It’s a weird situation, seeing Fluffy out in front, chomping away at three orcs while a rogue stands behind them doing their stabbity thing, and everyone else is back here with you, pewpewing like crazy. Weird.

But it works.

And things tell me that we might be seeing a bit more of it.

The bad part about this is that your friendly, neighborhood huntard is going to have even more of the spotlight when he screws it up.

The good part is that the good hunters have one more chance to shine in that spotlight. And that is so happyface that my cheeks hurt after seeing it happen.

This magic doesn’t happen on its own, though. You still have to have people paying attention to how angry they’re making the monsters, and the hunter has to make sure that Spot is making ALL the monsters angry at Spot - not just that one orc she first attacked. Yes, Spot is a she, get over it.

It’s the kind of teamwork that should be happening no matter who or what is up there playing meatshield, really. The trouble comes from the fact that warriors and blood knights are so good at it. Yeah, I said it. They’re so good, people get lazy about what they’re supposed to be up to back in the back. Heals are going to sleep, fireballs are all over the place, the hunter is sublimating Tobasco sauce and the rogue is going “lol dodge tank!” just before dying to a critical strike called AXE TO DA FACE.

I hate axe to da face. I usually eat one when the melee hunter feigns death after pulling aggro and I have to slap a big heal through the back of his head. Grr!

Right, right, magic.

So there’s a right way to treat your meatshield, and it’s even more critical when your tank doesn’t have all the nice pretty tricks that a warrior or blood knight or even a bear druid might have (yes, sorry, I forgot about the druids a minute ago, I HAVE OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT).

The dungeon crawl will go a lot slower, because it’s more critical that Fuzzy gets all grrface on everything. It’s more critical that targets get hit by focus fire. It’s more critical that AOE is kept to a minimum. It’s more critical that Boots up there is taking the most damage and everything else is just monsters doing their aoe thing - the minimal stuff that can be dealt with via a quick Renew or Rejuvinate or whateveritis Blood Knights do.

Also, unlike most situations, the hunter shouldn’t be healing Spike. Yeah, I said it. The hunter should not be using ‘mend pet’ at all.

Here’s how that works. Tigger is up there doing his thing, trying to keep all the baddies angry, and doing some damage too. Most of the damage, though, is probably coming from the paindealers in your group, including the hunter who’s keeping an eye on his friend. He’s going to be staying right underneath that level of making the baddies come chase off after the fellow shooting them in the face. If he were to toss in some heals at the same time, that’d just make them angrier. You, however, should have ways of reducing the angry you’re causing, and the priests out there have our handydandy fade thing. The hunter will be playing dead whenever it’s available, but most of his attention should be spent on killing those things as quickly as Sparky will allow it to happen.

See, the longer the baddies are alive, the more mana you’re using to keep Rover alive. The longer you’re throwing sparklies, the angrier the baddies are getting, too. Fast battles will be your goal, kiddos.

So through focus fire, spreading around the aggrivation through all the baddies, and minimal targets to heal, Scruffy can definitely tank with his face right up there with the regulars.

ps: Seeing a cheerleader-slash-druid night elf wench in a ‘tanking teddy’ would be worth almost any price.

pps: Until she went bear form.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 and is filed under Healers, Tanks, ~ Hannelore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.