Self Discipline: The Politics of Dancing

Grace Procs On The Two-Step, Fool!

I have a major problem: I can’t dance.

Oh, I can bust out a serious foxtrot when the need arises, using my actual real-life people feet, but I can’t for the life of me [Safety Dance] with that damnable, damnable, damnable Heigan in Naxxramas.

Every single time it starts, I say to myself: “You’re a physicist. You get paid to understand this stuff. You can sure as hell do it in WoW, dammit.”

And then I wipe the raid.

I’m appalled at myself but unable to curb the self-destructive tendencies. As a player, I’m enchanted at the challenge, but as a member of a larger group I’ve become the Heigan-pariah, Unclean By Association. I’ve never finished Naxx because- for obvious reasons- no one will let me go with them. Server PUGs, initially seduced by my gear score and enthusiasm for the Plague Wing of Naxx, have learned the bitter lesson that I am not to be trusted.

YouTube videos have been viewed. Diagrams have been consulted. I’ve cut out those paper feet and pasted them on my screen with associated arrows indicating when I must proc haste and when I must do-si-do. Nothing, and I mean nothing, seems to clear this mental block.

I tried once again last night with nine other people who now hate me, and I finally realized that I need professional help.

Can you help me, gentle reader? Teach me to dance!

PUGtales: Snap Judgements

Just Another Day In Paradise

Lately I’ve been racking up massive numbers of PUGs with the LFD tool in order to keep my alts in the heirloom style to which they have become accustomed (the ungrateful bastards! Why, in MY day, I leveled as a holy priest with a broken dagger and half a cape, and was damn grateful for it! Uphill both ways to Molten Core through-… ahem, excuse me).

But my point, and I do have one, was that I realized last night that I’ve been creating a mental list of Instant Tank Judgements. We all know that someone with a name like ‘Ipwnulolz’ will likely require the patience of a saint, but there are more subtle signs.

There’s that inescapable, thoroughly subconscious, internal checklist that makes us think, Oh, God, I should just drop now and get it over with that we run through before anyone even opens their mouth. I’d be totally interested to hear someone else’s, but without further ado, here are my own:

Good Tanks

• Dwarves (usually)
• Gnomes (always)
• Females (unbelievably good, unless they’re a DK named ‘Sexxorz’)
• Any tank who’s running with his ‘Display Helmet’ turned off (???)

Bad Tanks

• Any retarded name (always)
• A tank grouped with only one other DPS from his guild (Always, always means a sprinter who will not stop to let you drink; something about not wanting to be seen as weak in front of the DPSer, maybe?)
• Human males with facial hair (This makes no sense!)
• Any tank who’s running with his ‘Display Cloak’ turned off (??? x 2)

DKs are emphatically not on my list; certainly Outland runs they tend to be much hazier on the mechanical details, but they don’t seem to be any more or less personally obnoxious than any other tanking class. Man, they sure do get a bum rap, though.