"Ambassador" and "Crusader" simultaneously. On second thought, that might not work well nowadays.

This may not seem like much to people in the world of Wrath of the Lich King…after all, there are a ton of people running around with these achievements, given how easy cloth turnins and the Argent Tournament make it to gain rep with your home factions.

But you have to understand that Linedan is old-school, boyyyy…created in 2005, back in the day when quests in newbie areas gave a paltry 50 or 100 rep instad of the 250 or 350 they do now.  He wasn’t Revered with Thunder Bluff until level 70.  For most of his life, he’s had better rep with Orgrimmar than he has with Cairne and the boys.  In fact, I’ve played that into his whole “disowned” RP persona…had I been able to, Thunder Bluff would have been the last Exalted rep he got and the last Argent Champion he got.  Unfortunately, the Argents make you Champion for your hometown first before being able to do the others, and as the rep grinds worked out, he hit Exalted with Thunder Bluff not too long after he got it with Orgrimmar.  After that, it’s just been a matter of grinding out newbie quests in Tirisfal and Silvermoon, and doing Tournament dailies, which I have slogged through with the same joy and verve that I approach doing status reports at work.  Which is to say, not very much.

To give you an indication of how things have changed…Lin wasn’t Revered with Thunder Bluff until level 70.  Latisha, my human alt prot warrior who is now level 67, hit Exalted with Stormwind at level 42. Even with the +10% human rep bonus, that’s just crazy.

I’m not sure if I’m going to work this into RP with Linedan or not.  I haven’t quite decided if it’s time that the big guy got a last name again.  In the meantime, I feel a small glow of accomplishment…and then realize that the Argent Tournament rep grind is not over.  I’ve still got 4500 to go to get Exalted with the Sunreavers.  Oh God, more jousting. And it’s all champions this time.  Blaaaah.

And looming behind all of this is the Big Kahuna, the long-term achievement goal I have for him…Loremaster.  30 quests in Kalimdor, 120 quests in Eastern Kingdoms, and 20 quests in Icecrown are all that stand between me and that title.  Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s going to be one hell of a push to pull that off.

Everybody’s got pick-up group (“PUG”) horror stories.  If you’ve played WoW for any length of time, and grouped with total strangers to try and get a quest or instance or raid completed, you’ll quickly start building a list of tales of woe.  If nothing else, PUGs should make you feel much better about yourself, I think…after all, since you’re smart enough to be reading this fine blog, obviously you are a top-notch human being in general and WoW player in particular, and do not deserve to group with people so stupid that they have to put a sticky note on their monitor to remind themselves to breathe.

But even the best of us–and I–sometimes have to PUG.  And last night, I ran across a doozy.

I was on my hunter alt, and wanted to run the daily heroic, which was Gundrak.  Now Gundrak isn’t the easiest WotLK heroic out there, in my opinion.  Slad’ran (the poison snake boss) has wiped me more times than I care to think about; even with excellent players and a top healer in T7/T8 raid gear, his Poison Nova can throw out more damage than we can power through.  The Drakkari Colossus is a pain-in-the-ass pray-your-and-your-healer’s-latency-is-low movement fight.  Even Gal’darah, who’s pretty straightforward, will gib a strong tank if the tank has a brain fart and doesn’t get out of whirlwinds.  (Don’t ask me how I know this.  Please.)

But, against my better judgement, I joined the LFG queue for it anyway.  And a couple of minutes later, I got a whisper–”h gun?”

Let’s see.  No complete words, all lowercase, and this on an RP server.  I feel a winner of a run coming on.  Eh, toujours de l’audace, dude, what the hell…”Sure!”, I replied.  I immediately found myself in a group with the group leader (a boomchicken), a warlock, and a male human paladin–obviously the tank, since he had over 40,000 health–named…Hotbox.

Ohhhhh yeah.  The stench of quality is overpowering with this one.

I flew for Gundrak while the leader druid rustled up a healer (another druid), and the five of us headed inside.  I was immediately greeted with Blizzard’s lovely new feature…the “ZOMG are you sure you want to save to this instance??!?!?11?” dialog box.  Hmm.  That’s not supposed to happen.  Well, we were all a bit confused by this, but all of us accepted and thus saved ourselves to that heroic Gundrak instance.  And down the stairs we went toward Slad’ran’s area.

We got to the entrance, ate a Fish Feast, and the paladin “Hotbox” pulled.  Without warning.  Two groups.  Hoo boy.  A frenetic and confused fight ensued in which the warlock and tree died, but we got both the trash groups.  The resto druid popped (yay soulstones) and started rezzing the warlock…as the paladin pulled more trash without saying anything.  Ugh.  We four-manned the trash, got the warlock back in…and then the tree said, “no boss.”

We looked.  Slad’ran wasn’t in his alcove.  We walked over to the alcove and saw that the alcove bridge gizmo had been activated.  In fact, all the gizmos had been activated, the bridge to Gal’darah’s ramp was aligned, and had the trolls and rhinos in position.  That meant that Slad’ran, the Colossus, and Moorabi were all dead.

Now people started getting pissed.  The critchicken who had the “hat” denied vehemently that he’d been in Gundrak that day, as did the rest of us.  And yet somehow, we were looking at an instance where the trash was up, but the bosses weren’t, the worst possible combination.

So the rest of the party started jumping off the ledge into the water.  I was last because, of course, I had to dismiss my pet.  In that period of time, people started getting eaten by the fish.  A clusterfuck ensued, resulting eventually in us getting to the ramp with two more deaths, to which the group leader said, and I quote exactly, “lol.”

Yeeeeah.

We formed back up, buffed, and fought our way up the ramp to Gal’darah’s area…

…and he wasn’t there.  His bodyguards and their rhinos were.  But he wasn’t.

The paladin pulled the rhinos (without saying anything) anyway, and nearly died because we were all too busy going “wtf?!?” in party chat, but we got them.  A ferocious argument ensued where the boomkin protested his innocence and swore he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  Hotbox also said he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  The other two said it had been longer than that, and I hadn’t had my dwarf in there for literally a couple of months.

So there our tale ends.  Hotbox (!) the male paladin, plus the other four of us, all hearthed our separate ways, probably to never see each other again except amidst the bustling crowds of Dalaran…or in the LFG tool someday, God forbid.  I had a pittance of silver and a locked instance with no way to score the two Triumph badges I wanted.  Either somebody was lying their ass off, or had gotten tricked, or we had a bugged instance.  And it was 25 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

I balmed my wounded soul by wandering off to the Pig and Whistle in Old Town Stormwind for four hours of the best RP I’ve had in many a month…culminating in a raid by the Stormwind Guard, two near-arrests, three strained marriages, a couple of damaged friendships, and one of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins telling another of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins to go fuck themselves, while the third of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins stood there and shook her head in disbelief.

What’s two Triumph badges in comparison to that?

I saw this courtesy of Tarsus over at Tanking for Dummies…this is a tank version of Miss Medicina’s healer survey, done up by Dammerung over at The Children of Wrath.  It’s long, but this is a really good set of questions.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Linedan, 80 Tauren warrior on Feathermoon-US (RP).  His spec is the old bog-standard 15/5/51 Impale/Deep Wounds cookie-cutter; supposedly 15/3/53 is the “new black” but I still have those two points in Cruelty, at least for now.  I expect I’ll end up going 15/3/53 at some point soon.  I also have Latisha, a 66 human prot warrior, also on Feathermoon…she has yet to actually tank anything, though.

What is your usual tanking environment?
25-man raiding–currently Trial of the Crusader and Ulduar, poking at some Ulduar hardmodes and ToGC–with The Anvil raid group on Feathermoon.  We have four tanks in our core group (me, another prot warrior, prot paladin, frost DK) and we raid two nights a week, so we have a set two-week rotation where each of us gets to fill in the role of MT, OT, swing OT/DPS, and DPS (or in my case, loldeeps) for a given night.  Prior to the rotation setup, I was almost always slotted as an offtank and MT’d only occasionally.

What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?
XT-002, Iron Council, and General Vezax.  They’re straight-up mano-a-mano brute-force tests of strength for the tank, and I like those.  Auriaya is fun with the precise interrupt timings and fears, and I like Anub’arak as well.

What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Faction Champions in ToC may kindly go die in a mother-humping fire immediately and never come back.  Nerfs or not, I positively despise that fight.  Keep your badly-executed bastardized faux-PvP out of my raids, Blizzard.  I also have a strong dislike for heroic Gormok, because it feels like survival in that fight is out of my hands…the RNG decides whether I avoid that 40k Impale or not and there’s damn all I can do about it except pray I anticipate it.

