About a week ago, I actually went into the secret fortress of Icecrown Citadel with a good bunch of blokes, hoping to find out the truth behind this raiding thing. 

Along the way, we discovered rockets that stick out of furry Bear butts, the dangers of dancing too close to the edge of Gunships, and what happens when you don’t have maxed Hit Rating on your Taunt mechanic when fighting Saurfang.

I went on this run as a healer, and it was very exciting. After all, this was raiding. The big “R”. This is what the game is all about. This is where we seperate the noobs from the leet. Prime time.

Or, in the words of Ming-Ming, “This. Is. Sewious!”

We went in looking for a fight. The group had consistently taken down Morrowgar, but being all friends, most of whom know each other in real life, their focus is more towards fun together than on progression. I know of plenty of times on raid nights they’ve had 8 or 9 able to be there, and rather than pug in an extra stranger to get a serious raid done, they just give it a shot on theirown.

Regardless, they’ve got the skill, they just hadn’t taken too many shots past Morrowgar before then as a ten person group. This was the night they were hoping to really push the envelope way up into the far right corner. You know, that place where they cancel your ass. 

I was really looking forward to seeing it for the first time as a healer. In the past, as a tank, I’ve found having the chance to observe in person the action from a distant vantage point very valuable. Healers get to see a lot, most especially what kind of damage people are taking, and where people are standing, and what adds spawn from where, and what AoE pops up, and slime trails, and frost paths, and etc.

I was one of three healers for the ICC 10 run. One Shaman, two Trees, no waiting. I was supposed to focus on party heals.

Yeah, okay. Like I’m going to sit there and NOT throw some HoTs on the two tanks when I get the chance.

The group composition was kinda neat, since we had 3 Hunters, Bear and Paladin tanks, and a Warlock and Shaman as additional DPS.

Yes, that’s right. Three Druids, three Hunters, two Shaman, a Warlock and a Paladin.

Makes for interesting buff combinations. On the other hand, we certainly had lots of Runescrolls of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings handy, so what the heck.

Morrowgar happened to be the weekly boss, and went down with scarcely a moan. In fact, Morrowgar doesn’t cause nearly as much angst as doing the trash leading up to him without a Rogue to check for traps.

The excitement that comes from having someone run in for a planned group pull, and body-trip the land mines on the way in is AWESOME.

Adrenaline junkies, take note. That’s the good stuff.

“Here we go, here we go, pulling, OH SHIT WE HIT A TRAP, RUN, RUN, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!”

Good times, good times.

Morrowgar went down, and there was much rejoicing.

From there, we went after Lady Deathwhisper, and the Zuggers were in new territory where boss kills in ICC were concerned. They were all primed, and ready to give her a whomping. 

The first time we went after her, there were a few learning curves all around, but it was awesome seeing how so many Battle Rezes plus the Shaman Ankh helped us towards the end when it all went wahoonie-shaped.

But we still all died.

For myself, I found that it was actually easier to use high Mana-cost Regrowth for general party heals due to it’s duration, spot in Rejuvenation when needing an extra kick, Wild Growth on tank groups and a fast pop of Innervate on meself 1 minute in.

That let me launch a ton of up-front healing while the group got settled in and worked through any jitters or confusion. With the Innervate getting me charged back up, I was able to coast on spot party and tank heals for the next 2 and a half minutes of cooldo, burning down the adds.

As the fight wore on, the intensity of outgoing heals increased, my Mana began to really drop towards the bottom, and while a carefully timed Potion kept me in the bottom 25% of my reserve, Deathwhisper’s Mana Shield finally dropped, and I was perfectly poised to have Innervate ready to go again for full Mana right as everything went into overdrive. 

Sadly, as I said, we all died anyway. 

But the second one, ah yes, the second one went smooth as clockwork. Regrowth is a major Mana investment, I know, and isn’t very cost effective in healing done, but it really does allow you to have a few extra seconds in there to get spot Rejuves on while ignoring some of the group.

