A quick post to thank everyone that commented and offered advise and suggestions concerning my failed attempts at healing last night.

Tonight, I was ready to throw in the towel on healing, and focus on 100% Bear tanking. I even went so far as to spend about 10,000 gold on Bear upgrades before assaulting the randoms.

Your comments and guidance led me to take a step back, respec, really rearrange things on my VuhDo and think about what you said, and I went into Blackrock again with a pug.

It went as smooth as Paula Dean’s favorite snack food.

My mana damn near stayed at 100% during the entire run, Lifebloom stayed on the tank in 3 stacks, I watched for and used Regrowth when the Omen of Clarity procced and almost no other time except when a Warrior looked like they could use some topping up.

I sparingly used Rejuvenation, prioritized Healing Touch more, and even halfway through started using Swiftmend for no other reason than to incorporate that plus Efflorescense into my arsenal.

It was a much easier pace, it basically felt like healing a half speed run, because of the lessened stress of the damage. It gave me time to experiment with what you’d told me in practise, without actually endangering the group.

The only time I felt the need to hurry out of a measured rhythm was when the tank pulled several mobs at once in the Quicksilver flame room, and I think he stood in the fire a little. No harm done, it was good to have to respond quick and see where my instincts took me, a good way to see what habits I really need to break.

To cut this short, I had an extremely pleasant healing run, I received two upgrades, the Intellect/Haste trinket dropped off the last boss for me and I won it, and my confidence in being able to learn as long as I do so at my own pace has been restored.

Thank you all very, very much.

Oh, and an special thank you to Nodenugget for recommending the addon GTFO!, which provides audible warnings when you’re standing in bad stuff, and visual warnings if you use Power Auras. It’s a lot of fun, and could be highly useful to pass the word around to all your friends.

When Patch 4.0 was originally released, I’d heard that Healing had changed drastically in the game.

I have read Blue posts, both before and after the Patch release, that talked about the state of Mana regeneration, and how Wrath of the Lich King had shown that healers had it far too easy. In Wrath, Healers did not have to watch their Mana apparently, and thus could cast any spell they liked irrespective of what Blizzards’ designers intended.

I’d read that healing was now much more difficult, and also that it was now just right; that a challenge that had been lacking was returned to the healing game.

From the majority of comments and thoughts I read, I gathered that healing was much harder than it used to be, but that it is now exactly where it should be. A challenge, rather than a relaxed route to easy Justice and Valor points.

Of course there were opposing points of view, people who claimed that it was far more difficult now than it really needed to be. But such views have generally been met with disdain and scorn. I’ve seen a rise in claims that such complaints or concerns come from those who didn’t know what real playing was like back in Vanilla WoW or Burning Crusade. I’ve seen the term “Wrath baby” bandied about repeatedly, apparently directed at people who played during the Wrath expansion and committed the unforgiveable sin of liking it.

I haven’t shared any of my thoughts on the subject at all before, because I had not healed any group activity since Patch 4.0, long before Cataclysm itself was released.

I hadn’t healed… that is, until now.

That’s changed. I’ve healed some pugs. I’ve experienced the changes first hand, months after everyone else granted, and unsurprisingly I’ve got an opinion about it.

I have multiple characters that could heal, but the character I have the most experience with is my Druid, so that’s what I went with.

I leveled my Druid to 85 as pure Feral Bear tank spec. No, I didn’t tank my way to 85.

I know it probably sounds silly, but I like playing my Druid with a full Bear tank spec, even when I know I’m going to be solo questing as a Cat through the game. I couldn’t explain why, except to say, you just never know what may pop up. Like a sudden request to tank the CoC ‘Ring of Blood’ style quests in Twilight Highlands. It is, after all, the Feral Druid marching song: Be Pre-Beared!

Sure, I would have done more damage soloing in Kitty if I specced appropriately, but why bother? Fast or slow, they all die regardless.

I had not, not even once while leveling, considered healing something. I was too busy killing stuffs.