What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
I used to say single-target snap threat, but DKs can beat us on that, so I’ll say mobility.  Nobody is more mobile than a prot warrior.  Single-target threat is still our best tanking area, and we still may have the best two-second burst threat of any class, but overall, with Warbringer, we’re probably the most mobile class on any raid battlefield…ironic, considering we’re wearing the heaviest armor.  Also, all warriors automatically spec 5/5 Improved Badass and 3/3 Irresistable Sexeh, which are talents not available to any other tank class.

What do you think is the biggest weakness of your class, and why?
Three things–our DPS while tanking is weak compared to other classes, especially death nuggets.  Our AoE threat is weak compared to other classes, especially death nuggets.  And the Heroic Strike mechanic is effed-up beyond all recognition and forces us to repeatedly and rhythmically pound a button every 1.5-2 seconds for no bloody reason whatsoever in order to keep our threat near other classes…especially death nuggets.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best tanking assignment for you?
Anything except pure AOE tanking.  Personally I kind of fall down on constant-mobility fights like a Grobbulus or a Razorscale, but other than that, I can do any single-target job you need.  Main tank, pinning down adds, kiting, I can do it, and do it well.  The only thing that is really out of my realm is pure AOE tanking, like Freya flower trash or rubble on Kologarn.  That is the home of the paladin and the death nugget.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the most?
Any class, really, as long as the player knows how to use their abilities and we know how to complement each other.  We have no beartanks in our raid (sadly) so I have limited experience in working with one.  Warrior/paladin is a ferocious team that complement each other very well.  Warrior/death nugget can work very well together as well, especially if the DK is good at AOE tanking (as ours are).

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the least?
Stupid ones.  Stupid death nuggets are the absolute worst, just because the DK class has a lot of abilities that can make a tank’s life a living hell if they’re misused.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I don’t Heroic Strike enough.  Yes, I’m the only guy in WoW who literally doesn’t hit “2″ enough.  It’s easy to forget HS spam, but not hitting it enough gimps my damage and threat output, so I have to get better at it, or I think Kadomi will fly over from Europe and kick my ass.  On the flipside, I also tend to overuse Devastate–oddly enough, 3.2 made that less of a problem, since it hits so much harder now.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Other tanks who won’t let me do my job, taunt off me, “help” me when I don’t need it. DPS who overburn on pulls and don’t let me get solid agro.  And, most of all, Army of the Dead.  Keep those taunt-happy little bastards away from my mobs.

Do you feel your class/spec is balanced with respect to the other tanking classes?
Generally, yeah.  I wish we did more DPS while tanking, and could do more DPS in prot spec while not tanking, but in general, I think we are reasonably well-balanced against druids and paladins.  Death nuggets, well…”they’re a hero class,” that’s what I keep hearing, anyway.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
My eyes, my ears, and my brain. I look at logs to an extent, and glance at Omen and Recount occasionally, but for the most part, I look back and think about what I did and what went right and wrong. I talk to our raid officers and the other tanks frequently, too.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have with your tanking class?
There’s two–first, that we’re uber, just because we were uber in vanilla.  We’re not.  And second, that leveling a prot warrior is hard and painful.  In the post-3.0 world, it isn’t anymore.

What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about tanking?
The priority system that you have to use to maximize DPS and threat. Warriors are, as far as I can tell, far and away the most complicated and active of the four tank classes. We have a veritable metric assload of abilities that we use, and we don’t have a fixed rune rotation like DKs or a “969″ setup like paladins.  We have to make split-second decisions based on what’s off cooldown and what’s lit up.  It’s not hard to learn, but it takes some work for it to become second nature.

If someone were to evaluate your tanking ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I tend to faceroll a bit and spam keys instead of cleanly hitting my priority system, when I get stressed.  I don’t Heroic Strike enough.  Sometimes I stand in Bad(tm).  And when I’m DPSing, I tend to lose targets in all the flashy glittery glowy clutter of a 25-man fight.  Yes, I’m extremely critical of my own performance, can you tell?

Stamina or Avoidance, and why?
Avoidance is based on the random number generator, and the RNG will screw you sooner or later.  Health is always there for you.  (Besides, Lin’s a Tauren wearing plate armor…how can he have a near-30% dodge rating?  He’s humongous and weighs a squillion pounds.)  Stamina is your tried and true friend.

Which tanking class do you understand the least?
Paladins.  I’ve done beartanking back in BC, and I have a DK (though she’s blood DPS) so I sortakinda understand how they work, even if I don’t know the details of how they tank.  But I’ve never gotten a paladin past level 33, and that was ret.  I have no clue how fancybelves do what they do.

What addons or macros do you currently use to aid you in tanking?
Nothing too out of the ordinary.  The normal stuff, of course–threat meter (Omen), DPS meter (Recount), raid assist (oRA2), and boss mods (DBM).  I use ItemRack to switch gear sets quickly, and have recently started using the wonderful and versatile Satrina Buff Frames to replace Elkano’s Buff Bars.  I also use Bartender4 for bars, XPerl for unitframes, ChocolateBar and Data Broker addons for a top status bar, and the old warhorse, Scrolling Combat Text.  (I think it may be time for a Panzercow’s UI post very soon.)

Do you strive for a balance in tanking stats, or do you stack some higher than others, and why?
Stamina in general is my #1 priority–I’m down on health compared to our other three tanks because I’m slightly behind them in gear level, so that’s my biggest thing to catch up on.  Plus, Ulduar hardmodes and ToGC are the home of the “holy crap, how much did that thing just hit for?” fight (hi Gormok), and there’s no replacement for a huge health pool as long as I can still crank out enough threat to keep the mob on me.  Other than that, I try to maintain a balance, but don’t usually succeed.  Right now, Lin’s under the hit cap, near the expertise cap, heavy on defense, way heavy on dodge, and light on parry.  I keep an alternate set of gear that’s still crit-immune, but gives up stamina and some avoidance to load the hell out of shield block value…for those times where nothing else will do but an 11k Shield Slam across the face.

Every now and then, you run across something that reminds you that at its best, World of Warcraft is more than just an online game with 11+ million subscribers.  In its best moments, it becomes a community of friends who care about each other.

John “Big Bear Butt” Patricelli has one of those moments up over at Big Bear Butt Blogger now.  A member of his guild, Sidhe Devils on Kael’thas-US (one of the more active guilds in the WoW blogosphere), has been diagnosed with breast cancer, so the Devils have decided to do a little more than just mere moral support.  Go check it out:  World of Warcraft Raid for the Cure!

The always-readworthy Spinks has an outstanding post up over at Welcome to Spinksville about why people love their warriors.  She quotes responses from a post on the Blizzard warrior forums where warriors talk about why they love the class.

There’s a common thread through most of the four pages of replies over there, and as Spinks notes, it’s not the game mechanics:

Here’s a few snippets, sorted into categories. The most interesting thing to me is that no one has mentioned the mechanics — not a single person said that they liked the rage mechanic. I bet hunters and warlocks would have mentioned their pets, death knights would have mentioned runes, rogues would have mentioned the energy ticks and finishers, shamans would have mentioned the totems, etc. But nope, mechanics are not part of the warrior appeal.

Truer words have never been spoken.  Yes, the warrior class in general has some cool mechanics–Charge and Intercept do keep getting mentioned–but overall, the warrior players that I know that are “hardcore” about the class, including yours truly, aren’t in it for the button-pushing.  Yes, warrior tanking is probably the most active and engaging of all the tank classes, because we don’t have a fixed rotation like paladins and we have more buttons to hit than beardruids.  But there’s significant problems too…Heroic Strike spam for threat is just silly IMO, and Shield Block has morphed into a neither-fish-nor-fowl bastard of an ability that Blizzard has no clue what to do with to balance it.

No, the appeal of the warrior is much more visceral than “o hai, cool stuph.”  It seems to strike an emotional chord in people that provokes an attachment few if any other classes have.  It’s about the look and feel and sound, how the toon looks in high-end armor wielding two two-handed weapons or a giant shield.  It’s about watching and hearing your character use their shield to backhand some poor bastard straight into the graveyard, or Bladestorming their way through a pile of enemies.  It’s the thrill of tanking, standing in against large numbers of foes and surviving, about being the focal point of the entire encounter…about being The Man (or The Woman).  About having no magic, no pet, no range, no Light…it’s just the character, their items, and their own ability keeping them alive and getting the job done.