As Napoleon famously once said, “Time, time, ask me for anything but time!” Sometimes, having a HoT ticking those few seconds longer somewhere else is more precious than gold, if it lets you blow an extra two Global Cooldowns on HoTing someone else. 

At least, it does for me, since I don’t have nearly the Haste a raiding Resto Druid should have. 

With Lady Deathwhisper down for the guild’s first kill, there was much rejoicing. Cars were flipped over in the streets and set on fire, bottles upended, toasts drunk, and Brokentree woke up the next morning with a strange pair of underpants on his head and a shaved cat hiding in the cupboard.

The awesomesauce epic Bow dropped, and watching three hunters all want it and only one be able to have it hurt. A lot. At a moment like that, you really do wish everyone could have a pony, don’t you?

Okay, great night, grats all around.

Somebody, I think it was Brokentree, had to suggest we go on to the Gunship battle. “I hear it’s pretty easy.”

Now why would you want to go and spoil a perfectly fine victory like that for?

Well, okay. I wanted my own rocket pack!

Now, in Tree form, I don’t get to have a visible rocket pack. This makes me fairly sad. But I did flip to Bear form, and do my fair share of rocket blasts back and forth on the deck.

Now, with this fight, I began to detect the first hints of a pattern.

The Zuggers would take their first try at something totally new, go over the strat, line up, take it on, and then wipe in glorious fashion.

Then, on the second try, down she goes.

Now, the Gunship might have been successfully run the first time, but we’ll never know, now will we?

No, because you see, we had to try nine-manning it.

We WOULD have had ten… but Chawakanda was admiring the view from off the port bow, seeing the sights of Icecrown from the air. She’s always wanted to take an ocean cruise, try the badminton, the shuffleboard, see the floor show, dine on lobster and all those funny little glass bowls with the shrimp with tails on and the spicy red sauce.

Well, she was lost in thought, leaning over the railing… and fell off the ship. 

I have it on good authority that once the Hunter has left the ship, the Rocket Pack no longer works.

Gotta love that Goblin engineering, eh?

The second try, we all made it into battle, and we totally kicked their ass.

Like, totally.

Do you like that descriptive replay? Isn’t that helpful?

Not really much more to say. Go across and kill the Mages when the guns get iced up, head back and repel boarders and shoot hell out of the other ship. Dodge Mortars. Avoid the enemy captain. Rinse and repeat. Next!

So, more loot, and I gots a shiny new healing dagger. Woot! icecrown loot! I iz a raider fo sho!

Yo man, check out mah leet gear score! Pay no attention to the iLevel 200 Trinkets behind the curtain.

So, guild first Gunship battle kill, same night as the guild first Deathwhisper kill. Rock on, right? We bad, we bad, you know it, uh huh.

Yeah, well, let’s go for the hat trick, and a guild first Deathbringer Saurfang kill.

Wait, what?

At this point, I know one thing.

There isn’t enough alcohol for this raid night.

On Deathbringer Saurfang, the trend is definitely confirmed.

See boss. Discuss strategy. Attempt boss. Wipe after a solid attempt, screaming and shouting and carrying on. Then do it a second time and make it look easy.

This is a terrible rut these folks have fallen into.

Don’t they know you’re supposed to wipe four or five times, argue strats in heated tones, reference the almighty Elitist Jerks or Tankspot, then bitch at each other for sucking or pulling aggro?

Noobs. Lrn2dramaz.

Long story only slightly shorter, yes, we did in fact take down Deathbringer Saurfang.

I even got enough rep from the night’s extravaganza that I could go get my Friendly Ring, and I chose the tanking one. Woot!

Wow. First four bosses dead in ICC, achievements, loot upgrades, rep Rings…

That was pretty cool.

This raiding thing… it’s pretty neat. I’m not sure the Zuggers get the concept, though. They’re entirely too… I dunno, efficient.

