10m H-Halfus - with no mage

Last week we lost our mage (if anyone sees a panel van in the greater KC area where the driver is constantly screaming "YOU DOCTOR YET!!?!" at every Asian male he sees, call me) and were forced to go out and find ourselves a replacement.  While we didn't land a mage right away, we did pick up a shaman who seems to be fitting alright - at least he has an active desire to learn.

Catching an interrupt

Traditionally on H-Halfus we used our mage to blink out of the AoE stun and get his interrupt off on the shadow nova.  As long as Crathia (our hunter) wasn't being an idiot and releasing the wrong drakes "But guys, it has an X - it must be right!", this worked every time.  As long as we lived through the first two drakes, the the fight was in the bag. 

Now, not so much.

Things we tried

First thing we did was send Crathia out for a spanking new Nether Ray.  Supposedly you can talent them for a 30% stun reduction, and they have an interrupt.  Now I don't know if it is because the pet wasn't lvl 85, if the stun duration wasn't enough/talented, or if it just doesn't work any more. 

We also had our shaman - who was resto - put in a stun duration reduction meta gem.  That plus the Orc racial (that's right, he didn't sell out and go Goblin) should have been enough to give him time to get a wind shear off.  But that didn't work either. 

We finally resorted to a pally bubble rotation.  Fortunately we have three Paladins, so we were able to bubble through the stuns and get an interrupt off every time.  I suppose we could have used HoP on our Shaman once as well, HoP the shaman, three bubble rotations, then HoP again.  Though I really hope we wouldn't need five interrupts. 

What happened to BTP?

Now I know Bring the Player not the Class has some restrictions on it.  You obviously can't bring all tanks/healers or what have you, and a raid of all melee DPS might have some problems, but this is rediculous.  You could save your potion CD for a Free Action Potion, but then you cut out your DPS boost or a mana pot. 

So I'm ok with having multiple ways out of this, but damn.  Paladins have a 5min CD on their bubble.  Spriest is a 2 min CD on Dispersion.  It's kind of a gong show if you ask me.  I suppose we could have our interrupters get a PvP trinket for the fight, but even that is on a 2 min CD.   /shakes fist

I suppose it is better than Razivus still though - where you HAD to have Spriests for the MC, and back in the 40m raid days you had to bring a whole stable of them.  Speaking of that - was Naxx bigger in the 40m days?  I'm thinking about some of the fights, and damn if it wouldn't be super crowded with 40 people in there.