Dimensional Marathon

Whoop. I did it. Out of greed for AVs, I stayed up for about 3 hours longer than I should have. The only good thing I can say about it is that it’s not like EQ or other MMORPGs where such things like raids are habitual. Hee hee. You see, it was all Haard Boyle’s fault. We started at like 7.30pm my time, and went on an AV hunt, through his Praetorian AV missions. I figured this would be the best way to finish up the AVs I needed for Dimensional Warder, for Portal Jockey accolade. Break at 9.00pm, thanks to scheduled maintenance, and that gave me time to eat dinner. (*guilty look*) Then we continued on again until like 3 am.

See, I figured, good teams at level 40+ only come around so often. And when you have a leader who isn’t abusive, yet can make firm decisions, that’s even rarer. And when the leader has a Praetorian AV series of missions AND wants to kill the AVs, rather than farm – that’s even rarer still? And all this in my time zone, no less.

Of course, the actual killing of the AVs was actually quite fast when we got down to it. What caused the massive slowdown was the inclusion of the second tank, Evenflow (one of the ego-filled culprits of Multiple Tanker: Nightmare version) who was at level 49, and out to herd and get to level 50.

Remember way back then, in the scenario I was describing, old Even was one level lower than me? And he still wanted ME to herd? +2/+3 wolves at that? Well, I took a closer look at our builds.

Me, I took the bare minimum of the invul primary, I’m scorning the passives as things I can’t be bothered with after the nerf, and am choosing to live with about 75% resistance to smash/lethal rather than hit the cap. To compensate, I’m becoming a gimpy regen scranker with dull pain and health. If I desperately need to tank, I want to go unstoppable, so as I get slots available, I’m going to put in some more recharges into that so it cycles faster. I’m near-perma-hasten at 5 slots, and might do 6 if slots are free. And I took every damn power in fire secondary for the heck of it, and am going Artic Mastery for hold, ranged power and a snow storm, ie, pretending to be a pseudo-controller too. My philosopy is more of, hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em hard, don’t leave ‘em standing long enough to hurt you. At 16 mobs a spawn, “just as States intends,” I tend to be okay with def/troller support, and playing the game HIS way should protect me from any more hard hitting nerfs.

Even is, of course, the typical herder. He took every power in his primary, moderate amount of secondary powers. Oddly enough, he has hasten, but I never noticed his icon turn on in the team window.

I spent the greater part of the evening fighting off, no, I won’t say jealousy, because it wasn’t that – I didn’t envy him his build, I wouldn’t have wanted it – but rather, the sense of inferiority. Of…my god, will people want to team with me if I can’t do miracles of herding like that tank over there?

I kept telling myself he was even-con. He was. At lvl 49, mobs would be white to him, and I’ve herded my share of whites without too much incident. Even then, sometimes his enormous herd would nickle and dime him to half health, and he would need to chew a respite or get a defender heal. At lvl 46, with mobs +3, stuff would be much harder to cope with for me.

As usual, he had an enormous ego, but this time, because there wasn’t anyone else trying to backseat drive (he was highest tank), we just played along with the bugger. He went herding spawn to spawn, and I mean herding, 5-6 spawns or more easily.

I got massively cheesed off by him because I asked him for a sk. Three times. Each time, he pretended not to hear. But he would respond to other things in teamchat. Tell me, why would you refuse someone a sk, if they ask for it? Is it because he was jealous of my /fire firepower, and didn’t want me to hit his herd like an exposive nova, and prefered that I miss? I dunno. After the third time, I gave up and just resigned myself to missing.

But little things in his behavior slowly opened my eyes.
Kicker number 1. He can herd. But he couldn’t hold aggro. He gathered like 200 mobs in one spot. Great. He whirling hands, and taunted, and then called people over. So far, so good. Then poor Haard Boyled comes over and does his AoE claws thing, and PHWOOMP PHWOOMP PHWOOMP his hp plunges so far down, he hits China as his face buries in the dust. Over and over, the scrapper bit it, our lvl 20 sk’ed up blaster bit it, and assorted squishies bit it.

