Le sigh.

I swear, I want to curl up in my guild and hide from the outside world some days.

/shun

I was about to log off last night. I was tired. All I wanted to do was play my Shammy and level to 70, but it seemed it was a ‘one more thing… just one more’ kind of night.

Right at the end, JUST as I’m finally logging, I see someone post in trade, “Any tanks want to help us down the last boss in AN? It’s the daily heroic, easy 3 Emblems.”

That there is foreshadowing. “Easy 3 Emblems.”

Saying it again like that is overstating for comedic effect, just so you know.

Well… on the one hand, no. Please, no. I’ve done AN, I’ve gotten everything I want out of there, and I could care less about Emblems. All I do is buy more Bind on Account items with them on my tank. And the last boss annoys me because at least once a pull he bugs that stupid Pound, spinning to nail everyone behind him, or starting the cast when he pops up from a burrow, and then casting facing one way and it hits somewhere else. Just… no. Not with total strangers.

I only want to run that to get my friends the gear they want. Period.

Then, my sympathy kicks in.

Some poor group actually got all the way through the first boss in heroic AN, and then they lost a tank at the final boss. Oh, that would just kill me if I fought all that way for nothing. And I know that I’m somewhat overgeared for the fight, so if I volunteer I’ll be making it a bit easier on them to have a fast run.

Okay, sure. Fine. It’s one boss, even if it is with strangers. How bad can it be?

Oh. My. God.

Epic. Freaking epic. All the stereotypes are represented.

Names are completely being left off this one. I ain’t even going there.

Because even though some of them were awesome, by the end there was just too damn much drama, and if I name even one name, even of the people I thought rocked, word might get out about this post. And then I’d be holding back some of the bile, and I’d like to really let it loose on this one.

There were four other people, one unguilded in purples, one from one guild in all blues with some purple weapons, and two from the same guild in blues. Nobody that can cleanse poison at all.

It turned out that they were actually pairs. The unguilded one and the one in a guild were real life friends playing in the same room, apparently, from stuff the talkative one said several times. So it was two teams… and me the stranger in the middle.

I ask if everyone is familiar with the fight. They tell me they’ve wiped on it many times this evening. One of them says they just don’t understand it at all. Then they tell me the tank they had sucked, and the healer kept going out of mana in the middle, and when they told the healer their mana sucked the healer blamed the tank, and in the end both the tank and healer left in a huff. But they had a great healer now, so that wouldn’t happen again.

Then one of them asks who the main tank is.

Whut?

“Well… how many tanks do you think you need?”

I’m still really pissed about the instant know-it-all attitude from the one guy here. If you’ve wiped all night on this, you don’t bloody well know how to do the fight, you just know how to LOSE the fight. Go let Wellington tell you how well he knows the damn fight when he fought Napoleon, okay, pal? Closed minded know it all….

Anyway, what fresh hell is this again?

“Why are you asking who the tank is going to be?”

“You’re in DPS gear.”

….. okay, moving right along, I’m totally going to pretend that you did NOT just gear check me when you don’t understand what you’re looking at.

I let them know that, yes, I am the main tank, and will be providing the tanking services for this particular attempt.

I then proceed to begin explaining the fight.. only to be totally cut off.

“We know the fight. Gogogo.”

Ummm… if you know the fight so well, why are you wiping? Oh right, sucky tank and healer with no mana. Nothing to do with the DPS, not at all. So, since you have a Priest for a healer now… who exactly is cleansing poison in 50% and 25% add phases?

“We’ll heal through it.” Note it’s not the healer saying this, it’s the person that blamed the previous healer for sucking because they ran out of mana.

So I ask what is going to happen when, healing through the massive poison, the healer runs out of mana?

Will they blame the new healer too?

My sarcasm seemed to go unremarked. Go figure.

So, okay, a few of them know it all, blame other people for things without understanding the mechanics of the fight, and they are sniping at each other. Let’s give it a shot anyway.

Can you tell that, of the two teams I’m playing with here, I’m starting to get a feel for which one is snarky and close minded?

I charge in. I give it my best shot.

One of the DPS dies on a Pound, I Battle Rez perfectly on the fly to grab adds on the ramp. I do an extremely solid job of using my Survival Instincts, Berserk and other long cooldown abilities at just the right moment.

Healer runs out of mana trying to heal through the poison on the 25% venom adds. Not a bad first try with this crew.

And I’m actually, even though it was a wipe, pretty damn happy. I was in the zone, I FELT it, that feeling that I was spot on in both timing and execution of my skills. I responded to the tactical situation, I anticipated at the correct moments, Hell I even Bear bounced out of the damn spikes JUST the tiny amount necessary to get out of the damage effect but NOT so far as to pull out of position for melee DPS.

I was a smooth criminal, baby. 

Too bad the operation was a success but the patient died.

And the bickering begins. Who did what, who was to blame, yadda yadda.

One of them said something about why the tank didn’t have aggro on the boss at some point in there. 

Oh, HELL no. You did not just….

I mentioned earlier the way I hate some of his Pound related bugs, right? In that instance, the boss started casting Pound as he rose from burrow, and bugged out. He kinda stood off to the side facing the wall totally unresponsive for a couple seconds, and then began a late Pound cast. Almost like he lagged for a few seconds. 

I tell the crew flat out, I will not put up with that kind of finger pointing bullshit. If they intend to blame my tanking and aggro management for the wipe, then start now so I can hearth the hell out of there and not waste more of my time.

