With Naxx25 cleared over Wednesday and Thursday and plans for Malygos and Sartharion-plus-three-drakes in place for the weekend, that pretty much left a light ‘n’ easy, stretch-your-legs run through Naxx10 as Friday’s excursion. Anj was there, remarking to herself on how comparatively quiet the TeamSpeak channel was and hey, wow, what’s this?! Double-figure framerate? Cool!

We’d taken down Grobbulus, had a little break and a talk-through tactics before heading down the slimepipe towards Gluth. Anj was assigned to Zombie Chow kiting duty along with a couple of other ranged DPS, and there was much rejoicing.

As soon as the fight started, it was clear there was a problem.

Um… I’m not firing.

Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Auto Shot… nothing.

Back in the Burning Crusade days, every so often, I mean it was pretty rare, I would become the unwilling victim of some kind of a bug where my Auto Shot would stop working, I’d have to relog to get it back again, but this was different. No shots were working at all! What? What?!

Panicking, checking various possibilities commenced while zombies were making their way ever closer to Gluth. Then in my character window I saw a strange red border around the icon for the crossbow. Checking the tooltip was not pretty.

Durability 0 / 90

Oh noes! How did this happen?! Seriously? Okay, so I was summoned to the raid without time for repairs but no big wipes were planned and DurabilityFu showed an average of 55% for all gear! All, it seems, except the one weapon any hunter simply cannot exist without. And it chose the one encounter where it was needed more than anything else to present itself.

So…

So I…

Elune, forgive me…

I had to run up to Gluth and use (jarring chord) a melee weapon, up to this point largely uncontaminated by the blood of various baddies! Oh, the deliciously-inconceivable shame! That included clicking Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite from the spellbook when the cooldowns were up because, to be honest, I just don’t have them on my action bar! Why the hell would I? There’s a Wing Clip Plus Raptor Strike macro, that’s about it, it was only about a week ago that I discovered Mongoose Bite didn’t need a dodge to be usable any more.

Of course I still did my bit by breaking away every so often to set down a Frost Trap, but still. My name is Anj, and I’m a Melee Hunter. Hi.

I can only thank my guild for being a kindly, forgiving bunch and laughing it off while clearing trash as I hearthed back to Dalaran, got repairs and flew back in time for Thaddius.

It will make a great story for the grand-kids some day… :\