Once I reached level 85 it was time to try healing. Well, okay, once I’d leveled all my professions on 8 different characters, and leveled three characters to 85, and did this and that and bunches of other stuff… oh yeah, right, they changed up healing didn’t they. 

I did everything I could in advance to make sure I would NOT hurt other players while I learned how things had changed.

First, I as a level 85 Druid decided to only attempt to heal the first two instances of normals, Blackrock and Throne. No true randoms until I knew what was up. Level 85 does not mean ‘ready to rock’.

Second, I went to Keeva’s brilliant RestoDruid.info website, and carefully read and worked to understand everything she had to say concerning desired Stats, changes to spells, suggested Resto Druid specs and what situations they were for, everything.

Third, after respeccing and accumulating the best gear I could, I set up my VuhDo to incorporate my understanding of the new importance of Lifebloom, Nourish, Rejuvenation and the rest.

Now, my gear wasn’t the best, obviously. I had chosen leather spellcaster quest rewards as I leveled and kept them, IF there weren’t feral items available. I hadn’t gone out and worked at it. What I had done, though, was keep any spellcaster leather I made while leveling Leatherworking, and there was some good stuff in there. My eventual Resto set ended at an average iLevel of about 315. Not good enough to unlock Heroics, but that wasn’t what I wanted, anyway. I optimistically hoped that an 85 Resto Druid with iLevel 315 gear should be able to successfully heal a regular level 82 instance or two while I tried things out.

Right? I mean, that’s not out of line, is it? I know I’m rusty, but I was healing at level 80 quite a bit for fun, and yes, I know things have changed a LOT, but I have the instant responsiveness and visual awareness VuhDo provides, which is more than the default UI would provide for a healer.

Blizzard has to balance content with the understanding that people without VuhDo can successfully heal, right? That there could be as much as a .5 second delay between selecting a party member and casting the appropriate heal?

Yeah, that’s what I tell myself. Right now, I’m not really believing it.

My first healing instance was Blackrock Caverns. About as easy as you can get, and probably the single instance I know best other than Stonecore. I know exactly where to be, how things hit, what to expect, no problem.

Beyond that, I expect that if the instance is designed that an 82 could heal through it, it should be possible that I can do it at 85 with better gear.

I said possible, not likely.

The very first trash pull, and indeed the entire instance, I forgot that according to RestoDruid.info, I should be prioritizing Lifebloom on the tank, along with Nourish. Instead I fell back on old habits and used Rejuvenation 100% uptime, Wild Growth for party heals at an almost 100% uptime, and Regrowth for my “fast top up” spell. Nourish occasionally showed up, but Lifebloom was nowhere, NOWHERE to be found as part of my toolset. Terrible, terrible bear.

By definition, the healing went fine, because I kept everyone alive. I did burn through nearly my entire 67000 Mana pool on the very first trash fight.

There is something obscene about bring given stupid high numbers for health and mana after all these years, only to have the costs of things increased to make those high numbers feel puny and insignificant. It doesn’t feel right at all. The numbers now feel meaningless to me in and of themselves.

“Oh, 1500 more health? Oh well, that’s nothing. Nothing at all. It’s not even worth eating the food, the mob will hit for 8,000 a pop. What, Runic Healing Pots? They don’t even heal 5000, might as well toss ‘em.”

That’s pretty sad. When advancement within the game is based strongly on improvements to stats, the value of those stats need to have meaning. I feel when  you’re reduced to looking at an iLevel, ignoring the number on a stat in favor of just checking which categories of stats are present, “I want crit more than haste, so I’ll pass on this iLevel 300 in favor of this other iLevel 300”, things have gone just that bit too far. Reforging just exacerbates the problem, by making it feel that how much of the stat is moved ain’t important, just move as much as is available over to a more useful category.

Just my opinion as a former theorycrafter for the past whatever years; the numbers aren’t impressive at all, because they do NOT correspond to an equivalent feeling of  capability.

