We had a great heroics run in Waypoint this morning, picked up a Rogue working on her daggers (stage 2) from Medivh with a fun sense of humor.
Well of Eternity, Snack asks Dee to take off her pants so she can take some damage, he’s bored. So she does, and we run through the instance with a pantsless tank. This was a lot of fun, and let’s face it – dead or not, Night Elf ladies have some nice looking legs.
But it got me thinking.
There are some things I’m still struggling with on Cynwise – not being raid geared, not being top DPS, not hitting big numbers on trash OR bosses – that have all coalesced into what I call “losing the Eye of the Tiger.” Great DPS need to have the Eye of the Tiger, the will of the fight, and Warlock DPS need it more than most. Execution has to be perfect, you miss a CD and you are screwed. You miss a Haunt or a SB and you are screwed. You have to have great gear hitting haste breakpoints. I know the math behind it. I wrote a book on it, once, though that seems a long time ago now.
But I’ve lost the drive, the Eye of the Tiger, the will to care enough to raid and gear up and be the best of the best in any and all situations. Good enough is good enough. My PvP gear outclasses my LFR gear, so I wear it. I am hit capped for heroics but still sporting 2500 Resilience. (I think I ditched my Spell Penetration cloak, at least.) I haven’t been the top of the DPS meters in a long time. And that’s been hard. It’s a serious obstacle to “coming back” on a character. You want to have fun, you want to do well, and sometimes those things are not compatible. That’s tough to recognize. I have run without Skada on for a while now because the numbers, frankly, made me feel bad.
So today’s run of two heroics was pretty special because I had a tremendous amount of fun doing something I don’t really enjoy doing. I just don’t have fun solo running heroic pugs anymore – not because of the people, but because I am there to do well, and I fail to do my job well. With Snack and Dee and this pug Rogue, it was fun and relaxed.
And, remarkably, I did well on the meters as a result. Not great, but well. We went for, and got, the [That’s Not Canon] achievement – which basically involved me DPSing on Mannoroth for about 5 minutes while avoiding fire and occasionally multidotting. It was a chance to practice how the class really flows, tracking dots and refreshing haunt and hitting CDs and move Fel Flame Fel Flame move ok dots more dots never stop dots, and I did well. I pulled 69k DPS – which may not be great in an absolute sense, but that’s higher than I’ve pulled before in PvP gear.
Dee and Snack raid, so they are at the point where they can take off the tank’s pants to keep things interesting. I really appreciate that. I appreciate hanging out with folks who do have the Eye of the Tiger when it comes to PvE, because they have fun with the competition. And it was a lot of fun to both enjoy the company in some heroics as well as do well.
But there’s a second picture up at the top of this post, too. And that’s where I’m focused on being great these days. I’m not, always – no one is in solo PvP – but more days than not I’m pretty good, an asset to my team.
It feels pretty good to cross over to the other side, sometimes, take off the tank’s pants so the healer doesn’t get bored, and enjoy playing video games with friends.