I’ve never heard other classes’ players get as rawly emotional about what they play as warrior players do about their characters.  (Hunter players, in my experience, have been the closest, with priests in third place.  I think the pets draw hunter players, and hardcore players of priests just love healing.)  It’s odd, but I understand it.  Some people “get” it, and some don’t, and that’s cool.

Besides, any discussion where I get to drag out this little piece that I wrote many years ago, back in my Everquest days circa 2000, is a good one.  Behold…”The Warrior.”

I am the Warrior.

When you see me, I will, most likely, not be attired formally. I will be encased in my steel. It will be dirty, bloody, and battered. I do not have a quick tongue or eloquent speech. I know nothing of the manners of the King’s court, or the ettiquette of the formal ball.

I am known by many names. Tank. Meatshield. Fighter. Brawler. Corpse.

I am the Warrior.

I have not the capability, nor the inclination, to hide. I cannot strike from stealth with devastating blows, then fade into the darkness. I cannot incinerate a foe from twenty paces away. I cannot deal death from a distance, safe from the return attacks of my enemy. In order to kill, I must close with the enemy. I see his eyes. I smell his breath. I taste his fear. And he tastes mine.

I cannot bend Nature to do my bidding. I cannot tap into the Nether and force it to do what I command. I cannot study the arcane and master it to my control. I command nought but my mind, my body, and my will. It is by those, and those alone, that I stand or fall.

I have no friends on my journey. No walkers of the void, summoned from the Nether as servants and bodyguards. No loyal beasts of the plains or woods, to defend me and comfort me in my pain. My sole companion is my weapon. I must care for it better than any hunter has ever cared for his beast. I must master it more than any warlock has ever mastered his demon. Without me, it is useless. Without it, I am nothing.

I cannot heal. I cannot shield. I cannot call upon the gods and see my prayers answered. I call to the spirits of my ancestors in the heat of battle, and they are silent. My only ability to protect is to offer myself, my blood and bone and sinew, as a sacrifice. To draw the attacks of our foes. To take the blows that would kill a lesser being, and continue to fight on.

I cannot kill with the speed and grace of the rogue, the suddenness and shock of the hunter, or the flamboyance and power of the mage. When I kill, it is a slow business. Slow and bloody for all concerned, myself included. I fight on, pummeled and battered so that my companions may receive the glory of the kill and the wreaths of victory. If I die and they yet live, it is an expected sacrifice.

I come in all races, all sizes. I fight under a thousand flags, on a million battlefields. I am dismissed by the highborn, scorned by the noble, lectured by the priest, and forgotten by the peasant. Until the time when the trumpets of battle sound, and those who would destroy them come forth. And then the cry goes up…”Where, oh where, is the Warrior?”

Pray to your gods that I continue to answer that call.

Few do answer the call. Fewer still survive. It is a long and hard road, this way of the Warrior. Along it lie pain, and fear, and death. Scant rewards and scanter gratitude. At the end, for most, is an anonymous grave on some windblown battlefield. If they are lucky.

And yet, I fight on. I do not even know why. Perhaps for glory, perhaps for fame, perhaps for money, perhaps for my country, perhaps for my family. Perhaps it is simply all I know how to do. But fight I will. Whether you appreciate it or not. Whether you even notice it or not. I will be out there, on the battle lines. Fighting. Killing. Dying.

I am the Warrior.

Death is my business.

Be it yours…or mine.

This time last year in WoW, we were fighting for our lives.  Or, maybe running for our lives might’ve been more appropriate.  Our towns and cities were overrun by gigantic hordes of shambling, terrifying zombies, and they only wanted one thing…braaaaaiiiinnnnss.

Yep.  Last year, in the runup to Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard decided to give us a world event we’d never forget.  Forget the 2008 recycle of the 2006 Naxxramas opening event, where you got to go out to various zones and then get camps of undead stolen from you so you couldn’t get those l33t [Jockstraps of Undead Slaying].  No, Arthas had a little more in mind this time than sitting there and waiting for us to smash up some crystals and scream at people for jacking our mobs.

Remember how it started?  Boxes of tainted food started appearing, mysteriously, in towns.  And then came the zombies…well, OK, ghouls, but they were called zombies, because zombies are cooler than ghouls.  If a zombie bit you, or you messed with a food box, or you splattered a tainted bug or rat, you got cooties.  If you didn’t get cured by the time the cootie timer ran out, you became a zombie, with a whole new set of abilities…including having to fight nearly-constantly or your health would drain away and you’d die.  Zombies aren’t exactly known for just standing around and chillaxin’, y’know?  They feel the need…the need to feed.

At first, the disease timer was 10 minutes and it was easy to cure…no worries.  Then the disease timer dropped to 5 minutes, and then two minutes, and then one minute.  By that time, it was World War Z time, baby.  There were zombies everyfrickinwhere, man.  Cities became deathtraps as guards and NPCs got zombified by the dozens.  Death and undeath were spread across Azeroth and Outland.

And just like that, it was over.  Grand Apothecary Putress came up with the cure, and the Argent Dawn delivered it…and all that was left was to clean up the streets of Orgrimmar and Stormwind, burn the bodies, and count the cost.

There’s no doubt that Blizzard absolutely swung for the fences with what we’ve termed the “Zombiepocalypse.”  This was not just another holiday, or some optional event for certain levels.  This was specifically designed to get the point across that the Lich King wants your ass dead.  Yes, you.  And he doesn’t much care about your daily quest grind or your current assignment to retrieve eight [Bear Asses] for some idiot in Thelsamar.  This is total war, son.

There’s also no doubt that the Zombiepocalypse was the most contentious and divisive world event Blizzard’s ever done.  It affected almost everyone who played during that week last October, whether you wanted to be affected or not.  The only way to “opt out” was not to play.  The potency of the disease in the last few days, plus the ease of catching and spreading it, made Hakkar’s old Corrupted Blood look like a minor sniffle.  You either loved the Zombie Invasion of 2008, or you hated it.  There was no in between.

Well, except for me.  I can find the in-between on anything.  (Yes, I am the world’s only wishy-washy tank.)

Let’s take a look at the bad, and then the good, that came out of the Zombiepocalypse, and what lessons Blizzard can hopefully take away from it for any world-shattering–literally–events they may want to try for Cataclysm’s ramp-up.  First, the bad:

- Griefing.  The Zombiepocalypse proved that there’s a population of people on every server who are nothing but raving assholes who get a good laugh out of ruining other people’s fun…but can’t handle it when their own plans get thwarted.  Stories ran rife of groups of level 70 player zombies tearing a swath through newbie towns, infecting the guards, causing level 1-5 characters to get one-shotted again and again.  Questgivers and flightmasters were dead or undead for extended periods.  Auction house bombing (run into an AH and zombie-explode, thus infecting everyone around) became an art form.  Protests from the affected parties brought forth streams of “lololol cry more noob.”  And yet, when a paladin or priest would “fight back” by actually, y’know, cleansing the disease off the zombie, oh, the four- and five- and twelve-letter bombs that flew from the newly de-zombified!  Newsflash, Griefer Boy:  If you get to run around and make life miserable for level 10s, then we get to cure you back from zombie form into douchebag form, even though your spelling and grammar is better when you’re screaming “braaaaiiiinnnnsss lol.”  Yes, I know the event was designed to force people out of a comfort zone–I get that (see below).  But like every other thing that griefers get a hold of, many times, zombiedom was turned into nothing more than an excuse to be a dong.

- Non-consensual PvP.  Here you are, Joe Noob, level 11 mage, rolling around Westfall wondering why the hell Old Blanchy can’t just graze her own oats and HAY WTF LEVEL 70 ZOMBIE ZOMG I’M DED.  Zombies, see, know not of your PvP flags.  A zombie could attack, and be attacked by, anybody, anytime.  They were, effectively, their own faction…and you were always flagged to them.  Don’t want to PvP?  Tough toenails.  If a player zombie wants to PvP with you, you can outrun him, yeah, because he’s a zombie, but other than that, you’re PvPing regardless.