Why not? 5000 strength has to be more impressive than 500, right? It would seem so, but the higher your characters level, the more of a stat you need to gain the same effect. Sure, you ARE more powerful with that 5000 strength… but at 85 with 5000 strength you aren’t as comparatively powerful as a level 60 character with 5000 strength. That’s always felt like a deceptive design practice to me; to visibly give you more of a stat on items as you level, but behind the scenes reduce the effectiveness of those same stats so they do less.

You feel like you’re leaping forward, but mostly you’re just treading water. In Cata, the stat imbalance almost feels like you’re drowning.

It gets too noticeable when the bad guys leap ahead in power faster than you do, even when your stats are getting all bloated and ridonkulous.

Enough about my little soapbox on the stat changes. It’s old news anyway, but it is how I feel, and it certainly applies to my shock at watching 67000 Mana evaporate by casting Rejuvenation and Regrowth during a single trash fight.

I felt, overall, as I adjusted to the changes the run went well. I used the wrong spells from the point of view of mana conservation, I spent a lot of time drinking espresso, but everyone was alive and nobody was ever even close to being in danger of dying. Wow, I could heal a level 82 instance. Cool!

What I took away from the experience was an awareness that the game had really changed from a healing point of view, if the fight takes just a little teeny bit too long and you don’t use the ‘right’ spells, you’re sucking vapor in your mana pool fast.

Even more urgent to consider, this was an 85 healing a level 82 instance. If I’m struggling on that, clearly I need to really get my head wrapped around the importance of Lifebloom and Nourish for tank healing.

It was a bit of a shock, but I wasn’t disheartened. I could make it work. I just needed to improve my gear and practice, practice, practice.

Last night, I accidentally queued up for a true random, and got Grim Batol. Not just GB, but a group that had apparently wiped already, because we formed up in the starting chamber with the three quests, but we ran straight to the drakes and rode quite a good ways into the instance before being offloaded.

I was not pleased. I don’t want to mess up other players while I’m trying to relearn the ropes.

But, the mistake was made, I was there, and I had improved my gear a little more. What’s more, I felt confident I was ready to use the proper healing spells in their place as directed by Keeva.

Our very first pull was complete and utter fail.

Everybody was below half health the entire fight, I abandoned half the party to fend for themselves as I tried to keep the tank at least above 25% health, by the time the fight was over, a Warlock in the group had died, and for most of the fight I was frantically trying to use anything in the toolbox just to get people up to half health.

I still don’t know what happened, but I do know that I put my Lifeblooms on the tank, and used Nourish, and it didn’t seem to do anything much to increase his health at all. If I didn’t spam Rejuve or Regrowth along with Wild Growth, my bad old habits returning halfway through, everyone would have died.

I didn’t stay past that pull. I apologized for being a completely worthless healer, rezzed the Warlock and left them to find someone that knew what they were doing.

I was shocked. And this was on normal!

I would like to keep trying, but after the complete and utter fail of healing a single trash pull at 85, do I have what it takes in this new WoW order?

Maybe I am a Wrath baby. I like tanking, maybe I should stick to that.

I walked away feeling pretty discouraged and demoralized. I knew I didn’t feel ready for the 85 normals, but I didn’t expect to be dropped in one and feel completely useless.

I dunno… am I the only one that feels like, in order to be halfway competent requires a really steep learning curve? Or, and this is totally possible, do I really just suck that bad?

Today, I wrote you a post on tanking techniques.

On styles. Indeed, on the very philosophy behind what makes for a good group and solid tanking.

I included simple things you could do to tweak your own performance to make your groups far better from the tanking side of the game, and some simple reminders for DPS players when joining an unknown tank on how to have a great run.

I talked about communication, and teamwork, and the two main styles of tanking group pulls in detail.

I wrote the “Ultimate Tanking Manifeasto”™, a veritable smorgasbord of words that you could devour whole and yet remain feeling hungry… hungry for more tanking goodness.