What the hell am I gonna blog about, if all they do is just go in and win?

There is a limit to how many bosses they can see and wipe to the first time, you know. How freaking boring!

Oh well, I’m sure something will turn up.

Like maybe we can go into The Eye and try to brute force Kael’thas.

Yeah, I bet that would be awesome!

“It was an accident, right? You tripped, fell on the floor and accidently stuck your Druid into my raid.”

So, who can guess what movie line I stole THAT from?

Again, as in the last quote in a post I did, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.

Hmm, okay, one more quote from that movie that might help.

“Head or gut?”

Moving on…

With all the fun surrounding having Blizzard announcements to talk about, I neglected to mention one interesting (to me, anyway) fact.

I raided last week.

Yes, yes I did!

Oh, not ICC or anything impressive like that, although I’ve seen Morrowgar a few times.

But still, I’m talking an actual raid, you know, where it’s not a pug full of strangers in wildly different gear, skill and interest levels.

No, it was a group of people who are friends and know each other, all at an appropriate level of gear, and all (and I mean every single one) who actually tried to play well and showed a lot of skill, going into a place looking for a full clear if they can at all swing it.

We went into Trial of the Crusader 10, and had a wonderful time!

It was very exciting!

No, I’m not expecting YOU to get excited about it. I know most of you who read this probably see ToC 10/25 raiding as being somewhere along the line of dipping your toes in the kiddy pool.

That’s cool. I fully understand. 

For me, the experience had a solid “Burning Crusade” vibe to it.

What I mean by that, is this is a place with bosses and battles that I have long heard stories about, seen people talking about, heard a buzz over in Trade chat. 

Much like in Burning Crusade, when I’d be raiding ten mans and no further, and hearing talk about fishing up the boss in Serpentshrine Caverns, about running back and forth with a Mage tank in Gruul’s Lair, about having to have lots of tanks at various stations in Magtheridon’s Keep.

You hear about the Faction Champions, you hear about the various fights in ToC all the time, and once you finally get in there and see it for yourself, you get to have the reality come into comparison with a place that you imagined, and it makes the whole thing more impressive. More, I don’t know… special.

I’m sure it’s much the same in ICC now, where you see people talk about the Gunship Battle, and rocketpack jumping and all that in chat. You hear that, you get a mental image of it, and then really look forward to experiencing it yourself.

I still remember with great fondness the time I went into Mount Hyjal with Cassie for a retro raid. The recent announcements about Mount Hyjal being an updated raid brought it to mind. 

It was long after Wrath came out and we were OP for it, but it was a place we had heard a ton about when it was meaningful in Burning Crusade, and sounded bloody awesome.

I can tell you, doing Mount Hyjal at level 80 did NOT disappoint. It was still amazingly fun.

Almost as interesting, actually, was finding out that at the time, before all the loot upgrades from content higher than Naxx and before ToC Heroic came out, the Tier helms were actually still very good at 80. Cassie won the Rogue tier helm and wore it for at least a few months.

I went in and ran ToC 10, as I said, and I have to admit I enjoyed it not just because it was all new content to me and really exciting, but also because the group I ran with really did know how to play.

All of them.

Not just 4 or 5 in the group trying their all, and the rest phoning it in because, hey, casuals, so why actually try to learn how to play?

No, everyone worked together, and played their classes well, and as far as I could tell actually used lots of class skills, and not just “hit DPS button, rinse and repeat.”

Even stranger, there were no silly, wierd, or disturbing “What the heck was that” moments. You know what I mean, that moment when someone does something and you just wonder, “What the hell were they thinking?”

You get used to all that in pugs, don’t you? You get used to carrying people. Of seeing someone do something almost unconscionably stupid, something that has nothing to do with not knowing the fight, and has everything to do with being stupid or not caring.

You get used to it when pugging is how you roll, and you have to learn to just shrug and let it go because, hey, it’s a pug.

