Blog Azeroth Secret Santa

Every year Blog Azeroth organises a Secret Santa event where bloggers from across the community write guest posts for each other. This year was the first time I entered, with Arphalas from The Dark Order pulling my blog in the draw. I’d like to thank him for putting together such a great post and I’ll be sharing my own Secret Santa soon. Enjoy!

Greetings everyone!

This is a bit different than your normal blog post, but instead of Gazimoff I will call the shots tonight! My name is Arphalas and I am a Death Knight Blogger from The Dark Order on a mission called ‘Blog Azeroth’s Secret Santa’.

With that out of the way shall we begin?

First of all, as a Death Knight I don’t have much to tell about Mages, other than their fireballs hurt when flung into my face and their tables can hold nice things to eat. I’ll take a different approach and talk more about how Tanks look at DPS at times, especially ranged DPS who can take aggro so fast you can barely hear the screams of Leeroy Jenkins.

So let’s get a Tank point of view. You’re a tank, you were awesome in Wrath of the Lich King, mobs actually ran in fear when you approached. Bosses, mobs, who cares? Pull them all!

Then Cataclysm came.

Suddenly all the Tanks were forced back into the routine from The Burning Crusade and Pre-Naxxramas (Tier 7) Wrath of the Lich King dungeons, with crowd control and everything.  While this was only a setback (*snicker*) it does take some getting used to.

For the Tanks these days there are specific groups of DPS that one may encounter during a PUG or even a Guild Run:

• The ‘Trigger Happy Lich King lover’
• The ‘I-don’t-care-just-tank-lol’
• Last but not least, the ‘Oh my, maybe I should give the group my input and improve the group experience’

For people being the last one, thank you. Seriously, I love you guys.

The first two are more of a Tank nightmare, especially the Trigger Happy ones. You run around as a Tank, you pull a small group and boom, the Hunter, Mage or Charging Warrior comes in and nukes the target you as a Tank aren’t even focused on. Before you know it the DPS dies, the Healer dies and then you die, followed by a barrage of how aggro must be held.

Talk about a pet peeve.

The other side I can understand though, even as a Tank. Waiting for a PUG can be stressful considering you sometimes have to wait 40 minutes to get into that already half-finished dungeon with a Healer who is still ‘learning the trade’.  So I can imagine that you do not have the energy to take a second before you whack that stick on that mob, but it may be better for the Group overall to let the tank get aggro before whacking.

So helping on Crowd Control by itself is an awesome feat, but to work together with your group rather than ‘top the meters’ is also something I’d love to see more in groups, and hopefully this will improve in time when Cataclysm has aged more into maturity.

As a closer I’d like to once again thank Blog Azeroth for the chance to join in on the fun of Secret Santa Blog writing and Gazimoff of Mana Obscura for having me as a guest. I hope you all had an awesome Christmas. Let’s think about the Tanks, and in return they might run you through multiple instances. I know I will!

~Arphalas
www.TheDarkOrder.com