Pugging a raid

Sunday afternoon i was about to log as there wasn't much to do, or at least i didn't fell like doing it, when i saw someone spamming in trade: Looking for Offtank and Holy Pala for Karazhan (T5-T6) for speedrun.
I decided to give it a shot and offer my warrior's help which has T4+ gear as i look at it, not exact what they requested but too be honest that was a bit absurd. Without much questioning i got the job so i relogged and entered the raid.

Once i got to Deadwind pass i noticed not everyone wasn't geared in T5-T6 at all... most were decked in epics tho but mostly T4 and perhaps some T5 equilevant but others still had their share of blues. The maintank wasn't better geared then me either with a bit less stamina and quite likely less armor aswell when i inspected him. His avoidance seemed to be lower aswell as he had a few lower level items then me, even a blue still.
I'd be the first to admit that gear isn't everything, skill can often compensate for a bit lacking gear.. besides he was in before me, would probably be tricky to make me MT as i got in last.

It proved to be an interesting run anyway, people's tactics were a bit different for starters. Also when we (my guild) do Karazhan, being an Offtank is a quite boring job... there are only a few bosses where you need a second tank and just a few trashpulls aswell.
In this case i got plenty to do, people ninjapulling extra mobs or Hunters sending their pets to attack out of range groups (i'm expecting quite a few alts were along) or even the MT not generating enough threat so i took over the mob or even boss. Just a handfull of people used a threatmeter anyway and the MT wasn't one of them, how are we supposed to know we are about to overaggro him? Or in fact, how does he know he's generating enough threat?
When i tank i rarely look at the meters aswell, i just go full out threat and that's enough 99% of the time.. things only go wrong when i don't have rage and people start nuking a mob before i hit it ór my first attack gets parried or dodged. (but still have Taunt as a backup plan then, for those mobs which aren't immune)

Moroes was quite interesting aswell. The plan was to kill the Priest, a Warrior (i had to OT it), a Paladin (got feared) and then the Boss. After that we would kill the last Paladin (got shackled). With 2 Hunters along i'd rather see something trapped then feared myself, but it was their run.
So how did this theory translate into battle? I ended up tanking the priest and the warrior at start and quickly picked up the paladin after it got feared. In meantime i tried to build threat on the boss aswell so i could stay 2nd on his aggrolist so he wouldn't go after a healer or dps if he disorientated the MT.
I taunted the Paladin which was supposed to be shackled of a healer as it didn't get reshackled much and we ended up killing that one aswell, saving the boss for last.
It's save to say that the healers did an excellent job keeping me up with me tanking that many mobs while needed top up the MT aswell as people who had the Bleed debuff.

While they claimed it was a speedrun, it wasn't very fast imho... lots of waiting for who knows what and quite some people AFK'ing. Once we killed the Opera boss and made our way to the backdoor, the mage stepped out as he simply ran out of time and expected to have gotten further into Karazhan by now. We got some replacements, the MT dropped out aswell so i was the new MT, getting an extra dps in.
As it was almost 17h already i told them i would be off in about an hour or so aswell so best to start looking for a tank in meantime.
We decided to do Nightbane first and a couple of people were able to summon him it seemed but then the AFK'ing started again....
17h30 we finally got most of our people back except the one of the replacements who had something RL come up and had to go afterall for which he got thanked quite explicit, it took a while but the true face of a pug was finally showing.
Shortly after we found out no one could summon Nightbane afterall, eventho i scrolled back up and saw people say "i can summon NB". So the next target was Curator.... with still a replacement to be found for the 10th person (which was the 4th hunter in the group btw) i didn't expect it to make it in 30mins so i let them know and departed aswell.
I thanked them for the run sofar and while no one returned the gesture i didn't get blaimed for leaving either, then again i announced it an hour early.

Besides some repaircosts i still got myself seven Badges and a refreshed appreciation of my guildmates... even when doing Kara with mostly alts in blue gear we tend to go faster ánd have more fun. Don't get me wrong though.. i've had worse runs in the past but i guess i'm just spoiled ;)