Okay, after Monday's rant, I'm going to pivot* and promote a friend/acquaintance of mine** in WoW Classic.
Jasperin is a Pally Tank on Myzrael-US, and is probably one of the best Classic Pally Tanks I've ever seen. He frequently blows my mind with his skill in out tanking well geared Warriors, even though in raids he's frequently a Healer. And even when going balls to the wall on Cardwyn, I've never had issues pulling aggro from him. Yes, part of it is me being a good party member and waiting for Jasper to get a good grip on aggro before attacking, but even then on a lot of Pally tanks they'll still lose aggro. But not Jsaperin.
The guy is good.
And to match it, he's probably one of the nicest guys I've met on the server. Yes, I've been in Discord chat with him, and he's just as nice in Discord as he is in game. In fact, he reminds me of a guy I knew when I was much younger and at college; my friend back then was just as unflappable and upbeat as Jasperin. And like my friend, just about everybody on the server seems to know Jasperin.
Why am I talking Jasper up? Because he just started a YouTube channel to provide info about Pally Tanks, Boss Guides, and other assorted topics. Before you ask, no, his skills are in Pally Tanking, not video creation/editing, but he still provides a lot of data in his videos. One of his goals is to do a two Pally tank run of Zul'Gurub in Classic, just to prove it could be done. I've already volunteered to be part of his run if he wants me, but I think it likely that he'll want to do it as a run with his guild, Mystic Bond.***
Now, after all of this, why am I promoting a YouTube channel when I implied yesterday I'm not too fond of them? Because Jasper puts in the work and figures things out. He has a grasp of the finer points of Pally tanking in Classic that a lot of people don't get and simply dismiss Pally tanks as --at best-- only good for instance running. And I'm not against YouTube channels as much as I am against the feedback loop that Blizz gets from using the PTR servers to overemphasize raids over everything else.
Jasperin only has a few videos up so far, but he's intending to make more, and they're very much worth a view.
In addition to the channel link above, here's a link to his video about using two Pally tanks in Upper Blackrock Spire:
*Sorry about the obligatory Friends reference.
**Where is the border between when an acquaintance becomes a friend in a MMO? That's a question for another post, I suppose.
***Mystic Bond (or MB as known on the server) straddles the line between casual and progression raiding, but they lean hard on the progression end of things. Yes, they're that good. And to reference my post from several days ago, the guild's personality is of a light hearted yet serious bunch. If an MB guildie is in an instance pug or raid pug, you know you're getting both a quality person as well as a quality player.
No comments:
Post a Comment