Tears of a Goddess

Taurens make the best rogues

2010-08-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

... you never see one coming.

This post is sponsored by my sincere wish that some day Blizzard will allow shamans to be played by humans or night elves.

Playing Leapfrog

2010-08-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

I almost entitled this post "Jumping the Shark" but I didn't want to imply that any climaxes had been reached or that it's all downhill from here, because that's not even close (maybe after I get to introduce the Lich King to my fire elemental). It's about bypassing content, something I don't actually enjoy doing.

In the Burning Crusade, I started fairly late into the xpac. I'd made some close friends playing LotRo and we'd thought of drifting to EQ2 (a game I love by the way) when one of them impulsively rolled a character on WoW and we just kinda followed. This was reluctant on my part and my third venture into Azeroth.

Vanilla

My vanilla characters had fallen by the wayside because I was living overseas then and my clunky second-hand pc couldn't handle the game (yep it was a pretty dismal machine). I remember at level 28 or so, our guild decided to take all the lowbies into one of the 60 instances just to experience it. That was my first taste at bypassing content :p No idea what it was or how we got in without attunement. My screen was frozen the whole time and I died a lot. I was probably the person standing in the fire/slime/green stuff/pink stuff/bombs - name it, I was in it.

It burns when I crusade

My second misadventure occured at the beginning of TBC when I rolled on a horrible server to join a horrible friend and his horrible guild. Everything fell apart before I hit 45 and I swore off the game forever (famous last words that established a vicious cycle of addiction).

Third time lucky. We chose a pvp server, horde side, in my timezone. I rerolled a druid (my vanilla class). I loved the friends I was playing with. We met an American while leveling (who has now moved to my town in Australia, small world) whose main happened to be in a a wonderful, small (but srs bzness) raiding guild and we were invited in as the only leveling non-alt characters. This is back when all raiding was guild based and if you weren't in a raiding guild, you were unlikely to see endgame content.

When I hit 67 or 68 (whatever level druids got flight form back then) I was able to do the Karazhan attunement quest (usually only doable at 70 then) so by the time I hit cap, I had a full set of T4 (woot!). The guild had by now finished TK and SSC and were well into MH and BT. After proving myself as a fill-in healer in Hyjal, I was offered a permanent spot on the team. Essentially I was the only person in the guild doing T6 content in T4 gear so I'd hide in tree form a lot. While this was a great opportunity, I actually hated jumping over T5 content completely. I loved Sunwell just because it was my first real taste at progression raiding where I was geared for the content and learning the fights along with everyone else.

Wrath and the Lich King

Different things led to another break from the game on the cusp on Wrath. Lots of games in-between, including some adventures in text-based RP and a lot of PvP. I got an urge to go back to try WoW after reading you could level through PvP. The old guild was now gone. New character. New faction. New server. I started several characters to between 40-80. The viability of leveling through PvP wasn't as expected and the ease of the dungeon finder tool meant I found myself interested in PvE again. By the time I rolled my current main, a shaman, I barely PvP'd at all.

Now I find myself at 80 and in T10 content with people I like a lot. I've completely missed Tiers 7-9 and while I can go back and pug those, it's not really the same.

I love ICC. It reminds me a lot of BT. I think the pacing is good, the layout, the different fights. In some ways I'm glad to be able to skip to the good stuff this time. It does feel like cheating though. I may get a chance to battle the Lich King soon with my spiffy emblem bought lowly T9. Maybe it will remind me of battling Illidan Stormrage when I was still in Kara gear.

Meow

I wonder if Cat will finally give me a sense of natural progression.

You ROLL a ball, idiots!

2010-08-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

It's ROLE. LFM VoA10 class run, pst ROLE

ROLE!!!!!

A picture tells a thousand words

2010-07-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

This week's shared topic at Blog Azeroth was started by Nenunial with a fabulous pic of a draining draenei. A picture tells a thousand words.

I probably have a thousand pictures that tell a single word: 'lol' (does it count as a word?). I never think to capture the pretty moments, or those that shaped my WoW experience. I do however have quite a few goofy ones.

A picture of a thousand pets:

In TBC there was a bug (not game breaking but I won't explain it just in case it was naughty of us to do this) where you could repeatedly summon a non-combat pet. We took my friend's army of companions for a joyride around Outlands to gank unsuspecting alliance for the lols. (look we found one!)

Don't laugh at my name, I thought it was appropriate for a female cow even if it did make for awkward vent conversations (you could literally hear girlfriends in the background demanding to know who their partners kept calling "honey").

Speaking of exploiting bugs (not that I'm encouraging it), the following provided a lot of giggles in Shattrath. I ended up with half the town following me wanting to know how I did this.

A friend asked me to make a level 1 character on his server to show off his paladin. He was very happy to see me.

Ran into this poor dwarf on my level 8 rogue. He'd been there for a while.

Ranted

2010-07-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

I shift between absolute patience where nothing phases me to being constantly irritated at every little in-game thing. Maybe it's tied to my, um, lunar cycle.