- Shattrath.  Nowhere did the problems with the event loom larger than Shattrath City.  Shattrath, of course, is a Sanctuary–no PvP combat allowed.  This included zombies.  Which means that once a player turned into a zombie, they were, for all intents, immune from attack from other players.  Similarly, player zombies could not infect other players directly…but they could chain the infection among the hordes of Aldor and Scryer and refugee NPCs running around, and those NPC zombie swarms could zombify or kill a player in short order, because of the additive nature of zombie bites–the more you get hit, the more it cuts the timer down.  As long as the player zombies could find the occasional NPC to nomnomnom, there wasn’t a damned thing zombie-fighters could do to stop the root cause of the problem.  It was a gaping hole in the “ruleset” for Zombiepocalypse, if you will, and it was exploited to the utmost.

- Melee need not apply.  That week was an awesome time to be a priest, or especially a paladin.  Everybody snuggled up close to you because, hey, hordes of undead are what you live for, right?  You can heal the sick, or you can protect the innocent, or you can just ret up and kick massive zombie ass.  Well, conversely, trust me, it was a shitty time to be a warrior.  The last couple days of the plague, the infection timer was a mere one minute…and each zombie bite cut it down by something like ten seconds.  Just a few nibbles and you were a zombie, whether you wanted to be or not.  There was no place for warriors in particular (although I’m not sure shamans could clear it off themselves, or if rogues could CoS out of it).  Even if I had a paladin behind me spamming cleansing on me while fighting a zombie horde, all it’d take is one resist or one lag spike, and poof, Zombiepanzercow.  I had really wanted to play Linedan through the end of the Zombie Invasion, but it quickly became so obviously pointless that my fearless Panzercow ended up not logging on for the last two days of the fight.  Beltar, my dwarf hunter, became my primary character, and I had a much better time.

Now, all that said, do I think Zombiepocalypse was a failure?  Hell no.  Here’s the good stuff:

- Arthas wants to eat your face.  Nothing drives home the fact that Arthas is the Big Bad like having your entire city overrun by brain-eating zombies.  We, as players of WoW (especially if we never played any of the Warcraft RTS games, as I didn’t), will never really feel the despair and desperation of the Third War, of the loss of Lordaeron and Stratholme and Darrowshire, the scouring of the Ghostlands and Eversong and the desperate stand at the gates of Silvermoon.  That one week, a week of increasing disruption and violence and vicious fighting in the streets, is the closest we’ll get.  If you’re a bit of a lore nerd like I am, that alone makes putting up with the negatives a ton easier.

- The RP was awesome.  Since I ended up on my dwarf for most of the latter half of the Zombiepocalypse, I ended up fighting in Stormwind along with his guild, the Wildfire Riders.  And there was crazy fighting going on.  The zombie-lovers were constantly infecting the Trade District and Old Town.  There were pitched battles in the streets all that last night, literally for hours.  Zombies were popping out of every building as vendors got infected.  The “front” shifted constantly, from the Trade District to the Harbor to Old Town and back to the Trade District.  We gave it a name…”The Longest Night.”  And the roleplay and stories that came out of the last night of the event still resonate among us to this day, so much that we’re having a little in-game get-together soon to remember the night that the Pig and Whistle became Old Town’s last redoubt against the forces of undeath.

- You got to be a zombie!  I had a rule of thumb.  I’d fight like hell against any zombie I saw, but if they got me, they got me fair, and I proceeded to go all-out as a zombie.  (My exception was Shattrath…the situation was so screwed up there thanks to the Sanctuary rules, I’d just go off in a corner and suicide.)  Why not?  Being a zombie, if you’re reasonable about it, is hella fun.  You can control NPC zombies, you can lurch around yelling “BRAAAAAIIIIINS,” you eat tasty human fase to regain health.  What’s not to like about it?

- Beltar got to pretend he was Bruce Campbell.  Sort of.  Shooting zombies in the middle of the Trade District while ripping off one-liners in /say?  Hell yeah.

I really hope that Blizzard has something as epic as the Zombiepocalypse planned for the Cataclysm rollout.  I just hope that if they do, they take a hard look at what went wrong last year (and there was a lot) and don’t just dismiss the legitimate complaints as “a bunch of noob carebear whiners,” like a lot of the forum idiots do.  Obviously you can’t have something like this without disrupting people’s play, at least some.  But with some thought, they should be able to at least mitigate some of the griefing and make it more enjoyable for more people, of all levels.

Sometime late on Sunday night, Achtung Panzercow passed the forty thousand pageview mark in just under 11 months of existence.  I still don’t know how.  I mean, it’s just me, one fat guy in the American South, taking time out of his occasionally-busy workday to randomly wank about WoW, right?  A little roleplay here, some warrior advice there (some of which is even, on occasion, almost correct!), a bit of raiding in the middle, all garnished by snark and profanity?  Doesn’t exactly sound like a winning combination…and yet, a couple hundred people a day troop through here, day after day.  (And half of you forget to wipe your feet.)  Thank you all, so much.  I couldn’t do this without the folks who come through here and read and comment, and I wouldn’t want to anyway.

The Anvil’s raiding this past weekend was a mixed bag.  This was the weekend we decided we were going to start making serious pushes on some Ulduar hardmodes.  But first on Thursday night, we stopped through ToC for our weekly visit.  They really just need to put a vending machine outside the place…we do a retinal scan, it gives us our 15 Triumph badges, and we head on to something actually, y’know, interesting, instead of spending an hour and a half staring at the same room and listening to Garrosh and Wrynn stroke their peens.  (OK, an hour ten minutes staring at the same room and then 20 minutes in Anub’arak’s pad.  Whatev.)  We went five for five on one-shots, including the hated Faction Champions, culminating on a nice clean kill on Anub’arak.  We are, unfortunately, falling into that large gap between Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader.  We’re able to cruise through 25 normal with relative ease now,  but 25 heroic would probably gut us like a fish.  It’s a somewhat awkward position to be in.

The second half of Thursday night was spent in Ulduar.  We went for Shutout on Flame Leviathan, with no towers up–a pure speed kill.  Well, how does fifty-four seconds flat sound for a speed kill?  (Pyrite spam is love, baby.)  Then it was on to XT, where we forced his hardmode for the first time by finally bringing enough deeps to destroy his heart.  We couldn’t quite bring him down–our best wipe was about 35%–but that’s OK, as it was the first time a lot of us had seen hardmode on XT and we’re still learning how to handle Life Sparks and voidpoo and whatnot.  We rounded out the night with Kologarn and Razorscale.

Thursday was interesting for me because it’s one of the few times–maybe the only time, come to think of it–that I’ve been pure DPS for every one of those fights except Faction Champions (where prot > everything).  My Arms gear is still at least a full tier below where it needs to be, not to mention badly itemized, and Arms is not a killer DPS spec for personal glory anyway.  But I managed, according to World of Logs, to squeeze out around 3500 DPS for the entire three hours, and actually beat a couple of other people on aggregate damage and DPS for the first time.  It’s still not my favorite thing to do, but all four of us who tank for The Anvil rotate in and out, and all four of us get our turn in the deeps barrel occasionally.  I got some deeps upgrades, ditched some of my excess +hit (maybe too much!), and once I get my new toys enchanted and gemmed, should be able to see a bit of an increase.

Now, Fridays have been our bane lately.  We’ve really had to scramble to fill 24 or 25 slots.  Because of the number of subs we were running, we pretty much knew that hardmodes weren’t going to work on Friday, so it ended up being a relatively laid-back three-hour tour of Onyxia, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim (who gave us a fair amount of trouble, more than usual), Freya, and Ignis.  I’m pretty sure our officers are going to extend the Ulduar lockout so we can take cracks at Mimiron (NO FIREFIGHTER), one of the IC hardmodes, Vezax, and Yoggy next week.

Personally, I’m pleased that Lin is closing in on a second piece of T9.25, because the warrior Tier 9 set bonuses are sweet.  My problem is, I don’t have a ToC 10-man.  All the 10-mans that my guildies, raidmates, and friends run are completely locked-in for tanks.  So I’m only getting 15 badges a week, meaning it takes quite a while to accumulate 45 or 75 for a T9.25 piece (or even 30 or 50 for the vanilla T9).  My wonderful wife tried to throw a 10-man ToC together on Saturday afternoon…yeeeah, it didn’t go well.  It’s easy to get cocky when your raid group walks through Northrend Beasts like a tank through a sheet of paper, and then you take a mixture of friends’ alts and a couple pickups in and Gormok hands you your ass after he’s bitten it off and had a snobold roast it.  It helps you remember that yes, it’s quite possible to dominate on Thursday night and look like a scrub on Saturday afternoon.

