Mixing RP and Other Servers

Okay, before I get to the main topic, one thing needs to be said:

Me and my big mouth.

I'd written yesterday about how I only tank in emergencies when LFD spewed me into Violet Hold.  (What, you were expecting that I'd be watching Lost?  Nah, that's my wife's addiction, but it did allow me some play time.)  Well, it was a strange grouping, to say the least.  Two mages, a Tree, a DK tank, and Quint.  The first three looked like new 80's judging by their gear, while the tank and I were a bit more on the purple side.  The first bunch of pulls went okay if slow; I had to really dial back on my hits to keep from pulling aggro, and the mages didn't have a lot of firepower.  We got the Void Demon boss, and about 4-5 minutes later we knocked him out.

Then, a couple of pulls into the next phase, the DK tank stops moving.  "I'll BRB; have to go move clothes to the laundry room," he says.  "Pally, you tank."

While I was trying to formulate a response, the next portal opened.

"Use Righteous Fury," was his parting shot.

I know that, I thought.  I just want people to keep me upright.

Luckily, the trash mob was just a Portal Guardian, so that wasn't so bad.  I could see my health bouncing around like a ping-pong ball, and at one point I dumped Lay on Hands on myself, but I survived.

Then DBM announced "Boss Incoming."

Oh.

Crap.

About the only good thing I could say then was that it was the Water Elemental boss.  "Tank?" one of the mages called.  "You back?"

No reply.

"Joy," I said, and pulled aggro.  I almost immediately dropped to 1K, and had to do something to preserve myself.  Lay on Hands was on cooldown, so I had no choice but to bubble and then chase after the boss before she turned the Tree into so much splintered wood.

Finally, the tank returned from doing his laundry and pulled aggro.  Everything returned to normal, sort of.  "Hey, you did fine," he said.

"Dude, if you look up 'tank' in the dictionary, you won't find my name there."

That's what I get for displeasing the WoW gods.

Now, on to other business.  I was perusing the Battlegroups listings yesterday when I noticed that the roleplaying realms were grouped in with the PvE and PvP realms.  Since both the Arenas and the LFG tools use those listings, I wondered why the RP servers were set up that way.  You'd think that the RP servers would be grouped together, so that there's not a lot of metagame talk going on, but I guess that's not the case.

For those of you who play on RP realms, do you simply suspend your RP for the duration of those instance and BG runs?  From the perspective of a long time PnP roleplayer, it would be very hard to remain in character while everybody else is talking about other stuff.  (Yes, I know, that assumes people are talking at all, but still...)  What do you do?  Do you try to remain in character?  Do you even bother?  Should the RP realms be grouped into their own separate Battlegroup to preserve their identity?

One last item (I swear) and then I'm done for the day.  The last couple of runs through Halls of Stone, I've noticed a couple of interesting things:  DBM no longer provides a countdown in the Protect Bran encounter, and there's an AoE that happens after the archive voice says that things are fine.  For the former, it's an add-on, so I'm not surprised too much about that.  As for the latter, at first I thought it was a debuff that someone had not paid any attention to, but during yesterday's run the healer exclaimed "WTH is that?!" and he immediately died.

"Did anyone see anything?" he demanded.  "I was at full health, the encounter was over, and then BAM!"

"I didn't," I replied while I rezzed him.

"I wasn't even close to the beam, either," he added.

Interesting.

Tanks and Tanks Once More

Who, me?

No thanks.  I only tank in emergencies.

However, I'm thinking about the tanking writer of this blog.  The one who loves his DK Tank and has some old fashioned love for his long suffering Warrior Tank.  The same one who isn't sure what to do with creating a toon to run through low level instances with.

Yeah, I know, he could do a Pally tank, but he has one of those, and he's not thrilled with him.

He already has a Warrior.

So why not be a Big Bear Butt tank?

Okay, I know one reason he'd have issues:  the Night Elf in general.  Aside from that, however, Druid Tanks hold their aggro quite well, thank you very much, and I have to admit I've got a lot of respect for the Druid Tanks I've pugged with.  No, I'm not suggesting he hang out as a Tree --that's not his style-- but a Bear?  Yeah, I can see that.

Class Attachment

So, as we're nearing the next expansion, I've had a nagging feeling lately to finish leveling my warrior.  Currently, he's level 73.  This guy originally started out as a level 29 Tauren warrior who was a BEAST in the level 29 bracket.  This was back when having a "twinked" character was just becoming popular.  I did so much Warsong Gulch with him that he earned the rank of Sargent in the old ranking system, while  my main character was a stone guard.

My point being, the warrior has been around for a while, but has NEVER been at max level and doing end game stuff.

I've always had a sort of fondness for warrior tanks, as being a squishy rogue raiding Molten Core, I was amazed when our main tank could take up to two of the giants at the same time!

And not only that, but watching old pvp videos like those of High Warlord Pat, just gave me an awesome feeling. (It's funny, now, how small those numbers in the video are)

Warriors are raw, they fully commit to the fight or they die.  There's no nifty get out of jail free card.

So what's holding me back from leveling it out fully?  The frustrations I get when tanking.  It has to be a world of difference once you get geared up, but tanking at my level (while I can do it successfully) seems to be more work than it's worth.  It's not so much that you have to change targets and weave in some cleaves and a devastate or revenge here and there, it's feels like a constant struggle to keep everything focused on me.

Maybe I've been spoiled with my DK's abilities like placing an AOE anywhere I want to grab incoming enemies and having a spiffy pulling mechanic to get casters all lined up nice and pretty for AOE.

I'm thinking now's the time to at least max out level and wait and see how the DK revisions are panning out.  I still love playing my DK, but with a reworking of the entire mechanic, a reworking of the DK talent trees to make blood THE tanking tree, and a reworking of the vital tanking stats, I'm afraid of another brutal balancing act by Blizzard.  At least this way I'll have options once Cataclysm is released.

But this all raises an interesting question; and one I've been thinking about recently.  What drives you to play a certain class?  It is role choice?  FOTM?  One ability you love and can't do without?

Tank Etiquette

Okay, this is a question to the tanks out there. (I guess that means Souldat, but you never know who else might be reading.) When a monster drops an AoE on the floor -like the Reanimators in Drak or the Maiden of Grief in HoL- is it considered proper etiquette to pull the monster away from the middle of the floor? I've seen in several runs this past week where the tank just lets the monster or boss sit there while they wail away, but I have to split and then watch remotely after unloading my distance attacks. I know Soul will pull them out of the center, and I've seen plenty of other tanks that do it too, but the batch I got this week either don't understand that melee DPS can't stand around in the black stuff on the floor or don't care. Or maybe they have tunnel vision and don't notice, which is something I've been guilty of when I've done healing.