How much worse if that’s how it is in your guild, because, again, hey, it’s casual raiding with friends, and how do you tell your friend that they, well, frankly they suck? I mean, really, really bad?

You can get so used to it that, if or when you get the chance to run with a group that is, in it’s entirety, well skilled, it’s just like someone taking a heavy weight off your shoulders.  

Yep, it was tons of fun. It was a blast.

Oh, and we cleared the whole place in one night!

Had a couple wipes along the way… and, would you believe it, the group came up with a different strategy each time it happened and succeeded on the next shot?

I could almost get used to this wierd thing I saw.

What the hell do you call it?

Oh, yeah.

Competence.

Last night I decided to give PUG raids a chance once again, and on a whim volunteered for a VoA 25 run.

Let’s just say that, while I have seen the 2nd and 3rd bosses before, I haven’t done VoA since they added the Ice boss, and I’d only done the Fire and Lightning a few times. Possibly not even on my main, either.

In fact, thinking back on it, I think I’ve only done the Fire boss twice before; once on my Paladin on Horde side with the Zug Initiative, and once on my Hunter on Alliance in a PUG, winning some nice PvP boots that I’m still wearing.

I had studied before, and knew the tactics for all the bosses except Ice. I’d never intended to do VoA again, so I hadn’t bothered studying that one. Oh why look, an unprepared Bear. /win

I went as a Tree, and not only did I get to heal, I even bullied poor Dechion to come with me to heal as well. Misery loves company, and if I’m going to screw up, best to have witnesses, right?

It’s more fun that way.

Since I hadn’t studied in advance, a hurried query in guild chat followed as we ran in. “Hey, Occulus… wtf do we do on the Ice boss, dude?”

We were then given the following advice;

“Stay away from the Orbs.”
“Heal the tanks.”

Ooookay. We can do that. I think. Thanks for the tip.

It was a lot of fun. It did take a while to get the group together, people kept dropping in and out, and as far as I can see it was because people felt that the group was not forming fast enough to suit them. Which, let me tell you, when you drop group because you’re missing two people out of 25 after 3 minutes, it sure does speed up getting the group formed. Idiots.

We got the group full up, summoned or teleported in, marked the two main tanks (I love that, I really do), buffed up and ran to do the new boss first.

All things considered, it went very well, although I quickly saw what Occulus meant about watching the Orbs. The damn things spawn and swirl all over the place, and if they touch you it hurts. I have no idea if they had to be DPSed down or if they despawn on their own after a set time, because nobody… NOBODY mentioned doing any particular strategy at any time, for any boss. If you didn’t know how to do things going in, there was zero guidance along the way.

So, all I really know is, Orbs spawned and did lots of group damage that we healed through, and then vanished after a while. It’s kinda hectic in a 25, and I just don’t know without researching if they despawned on their own or not. 

After that boss fell, one person instantly left group. Guess he only wanted a piece of loot from the Ice boss, and had no interest in sticking around to like, I dunno, finish the run. That’s one to feed to the ignore list, and thank you very much.

We then continued on to Archavon, short 1, cleared that and went back and did Lightning. Lost another player after Lightning, a healer, and did the Fire boss with 23.

It amazes me how many people dinged boss kill Achievements all the way, even on Archavon, and yet there were no wipes, and no discussion about tactics at all.

I’ll admit, I was healing with all the skill I was capable of, and a lot of people getting stuck in Lightning Ring and in Fire and stuff got very low in health before we brought them back up, but we never wiped, and had very few actual deaths. I think we had four healers, and Dechion and I were two of them, so that always feels good.

Cassie walked in towards the end of the run, and of course almost everything that dropped was Paladin plate, so she was crying a little inside for her Pally.

That led us to talk a little bit about this whole raiding thing, and PUGging versus guild runs, and how things are now compared to how they used to be.

I think I’ve been pretty clear in the past year or so that I ain’t a regular PUG kinda person. Unlike most people I know, I haven’t done PUG raids as a regular thing in a long, long time. Not real raids. I have tried to do the weekly Raid boss on my Druid, when I think of it though.