Oh, and Linedan, Azeroth’s Most Humorless Cow, has Hallow’s End wands.  Whether he actually uses them or not, we’ll have to see.  More than likely, he’ll accidentally hit somebody with one and be mortified.

If you’re reading this expecting an answer to the question above…sorry, folks, I don’t have one.  Because, see, it’s my question.

As I posted in my latest installment of So You Want to Be a Prot Warrior on endgame gearing, there’s certain magic numbers that you strive to hit when you first move up to tanking heroics or raids.  One of those numbers is 263 hit rating, otherwise known as the magic rating number that gives you +8% chance to hit–needed to push misses out of the picture completely.

If you’ve had a chance to run through Ulduar a bit, or have looked at some of the items that come out of there, you may notice that it seems like almost everything’s got +hit on it.  I know many melee DPS, despite their best gearing efforts, who came out of Titan Disneyworld way, way over the hit cap.  My wife, a feral druid who Knows What She’s Doing, is stuck with 313 hit rating–and that’s after replacing some Ulduar pieces with Trial of the Crusader stuff.  Our raid’s Chief Cat Herder was pushing nearly four hundred hit rating–11 or 12 percent +hit–at one point.  Even Lin’s arms gear, a grab-whatever-I-can-find hashup of badge, Naxx-25, Ulduar-10, Ulduar-25, and a couple of ToC pieces, sticks him with 300 hit rating and not nearly enough expertise to balance it.

Lin in tank mode was no exception through Ulduar.  Recently, I finally got his hit rating to about 265, with his expertise in the low 20s–not quite dodge-capped, but close.

Enter Trial of the Crusader and other Tier 9 content.

Suddenly, +hit is gonzo.  Last night, I got a nice upgrade from Faction Champions in ToC-25…the very tasty ilevel 245 version of the Belt of Bloodied Scars, to replace his Shieldwarder Girdle.  The BoBS is great for his “boss” avoidance set.  More strength, more stamina, lots of dodge, parry, and defense.  But…no +hit.  The Shieldwarder’s Girdle had a lot of +hit.

And so, I, der Panzercow, the guy who just told you aspiring nubwarriors last week that you need 263 hit rating…is running around with 159.  Three full percent below what you are supposed to have.  At least I have 28 expertise.

I almost didn’t take that BoBS because of what it’d do to my hit rating.  A couple of my fellow tanks had to smack some sense into me before I went ahead.  But now, here I sit, with a 3.07% chance to miss on every swing.  Every taunt.  Every…well…everything.

Now here’s the weird part.  I’ve spoken to two people, one in my raid, one in another raid that’s slightly ahead of us in progression.  And they’re saying that from what they’ve seen, it’s now no big deal for tanks to be running around at 5% or even lower +hit.  Because, apparently, just as it seemed like everything in Ulduar had +hit, stuff in ToC and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 doesn’t.  So tanks are having to adapt.

That brings me back to the question at the title of this post.  If you’re tanking a raid at this level–hardmode Ulduar, normal or heroic ToC–are you doing it with less than 8% +hit?  If so, how is it working out?  What are you doing to mitigate the chance of misses, especially on taunt-sensitive fights like Gormok?  Am I being a nubsauce for worrying about this?  Why does it burn when I pee?  And, of course, are we there yet?

Linedan is my main–he always has been and barring catastrophe, he always will be.  But my “Alliance main,” the dwarf hunter Beltar Forgebreaker, is probably my most fun character to roleplay.

On the surface, he looks like your typical fantasy dwarf…irascible, sarcastic, a bit on the greedy side, inordinately in love with his guns.  But dig deeper and you’ll find that Beltar’s not exactly a stout-hearted dwarven hero in the Gimli mode.  For over a hundred years, he’s wandered the Eastern Kingdoms as a gun for hire, on both sides of the law (sometimes simultaneously), not settling in any one place for long.  He’s been a mercenary, an assassin, a guard, a hitman, a bodyguard, and more.  His idea of a fair fight has always been one where he shoots his opponent in the head without ever being seen.  And now, late in his life, he’s found his calling as an adventurer and general ne’er-do-well with the Wildfire Riders.

But even anti-heroes have to start somewhere.  And in a fashion typical of the accidental nature of his wanderings, Beltar’s first steps on his wandering path didn’t happen the way you’d envision they might.

“Redemption” was a story that I wrote in late 2005, a few months after Beltar’s creation in August.  I don’t remember how this backstory came to me, really  It just popped into my head and I had to take some time out and write it right now dammit…so I did.  I always knew Beltar was oldish, and a wanderer, but until this story body-checked me out of nowhere, I had no clue as to what started him on his lifelong odyssey of the gun.

It’s below a cut, because it’s hella long–4400 words.  In case you haven’t noticed, I do tend to run on a bit.

I hope you enjoy it.

“Anias Steelson.”

The two guards half-escorted, half-drug the young dwarf forward between them.  They stopped in front of a stone table, behind which sat an old, grey-bearded dwarf.  The gold seal he wore on a chain around his neck identified him as a magistrate here in the tiny mining village of Flintrock, high in the mountains on the edges of the dwarven lands.  The carved stone nameplate on the table said, simply, “COALFORGER.”

The dwarf shackled between the guards was barely adolescent, still gangly–as gangly as a dwarf could ever get, anyhow.  His hair hung, limp and greasy, long on either side of his head and down in front of his face; his clothes were dirty, and he smelled none too pleasant.

Magistrate Coalforger finished surveying a paper in front of him, then put it down and gazed over small glass spectacles at the trio in front of him.  “Turn him loose,” he waved to one of the guards, who duly produced a key and freed Anias’ hands and ankles from the iron shackles.  Both guards then stepped back a precise distance from their former charge; not close enough to crowd, but close enough to strike.  Anias never looked up; he kept his head down, looking at the edge of the desk, hair hiding his face.

The magistrate picked the paper back up, then, with an aggrieved sigh, dropped it again.  “Hell, I’ll dispense wi’ th’ formalities.  Anias Steelson, y’done yer sentence fer thievin’, fifty days and fifty nights in th’ gaol, and now yer free t’go.”  He removed the spectacles and looked at Anias with a mixture of frustration, pity, and sympathy.  “Lad, I hope it taught y’a lesson.  Quit this thievin’ business while y’can.  Y’ain’t no damn good at it, we both know it.  Stop runnin’ with those boys yer with, and do somethin’ honest with yer life.  Y’keep goin’ this way, th’ next time ye be caught, boy, ain’ nothin’ none of us’ll be able t’do ’bout it…ye’ll either be guestin’ here fer half yer days, or it’ll be th’ rope’s end fer ye.”

Anias never looked up, never said a word.  He just nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Dammit, boy, look at me!”, the old dwarf yelled.  The guards flinched; old Magistrate Coalforger never raised his voice.  But Anias did not flinch; he slowly raised his head, and brushed his hair back with one slightly shaky hand.  There was no rage, no defiance, no fear in the gaze that met Magistrate Coalforger’s; only apathy, resignation, and loss.

“Boy, what would yer mother say, if she seen ya like this?  And I promised yer Da that I’d keep y’straight th’ best I could…he’d whup us both if he saw y’here now.”  His tone softened.  “Anias, I gotcha one more chance.  Y’know well as I do y’re supposed t’ be in here for a half-year, nae just fifty days.  I cut yer sentence, gave ya four months and a bit off.  Don’t go makin’ me regret it.” 

“May I go now, sir?”  Anias’ voice was quiet as his head dropped again.

Coalforger leaned back in his chair, frustrated, and looked out the window to his left.  Three young dwarves stood outside in the snow, clad raggedly, simply.  One, the oldest of the bunch, saw Coalforger through the window and locked eyes with him, lips curling back in a sneer of pure hatred.  Theatrically, he hocked and spit onto the flagstones in front of the keep.

With another sigh, Coalforger closed his eyes and threw his head back.  “Aye, yer ‘friends’ are here, Anias.  Y’kin go.”  His head stayed back and his eyes stayed closed as Anias walked out of the room.  When he heard the door shut, he looked back out the window again, saw Anias meet the three dwarven youths, and the group of them head down the hill toward town.

“Light save ya if’n I ever see y’here again, lad,” he murmured softly.  “I cannae save ya next time.”

The Mineshaft Tavern was a virtual copy of a hundred other dwarven taverns in a hundred other dwarven mining towns.  With evening coming on, and the release of the miners from the nearby mines, it was noisy and crowded with dozens of patrons.