This was my War and Peace, my Ender’s Game. My Raggedy Ann and Andy.

I rewrote the project a dozen times over, slaving away, adjusting whole sentences here, striking poorly phrased paragraphs there, crafting the perfect document of tanking deliciousness.

Sadly, you’ll never get to see these words that I describe.

For as I sat back and felt the warm, pleasant glow of having completed the perfect post, I pressed the “Publish” button, and watched as all of my work vanished. Vanished without a trace into the random dashes and dots that make up the modern digital sewer we call the computer.

There, in it’s simplistic maliciousness, like a malign demon of half-assed evil, was displayed before me the WordPress login screen.

I entered in my name and password, and re-entered my domain, there to find that while IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF WRITING my sublime article of exuberance, WordPress had logged me out. Or lost my cookie. Or decided I wasn’t really there.

But instead of actually SAYING so, instead of informing me with perhaps a popup or warning, it simply chose to stop backing up my draft automatically, but let me type uninterrupted in perfect ignorance for the next three hours.

Three hours worth of blood, sweat and sky that disappeared in the press of a single, simple button.

Gone before, gone forever, gone ahead into digital oblivion.

Those are words that can never return. Not in the way they were. Not in the form as I imagined them.

No matter what we poor souls may desire, nothing we do can ever capture that perfect magic again. The magificent perfection that was the ultimate tanking manifeasto.

Perhaps in some library of the lost, at the outer boundary between what never was, what is and what might have been it yet resides, saved to a CD-ROM that shines with a golden glow.

Perhaps.

It’s really too bad.

It was great. You would have loved it.

I feel kinda bad for you, that post would have changed your life forever.

You would have momentarily achieved a state approaching nirvana, approaching and yet unable to be sustained, because the intensity of joy would have just been too much for one soul to withstand.

Instead….

You get this.

And thus, the circle is now complete, and the malicious evil that was visited upon me, I have passed on to you.

This is going to be a slightly different post for me, but I’d like to ask that you bear with me on this one for a few minutes, because the feelings behind it are very important to me.

I’d like to start, by asking you to try and remember back a few years to 2008, and the story of a young boy named Ezra Chatterton. 

Ezra Chatterton, for those that might not have played WoW back then, was a charming ten year old boy that suffered from a very serious brain tumor.

His story came to light in the WoW community when, through the works of the Make a Wish Foundation and Blizzard, his wish of meeting the designers and developers of his favorite game, World of Warcraft, and spending a day AS a developer was made real.

World of Warcraft was Ezra’s favorite game, because according to the story related by WoW.com, Ezra’s parents were divorced, and Ezra’s main method of spending time with his father was through playing together, and talking together while they were both online in WoW.

WoW was a bonding experience that helped bring father and son closer together, even though they lived quite far apart. 

The story of a father and son brought closer together through a shared love of video games did strike a very personal chord with me, and it was only too easy to imagine how I’d feel if it was my own son that suffered from a brain tumor, and an uncertain future. My little wabbit slayer. :)

During his visit with Blizzard, and his day as a guest designer, Ezra, whose in-game name for his Tauren Hunter was ePhoenix, took part in helping design many small features that are still to be found in the game.

He helped design and do voiceovers for a new NPC, Ahab Wheathoof, that can be found in the Tauren starting town of Bloodhoof Village near Mulgore, and also designed the quest Ahab gives you, which is to help find Ahab’s pet dog, Kyle, modeled after Ezra’s own dog Kyle.

Ezra also gave input on, and helped design the Season 2 PvP weapon, the Merciless Gladiator’s Crossbow of the Phoenix. A weapon that still looks really damn cool, and that my Hunter has in the bank. How can you get rid of the Phoenix bow?

Why so many references in Ezras’ story to the Phoenix? It’s because Phoenix was actually Ezra’s middle name, and he took the name his father Micah and his mother had chosen for him, and it’s mythological background, close to his heart.