As earlier on in a prior mission, once evenflow came along, Haard did tell me, “est, ok, now you can be an honorary scrapper,” which both made me raise my eyebrow slightly (is he being nice, or is he dissing me? I chose to pretend he was just being nice) as well as made me shrug (as I can and don’t mind scranking. Though I was perfectly ok and intending on being the domestic scrapper, ie. squishy bodyguard, secondary tank.)…

I didn’t bother taking aggro of assorted 100+ mobs that were +3 to me. I let the squishies bite it from the herd the other tank dragged. After all, if you want to be a cooperative two-man tank working team, you need to involve the other tank and make sure he’s close to the mobs in level so that he can be your secondary support.

Me, I herd what I can hold in terms of aggro. My spillover is a nuisance, but not fatal. That shows a non-tank mindset in evenflow already, rather, all he had is a herder’s mindset.

Eventually, Haard gave up, told evenflow very nicely that he needed to pull smaller spawns, and also told him to sk me up.

THEN I finally got a sk which allowed me to hit stuff and so get some aggro that way. Though I can tell you I kept a hawk eye on this bugger, as I wouldn’t put it past him to just run off and leave me stranded in a bunch of suddenly purple mobs. So I stuck to him like glue.

Even did group by group for a bit. He was probably sulking and wanting to “show” us, see, you want to do it this slowly? Me, I actually enjoyed it, and the groups went down faster than the herd and everyone got to do something without dying.

True enough, once we started fighting Diabolique, and Diabolique did her siphon speed and running around like a wacko thing, you know what Even did? He followed her. Through spawns. Without bothering to kill the spawns. So you can guess what happened, there was about 100 spectre/poltergeist things following us with a very tenuous aggro hold. Me, I was just keeping my hat on and following Even, since near him, I would have the same invinc bonus and be at –1 to the mobs. He pretty much got the whole team wiped. Deliberately? I don’t know, but I would wager so. Why? Because as they were dying, he said, “u glad I was herding now?”

Disgraceful. He’s not a tank. He’s a herder. I know of no other worse term to lump on him.

He eventually pulled so much that he slipped up and fell flat, because he had Diabolique on him too. So once he dropped, then I turned tank, and decided to hit unstopp (not going to tank whatever he pulled without max resists) and gave the others time to pick themselves up and regroup and rez. It was pretty much a wasted effort, I know, the rest were all too dead to bother, and I could have just ran off, no one the wiser. But it was just…a tank instinct. Even if no one is there, I want to hold the line because I am a tank, that’s what I do. I will sit there and tank it for the 3 minutes because that is the limit I5 has given me, but tanks will stand there and take the beating. And I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I was a tank in my own way, rather than a secondary scrapper.

But in the end, his true colors outed himself. The one crowning scenario that was worth staying EVERY minute of the overtime-playing for. The REAL difference between a tank and an xp herder.

Mission: Defeat all. Mother Mayhem outdoor city streets map. Mobs, child of anger, child of hate, the works.

As usual, evenflow dashed into the mission without saying a word or waiting for people, and started to do his herding thing.

(He did this every damn mission. He would just let whoever was faster come in, he would herd, and then he would let us kill the mob. And he never fought to punchvoke. He stood there and taunted. Obsolete bugger. :P Once the whole team except for poor Haard and his sk’ed blaster friend was killing through half of the mission before they finally came in. Don’t even know if they missed mission completion xp for that.)

Or at least, he tried. They were level 47s. That made me happy. You know, he actually took one look and just dropped my sk, like that. (What is his problem? If I’m happy with not getting much xp, why do you force the extra xp on me?)

Anyhow, back to my story, he ran into the first spawn, caught all the psi blasts in the face, SCREAMED like a little girl and RAN back to the four of us still waiting at the mission exit zone, with the psionic rings still buzzing around his head.

And then he went ballistic in team chat. R U nutz! theyre PSI i want to get 2 50 2day. im goin 2 die 5 timesor more in this mish. no @#)(&# way. And continued to rant in illegible speak.

Haard told him calmly, Come on, man, don’t worry, I’m also invul, I know, don’t worry, we’ll take it slow, do it group by group. We’re doing AVs for warder badge, ok?