When Cassie and I talk about raiding, and doing them as PUGs, the conversation usually turns to the last time we actually enjoyed PUGging a raid.

Karazhan.

That’s right. Karazhan.

There was this beautiful window of time where a lot of people had leveled and geared from Heroics, gotten some decent Badge gear, but the last load of uber-leet Badge gear costing beeellions and beeellions of Badges had NOT been released yet on the Isle of Pretentious Blood Elves.

It felt like a magical time.

We’d left our big guild that wanted to do serious raids, and there was just the two of us on our own, with our alt guild nametag over our heads. Karazhan was the only 10 person Raid in the game, and it was very, very long with tons of bosses. There was lots in there to do.

Karazhan was the stopping place for many casual guilds that wanted to raid, but didn’t want to merge into large guilds and deal with potential drama just to hit 25s. If you wanted to raid and didn’t have 25 people to field, Karazhan was the place.

For Cassie and I, it really was a magical time to PUG. We both loved the length of Kara, we loved the way the fights required people at our gear level to use all our abilities and to CC and move and play well and use tactics in order to succeed. It was lots of fun to be with a group of other people all at our same level, because raiders never went back to Kara.

We were also very fortunate that, most of the time, when someone was advertising that they needed a few more for Kara, they were really great people that just happened to be short one or two guildies at that moment, like Essence of Grandeur.

We got to join PUG raids as a couple, and do really interesting and challenging content at the time, with what were in effect entire guilds of skilled people. Not really a true PUG at all, when you think of it.

Looking back, it’s really a shame how things turned out.

When the uber-leet Badge loot was released, suddenly all the raiders wanted fast Badges again, and lots of them. So Karazhan got swamped by people that had insane levels of 25 man raider gear, raiders that wanted to run Karazhan, and who were in guilds that weren’t going to organize Kara in the middle of their progressive raiding schedule.

These people were in a rush to get done because they weren’t there for fun or to see the place or enjoy being with friends. They didn’t want loot from there. They just wanted Badges, and they didn’t respect the level of content OR the other people who were in there at the appropriate level.

These people also wanted to gear their alts up to join their raiding guilds, their raiding guilds weren’t organizing lower-level raids, and so they raided on their mains, and pugged Kara to gear up from the uber-leet Badge gear. And they broght with them their high end raider attitude.

Welcome to brute forcing content, speed pulls or nothing, trash talking, and e-peen waving. And of trying to brute force content on undergeared alts.

It really did ruin that as a raid for both of us, at least for the brief period before Wrath was released. And with Wrath, the whole game changed.

I personally thought that adding both 10 and 25 person versions of all raids would make everything all better. The raiders could move on, and never want to go flood the lower level raids again. The days of e-peen waving leet raiders PUGging with strangers and being asshats were over. Why PUG when you can run with your guild in all these actual raids?

What I didn’t anticipate was the Badge/Emblem system going live with such highly desired rewards, and there being small raids like Sarth and VoA that would be so conducive to PUG farming for quick Emblems.

The model we have is still what we had at the end of Burning Crusade. High end content for raiders to focus on in their official guild scheduling, and lower end content that provides Emblems for gear that high-end raiders will still want, and that will drive them to try and PUG the “lower” difficulty content to farm Emblems fast with their OP uber-leet gear.

Raiders are not encouraged to move on to one level of content, one level of challenge, push forward together with their guild, and stay there.

With Frost Emblems from both daily Heroics and from the Weekly raid boss from lower level raids, and with Triumph Emblem gear being so good to fill in spots like Trinkets and Rings, raiders in their uber-leet gear are encouraged to go, and I hate to phrase it this way but that’s how a lot of these people act, “slumming” in the lower level content. To run content they vastly overpower, content they don’t want any gear from, and content their guild has no interest in running together as a group.