The lengths the Make a Wish Foundation and Blizzard went to, to bring his dream of feeling what it was like to be a game developer for a day, really was an inspirational, sweet gesture full of heart. 

Towards the close of his  day with Blizzard, he was given one parting gift from the development team; the Ashes of Al’ar that drop from Kael’thas in The Eye, the 25 man raid instance in Burning Crusade. He was the very first person to have the Ashes of Al’ar in all of the game, the exceedingly rare drop that becomes the lovely Phoenix mount, and I think it was very appropriate and wonderful to have thought of.

Not too long after the story of Ezra and his day with Blizzard came to our attention, WoW.com shared the news that Ezra had passed away on October 20th, 2008, after complications resulting from a stroke.

So, why am I bringing this up now?

Well, here’s the thing.

One thing that is talked about a lot these days, here and elsewhere, is how things feel like they’ve changed recently in the game.

With the addition of random Battlegrounds, random Looking For Dungeon tools, weekly Raid quests that get advertised, filled, knocked off and then party abandoned, even pug ICC raids, it’s become increasingly easy in the game to log in, join a series of groups, play in group content for hours, and then log off without ever having shared an actual moment of personal interaction with anyone else.

For me, the story of Ezra is, at least in part, the story of how a video game that is designed to make it easy to bring people closer together CAN be a place where families and distant friends can get to spend some valuable time together that they might not have had otherwise.

Yes, it’s time spent in a virtual world, but it’s time with REAL people that you know, love, and miss, people that you can’t be near in real life at that moment.

The distance between people in game, the ease the random group systems make it to slip away into isolation from other people… these are things I think about often, and Ezra’s story stays there in the back of my head, as counterpoint to what the game can be.

I’d like to try and do something with you, the readers of the blog, as a joint effort to remember Ezra. A little event where we could each get together and remember him, and the joy he took in having the game help him be closer to his dad, by doing something with friends and family.

What I’d like to propose is this.

If you read this blog, and if you are willing to take part in this with me, then approach your guild leaders, raid leaders or officers, and ask them if they would kindly put up a raid sometime during the next week or so to go into The Eye, the 25 man Burning Crusade raid, and try for a Phoenix mount drop, in honor of the ePhoenix.

Make it a special occasion that holds the spirit of the game to heart; you and your fellow friends and guild members, and of course your family if they play, getting together to have fun, to bond, and to spend time doing something just to be together as friends in the game.

I know it must seem corny, but it would bring a smile to my face to think of people playing WoW all across the world, seperated by physical distance but together in the game, having fun and giggling and doing silly crap, all inspired by the memory of the young boy who loved the game and the closeness it brought his family so much.

Now, here is the part that will probably sound wierdest, but I’m really serious.

Please, don’t advertise it with my name on it. Please don’t link to me, or refer to me, or have it be attached to me in any way. It’s not a Bear thing. It’s an “all of us” thing.

If you do want to spread the word, please do not mention me in any way. Just take the idea on your own, and mention it as something you’d like to do.

Where the idea comes from isn’t important.

I want this, for the people who agree that it’d be a nice thing to do, to be all about the idea, and about Ezra, and about playing together with friends instead of alone in LFD.  

If the idea of taking a few hours out of the week to remember how precious it is that we can get together with friends and most especially family members from all over the world and have fun appeals to you, just bring the idea back to your guild, and try to make it happen.

Any of you that do this next week, whether you get a Phoenix mount or not, I’d just like to know how it went for you. Whether you had fun, what craziness you may have gotten into. Just drop me a line at my email, and let me know.

If by some chance you do have a Phoenix mount drop, send me a screenshot if you think about it. Cassie and I would love to see it. :)

I don’t know, maybe it sounds stupid on the outside. Maybe folks just have much more important things to do, or things to think about. But the older Alex gets, the more I think of Ezra and his father… and of how precious having these few moments to spend together really are.

