4.25. Twenty-Five Morsels on the Menu

"The Triumph of Evil",
Artwork by Keisinger

Damage Control

I wanted to be mad, but my schedule didn't allow for it. I would've been perfectly happy wallowing in pent up frustration at Bheer's bombshell, falling back into old ways, holding grudges and punching keyboards in frustration. Circumstances, however, dictated that I focus my rage into solving the problem. So behind a false grin of clenched teeth, I moved to assess what damage the roster took as a result of being in the blast radius.

At first glance, practically nothing changed; the situation was only slightly different from when he left me high-and-dry midway through Tournament of Champions. Bheer was but one enhancement shaman out of the 25-Man roster. His then replacement, Hellspectral, was now a full-time frost death knight of the core raid team: former Elite, and fiercely dedicated to progression, his improved icy talons / 10% weapon speed bonus was a permanent fixture. Thanks to the rework of hunters, every raid buff in the game could be brought via a pet -- this comprised the contingency plan. Realistically, all we missed was the warm body. The safety net provided by a "reliable" long-term vet was gone, and anybody I chose to put in that spot would be a wild card. It wasn't uncommon to raid with 24 players for the next few weeks.

There was more at play that simply Bheer's absence from the roster. In their announcement, Bheer made it clear that he was to join Drecca's 10-Man team, which also meant Drecca was forsaking 25 as well. True, he offered himself as a back-up, but you can't plan around "maybes". I had to assume he would never be available, and rebuild the roster to that end. Anything less would put progression in jeopardy.

It sucked.

It sucked because Drecca had been such an incredible asset to the 25 when he joined DoD. Few raiders could slip into an intact team so seamlessly, taking up responsibilities and demonstrating skills one would expect of a long-term, committed raider. The chances of it happening again were slim-to-none.

I immediately ramped up recruitment in search of long-term tanks. Soot was one possibility; Falnerashe's "hubby" Teras was another, by way of his paladin alt Horateus. I pushed both to gear up and sign up. But before recruiting any more tanks, I had to have a heart-to-heart with Insayno.

---

"The situation has, shall we say, had a bit of a wrench thrown in to it."

"Oh yeah?" Insayno answered me over vent. I could hear the rapid clicking of keys in the background ...a telltale indication of PvP.

"Without the tanks, we have no progression. That should be pretty self-explanatory."

"Agreed."

"In any other circumstance, I'd have back-ups. And I am working on that. But I'm speaking to you about this right now because of its importance. I want to make sure you understand how this affects the raid team and the guild."

"Ok…"

I downshifted. "Are you enjoying the tanking stuff so far?"

"Yeah, it's pretty solid right now. I like it. Still jealous of the prot warror's AoE stun, but it's still workable." He spoke of Shockwave, an ability I didn't pay much attention to...an ability I would soon come to despise. I continued.

"I'd appreciate it if you could continue in this capacity, for as long as humanly possible. Right now, you and I are all that the 25-Man team has for 100% reliable tanks. All the rest are wild cards."

"Yeah, my schedule is wide-open right now, so I'm happy to help. For as long as it takes."

"Thank you. I'll do everything I can to solidify new long-term tanks for our spots. Maybe we can get a little deeps in now and again, eh?"

Insayno's tone became official, "Sounds like a plan, Hanzo. I shall sign up for all raids until I hear otherwise." The faint sound effect of Icy Touch landing on his target could be heard before his mic shut off.

Fight the good fight, Insayno. Don’t let me down.

The 25-Man progression team spots a
familiar friend waiting for them,
Blackwing Descent

Healer Heart Attack

Week two put us face to face with a new foe. By the end of the first night, Magmaw, Omnotron Defense, Maloriak and Atramedes were all eating dirt, a huge improvement from the previous weekend. This freed us to dedicate Sunday entirely to Chimaeron, a hydra that would push the healers to their very limits.

Chimaeron's gimmick was Finkle Einhorn and his "Bile-o-Tron", a silly bot that wandered the room, dousing players with a protective spray. The mixture prevented anyone above 10k HP from dying -- instead, those covered in the gunk were reduced to a solitary hit-point when Chimaeron struck. This unnerving style of damage forced the healers to rethink their traditional strategy of keeping the raid topped off; any heals above 10k translated into overheals, and was a fast track to an empty mana pool.