So the raiders are still encouraged by the system to PUG with strangers.

And the raiders, ever and again, seem to act like they feel that they’re running content that is beneath them, with strangers that are beneath them, and they want to get done and get out as fast as they can with their Emblems.

I will say that the only thing about the entire situation I mind, what really bothers me, is simply how it brings up-and-coming players trying to do content at the appropriate level, trying to learn how to play and learn how to deal with different mechanics, face to face with people that are vastly overgeared, have no respect for them, and teach them nothing but bad habits and how to brute force content, and who actively discourage any other way of doing things because it would take too much of the raider’s precious time to even discuss.

I am thinking about it a lot, but aside from bitching, pissing and moaning about it, I really don’t see a viable solution. Cataclysm is coming, and Blizzard really wants more players to have the opportunity to see Icecrown Citadel before it turns into what vanilla Naxx 25 did; a place that only a handful of folks got to see before an expansion made it obsolete.

Without a method that is easily understood for gathering gear upgrades that leap you past older, time consuming content, or increase how many upgrades you can get over a limited span of time, players starting now would never have a chance.

I’ve got that Marine Corps mentality that says, before you bitch about the way things are, you better have taken the time to come up with your own idea on how things could be better. If you can’t, then shut the hell up.

I have some ideas, but frankly, I don’t know if they’d fix anything without making the overall fun of the game suffer.

Where I’d lean most, is to cut off the power of Emblem gear and drops a few ranks below the top progression content. Spread out the difficulty of the progression content (and the rewards provided) so you really do have to master the one below before moving onwards and upwards.

Instead of leaving people to have to bring alts up through older content that your current progression guild doesn’t run, one solution to that would be to have drops at your current content level be Bind on Account, so that if you as a player are already playing at one level of content, you could gear up your other toons as well from that level without going backward. That way, no matter what the drop, somebody is going to want it.

And finally, when there is Emblem gear to bring players ahead past old content, release one entire range of items, one for every slot, so that people are able to get geared and not feel they have to pug in lower levels raids to fill the same three slots every other player wants as well, and fight over those handful of drops while all the armor gets sharded.  

The problem is, even with doing something like that, trying to make levels of progression feel more significant on their own and remove the urge of high end progression raiders from running with people in places they don’t want to be, it still doesn’t take into account the desire on the part of players in 10 person guilds from wanting to PUG to get their hands on 25 person content gear to make their 10 man runs easier. 

See, that’s the hard thing about trying to second guess where things are now. Where we’re at now works. There may be issues with it, but it works. Would a change cause more problems than they’d fix?

Blizzard is very smart. Cataclysm is coming, and they watch all this stuff just like we do. They play as well, and I have to imagine they’re not all high end progression raiders in tight guilds, oblivious to the feel of the game and the effects of all these Emblems and PUGs on players. 

Who knows what kind of flowcharts and graphs they have of player expectations and feedback, what Six Sigma analysis they may have made on the situation and it’s core variables, and what decisions they may have planned for addressing things without breaking them?

What I do know is that I was able to raid last night in a PUG and succeed, and there was loot handed out, and Emblems that were won, and there were many other raids going on as PUGs at the same time. There are PUGs at all levels, from ICC to Ulduar to Naxx and even to Sunwell and the Black Temple. If you want to run something, at any content level, there is an opportunity available. You may need to run a ton of Heroics to prepare, but the opportunity to see content at all levels is there just the same. And that’s the single biggest complaint people had coming out of Burning Crusade.

For me, though, it also doesn’t change the fact that even though those PUGs are there, and available, and can be fun to run, the attitude among a lot of players is still there as well. That they want something from lower level content to gear at the highest levels, and they act as though they are somehow lowering themselves, slumming, in order to get it.

Hmm. I feel like I should be standing on my lawn, waving a fist and screaming at some kids.

I’ve been having fun doing a bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of the other for quite some time now.