Everyone chills out, I get whispers from people in both teams about how the other person is the other team is dick or a noob…  and I reply to both of them the same way… “it’s okay, relax, the boss bugs sometimes, it’s more productive to give a try your best effort and learn from what YOU did, not place blame on what someone else did.”

So we try again. And again. And again.

Each time, just not enough DPS to get us over the 25% venom adds. Blame gets tossed around a little, but never on the right people… no, the blame comments come from the people I think of as the true failures. Because it’s always the same.

I’m telling the melee DPS to run the hell AWAY from the boss when he casts Pound, because he often bugs and follows the tank and Pounds behind him anyway, or just nails people behind him AND to the front, or some other shit. If I tank him in the middle, and you run away from him to the wall… you’re out of range no matter what he does.

They stand there on the bosses’ ass anyway, and someone gets one shot at least once on a pull.

Can’t really be down a DPS on the ramp adds, can you? Not if you’re healing through the poison.

We are at this long enough we actually have adds respawn at the front of the cave. The one three pull with a Skirmisher right before the first boss. 

The healer and someone else had already run inside in advance of us, and had dropped down to the boss. So there were three of us, no healer, and a three pull with a Skirmisher.

I said hell with it and we took them on without a healer and crushed them and moved on. Yeah, I’ve said it before, Survival Instincts, Feral Regeneration, Lifeblood and Enrage in combination ROCKS. Healer optional for me… if someone else dies on the trash, I’ll rez you. Be damned if I quit now.

Finally we have a wipe and one of them just goes offline. Not a word, just offline, never comes back.

Another from the other pair sees the guy go offline, and decides not to come back from being dead. Just stays dead as the rest of us are in the instance waiting.

The guy who never comes back from being dead whispers me to tell me that his friend is just walking around, and they’re not coming back, it’s time to abandon these other losers, they don’t have what it takes. But hey, you’re a great tank, an awesome tank, and I’m being added to his ‘one of the greatest tanks on the server’ list.

I tell him to go ahead and leave with his friend, it’s cool, I’d explain it to the others. And, since I had lead so I could mark targets on the fly, I remove him when it becomes clear he is going to stay to see what I tell them.

With those two gone, I ask the healer, the only one besides me remaining, if they know where their guildie went. I figured they knew their guildie had left out of being irritated at the comments, and might be able to get him to return now that the run had changed it’s tone.

Nope, he’s gone. But they do get another guildie to come. I get my secret weapon, Razedbarre, to come in as DPS. And the other person gets one more DPS from their guild to volunteer.

Do you understand what has happened? The healer is the only person left of the original crew that started this run. And I am by God going to get this done for them. Oh hell yes, it’s happening. I don’t give a shit if I get 4 Sidhe Devils and the healer in the group if that’s what it takes to get it done at this point.

Because it was NOT the healer’s fault. The healer kicked ass. The healer was all in blues, except for crafted epic Tailoring and JC items. And as far as I know, the items she did have, the Moonshroud stuff, takes a long time and a lot of effort and money to make. She did a great job with the tools she had, I saw the intelligent use of heals, mana conservation, and use of Shadow Beast at just the right times.

The DPS either could NOT keep themselves out of Pound, or could NOT get the venom adds down. Period. How the hell is that the Healer’s fault?

But if we quit now, then the healer was going to walk away having had some asshat dump his bile on them, blaming them on the wipes.

I’m 26 gold in the hole for this run in repair bills. We’re finishing the damn run. Someone is walking away with a freaking win, do you hear me?

I get comments and mails all the time from people telling me about how they or their spouse were simply playing the game, doing their best, and doing well, and some immature little asshat having a difficult time in a run not only blasts them for the difficulty or wipes they experience, but just unloads a pile of hate on them. Adn I hear about how this makes someone who is either a new player, or a casual player, feel like shit.

Having someone blame everything on you, when you haven’t played your class and other classes AND the instance enough to have the experience and self confidence necessary to KNOW they are full of shit, can really tear you up inside. If you care about what you do, that is.

Not this time. Not on my watch.

We went in with three members of their guild, and me and Razedbarre. We went in with a mission; kick ass, any way possible.

And we did it, first time, first try with this group.

Now, there were deaths. Yes, there were. I used my Battle Rez again, and unfortunately the person I rezzed died to a spike moments later. Another of the people did a great job, but even with a self-rez, couldn’t quite make it through.

But we did enough DPS, we survived long enough, and the healer kept us together well enough that we scored a win.

Razedbarre and myself were the last two standing, but we had the win. And it tasted sweet.

What tasted even sweeter was when the person that ditched the group for being losers whispered me the second we downed the boss to ask, jokingly, how it was going. And I was able to truthfully reply, “No problem, we brought in some guildies and cleared it first try with the new team.”

He seemed a little… unhappy at that news.

What should I have said? Sorry we succeeded despite your bailing in a huff?

And I’ll tell you something else. I made damn sure I let those folks know that I felt they had done a damn fine job, and they should be proud of the win.

There is being undergeared, and there is being unskilled.

They were very undergeared for one of the hardest heroic challenges in the game right now.

But their hearts, and their skills, were spot on.

That healer never got a bad attitude, never got pissy, they just tried their best, did their best, and when people left they tried and succeeded to get more friends in to keep going, and they didn’t quit. They didn’t give up.

They had heart. And I am so happy to have spent an hour and more of wiping with them to get them that win.

Okay, I still winced when I paid that repair bill, though.

I’m on your list as a tank, bud? Well, I assure you, you are on my list too.

Bet on it.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Recap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.