on Wowhead beforehand and thought that the only ranged weapon upgrade that I might be able to get was going to be the gun from Hakkar. I don't know how I managed to miss this lovely bow, but the fact that it dropped and I won it was easily the highlight of the run for me. What an upgrade from my Thornflinger!

It's been a long time since I got this excited about loot, but getting all these massive upgrades for what ultimately felt like relatively little effort (besides the initial mental hurdle of daring to join a pug for a raid despite of my limited experience and lack of preparedness) has just been one huge sugar rush to be honest. And all this on a character that hasn't actually done a single one of the level 60 five-man dungeons yet!