Alright, so here goes the first part of my rantings. Like all those who gathered here on this webiste, I’m an avid player of WoW, following the rule that dictates that “There is no real life, there is only AFK”. I have a happy career as a vending-machine and transportation means (e.g. mage) on EU Sporeggar (RP-PVP), Horde side.

Now then, this story will be about instancing. Instancing is that little thing where you happily press your “I” button and pray to god that you’ll find a group for before the five hours that you have left pass. That’s usually how it is on my server. Especially at level 70. Especially for a DPS since they are a dime a dozen. The likelihood of me doing a daily heroic is just like a PoM+Pyro’s chance to crit while clearcasting… it just doesn’t happen.

This is mostly because nobody wants to roll a tank. Don’t get me wrong here, people play warriors and paladins and druids and there’s nothing quite as frustrating as joining a group made from two warriors, a paladin and a druid and being kicked because “soz m8 we need tank”. So you resort to the ol’ faithful “take along what you can get” and I usually enlist the services of a real life friend to tank.

This guy was born to be anything BUT a tank but refuses to play anything but his tauren prot warrior. In order to instance with him you need a) lots of patience b) lots of coffee/smokes c) lots of repair money (or preferably do the instance naked).

First I will recount a tanking experience from 3rd person. So I’m at my friend’s one day, watching him run a Botanica. A rag-tag group from his guild joins up and they start the run. I walk in as they’re clearing the area for Laj. Now this is a normal run and they were pretty decently geared so they should have no problem running any instance.

First pack, our mythical cow pulls out his Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix, twangs the bowstring and an arrow fires true and MISSES. His screen freezes (playing with 1500ms latency as a tank) and when it unfreezes the tree healer is already dead. WIPE! Rinse, repeat. Second try on the same pack, our tank decides to use his ol’ faithful LEEEEEROY JENKINS! approach, so he charges into the mobs, regardless of my “dude you’re gonna pull the other packs”. Charge, thunderclap and I swear that the moment the cow thunderclapped, all mobs ran away from him and procedeed to mop the floor with the other members of the party. WIPE!

By now I was getting myself comfortable and watching the show. Third try the rogue pulls the mobs with a thrown (and he doesn’t miss) and they manage to kill the THREE mobs with only two casualties. Unluckily for them, the only resser was the druid and so the two have to run. I was already admiring their patience by this time. A painful fifteen minutes later, after many lag spikes with screen A: Thunderclap, screen B: Every man/cow/troll for himself, screen C: Cow running around to gather mobs and repeat… they’re left with only the boss. Hurray! Now Laj isn’t a hard boss and so I thought that this should be an easy fight compared to the previous ordeal.

They assign the poor rogue to clear the adds and engage. Three minutes later and 80% left on the boss I wonder what the DPS are doing since knocking 160k HP of a boss isn’t that big a deal. The tree was running low on mana and it looked like a wipe. Surely enough, Laj gets bored of the attention our cow tank was giving it and proceeds to maul the other members of the party with our cow in tow, desperately trying to reestablish aggro (and failing). WIPE! I decide not to question our tank as to why there were only two sunders on the boss at any given time and watch their second try.

The moment they engage the second time, the boss swiftly runs away and gives the rogue a piece of his mind to the cries of “why the hell aren’t I generating any threat?” of our cow. I kindly point out that “dude your weapon’s broken and all your gear is red” and my friend is totally unfazed by this response. He swiftly opens up his backpack removes his King’s Defender and equips his MINING PICK. I swear that he tanked that boss with a mining pick and not much else on his person. His shield broke down soon after but our cow was still hacking away with his trusty pick. Luckily, the DPS was not being overly competent and this worked! I think you can down Gruul in less time than it takes to kill Laj with that kind of approached but it worked.

And that’s about your 2k rep in 3 hours of Botanica. Worth it? It was worth seeing it though…

I still think I’m insane that I go with him to heroic dailies but I thank Blizzard for Blink+invisibility when aggro goes wrong.