The raid had to maintain precise positioning during the fight. Caustic Slime would hit four people at random, bouncing to other players that were too close. Those afflicted would suffer damage handicaps along with their health spiking to 1 HP. A randomly positioned raid increased the healing stress, spiking more players down to 1 HP, and crippled our ability to make the enrage timer. Chimaeron was a solid gear check with benefits.

Massacre was the worst. In a single blast, the hydra reduced the entire raid to 1 HP, the extreme amount of damage even enough to throw the Bile-o-Tron offline. Lacking the protective cover of Finkle's Mixture, all players were susceptible to instant death...10k or otherwise. Our saving grace was the hydra's heads feuding with one another. We collapsed into a group and the healers blanketed the raid with as many AoE heals as possible, all the while poison bombs of Caustic Slime pummeling the raid in the process. Any heal helped at this point; players were even burning bandages on themselves, a tactic not seen since as far back as Naj'entus.

Massacre didn't always knock the Bile-o-Tron offline, however, so every single player had to be alert and ready to move into a clump if necessary. Gone were the days of an encounter following an explicit pattern of A, then B...A, then B...A, then B. Any PvP troll who trashed PvE as a mindless endeavor of learning a pattern and following it would've been eaten alive by Chimaeron. Many were.

A race to the finish kicked off when Chimaeron neared 20% -- again, a trigger not entirely set in stone. The entire raid receiving a debuff reducing our healing received by 99%. At this point, healers shut down completely, joining the DPS in a race to burn him down before he ate every living thing in the room. Not only did it involve blowing every cooldown that remained, but it forced us to start calling out the "next victim". Chimaeron used our threat meter as menu. One by one, top players in threat would retreat to the furthest corner of the room, delaying Chimaeron's feast, gaining the raid precious seconds of DPS. A kill would most certainly not be clean...if we could pull it off.

Mature glances at Al'akir from a safe distance,
Throne of the Four Winds

Juggling 101

Much of the encounter rested on the healers. Self-discipline and calm nerves were essential to keeping the raid alive. Blain and Jungard worked out very specific positions for people to stand, but resuming those positions after a Feud collapse often put people in the wrong spots. As for surviving Double Attack, the traditional Main Tank/Off-Tank setup had to be tweaked.

The first tank began by allowing Break to stack; consider this player the MT. By the second stack, healers certainly felt the strain. Between the 2nd and 3rd stack of Break is when Double Attack could really mess a tank up...and this is when the second tank, our OT for the purposes of this description, would taunt. It was in that split second that the OT would eat the Double Attack, saving the MT from being one-shot. Seconds later, the MT would take Chimaeron back and prepare for the third break.

At three stacks, the MT and OT switched roles.

Now, the OT, which had just eaten a Double Attack moments earlier, was now stacking Break, allowing the former MT a chance to let their stacks drop...hoping and praying that a Double Attack didn't come in before their stacks dropped. If one did (and it happened here and there), the OT would hopefully have cooldowns from the healing crew to keep him alive. Since I preferred avoidance tanking, I played the OT.

For the most part, the challenge came in the transition to phase three. The difference between the two tanks surviving an extra few seconds at the start of the 20%, vs. dying instantly was huge. Every second counted during the final 20% burn. Panic ensued, top melee often got over zealous, stayed in too long, lost track of their place in threat, and were eaten alive. The amount of 3%, 2%, and 1% wipes were painful. Chimaeron plowed through morale like a jackhammer.

But we persevered.

Chimaeron flopped over, lifeless, at the top of the third hour, after pushing nearly sixteen attempts. Wherever possible, I opted to give the raid an early dismissal, especially in the wake of a great accomplishment, but Blain rode the momentum. One hour in Blain's mind was plenty of time to investigate our next challenges, so we took that final hour to examine both the Nefarian encounter and set foot into Throne of the Four Winds, an instance that housed Ragnaros' wind-fueled partner in crime: Al'akir.

---

My nerves wavered amid the state of the roster. On one computer monitor, Mature procc'd achievements for completing quests in all the zones. On the other monitor sat WoWLemmings, as I scoured for tanks, looking for a long term replacement for the core...an Ater, a Dalans, a Drecca...anything. Page after page returned nothing. Nobody cared for the fine art of tanking.