Yeah, you know it. Uh huh, that’s right, you know it.

Just when everyone is choking down actual gameplay teasers being released in a flood, here I come with some non-informative post about a PUG run.

Hey, there’s only so much teaser BS a person can take in one day. You gotta have somewhere to go for a laugh, right?

Last night, I returned to the PUG for a turn or two on my Druid.

My lovely, beefy Tauren piece of awesomeness.

As a sidebar, I’d never really noticed how much I had grown to dislike the appearance of my very first, original female Night Elf character. When I started the game and chose my Druid, the male Night Elf options all looked terrible to me, and the Night Elf females looked pretty nice. I didn’t know about the whole “pole dancing” thing yet.

But the face I chose for the Druid just looked… well, vapid. Stupid. Irritatingly so. She looked like a valley girl, like, ya know?

Is it any wonder you hardly ever saw me in anything other than Bear, Cat or Tree?

But my Tauren… ah, my Tauren.

I love him so much, I want to heal in Tauren form. Screw going into Tree, I can’t see those horns!

Okay, anyway.

Oops! First, let me make clear, there ARE Night Elf females I do like. I think my Nelf Hunter Windstar looks awesome. She looks both sensitive and badass at the same time. It’s not Night Elf females in general, it was the choice I made in face design for my Druid in specific. You can’t change faces in the Barbershop. Doing a faction change, for that alone, is almost worth it.

Okay, anyway, anyway. Again.

(You know I do that with my grammer just to torque Kestrel, right? Shh, don’t tell him. Oh, and now some dots, everyone loves my dots…)

((Love you, Kestrel!))

(((Damnit, I spelled Grammar right above… I better fix that… okay, fixed. Moar dots!)))

I’m in a cheerful mood, so watch out, I don’t know where I’ll be driving this bus next!

Right. Where the heck was I? Oh, yeah, right.

[Queue Keanu voice]: Woah.

So there I was last night, all horny and everything, and wanting to build up my stockpile of Emblems.

I created this Hawt Blood Elf Hunter Chick (Which is kinda like a Sexy Blood Elf Biker Chick, but with a reddish colored cat with great big fangs like this ;-<) and she’s got two Heirloom Trinkets, some sexy Heirloom PvE shoulders and a chestpiece, and this big honking double-barreled PvP Heirloom shotgun.

It’s all good, the cute off the shoulder armor with the little red vest is precious, but the shottie? That’s so, like, Dwarf, you know?

Now, if the Shotgun had some taste and refinement, if it had the finishing touches found in a nice Holland and Holland over/under combo, if it came in a fine handcrafted ebony wood case with a few bottles of Mont Blanc, well…

But no, it’s entirely too plebian. It simply will not do.

But I did see just the thing in the latest Tiffany’s collection catalog, this very well shaped Heirloom Bone Bow,  that looked just the sort of thing for a Blood Elf with an eye towards style and sophistication. Perhaps with the 12 1/4″ shafted arrows with Northrend Shoveltusk ivory inlay, silver chased heads and rare black eagle feather fletching?

Yeah, those cost 65 Emblems, and my charge cards are all maxed out. And you don’t EVEN want to go there, but you know, it was Easter, all the stores had their new Spring collections out, what can you do, you know?

So anyway, that’s totally why I need Emblems right now.

Hey, let’s go on a pug!

I went into the LFD tool as a healer, because I pretty much have decided that I will only tank for friends from now on. I play for fun, or to achieve goals for other characters that are going to be fun, and being a tank for the groups I typically get just isn’t all that spiffy anymore.

I love tanking with friends, but strangers? Yeah, not so much.

On the flip side, I try to never be the person that does to other tanks what people do to drive ME to stop pugging as one. You pass it on, right?

I joined LFD, and right away got an Azjol-Nerub group. That’s a good thing, because AN is about as smooth and straightforward and fast as you can hope for in a pug, when it’s all about return on time invested. 5 Emblems, 15 minutes. Sweet!