He continued to freak out for about 5 more sentences, working himself into a frenzy. (My imagination was imaging him pissing his pants at seeing psionic enemies.)

Haard was trying to calm him. It’s cool, man, don’t freak. They’re only 47s. We can do it, we’ll take it slow. Ok, if you don’t want, we’ll call you back for the other avs, you can sit this one out, ok?

What did Mr Brave LEETz0r Herder “Tanker” do? Why, he never said anything more to Haard, he just freaked out some more, gave up, and quit the team.

HE QUIT. HE RAN AWAY.

I was seriously in hysterical laughter in my own seat, though I was polite enough to show none of this to the team. As I said, the crowning jewel. I no longer envied Mr Herder for surviving his 200+ herd that he couldn’t control. He was a one-trick pony. Enjoying his godliness under smash/lethal to the extent that he overdevelops his ego, but he wussed out the one moment he met his kryptonite.

So now, it was up to the level 46 tank to tank level 47 psi mobs meant for 8 people and show ‘em how it’s really supposed to be done.

So I did. Sure, I did my share of taunt around corners, hide behind trees (much to Haard’s amusement), not to mention my share of running into the spawn and getting pwn’ed flat by combined psi blasts. But did I die five times? No. I think I died twice at most.

After the second death, Haard said, hang on, let me get a healer. This is why I trust the boyyo as group leader. Granted his speech is as leetz0r as the rest and I’m getting sick and tired of ‘u’ and ‘r’, not to mention his tendency to call defs healers and look for only empaths… but for all those flaws, especially considering this is a Freedom (PLmeh!) server, Haard’s a good guy, doesn’t hold grudges and most importantly, has a phenomenal knack of feeling out his team and putting together a well-balanced group of members.

When evenflow was primary tank, Haard went buffing up the group with damage-dealers, blasters, scrappers, controllers cos instinctively, you know evenflow has nil on damage dealing ability. When I was primary tank, I had ample damage, so he picked up on tank support so I could do my stuff.

We lucked out on an ice/emp ‘troller who didn’t mind healing when necessary. So now I could run into the spawns and trust my support guys to keep me standing as they slicked up the place and pretty much laid waste to mobs that were –1 or –2 to them.

We cleaned up the place for the Defeat All, and went to Mother Mayhem. As usual I had been hoarding purples and oranges, so I ate two mediums of each and went to town on the spawn. After enduring the other spawns with negative defence even, the inspiration boost was really candy, and Mother Mayhem was cake. She died in under two minutes, imo.

And I redeemed myself in my own eyes. The others probably didn’t care, but it really wasn’t about them, was it? It was about me and my perception of me, and my perception of what others thought about me.

It taught me a valuable lesson, even if it was through sleep deprivation. Now, I can write a “What Tanking Means To Me” essay and mean every word. Offhand, it means I don’t run away when the odds are against me. It means I stand there, and I struggle through adversity, and I keep my teammates safe, trusting them to keep me safe also. I will use whatever means I have to hold aggro and separate spawns into the best groups that I feel my team can kill. This is what I do when I am primary tank.

Now when I’m not primary tank and am just a secondary sideliner and effectively granted ‘honourary scrapper’ status, then all bets are off and I will be a self-sufficient bastard worthy of being a blaster, but if you give me the tank’s responsibility, I will hold it with both hands, even if my face is rubbing the dirt at that time. :P

So after evenflow scattered off and we got the psi mission done, we set out to do the other avs in as short a time as possible. I was pushing 2 am, after all. We had an invis’er, our lvl 20 sk’ed blaster cum entertainment was a recall’er, so it was damn doable. Chimera, Siege, Shadowhunter are some I remember. Since we had so much damage, I just told them I’m going unstopp, we just need to kill av in under 3 minutes. And we did.

I got Dimensional Warder at Chimera, but because I am a loyal bugger, I stayed to kill the other two avs I promised I would kill before I finally begged out to go to sleep. I don’t know if they appreciated it, but in the end, it doesn’t matter, right? It’s my own conscience that matters. I did what I felt was right. It’s a good epitaph, for that matter. :)