The HoS that beat them all.

There was a time not too long ago that I got a bit...disenfranchised with the whole Frost Emblem gig. Sure, I put my time in and picked up that libram, but what else from there? 95 emblems is a long way to save, especially when there are only a few bosses open in ICC. It all just seems like such the drop in the bucket, except the bucket is as big as Jesse Ventura's chin dimple. We didn't exactly have access to 25 man ICC for more badges, so I just sort of let things slide for a bit. I won't lie, the sometimes 20-30 minute wait times for a random dungeon were a bit much, too. Sometimes when I did get the gung ho urge to get those two emblems for the day taken care of and in the bag, I'd end up literally just waiting around in Dalaran with nothing to do except watch that little icon twist about assembling my group. Sadly, though, many times it just never worked out.

For those DPS out there, or rather, anyone else that suffers long wait times for the random dungeon finder, how awesome is it to have everyone ready to go when the alert comes up, only to have that one single person AFK out of it and push your group back into the waitlist? Well, that's how this HoS started.

Actually, to be quite honest, it started with three of those, not just the one. I could have handled the one, the waistlist cycle usually goes pretty fast. But this time, not so much. Two out of the three times it was the healer that AFK'ed out. Sure, probably not an issue for them, they get pulled in all the time, great. But for the rest of us? More of a growing annoyance. Lord knows that all DPS are trigger-happy to begin with. You know as soon as we hear that alert we're mashing that ENTER DUNGEON button faster than Bill Cosby guzzling pudding pops. So, a growing annoyance. Nothing major, but I'm sure it didn't start us off in the best of moods.

Right, ENTER DUNGEON -> Blue Bar -> HoS Zoned -> Tank quit. Yeah, that's pretty much how it went. Now, I don't know if there's some sort of stigma against HoS or anything, I mean, I've done it with the random group before and it was a piece of cake. Come to think of it, what of the old world Lich King dungeons aren't cake? We've only been doing them for a few months now, well, now probably more than a year come to think of it. Yes yes, the newest dungeons excluded of course, but the others, the standby's, those should be cake. This Halls of Stone should have been cake. Though apparently, the tank thought otherwise.

HoS: 1 Us: 0

We wait around for a new tank, another five minute debacle. I don't know, maybe because it was four in the morning, the tanks just weren't up yet. Those tanks need their beauty sleep whereas all of us DPS are meth-addicts that compulsively troll the internets late at night searching for that next big score. Nightly habits aside, we get the new tank, and things get rolling, whatever. Trash falls over before the tank can even target it. I think the enhancement shaman and I were doing 14k DPS combined. It was retarded. Blah blah blah, let's go get Brann, pulling the constructs leading to Brann, priest lags through the room and disconnects, wipe, Bran puts up a valiant showing of self defense for a total of five seconds before falling over.

HoS: 2 Us: 0

The priest returns in a hail of apologies--Brann was having none of it. We try to start the encounter again, Brann is stuck in tighter than the Alliance's grip on Wintergrasp for the past few weeks. Okay, maybe he's got some sort of internal cooldown, plenty of other bosses to kill, let's check them out. Druid tank ends up tanking the maiden chick in a shadow pool from 75% on down, the boss dies, I prove I can still do 4k DPS as a ranged retribution paladin.

HoS: 2 Us: 1

Druid tank splutters out something in broken English about computer troubles, leaves the party.

HoS: 3 Us: 1

Apparently the hunter was in league with the druid tank and mysteriously leaves the party as well.

HoS: 4 Us: 1

Well, it can't be all that bad, right? After another few minutes we pick up a new tank and a mage to fill the spots. We've cleared most of the junk in there, so it should be cake, right? I think I said that earlier, too. Brann's still stuck, kill the giant rock dude? Sure thing. Rock dude falls over with little issue. Tank immediately leaves the group.

HoS: 5 Us: 2

So boys and girls, this is what we like to call negative math. Once again we throw ourselves into the random dungeon finder, desperate to fill those two last spots and finally get out of the dreaded HoS. By some sort of crazy blind luck we fill yet another tank and DPS. All of the trash is cleared. All we have to do is go to Brann and start the archive encounter to open the last bit up. But you know...Brann was having none of it. Four tanks later, Brann was still bugged out and those original few left from when we started the run promptly kicked our towers over.

Honestly, I don't know what it was about that place, but Christ...I've seen Brutallus be more lenient on groups. Here's hoping your random LFG's go a bit better than mine have.