You suspect it’s going to be one of those runs, when you don’t even have five in the group yet, and the tank has already pulled the first mobs.

You know it’s going to be one of those groups, when you just rounded the corner trying to catch up to “hopalong tankaday”, and you get a facefull of ignored Skirmisher all up in your roots.

So, yay, I self-heal through that, while tossing my HoTs around and begin getting down to serious healing. This group, tank included, are taking just a massive amount of fast damage.

Wow, what the heck?

I’m running the Gearscore addon these days, NOT to judge people’s worthiness to be in my groups, but for just this type of situation. By looking at each player’s portrait in the party, I quickly see I’ve got a Paladin tank with a 5600 Gearscore, I’ve got two players, Death Knight and Shadow Priest with 3K GS (or under, actually, both were like right on the edge of 3K) who are both in the same guild, and a Warlock at around 4K.

By way of comparison, my healing gear on my Druid is pretty solid from Emblems and Heroic PoS/FoS drops, and it’s gemmed and enchanted properly, and I’m at 4.8K GS. I’ve even got a Frost cloak. So 5600 tells me that’s someone in pretty good raiding gear, and 3K tells me a couple pretty new level 80s in mostly Blues and a few crafted Epics or drops, and 4K tells me the player is working their way up nicely.

Notice I make no judgments on skill at all here. I’m simply making assumptions on current gear level, where it may have come from, and set a few expectations on where they might be in terms of DPS and survivability.

It’s handy, as I said, specifically for situation like this. Because the tank actually says, while on the first boss, “C’mon DPS, wake up, you suck.”

Well, no, actually, considering the comparative levels of their gear, they’re doing pretty damn good. I’m very impressed with what the Shadow Priest is squeezing out of her gear, that’s a player spot on.

But okay, whatever, we’re moving too fast for me to type.

Boom, we get down to the next boss area, we’re flying along, killing, clearing, boss goes down, moving on.

We get to the two large mobs just before the last boss, and one of the players, the Shadow Priest I think, is back a ways. They haven’t caught up to us, and wonder of wonders, the tank didn’t just run ahead and pull without them.

But he DOES take the time to get bitchy in chat.

“Are you coming or what? We don’t have all day, get over here.”

I take the time to reply, “Since we’re sitting here waiting and you’re bored, how about buffing me with Kings, since you never gave anyone Paladin buffs yet?”

Yes, that’s right. A tank too lazy, too rushed or too ‘leet’ to bother buffing the group, not even doing the new standard “I’m too good to give you the buff you want, I’m giving everyone Kings” like you see most of the time these days. 

I get my Kings, and he shuts up.

For now. Oh yes, for now. But there is still one more boss, and this pull will tell me something.

Gear or skill? Care or indifference? Phoning it in or in it to win it?

One pull. We’ll see.

We clear the two mobs, we all line up on the King, and the Paladin runs in to pull.

Here’s the test. How did he pull?

He ran straight forward to the boss and stopped dead right there, boss facing the entrance ramp, and stayed there.

This is the loser way to tank the final boss in Azjol-Nerub.

Whether you want to call it laziness, ignorance, or just-didn’t-give-a-shit, bad tanks run forward on the last boss and stop.

Why?

Pound.

The last boss casts Pound. It has a long cast time, and when it goes off, he casts it in the direction he had originally been facing when he started casting. Well, most of the time. Sometimes he bugs and does whirl around if his main threat target is behind him, as the tank is supposed to be.

Oh, and Pound’s key characteristic is it does a shitload of damage to anyone standing within an area the shape of a cone in front of him. It’s a cone-shaped AoE.

It’s almost enough, sometimes it IS enough, to kill cloth or leather wearing players.

By running forward and stopping right there, the tank is leaving it to everyone else in the party to be aware of the mechanic, and run all the way the long way around the boss to get behind him, and during that time, of course, only instant cast spells and attacks are going off.

