The Great Equalizer

In the two years since we've been running this blog, ol' Redbeard has started to turn into Greybeard.  Although I'm sure that my family has had something to do with it, streaks of gray can now be seen on the sides of my facial hair, extending up into my sideburns.  Every morning, I peer into the mirror and see evidence of my mortality staring back at me.*  All the crueler, I suppose, in that my toons never seem to age or show any evidence of previous wounds.

A toon's appearance is the great equalizer in WoW.  Until you get on Vent or Mumble, you never know who is actually running the toon.  The players in your pug could be grandparents or tweens, male or female, gay or straight, and unless they make it obvious, you'll be none the wiser.

In a very real sense, this is how it should be.  We can gripe about racial design or (lack) of armor, but in the end, the toon is an idealized artistic version of an arbitrary race in a virtual game.  The toon isn't us; it is merely the vehicle in which we play.

And yet there's so much wrapped up in them.

If you don't think so, I point to the rejoicing at the vanity armor announcement for Patch 4.3.  Or how some people refuse to play certain races and/or classes, based on how they look. 

We invest so much time in these toons, it's only natural that we look at them as an extension of ourselves.  I suppose I'll always look at Q or Neve as Sindorei, Q with his Blood Knight tabard and polearm (evoking the Blood Tempered Ranseur) and Neve with her Kirin Tor tabard** and refusing to wear a helm.  Tom seems to have that Ramkahen tabard permanently stapled onto his chest, and will favor a 2H sword over anything else. 

Even when we aren't really roleplaying, we notice when things just aren't right with our toons.  Whether some gear makes sense or looks halfway decent does matter.  It's kind of hard to take a Dwarf or Gnome tank seriously with the Ulduar horned helm that looks like a giant codpiece.  Or the people who wield a specific weapon because that was what they leveled back in the pre-4.0.1 era when you had to level individual weapon skills.  Or whether your toon prefers to hang around Dal or Shat in the Cataclysm era.

I'll freely admit that one of my toons --Neve-- came out of a long running D&D campaign I was in.  She died in one of those freakish rolls of three '20' results on a d20 in a row, not more than 7-8 sessions after I'd spent all the time and effort to get her into the campaign.***  I'd been thinking about trying out a mage in WoW, so I went with Neve's name, hoping that she'd last a wee bit longer than her D&D counterpart.  In a sense the name was perfect, because I'd played her as a snarky, academically oriented Elf who thought she knew more than she really did, and that overall attitude is what the Blood Elves exude in spades.  At the same time, I don't play on an RP server, so I never really play Neve 'in character'; she's just, well, 'me as Mage'.  But I never forgot where she came from, and that kind of influences my attitude toward her.

Maybe we are all roleplaying, albeit unconsciously. 




*Unlike, say, my knees, which haven't been really right since college.  Yeah, I know, I could lose some weight, but three years of running hurdles in high school haven't exactly been kind to my knees either.

**She's not too proud to use her Illustrious Guild tabard to get rep with her guild, however.

***Our game group had no Wizards or Sorcerers --no magic wielders at all, really-- so I campaigned to take on a second character just so we could have some magic to round out the party.  I don't think I'd have minded her dying so much as the manner in which she bit it: killed by a fellow party member who'd been mind controlled by a Harpy.

Don't forget your Swiss Army Knife

In this era of role silos, I’ve found that I like playing the jack-of-all-trades.

This isn’t exactly a revelation to anyone who has read our blog the past year or so, but I’ve found that leveling new Paladins on the Alliance side has reinforced that attitude.

I’m the guy who actually likes handling the stairs on Drak’Tharon:  I can heal myself, use Righteous Fury and Consecration to draw aggro, and do enough damage by myself to keep the scourge from causing issues with the crew down below before Phase 2 of the fight.  Healer getting overwhelmed with debuffs or damage in a scrum?  I can step in and plug the gaps as needed.  Tank losing aggro to the ranged DPS?  A quick Hand of Salvation or a pull using Righteous Defense will drag that trash back into threat range, and a bubble will drop the threat right off of me, enabling the tank to reestablish control.  Garfrost’s stacking debuff hitting everyone hard?  Frost Aura will take a bite out of it.  Those Ymirheim Flamebringers blasting everyone with AoE over in the Pit of Saron?  Interrupts, Fire Aura, and Holy Wrath will stop that.

The bag of tricks that a Paladin has is an eerie echo of my own personal set of tools for work.  I might not be the most knowledgeable person at my job, but I’ve got a wide set of homegrown tools that will assist me in whatever is thrown my way.  By comparison, every Pally has the ability to heal, tank, and DPS right out of the box, but it’s the application of those various little abilities that let a Paladin really shine. 

When was the last time you saw a Ret Pally switch out of Ret or Protection Aura to help mitigate damage?  There are plenty of opportunities to do that in places such as Razorfen Downs, The Old Kingdom, the Scarlet Monastery, Halls of Lightning, and Pit of Saron, but why doesn’t it happen?  Because the theorycrafters say that’s not optimal DPS?  Why don’t Ret Pallys help out more with an occasional debuff removal?  Because they’re in their own silo?  Believe me, having run as a healer, if someone wants to assist with the occasional Cleanse, go for it.  Don’t overdo things, because it’s not your primary role, but if you want to help out, a zap or two of Cleanse in the middle of your rotation makes my job easier and lets me concentrate on the tank more.

As an example, I was in Razorfen Downs with Tomakan last week.  Tom’s reached that point where his Holy Spec gear isn’t being replaced fast enough, so he has mana issues.  Rather than burden a group with Tom being underpowered, I queued him up as DPS and switched to the 2H Heirloom Axe.  However, it was obvious that the healer and tank were struggling with the ranged DPS pulling aggro, so I pitched in with some debuff clearing and an occasional HoS or Righteous Defense to help out.

After about 10 minutes, the healer finally spoke up.  “Tom,” he asked, “are you cleaning debuffs?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m guilty.  I wasn’t going to say anything about it, though.”

“Oh, that’s fine.  I’m having lag problems, so by the time I see it pop up it’s already gone.”

The next instance that night was Scarlet Monastery, and I was doing the same routine:  clean debuffs when I can work it in, and help with crowd control without stepping on the tank’s toes. 

About halfway through the instance the Priest healer piped up, “I don’t believe it!”

“What?” the tank –also a Paladin—asked.

“Paladins who clean their own debuffs!  Not one but two of you!  That never happens!”

You know, maybe it should happen a little more often.  Working as a team means acting as a team, not just confining your actions to a specific set of keyboard strokes.