Well, That was Weird

Early this past Sunday morning, after my wife had left for work, I was catching up on some work* when Discord pinged and I saw that Azuregos had spawned. I've been involved in raids that killed two of the Dragons of Nightmare, but I hadn't had the chance to kill Azuregos yet. So, I quickly responded with an "I'm getting online" and hopped on Cardwyn. I received the raid invite almost as soon as the loading screen finished, and I headed out for Azshara for a morning breakfast with a blue dragon.

Sunday mornings EST on a PST server aren't a great time for a pug, much less a raid for a World Boss, and we made an attempt after temporarily stalling out at 9-10 people. Without any true healers the raid wiped, so as we bandaged our wounded pride we waited for more people to join up. We eventually got about 17 - 18 people, and our decision to wait for 20 was made for us when a couple of scouts for the top guilds on the server began to appear. 

We pulled, and once everything settled down, we were able to grind out a kill.

About midway through the fight, someone from the top guild on the server dropped in and asked if we needed a healer. I didn't notice any response --and I wasn't the raid leader either-- so I focused on doing my part to down Azuregos.

Afterward, however, said player struck up a conversation with me. 

On the surface of it, the chat was pretty general in nature: how'd we do, any decent drops, how's your guild doing on Naxx, etc. etc. But at the same time, the toon was chatting me up in that he'd seen me around, have I run with his guild before**, what do I think of several different bosses, etc. etc.

At some point the lightbulb went off in my head*** and I thought to myself "Am I being recruited?"

I almost immediately followed that with: "WTF, has he even seen what my DPS is? He's hitting on the wrong player in my raid."

I kept the conversation aboveboard and polite, and eventually it ended and we went our separate ways, but the entire thing was so surreal that I still can't quite wrap my head around it. (Hence this post.) On the one hand, it was entirely likely it was completely innocent conversation. But on the other, after having described it to a friend on the server, he said "Oh yeah, Card, you were definitely being recruited. They just don't want to come out and say it, as some guilds take poaching seriously."

So maybe that was my "brush with greatness" on the server. But I could also say that "There, but for the love of God, go I." That guild is also known as being the sweatiest of the sweaty guilds, and the amount of prep and training and practice that'd take to appear semi-competent in that guild would burn me out faster than you'd believe.

It was flattering, but I vastly prefer the raid team I currently run with. I know my role, I know the people, and the raid suits me well.

And really, nobody wants to be near me if I'm sweaty.

*Don't judge me. I'm not a workaholic, and I knew going into the weekend it had to get done.

**Yes, I've been in some 5-man runs with his guild. Never had a problem there. But at the same time, this was the same guild that the tank from THAT AQ20 run was from. so make of that what you will.

***No, I hadn't had coffee yet. Does it show?

Tanks, but no Tanks

I was clearing out the Tatooine bonus series quests on my Jedi Sentinel when the call came through on Gen Chat.

"LFM for World Boss."

It's not like I haven't seen that before.  Even WoW got back into the World Boss business with Mists, so you'll occasionally see recruitment messages in Trade Chat in much the same way you'd see pug raids in the old days.*  Still, I used to eschew World Boss runs in much the same way that I passed on raids:  I simply didn't have the time to invest in the gear grind and then the raids themselves.  Perhaps I'm not being entirely fair about raids these days, with LFR and all, but watching guildies smash themselves against ICC day in and day out for 3+ hours at a time kind of turned me off of raiding as anything more than an occasional diversion into AQ40 or Sunwell.

Still, one nice thing that the World Bosses in TOR have going for them are that they're level appropriate for the world you're in.  If you're at the right level for being on a specific world, you can assist in taking on that planet's World Boss.  No gear grind needed.**

Before I could talk myself out of it, I whispered the player rounding up the WB attempt and promptly received an invite.  I took a speeder out to the Dune Sea and scanned the list of people who joined up; I recognized a few people from Heroics I'd run, and one other person I'd run a Flashpoint with.  The slots were quickly filling up to the max of 16, and by the time I arrived people were splitting themselves off into the three parts of the trinity.  There was only one thing...

"Do we have a tank?" someone asked.

"Um," I replied, scanning the lists, "I don't think we have a tank spec at all.  But we've got a LOT of healers."

Indeed we did.  I counted seven Commandos alone, and three Jedi Sages.  There were a couple of Gunslingers, and one other Sentinel besides myself.  One person piped up, "I'm the only Scoundrel here? :-("

"Yeah," I replied, "but you're OUR Scoundrel."

The player organizing the run quickly spammed Gen Chat with "LF tank for World Boss" until our fifteenth slot was taken.  "Hi!" the tank said.  "Who's the main tank?"

"You are," someone said.  "You're our only tank."

One of the Commandos added, "Yeah, but you've got about 10 healers backing you up."

"Okay, cool.  I'll get there and we'll do this."

Playing toons whose damage can really spike --a Mage (WoW), a Barbarian (AoC), or a Gunslinger (TOR)-- taught me the value of waiting before joining in an attack.***  So I had a ringside seat of watching about a half dozen glowing green lines on that tank when he started in on the WB.  I'd have laughed if I wasn't so intent on getting into position, because it looked like the old Chain Heal spell run amok.

But what I really had in mind was this Order of the Stick comic.

We DPSed down the World Boss without losing a single toon.  In fact, I don't think that either myself or the tank dropped below 75% health for the entire fight.  Hell, it's entirely possible that I could have tanked the WB with that much healing available; not that I'd want to have tried, mind you, but it does illustrate the value of having excess healing to go around.

***

To piggyback on that WB adventure, I can make the conjecture that in a battleground a healer is far more important than a tank.

While having tanks and/or melee DPS is nice to have, BGs are won or lost by the number of healers a side has.  My completely unscientific observation has been borne out by months upon months of grinding through Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, where you can make a reasonable assertion which side will win purely based on which side has more healers.  

A good healer can turn a squishy Mage into a tank.  No healer can turn a Warrior into a sitting duck.

And while a Ret/Prot Pally has a very limited number of heals before they run out of mana, the Feral Druid and Shadow Priest can hang around, dropping far more heals, even though they are technically a DPS spec. I've recently been in an Arathi Basin battleground where a Shadow Priest, a Mage, and a Feral Druid kept six players busy at the Stables.  Sure, they eventually lost, but the corresponding loss in time to taking them out meant 1/5 of one side kept 1/3 of another side from impacting the game. Spreading 9 people across four nodes meant that nodes were shorthanded, and the other side could (and did) take over at least one other node.

A good healer, just like the Demonology Warlock with their Wild Imps, can swing the battle by being a force multiplier.  Sure, you've got others with pets, such as the Hunter and Frost Mage, but a healer is a force multiplier without needing a pet at all.  By keeping teammates upright, the healer has an oversized impact on the game.  And if that healer can drop AoEs like the Druid can....

Well, you get the point.  A healer is a prized commodity in the BG world.

*Old days = pre patch 4.3.  Not to make you feel ancient or anything.

**Imagine a Knucklerot on steroids in every region of WoW, and you get the idea.

***Well, that and being a smudge on the floor when the boss smacks you good.



EtA:  Corrected a logic issue in the last paragraph.