Meanwhile, home life vied for control of my attention. I readily gave it. Jul continued to recover from her knee and neck surgeries, leaving me to run the show -- dinners, lunches, laundries, homework, school projects, bills. I saw it as a chance to make up for lost time, for those initial years that WoW usurped all my time, stole me away from my wife and kids. It was a chance to make amends, and I took it. But at the end of each day, I was spent. I had a new appreciation for single parents, and wasn't so quick to condemn my mother on some of her own decisions. It didn't excuse her choices, but it helped explain them.

I took consolation in work. For three years, it remained a reassuring monolith of stability in an otherwise haphazard existence. I was respected at the office, given authority there. It changed me. At the start, I was excited about technology but shrouded in self-doubt about my ability to produce anything of any value. By the end of this third year, I not only discovered a confidence I never knew existed, I was compelled to strive for quality and results...something I could take pride in. Just a little bit of effort was all it took, a little thoughtfulness, care and concern towards a helpful tool you put in someone else's hands, something they rely on to do their own job. I gave a shit about the people I worked for and with, and wanted those tools to reflect our commitment to quality and detail. The side-effect: I was quick to condemn those who didn't put in similar effort. To anyone claiming it "paid the bills" made me nauseous.

The months of December 2010 and January 2011 were particularly exciting at the office, as news of an impending buyout was spreading. Exciting, yes, but it also filled me with a sense of unease. A potentially stable, empowering job was now in a state of flux. I thrived on stability, and my experience with such mergers in the past left a lot to be desired. I remained optimistic, but prepared for the worst.

Good thing, too...

2.12. The Accidental Florist

"Crying Tree of Life"
Artwork by Okha (Oksana)

Fauxliage

Kerulak was all I knew.

Since the game's launch in November of 2004, all of my end-game knowledge and expertise as a healer had been funneled through my Tauren Shaman. Like many players, I had a number of alts on my account, to break the monotony and see the world through a different pair of eyes. But my alts were low-level and I looked upon them as a hobby in-between polishing Kerulak's gear, assisting with attunement runs. My priority was first and foremost my shaman, Kerulak, so the prospect of putting him on the bench was unnerving and left me feeling a loss of control. My muscle-memory had long been cemented around totems, chain heal, and big single target greater healing waves. Earth Shield was still relatively new, having been added at the start of TBC, and was technically my only legitimate HoT (albeit one that lay dormant until reacting to damage). That is, if you don't count the pathetic heals-over-time that came from a Healing Stream Totem.

I feared the pain of breaking down that muscle and rebuilding it.

Part of the problem was that I was spaz. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with keeping my shit straight as it began to hit the proverbial fan. In emergencies, microseconds before death, I was at my absolute worst from a play perspective. I had a habit of freaking out and spamming a multitude of buttons as I scrambled for my life; in many cases they were the wrong abilities in the wrong order. In order to prevent myself from tripping over my own branches while playing on Breginna's character, it was important for me to keep shared functions in the same places. That muscle memory was all I had to rely on when adrenaline was pumping and I was about to flip out on the keyboard and mouse. I needed to ensure I was a contributor, not a detriment, by bringing this Druid to raids. Embrace the spaz.

My strategy in approaching the adjustment from Shaman to Druid was based around a single concept: Both are healers, so find whatever similarities you can, and map Druid abilities by function to the same keybindings you use with your Shaman. The starting point was the spell both the Shaman and the Druid shared: Nature's Swiftness, granting an instant cast to an otherwise long-casting spell. With Kerulak, the macro was mapped to Greater Healing Wave. This time, it would be Healing Touch. Kerulak could perform an emergency pool of mana regeneration through Mana Tide Totem, so I took my keybinding for it, and changed that to Innervate. Since Healing Touch had taken the place of Greater Healing Wave, I looked at my options. Chain Heal was more of a staple than Lesser Healing Wave in my eyes, and for the Druid, Rejuvenation seemed to follow suit. As a result, I chose to map Regrowth to Lesser Healing Wave, and made Rejuvenation my base spell. I reasoned that, since Earth Shield is what I'd use to protect a tank, I converted that mapping to Swiftmend -- with the expectation that I would have said tank loaded up with HoTs as the prerequisite.