Around one particular corner table, there extended a small bubble of space that existed nowhere else in the room.  It was a space enforced by threatening glares from its occupants–Anias and his three friends.

Anias sat back against one wall, pinned in by the other young dwarves around him.  On either side of him sat the brothers Eaglewing–Dalmas, the older one, a hulking, stupid brute of a dwarf on one side, and Gullan, almost as slight as Anias but older and quicker, on the other.  And across from him, his back arrogantly exposed to the room, sat the leader of the small band, their half-brother Delwyn Hammerblow.  There was no doubt that Delwyn was in charge; he had proven that through too many beatings and threats.

The four of them–really, the three of them, with the younger Anias more as a mascot than anything else–had run roughshod over Flintrock for many months.  Petty thievery.  Protection money to avoid beatings.  Burglary.  Everyone in Flintrock knew that Delwyn, Dalmas, Gullan, and Anias were behind them all.  But no one could…or would…legally prove it.  The rulers were old and weak, and the people, even the tough miners, were cowed.  “I,” Delwyn was fond of proclaiming, quite openly, “run this worthless stable of a town!”  An exaggeration, but still uncomfortably close to the truth.

The serving wench brought their food and ale, receiving nothing but a grope from Delwyn for her efforts as she hurried away, tears forming in her eyes as she heard the brothers’ laughter and crude comments.  Anias wasn’t paying attention to that; his eyes were focused on the steaming-hot tuber root in front of him, his first food other than bread and water since he’d been sent to the dungeons fifty days earlier.

From a nearby table, a roaring voice carried above even the tumult of the crowded tavern, the voice of a drunk old dwarf.

“…an’ then I BIT ‘IM!  Roight on th’ nose, I did!  Th’ bear lets go o’me, he din’t ’spec me t’fight back, see?  S’I grab me boomstick and I shoves it roight doon his throot!”

Gullan shook his head.  “Shapers, doesn’t that ol’ bastard ever shut th’hell up?  I can’ eat wi’ him screamin’ ‘is lies like tha’!”

Delwyn turned and glared at the table where the old dwarf held court.  “He is right annoyin’, he is,” he replied, seeming to grow annoyed that he couldn’t silence the storytelling drunk with the same icy glare he used to control the rest of the room.  He snapped his focus back to the table and fixed on Anias’ plate.  “Here.  Gimme that.” 

With a single quick motion Delwyn snapped the tuber root from under Anias’ knife.  “Hey!”, Anias cried.  “That’s m’ first decent meal in fifty days!”

“Shut it or y’ll eat boot leather instead,” Delwyn snapped.  He turned again toward the table where the old dwarf was holding court.  He had levered himself to standing, weaving, hands gesticulating wildly as he continued his improbable story of escaping from a dwarf-eating bear.

Delwyn half-rose from his chair, waited a second, then snapped his right arm overhand.  With a flick of his wrist, the tuber sailed across the room and smacked into the side of the old dwarf’s head, on the jaw just below the ear.  Hot root splattered all over his head and the dwarves next to him, and the impact sent him staggering back a step and crashing to the floor in a drunken sprawl.

“Ha!”, Dalmas slapped his knee.  “Good ‘un, boss!”  Gullan spit out a mouthful of ale and chokingly laughed.  The dwarves surrounding the fallen drunk glared at the table of four, and one made a move to get up.  But a single glare from Delwyn, cold as the mountains at Winterveil, made him think better of it.

Duly satisfied, Delwyn turned back around to his three companions and allowed himself a smile.  “That’ll shut th’ old fart up.”  He clapped Gullan on the back as he coughed.  “Breathe, damn ya, breathe!  I need ya tomorra night for that visit t’ the Snowglade house!”

Anias just sat and sulked as the three others collapsed into laughter, too hungry to laugh.  But from his angle, he was the one that noticed first that their victim had stood back up…and was moving toward them.

A tense silence radiated from the tables around as the old dwarf limped toward them, his right knee locked and the leg dragging.  Dalmas saw Anias’ shocked look and followed his eyes to the limping drunk.  “Boss,” Dalmas muttered.  “Behind ya.”

Delwyn slowly turned in his chair, then stood up as the old dwarf clomped up to them.  He was a big one, half a head taller than Delwyn, broad-chested with the muscle of youth fading into the fat of age.  But it was obvious that once he had been a very impressive dwarf indeed.

“You got a problem, ancient one?”, Delwyn asked quietly, his voice carrying an edge of steel.

“I ain’ th’ one wi’ th’ problem, lad!”, the other dwarf replied, shouting and sweating.  “Ye an’ yer sprats be thinkin’ yer some kinda stuff, aincha?  Well I’m tellin’ ya, lad, I seen troll shit scarier’n'ye and didnae smell half as bad neither!”  Gasps echoed through the room around them, and the whole tavern fell silent except for whispered murmurs, heads bobbing as those further away strained to see.

“Old man,” Delwyn hissed.  “Watch what ye’re sayin’.”

“Or ye’ll do what?”, the old dwarf replied mockingly.  “Whatcha gonna do, boychild?  Cut me in fronta half a hunnert pair’o'eyes?  Go fer it, then, if y’re s’godsdamned brave!  I ain’ nothin’ but nae ol’ drunk lame dwarf, y’could open me up likes a rabbit!”  He flung his arms wide.  “DO IT, BRAVE BOY!  DO IT!”

Delwyn stood, shaking with rage.  Dalmas had stood up on the dwarf’s left, his hand groping for his dagger; Gullan had already drawn his and hidden it under the table.  Anias still sat, across the table from the scene, open-mouthed.

“‘AT’S WHAT I THOUGHT!”, the old dwarf roared and turned to the rest of the room, waving wildly.  “Brave buncha lads here, we got!  But they scared like bunnies when y’stand up at ‘em!”

“I’m warning ye, y’fossil…”

The “fossil” whirled back around and planted a huge hand in Delwyn’s chest, pushing him back into his chair as the room let out a collective gasp.  “OR YE’LL DO WHA’?  Beat me up, an’ ol’ drunk fart?”  He looked up at Dalmas, whose dagger was half out of its sheath.  “Come ON, boychild!  Y’brave enough t’kill an ol’ dwarf and face th’ gallahs?”  Slowly, Dalmas edged the dagger back into its sheath.

Delwyn tried to stand up again but the old dwarf shoved him back down into his seat.  “Lissen t’me good, boy!  I ain’ nothin’ but a ol’ drunk lame bastard, but I seen and fought thin’s that make ye look like th’ mamaboy ye is!  S’ye remember, lad, ye remember t’night well, th’ night y’messed wi’ th’ wrong dwarf!”  He was roaring at the top of his lungs now, bent down, his face mere inches from Delwyn’s, spittle coating the younger dwarf’s red face.  “Ye REMEMBER, boy!  Remember ‘is here name!  I’M BELTAR FUCKIN’ FORGEBREAKER, YE STUPID BASTARD, AND YE’D DAMNED WELL BEST REMEMBER IT!”

Without waiting for a response, Forgebreaker turned and clomped back toward his table, the only sound the irregular thudding of his boots on the stone floor.  Then, from the back of the room, came a single handclap.  Then another one from another corner joined it.  And another.  And another.  Within seconds, the room swelled with applause, then with hearty cheers.  The only ones not clapping and cheering were Delwyn, Dalmas, Gullan, and Anias.

Innkeeper Tulum forced his way through the growing tumult and jerked a finger at Delwyn, then a thumb at the door.  “Git oot,” he growled.

“What did you say?”, Delwyn hissed.

“I said, GIT OOT!  Don’ worry ‘boot payin’ fer yer drinks, just git th’hell oota me inn, and don’t be comin’ back.  Ever!  NOW SCRAM!”

Slowly, the four youths rose, and the cheers for Beltar Forgebreaker turned into jeers aimed at them.  As they made their way to the door, a bread roll came out of the mass of dwarves and bounced off Dalmas’ head; he turned and made to charge into the crowd, but Delwyn and Gullan held him back.  That only egged the crowd on more, and they made their way out of the Mineshaft accompanied by a hail of bread crusts and the contents of more than one leftover plate.

Outside, the four stood together, silently.  Delwyn looked at each of them, then said simply, “He dies.  Tonight.”

A half-moon lit the snow as they picked their way up the last few feet of hillside toward the small stone hovel.  Flintrock was a small town, and most everyone knew where most everyone else lived.  Old drunk Forgebreaker’s tiny shack was not hard to find.