And if the other players aren’t aware of the mechanic, then when Pound goes off, guess what? Everyone standing somewhere in front of the damn bug king gets a big facefull of WHAM!

So, the tank ran in. Stood there. Kept the boss facing the ramp.

Not everyone ran around to the sides and back like I did. The Death Knight and Shadow Priest did, the Warlock didn’t.

The Warlock’s health plummeted to about 500, and my existing HoTs quickly pulled him back up.

The Paladin, who had run through the boss to get behind him when Pound started casting, lols in Party chat.

He did it on purpose, the worthless little prick, hoping to kill someone else.

Why? Why would someone do something like that?

The run had been smooth. The enemies all died. Nobody ran crazy. Everyone stayed on target. There was no chaos. My heals prevented sillyness and unnecessary deaths.

So why?

I tell the tank in party chat, “How about pulling the boss to face away from the party.”

He announces that you can’t move the boss after he casts Pound.

Well, he has managed to be technically accurate, while at the same time avoiding the fact I didn’t say shit about moving the boss DURING the Pound, I said move the boss to “face away from the party”.

On the second phase, sure as hell, he does it again, and the Warlock eats it again, and doesn’t die. Again, the “lol noob” rolls off the tanks’ lips.

I’m making sure that if nobody actually gets one shot, nobody dies.

Yes, not even the tank.

Phase three comes around, I’ve whispered the Warlock, and the only person that eats Pound is… the Tank. Who immediately throws a Party chat hissyfit.

Guess what?

He moved through the boss during the Pound cast, and the boss did his sometimes-seen bug and whirled around before it went off, nailing the tank.

Amusingly enough, the Shadow Priest, Warlock and Death Knight had all moved to the side during the cast, and didn’t eat it.

Oh, yeah, I was at the side too. Of course.

What? Hey, of course *I* know about the bug, I blogged about it a year ago. Or something like that. Back when it really hurt to get hit by Pound. Like, in Neolithic times, with the dinosaurs and shit.

The tank is hot. He ran through and got hit by Pound anyway, and that’s not fair.

Now, here is the question I have up to this point.

I’m the only one who has said a word, besides the tank, on the entire run. Not a peep out of anyone else while the tank has acted like an immature child.

Do you think the silence was due to not caring what an idiot thinks, or because they were afraid that if they said anything to show they didn’t appreciate the attitude, the tank would leave and the DPS would have a collapsed run on their hands?

Do YOU adjust your behavior, do you hold your tongue when insulted or ridiculed, so you don’t piss off your tank and maybe have him leave you in a fit of childish rage?

While you think of that, I’ll wrap the run up with a fun moment.

When the boss falls, the tank first rolls the Recount log of Damage done through Party chat, and then says, “God you all suck, I’ve got top DPS and I’m the tank.”

I immediately reply, having been primed for this bit of asshattery since the first boss, “You are a Paladin tank with a 5600 GS. The rest of the DPS has nowhere even close to your gear level, so what is your point?”

At the same time, the Death Knight says, “Well, if I was on my other character my DPS would be a little different, lol.”

The tank replies, “Well, the Warlock has 4K.”

To which I reply, “You are a complete moron. A MORON. Goodbye!”

/leave group.

The Warlock has 4K? This is your answer for being a dick about being a tank with the highest DPS? And a Paladin tank as well?

“Oooh, I only outgear you by 1600 gear score, how come I’m top DPS, you must all suck.”

Damnit, there are days, as I said in guild chat, where I just want to bitchslap the world.

Or, in this case, I’d like every tank with this kind of attitude to line up single file, perform a left face, and I’ll freaking ride down the line on a Harley doing 70 with my hand outstretched, to SLAP THEM ALL!!!

Do you do it? Do you eat your feelings and allow yourself to suffer indignities in silence just for the sake of not bruising a sensitive tanks’ ego, challenging his asshattedness, so that you get your run finished?

I now return you to your informative MMO Champion/Blues Tracker game announcements, still in progress.