As I wrapped up the changes, all that remained was Tranquility, taking the place (far more significantly, I might add) of Healing Stream Totem. Like an anal retentive chef, I dragged the metaphor even further, replacing Ghost Wolf with Travel Form and Revive with Ancestral Spirit. By this point, abilities were varying wildly, but it came down to function more than naming convention or even the difference between instant and non-instant cast. As for Ankh, a passive triggered upon death, the paradigm shifted the furthest in the form of a druid's Rebirth. This clutch ability was something the raid would rely on me for, so I needed the ability bound front-and-center. When the spazzing began, someone would need to come back from the dead while the raid remained in combat. I stuck to mapping functions in this manner in the hopes that re-learning healing from the ground up would be painless and quick.

Just like how Magtheridon intended to end our pathetic lives.

The Druid Talent Trees during The Burning Crusade

The Feels of Heals

Healing on Breginna's Druid was an entirely refreshing experience. I took advantage of the perpetual-motion machine that was everlasting attunement requests, and leapt in to help as much as possible. I was amazed at how much simpler it was to keep people alive. The freedom to heal while moving was a luxury that Druids took for granted. One can only know the pain of having to keep a Main Tank alive and stay out of the fire at the same time by playing a healer other than a Druid. It required extreme discipline to shuffle around as little as possible in order to maximize cast time, but all those restrictions went out the door with the Druid. With a Disney-like innocence etched into the bark that was the Tree Form's face, I pranced around 5-man heroics like The Arcatraz, The Steamvault, and Shattered Halls, waving my twig-like arms in the area, dolling out HoTs like they were candy, while bouquets of flowers and nature flourished behind me.

This was how the other side lived.

When it came time to return to Gruul's Lair for our weekly run, Ater and company had already been briefed on Breginna's story. The sudden loss of Kerulak from the raid turned the attention of a few raiders, and that was to be expected. I explained myself in Vent and waved to them all from my bird's eye view, gliding down out of the Blade's Edge sky and shifting into humanoid form at the entrance to the Gronn's cave. Yes, there was ribbing, and that was to be expected, but I took it in stride as this is what we did for one another in a family setting. Breginna may have still been new, but she was no less important than the players who had been with us since as far back as Blackwing Lair. We looked out for one another, and joked about each other's ability behind the wheel. We did this because if there was ever truly a legitimate concern about someone's incompetence, the jokes would be a little less playful, would sting a little more...have a little more bite.

They were certain to leave teeth marks.

Behind the wheel of Breginna, High King Maulgar was a bit less stressful, a little less chaotic. I got the hang of layering up Lifebloom to smooth out the otherwise jagged health bar that sat just below Ater's name on my screen. I was the only Resto Druid in the raid, so when I heard a call out for a battle rez, there was no need to debate or question who was being addressed. A button click later, the dead were back in biz, rushing toward the Ogre King with blades in hand. Gruul was equally less taxing. Moving out of the cave-ins was a cinch, as I shuffled the little wide-grinning Tree out of harms way, flinging its arms into the air for heals as I went. Other healers would run low on mana, call out for help, and without giving it a second thought, out came the mana-regenerating magic imbued within Innervate. When I took on the task, I wasn't sure if I would acclimate to the Druid as quickly as I had, but keeping my button functions the same pounded the learning curve into a flat pancake. The High King and Gruul were once again down, and I bid on items on Breginna's behalf, keeping her geared and growing in strength while she was away.

Hanzo plays Breginna during her absence for work,
Gruul's Lair

Magtheridon's Lair

April had come and gone, and with it, the task of digging into TBC’s raid content had finally commenced. But to say we were progressing would be a stretch. Three weeks of the High King and three weeks of Gruul landed us squarely at the beginning of May, and we still had not yet completed Tier 4. Yes, there were issues. Two pieces came from Karazhan, a 10-Man raid not officially on our roster. Two pieces came from Maulgar and Gruul combined, but with only three King kills and a single, solitary defeat of the Dragonkiller on our belts, Tier 4 equipped raiders were still a long way off. But as Blain had taught us, gear did not make a bad player good, so we repeated this mantra every time we slammed up against another wall.

This time, the wall was about to come down on us.

The remaining piece in Tier 4 would come from the pit lord Magtheridon, a pit lord shackled deep beneath the bowels of the Blood Furnace, where Illidan drained his blood as a means to fuel his army of Fel Orcs. If there was any shred of a doubt in the back of my mind that Blizzard misjudged the difficulty for their entry level raids, that doubt was excised from my brain once we set foot in the pit lord's lair. I was none too thrilled to dig into this fight. Word had spread among the raiding community about the sheer ridiculousness in difficulty the boss posed. A few short weeks after The Burning Crusade launched, I remember reading an article on WoW Insider about how Death and Taxes themselves said, not in so many words…

"Fuck that."