No one had said a word on the climb up from the village.  Now they stood a few paces from Forgebreaker’s shack.  “Delwyn,” Anias whispered.  “Are y’sure…”

Delwyn’s gloved hand whipped out and grabbed Anias around the throat.  “Shut up, sprat,” he hissed venomously, “or ye’ll join him.  Word o’what that ol’ bastard did’s all over town b’now.  Come mornin’, th’ guard’ll find their nuts and lock us all up ‘less’n we prove t’em y’don’t mess with Delwyn Hammerblow.  Now, ye’re wit’ us, whether ye like it ‘r not.”  His hand squeezed.  “An’ I swear t’th’ Makers, y’screw thissun up, I’ll gut ye like a squirrel.”  He looked around.  “That goes fer th rest’a ye, too.”  Delwyn shoved and released Anias, who sprawled backwards into the snow.  “Now git up and c’mon.”

They crept quietly to the edge of the house.  Gullan looked at the only window, tightly shuttered against the cold.  “Dunno if’n I kin op’n it, boss,” he said.

Delwyn smiled tightly.  “No worryin’.  Fer once, I ain’ feelin’ like bein’ sneaky-like.  Dalmas.  Bust that damned door down.  Get yer stickers out.  Anias, pull that lightstone out when we’re inside.”

Dalmas grinned, showing missing teeth.  “Y’got it.”  He drew a large two-handed treeman’s axe from his back.  Gullan had two daggers out, and Delwyn slowly, quietly drew his preferred weapon, a single-edged shortsword with a serrated edge.  Anias had a simple knife in his belt, but he didn’t pull it.  Instead he felt around in his pocket for the small magical lightstone that Delwyn had recently had enchanted…easier to carry and conceal than torches or lanterns.

Dalmas moved to the door and set himself.  Then he raised his right foot and kicked inward with the flat.  The door gave way with a splintering crash that echoed up and down the valley, and the four dwarves quickly piled inside.

There was only one room in the hovel.  Two beds, nothing more than piles of furs, occupied opposite walls.  A figure stirred in each.

Delwyn and Gullan dove to the right, Dalmas to the left.  There was a commotion.

“Light, ye stupid sprat!”, Delwyn hissed.

Anias remembered the lightstone, and removed it from his pocket and threw it on the floor.  Details resolved themselves in the dim reddish glow.  Delwyn and Gullen had old Forgebreaker hoisted up by the arms.  Dalmas had tossed his axe aside and was pulling another figure from under that bed’s blankets, one arm around her chest and another over her mouth…a young girl, perhaps Anias’ age.

“Hello, Beltar,” Delwyn smiled.  “Remember us?”  Before Forgebreaker could answer, Delwyn kicked him hard in his bad leg.  Beltar roared in pain and sagged before Gullan could slam him back against the wall.  Delwyn leaned in close, dagger raised to where Beltar could see it, the red light of the lightstone dully gleaming off the blade.  “Ye made a very serious mistake t’night, ol’ fossil.  I don’ take kindly t’humiliation.”

“Then don’ wake up th’ morning an’ look in a mirror, sprat,” Beltar spat.

Delwyn’s mocking smile faded.  “There’s a difference between brave an’ stupid, whoreson,” he said.  He sheathed the blade, and from the other side of his belt, he drew a leg-length, thumb-width black wooden baton.  He brought the baton across into Forgebreaker’s ribs with a muted sound of cracking bone, and the old dwarf only stayed standing because Gullan strained to hold him.  “An’ I aims t’teach ya.”

“What ’bout this’un?”  Dalmas turned to show the dwarf girl to the room.  Her features stood out in the light…body only covered by a light shirt, sweat on her brow, eyes huge and white over Dalmas’ huge paw of a hand covering her mouth.

“Fringe benefit,” Delwyn smiled again.  “Maybe we’ll enjoy her first while ol’ Beltar here watches.”

“UNHAND HER, Y’SPRAT!”, Beltar roared and lunged, all but throwing Gullan across the room.  His injured leg failed him, and he half-tripped forward as Delwyn brought the baton up into his face.  He collapsed, hands to his face, and as Gullan yanked him back up by the hair, Anias saw that blood was running into the old dwarf’s beard from an obviously broken nose.

“That settles it then,” Delwyn said.  “Dalmas, gag her, then c’mover here an’ hold up th’ ol’ ‘gentleman’ here while I interduce m’self to ‘is grandaughter.”  Beltar shifted again, and his reward was a boot-shod foot into the ruin of his bloody face.

Anias stood frozen as Dalmas gagged the struggling girl, and Gullan and Delwyn began to beat the helpless Forgebreaker.  He couldn’t move forward, he couldn’t run, he couldn’t participate, he couldn’t stop them…

“Anias,” Delwyn snapped as he walked over to the girl.  “Make yerself useful, sprat.  Y’need t’get blooded, y’rabbit.  He gestured down at his hip.  “Take m’sword and have a couple practice whacks at ol’ Master Forgebreaker o’er there.  Don’ kill ‘im.  Just cut ‘im a bit.”  He leered at the girl, then back to Anias.  “Y’do good, y’get a shot at this lass ‘ere.  Pretty one, ain’ she?  Lot purtier than y’d get on yer own wi’out us.”  He laughed, a harsh, discordant sound, as he unbuckled his swordbelt and tossed it as Anias’ feet.  He grabbed the girl away from Dalmas, and she screamed through the gag.  He slapped her across the face, hard.  “Don’ make me bruise ya more, lass.”  He turned and looked at Anias.  “Sprat.  Do what ye’re tol’, boy, or I’ll make y’regret it!”

Anias stood, shaking his head, and began backing up.  He took two small steps backward and bumped into the doorframe, groped backward with his hand…and it hit something.  A familiar shape.  Long, metal, a half-cylinder of wood…a boomstick.

Beltar roared again as his granddaughter’s shirt ripped under Delwyn’s pawing hands.  With a strength born of rage, he flung Gullan away and tried to stand up, catching Dalmas unaware.  Driven by instinct, Dalmas grabbed a knife from his belt and turned…the knife buried itself in Beltar’s gut up to the hilt.  The girl screamed through the gag, it might have been “Grandpa!”  Delwyn slapped the girl again and reached for his belt.

It’s a boomstick.

“GET AWAY FROM THEM!”  Anias’ voice was practically a child’s screech as he shouted and brought the boomstick up to point at Delwyn.  Every motion in the room stopped, and there was no sound except for Beltar sagging to the floor.  Anias’ hands were shaking, his eyes wide, his breath gasping as he swung the gun around the room.

“Lad.”  Delwyn’s voice, surprisingly calm and even as he let the girl sag back against the wall.  “Don’ do nothin’ stupid, now.  Damn thing ain’t even loaded.  Y’think a drunk’s gonna keep a loaded ’stick ’round where he’d shoot his get with it?”

Anias swung the gun back to cover Delwyn five paces away.  “Get away from her.  Y’don’t know whether’s loaded’r'not.”  From the corner of his eye he saw Gullan move a half-pace toward him and he swung to cover him.  “Stay back!”

“Anias.”  Delwyn again, and the gun swung back to point at him, now only four paces away, the muzzle vibrating violently as Anias panted.  “Tell y’what, lad.  ‘At’s a nice gun.  Y’keep it.  We’ll jus’ finish up here, an’ go.  Jus’ don’t do nothin’ crazy, aright?”

For a split-second, Anias listened to him, and the gun wavered.  Then Dalmas twitched, drawing Anias’ attention to his right.  And in that half-second, Delwyn leapt.

The discharge of the boomstick was absolutely deafening in the tiny hovel.  The gun was loaded with explosive shot, and Delwyn was two paces away when the load hit him flush in the chest and blew him back across the room preceeded by a red spray.  He slammed into the back wall and slid down in a clatter of shelves and food, leaving a red-black smear behind.

Dalmas roared and raised his axe, taking a fatal half-second to do so.  Anias swung and fired again.  Again there was the deafening report.  Dalmas’ head half-disappeared and he crashed down on top of Forgebreaker in a growing pool of blood.

Anias pointed the gun at Gullan.  It shook less now.  “You?”, Anias raised an eyebrow and asked.

Doesn’t look s’much th’ sprat w’that damned thing in his hand, Gullan thought and licked his lips, dropping his knives.  “Lemme go, lad,” he said, quietly and quickly, “an’ I’ll tell ‘em how ye and me saved ‘em from them two.  Y’can be th’ hero!  She’ll back y’up fer it, won’ ya?”  They both glanced at the girl, who sagged back against the wall, streaked with Delwyn’s blood, sobbing.