As it happens, though, I’ve been feeling mighty bored without an actual goal to plan for. Something to be preparing for and looking forward to over the course of the week.

I’ve done the leveling a Profession route, twice now in the last few weeks. I brought my Shaman from nothing to almost max in both Alchemy and Enchanting in record time. That was a nice diversion.

And of course, there is having the Shaman herself, leveling, gearing, learning to play in groups.

And there are always alts, to mess about with and have fun.

Still, there is that part of the game I do miss, and that is playing with a group of intelligent, skilled people who care, who have a good sense of humor, and who all get together to tackle big challenges.

PUGs doing random Heroics just doesn’t cut it.

Sure, you get some Emblems, and you get some stuff to sell or disenchant, but I don’t play for that. I play in groups to have fun with other people. I really don’t get much satisfaction out of most group runs in random PUGs. The best I can look forward to is a run where I can say that ’such-and-so’ player was really nice. And then regret they’re not on my server to chat with or group with in the future.

It becomes most apparent when I do a run like I did last night, with friends on another faction, and be reminded of what it’s like to run around with people you know who give a shit. Guess what? Everyone in my group last night had under 5k gearscore. One had just dinged his warlock to 80. They also worked better together and did a far better job of clearing Utgardt Keep smoothly than any group of random mismatched PUG idiots in 5200+ GS I’ve seen in months.

What I love most is my Druid, and what I’d like to do is be in a place where I can actually do something once a week with that mythical group of intelligent, skilled people who care and have a sense of humor. A weekly Ulduar, or Naxx, or something to look forward to, where you can anticipate rising to the occasion and doing something significant.

I’ve got a friend who does raid a lot each week, and he simply PUGs them. He seems to enjoy it, but as I said, I’m pretty much done with PUGs as a way to have rewarding, enjoyable game experiences.

I’m at the point now that I am contemplating doing a server or faction change on my Druid, going off the reservation to join another group of folks that would have an open spot once a week for a Druid tank or healer.

Will it happen? I have no idea. I’ve not actually got any offers sitting on my plate, after all. But it’s something I really am thinking strongly about, and have been for quite some time.

And I’ll admit… I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a Tauren Druid. I like Taurens. :)

/moooooooo

When I talk about something on the blog, I do try and pick out those things that are entertaining moments, weird moments, or teachable moments.

There has to be a point to it, even if it was just “Well, it made ME laugh.”

Something that happened that was a fun story, something that happened that was out of the ordinary, something that happened that called to mind a topic of discussion many of us might learn from… if only to know what not to do.

And in thinking of blog posts as a teachable moment, thinking about what not to do and how to present it… my mind, inevitably, turned to evil.

A new reality TV show… “How Not to Tank”, with your host, BBB.

Yes, thats right, I felt struck with inspiration for a horrifying series of Youtube videos.

I could join a random pug, and then intentionally do something that tanks should never do, narrate it, and film the entire sequence… including the reactions of the unsuspecting party.

“Today, the Big Bear Butt will demonstrate what happens when a Bear tank tries to free himself from movement impairing effects during the 10 waves of trash in Heroic Halls of Reflection, by shifting out of and back into Bear form. Repeatedly. What will happen, and how will our unsuspecting party react? Let’s find out!”

Seriously, can you imagine how terrible that would be? To be on a run with unsuspecting, innocent folks and intentionally do stuff wrong or stupid, just to film their candid-camera type reactions and then post it?

I have achieved a new, galactic level style of asshattedness.

Even worse… the temptation to actually DO this, if only once, is strong. Now I know what is really meant by “Tempted by the power of the dark side.”

How has this concept not shown up as a regular reality show or on the internet yet?

Stay tuned next week, when our undercover main tank healer goes on strike with loud drama over Legendary item loot priorities right as the main tank pulls the last boss of a heroic Ulduar 25 run, and how the guild leadership reacts after the epic wipe, here, on “Wipe That Raid!”

I’m a sick, sick bear.