DnT leap-frogged past Magtheridon entirely, diving into Tier 5, uninterested in wasting any time dealing with the foolishly designed mechanics of a boss that desperately screamed out to be re-tuned. The High King and Gruul were tough and unforgiving, that was never in question. But they were doable with a raid comprised of team members that were sharp, took accountability for their own actions, positioning and performance. A pro-team could absolutely take out these pro-bosses.

But even professional teams make mistakes, yet still come home with the championship trophy; it's because the game might be complex and technical, there's room for error and recovery -- there's room to breathe.

On the twelfth night of Magtheridon attempts, I felt like I was drowning.

2.11. Divergent Paths

Twitter.com, circa 2007
Source: SXSW

The Latest Fad

"Check out this new website."

I tilted my head to the side, peering around my work monitor, revealing Ater. His gaze remained fixed on his own computer's monitor, the clacking of keys producing a steady hum from his side of our collaborative desk arrangement.

"What's the url?"

"twitter.com. I guess it's been around awhile but I heard about it through South by Southwest. It's bizarre." Ater got up, walked around to my side, and pointed to the registration link. "Here...set up an account."

I clicked the link, filled out my info, waited for the confirmation, and then logged in. A lone window greeted me, with a single label above it: 

What are you doing?

"This is weird. Who would care about what I'm doing?"

"I know...crazy. But I bet people would use this for all sorts of things." He walked back around to his desk and took a seat, "Maybe even like having public conversations."

"That's just creepy, though. Following people's conversations? I mean, I can have a conversation over the Internet in IRC if I want to."

"Right," Ater shot back, "but how many people use IRC?"

"A hell of a lot of nerds, that's for sure!" I laughed.

"Nerds, yeah. But not the masses. Think about what you have to do to get into IRC. Gotta know what server to connect to, and then deal with all the lingo. Figure out what channels to go into. IRC is still pretty underground...at least for the general user. IRC is great for people who are tech like you and me. But not very usable for the masses. That's the difference."

I looked back at the website, and then looked at Ater. It was as though every time he spoke, there was some deeply insightful message that just seemed to be as plain-as-day to him. The masses? General everyday users, uninterested in technology, barely knowing the difference between Yahoo! and Google? They're going to be the ones having public conversations where strangers eavesdrop on one another? 

If it had been anybody else making such a bold prediction, I would've laughed them out of the room. The masses have never flocked to technology. As long as I've been alive, non-tech folk have always expressed frustration and dismissal when it came to technology. Cool for us...confusing, boring, and dull for them. Even at the agency where Ater and I built websites for customers specifically paying for technology, we struggled with training them. Things were too complex, too many terms to learn, too many buttons to press and an awful lot of "why doesn't it just work."

I couldn't help but be reminded of the plight of the casual.

Two Separate Roads

Every so often, a lone forum post would pop-up on the Battle.Net forums about why there weren't more raids like Karazhan. Smaller, less oppressive raids, allowing players to rely on fewer of one another to accomplish the same tasks. Most often, Blizzard wouldn't respond to these complaints. The folks in charge, namely Tigole, tuned it out as white noise. Raiding was never meant to be for the masses, the great majority of players that were confused by basic concepts like moving out of the fire. Should it have been any wonder that Tigole himself came from a background of hardcore late-night raiding in EverQuest, ranting on his guild's website about the undeserving whiners who were slowly forcing EQ into a watered-down grave. Raiding was a privilege, not a right. You want it? You get off your ass and you do it. No complaining of size or of having to interact with other people. You take that energy you'd normally use to bitch and moan about how you have it so hard...and you simply go and get shit done. Anybody that complained of raids being too large, too many things to learn, too many buttons to press...didn't belong in raids in the first place.

I looked back at the website, asking its presumptuous question. Ater did have a point. It was simple and accessible. Certainly something that far more users could take advantage of. IRC was involved, did have a lot of techno-babble baggage associated with it, and I got how it could turn the masses off, scare them with horror stories of pedophiles and pornography and pirated software. This...Twitter site definitely made things a lot more accessible. And it certainly wasn't going to replace IRC by any means. They'd serve different audiences -- maybe even both! But they would ultimately maintain unique purposes. If all you cared about was posting a public thought, this new Twitter thing would serve that crowd beautifully. Tell Twitter you're playing a video game, and maybe get a couple of followers as your reward. But if you wanted to take it a step further, dive deep down into the depths of IRC, get your hands muddy with mods, channels, binary file transfers and bouncing between servers, stuff you would never get through Twitter -- IRC was still an option.