Anias thought for a second, and then cocked his head over the barrel.  “Gullan,” he said quietly.  “D’ye remember two month ago, when we went t’th’ mine toolshed an’ th’ guards caught us?  An’ y’tol’ ‘em I did it?  An’ got me sent t’ gaol fer fifty days?”

Gullan laughed nervously.  “Aye, lad, ‘at was Delwyn!  ‘E made me do it.  Y’know I’d never do ‘at if I ‘ad a choice of it.  C’mon, Anias.  We’s practically brothers, lad.  Our Das died in mine t’gether, our Mas raised us t’gether.  Y’ wouldnae shoot yer brother, please?”

Anias lowered the gun slightly after a pause.  “Nae.  Guess I wouldn’t shoot me brother.”

Gullan visibly relaxed and laughed again.  “Thankye, Anias.”  He walked forward, making a motion to wipe his hand off on his pants and extend it in a handshake.

“‘Cept I ain’t never had a brother.”

The gun blasted one more time, from Anias’ hip.  Gullan went flying off to the left, and a small knife, something green and wet glinting on its blade, flew out of his hand to the right.

Only then did Anias lower the gun and carefully set it down.  He moved over to the fallen Beltar Forgebreaker and, with difficulty, pulled Dalmas’ body off of him.  Forgebreaker lay, still alive, in a pool of blood, some his, some Dalmas’.  The knife was still buried in his stomach.  Anias reached for it but Beltar gasped, “N…nae, boy.  Don’ m…move it.  Hells.”

“I…hold on, I’ll get a healer from town…”

“D…dinnae bother.  I’m dead…boy.  Yer friends seen t’tha.  I…I do thank ye f…fer savin’ me girl.”

“But…”

“G…”  A racking cough that brought up blood.  “Go.  Git oot.  Take gun an’ fly, lad, or y’ll hang.  Guard’ll be here w’all tha’ noise.”  What might have been a smile.  “G…guess I was wrong.  One of ya was brave a’ter all.”  A final rattling sigh, and Beltar Forgebreaker lay still.

Anias stood up, realizing his predicament.  Four dead bodies in the house, and the girl…he spun.  The girl was sobbing, hysterical, not realizing the boomstick was one lunge away from her hands.  He reached over and grabbed it, and stood, looking around in a hysteria born of panic.

Don’t panic, he thought.  Quit shaking.  Think, boy, damn you, THINK.  He had to run.  He’d see the rope’s end for this…yes.  Run.  That was all he could do.
A few minutes later he slipped out of the smashed front door and ran for the hills behind the hovel.  He still carried the boomstick, and over his back was slung a bag with all the provisions he could loot from the house–jerky, bread, some bloodstained furs.  It wasn’t much, but it would have to hold him until he could find his way to…where?  Where could he go?  Somewhere that isn’t here.

With a final glance over his shoulder at the lanternlights of Flintrock, he turned and trudged up the hill into the wilderness.

 
He’d calculated the provisions would last him seven days, and he was right.  It was nine days before he stumbled into another town, one whose name he wasn’t even sure of.  He was lost, and hungry, and cold, and without hope.

He sat on the edge of the town square, still clutching the boomstick, and looked at the smiling dwarf approaching him.  He looked friendly enough, but Anias was worldwise enough to see the cobra behind the smiling forked tongue.  This, he thought, is someone that wants something.  For a second he thought about running, but where would he run?  He had no food, no idea where he was.

“G’day, lad,” the older dwarf said cheerfully.  “I see yer new here.”

“Aye,” Anias replied cautiously.  “‘Tis right.  What concern’s it of yers?”

The other dwarf laughed.  “Just seein’ yer lookin’ a mite peckish, is all.  Wouldya be intersted in a bite t’eat and a warm bed, in return fer doin’ me some work?  Nothin’ immoral or illegal, mindye.”

By whose definition?  But he couldn’t ignore the rumbling of his stomach.  “Aye then, nice of ya,” Anias replied, shakily wobbling to his feet.  “I’ll take it.”

“Good,” his new benefactor beamed.  “By th’ by, lad, y’got a name?”

“A…”  Anias stopped.  They could’ve sent messengers on, be lookin’ fer me.  Word travels.  A name, I need a name, he won’t know no better…  He looked down at the gun still clutched in his right hand, and remembered words that burned themselves into his memory a week, a lifetime before.  And for the first time in months, he smiled a bit.

“Name’s Beltar Forgebreaker.  And ye’d best remember it.”

The sweet:  Friday night, The Anvil, on the sixth try of the night, dropped Yogg-Saron to complete our run through normal 25-man Ulduar.  We had to extend our lockout two weeks to do it, so we’d have enough time on Friday to get some good attempts in on the Old God, and finally, everything came together.

The bitter:  While the rest of The Anvil was beating the Yoggy out of, uh, Yoggy…my lovely wife, my charming daughter Nublet, and I were in a motel room in Perry, Georgia, asleep.  We would be getting up the next day to sell my wife’s handmade shinies at a very cold but very fun craft festival.  (Aside:  54 degrees, 15 mph north wind, wind chill in the low 40s.  30 miles south of Macon.  In fucking October.  Global warming, my big fat hairy ass.)

Finding out on Saturday evening that the raid killed Yoggy gave me some mixed emotions.  Of course, I’m happy that “we” finally got the chance, by extending the raid lockout another week and creatively scheduling, to get enough attempts in to work through the chaos of the fight and bring it to a successful conclusion.  Even though I missed part of the week before as well due to catching a cold or hamthrax or plague or cooties or something that I’m still not quite over yet, I was still a part of clearing at least the front of Ulduar in that lockout, and had been there for our earlier attempts on Yogg as well.  We’re a pretty tight group, and like most good raids (cutting-edge progression or not), we live or die as a team, and team accomplishments are more important than individual glory.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a tiny pang of “well, shit.”

I wasn’t there.  I wasn’t there for our first Yoggy kill.  I had a legitimate reason for not being there, of course…we do this craft show every year on the third weekend in October, it’s basically a (hard-)working vacation for us because my wife grew up going to it–her mom sold her handmade cornhusk dolls at every show for twenty-seven straight years until she got too sick to go.  In fact, we even now have her mom’s old booth spot…booth A1, right by the entrance gate.  It’s vastly more important that we be there–to make some money, to see old friends, to watch Nublet have the time of her life charming people and playing in dirt and riding hayrides and petting cows–than to attend our raid.  My raid friends understand that.  It was all planned out ahead of time, and honestly, my attendance has been so good in the past, even missing two weeks (one sick, one traveling) isn’t an issue.

But I wasn’t there for the first kill.  I wasn’t there to see my chat window vomit forth 25 peoples’ achievement spam.  I wasn’t there for the obligatory celebratory screenshot.  We’ll kill Yoggy again, I have no doubt, but when we do, it won’t be the first time.  It’ll be smoother and less painful, but it won’t be the first time.  (Draw your own analogies.  They’re glaringly obvious.)

And then there’s The Voice In The Back Of My Head.  I hate that bastard.  He’s the one that says things like, “see, they killed Yogg-Saron without you and we’re running a four-tank rotation as it is, they don’t need you.“  I don’t listen to him as much as I used to when he’d make me doubt myself and have me half-convinced every week that the raid was about to dump me for poor performance, but he’s still there, and there’s still a little part of the ol’ brain that buys into his bullshit.  Yes, I have a bit of a gear gap to the other three tanks because they’re all in 10-mans in addition to our 25, and none of the 10-mans I know have any tank slots available.  Yes, I am still the Minister of Silly Mistakes.  Yes, when I’m assigned DPS, my DPS is laughably bad, and when tanking my DPS is below our warrior tank and far below our paladin and DK.  But I’ve also successfully MT’d everything in Ulduar 25 up through Vezax and everything but Anub in ToC 25.  I’m not uber, but dammit, I don’t suck.

So here’s today’s topic for discussion.  How have you felt when you haven’t been there for a big important raid first–a first kill, a first clear, a first achievement or hardmode?  I think it’s natural to have a little undertone of bitter along with the sweet when knowing that your team pulled it off, but they did it without you.  Deep down, I think we all want to feel a little indispensable.  But the most important thing is that the team, the raid, pulled it off.  And even if you weren’t there for the actual kill, you did your part to help them get there.