One action with two separate levels of effort and two separate degrees of reward.

The Twitter thing suddenly made a lot more sense.

---

"I could only imagine someone like Blain using this. How goes the search for a Blain replacement, anyway?"

Ater glanced back, "I've been talking to Volitar. He might be interested in helping out."

"Ah, nice. Volitar's a good choice."

That damn site was still up on my screen, the dialog box practically begging me to type something into it.

"Twitter, eh?"

Ater smiled, "That site is gonna be huge. Keep an eye on it."

What are you doing?

I clicked into the box and typed a response:

Completing Twitter registration.

I closed the browser and went back to work.

Hanzo's Druid alt, Oxanna,
Thunder Bluff

Breginna

I logged in that evening, checking to see who needed assistance in completing their attunement, when Breginna shot me a tell.

"Can I chat with you for a bit?"

"Sure, of course! Let me hop into Vent."

I alt-tabbed and fired up Ventrilo. Breginna was one of our newest raiders, our lone Restoration Druid. In the wake of a myriad of class changes that The Burning Crusade gave us, I struggled to find quality healers of the druid affinity. Many, as was the case with our very own Dalans, had felt forced and betrayed into a role of healing during Vanilla. They wished to take advantage of all of the bestial forms they'd been granted by rolling the class -- and that meant inside raid encounters as well. But in Vanilla, Druid tanks were clunky and difficult to get right, and their feral and balance DPS wasn't up to par with the purer DPS classes. So if raid progression was the goal, Druids were expected to heal -- and many didn't like it.

Come TBC, Druids gained far more viability in their multiple forms, and they -- like Dalans -- said good-bye and good-riddance to healing. Great for them, horrible for me. The pool of available healing druids withered away to practically zilch, and this was not good. Even with all the changes that TBC brought to the table for the variety of playable classes in the game, Restoration Druids still dominated one very specific niche of heals -- the ability to stack a multitude of HoTs on targets. Between Rejuvination, Regrowth, and Lifebloom, Tanks that normally experienced huge spikes of damage would have their health bar changes smoothed to a much more tolerable level, which in turn, eased the minds of the remaining healers and kept us from having an aneurysm.

"Hey, Hanzo." Breginna's voice was refreshing. In the sausage factory that was Descendants of Draenor, having a gal in the guild was a relief from the daily testosterone fueled chat. It was fine most of the time...but even I needed an occasional break from random bouts of excessive profanity.

"What's up, Breginna. Everything OK?"

"Yeah! Yeah...everything's great. Getting settled in to the raids now, really psyched about Mag."

"Yes. Mag. He is going to be a tough one. You'll absolutely be key in the guild pulling that off."

"Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you..."

Oh, God, no...

"You're not leaving the guild on me, are you?"

"Oh no no, no not at all!"

Jesus H.

"Thank God! You scared me!"

"No, I am going to be around for a long time, if you'll have me! The reason I wanted to talk to you was to let you know about an upcoming event in my schedule that I need help with..."

"Sure, anything! What can I do?"

"Well, I have a job coming up that I have to travel for, and it'll be a couple of weeks at least. So, I'm not going to be able to raid, I expect. I mean, I don't think I'll have access to a computer that will be WoW-ready."

Well...shit.

"OK, well...hm, that sucks. But how can I help with that?"

"Well, I was thinking...what if I give you my account to play on? I mean, do you think that is a possibility?"

Uh...

"Yeah. I guess that could work." I stumbled a bit, lost in a train of thought as I attempted to deal with this curve-ball. Awkwardly, I blurted a thank-you back to her, "That's extremely generous of you to offer up your account."

It could work. She wouldn't fall behind in gear, and Kerulak pretty much had everything he needed from the content we were able to complete thus far. And as the lone Resto Druid blanketing the raid with HoTs, her presence was going to be pivotal in our success -- never mind the fact that it was one more battle resurrection we desperately needed.

"Alright. Let's do it."

I had some Druid homework to attend to.