When every little detail irritates me, I want to let off steam - to blow my top at people not buffing, tanks who quit groups mid-pull, ninjah skinners (my pet hate), naked female bank alts afking in town, leeches in battlegrounds, mages who roll on my gear (just kidding), people who don't reply to "does everyone know this fight?" and then wipe the group, idiots in trade chat, tanks who incorrectly blame the healer, healers who incorrectly blame the tank, hunters in general, that drop that just won't (drop), imbeciles, people who think grammar is married to grampa and the flood of "anal" spam on maintenance shut down (prime time for me).

So I started a blog. A blog for rants and qq.

And (in spite of the full moon) I actually feel content right now. What happened to my inner rage? I'm trying to channel it but get distracted by butterflies and rainbows.

Catclysm: Kalimdor

2010-07-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

I won't repost the video itself but wow.com has a link to some fabulous beta footage of Kalimdor that is well worth checking out if you have even the tiniest curiosity about how the world will look.

WoW Moviewatch the post at wow.com

Muffins Presents: Beta Cataclysm: Kalimdor

Youtube (Part 1 of 2) direct link
Youtube (Part 2 of 2) direct link

Beauty & the Beta

2010-07-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

I don't even harbor secret hopes to be accepted into the Cataclysm beta. I understand that this will not be my fate, based primarily on the fact I'm ineligible by location. I do however lap up the Cataclysm screenshot of the day posted over at wow.com. These are some of my favorites so far.

This is Wetlands I think, but it could just as easily be Loch Modan or another area that has been flooded. It's just beautiful. The water texture is lovely and the barren, darkened trees add a particular atmosphere.

Westfall, in all its glorious harvest colors. What interests me are the spurting rocks and what they might suggest.

Is this Tirisfal Glades? I love the mood of this one. It reminds me of a little medieval town I visited in Germany. The town wasn't dark and sinister of course, but the similarity for me is in how Blizzard captures that old-world feel.

The vibrant greens and lush foliage are winners for me. I love the detailed textures. No idea where this is, it reminds me of Sholozaar Basin and I'm hoping it's Feralas.

This looks like Ashzara and I know the zone is undergoing huge changes. A goblin transport system of some kind?

The Elekk & the King

2010-07-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

This is a shared topic from Blog Azeroth started by Strumwulf. The theme is to roleplay a scene involving your mount. I chose my shaman Anaia and her elekk. It's a lighthearted first-person piece culminating in the Battle for Undercity.

Fatso and I were not love at first sight. Nuh, uh. The best thing I could say about him when I got him was “at least his thighs are bigger than mine.” It’s not that I didn’t want a mount, because I would have loved a unicorn or something but the elekk trader up at Exodar didn’t have any in stock and I was getting pretty damn tired of walking everywhere.

My bargain basement buddy and I didn’t get along at first. For a start, elekk poop is huge! I’m not scoopin’ that up, no thank you. I’d try and make him go before I took him anywhere but he was pretty uncooperative about it. We kind of barely tolerated each other for a while; he got me where I needed to get to and I’d stable him in town so he could play with all the good looking mounts.

We ended up in Stormwind for a bit. Whenever I tried to move on, some human would give me a task to do and there we’d go again. Don’t really know why it’s so hard for them to pick their own damn apples but I figure humans are a bit on the short side. Not as bad as dwarves, mind you, especially the skinny ones with pink hair, but not much is. I don’t really get them, but oops, I’m digesting from my story, sorry.

Sormwind is kind of fun. There’s lots of people around and this big harbor and some boats and they have a king. His name is Varian Wrynn and he's a buddy of mine.

Once I was done picking apples, we migrated to Northrend because I heard they don’t have apples and I wanted a break. Fatso and I rode all around this place called Dragonblight where there are real, actual dragons and we were vanquishing evil and stuff and having a lot of adventures that didn't involve fruit.

In Northrend it’s really cold to fly, like your wings freeze or something. But Fatso never got cold ‘cause elekks are fat and that’s kind of awesome. Also, he doesn’t have wings and can’t fly, which solved that problem too! He was always there for me. At night, I’d curl up against his big belly and he’d wrap his trunk around me. His breath didn’t bother me so much after a bit.

Eventually I had to go deliver a shield to this King Val guy so we trampled back to Stormwind. His name isn’t really Val but I kept calling him that until Lady Jaina whispered me. How embarrassing. So anyways, his name is V-a-r-i-a-n and he lives in this big keep. Elekks aren’t allowed in the keep which is kind of dumb because why call it a keep if you can’t keep things in it?

King Val said he got word of my adventures - he probably meant the dragons, not the apples - and he wanted me to go on a diplomatic mission. After they explained what diplomatic meant (which I forgot again, sorry) I totally agreed.

We went to this place called Orgrimmar which is full of orgs (kind of like giant goblins) and we got to meet another king called Thrall, except Lady Jaina did ALL the talking and I couldn’t get a word in. I’m sure she’s nice, but whatever, it got boring so Fatso and I snuck out and rode around the city and guards wanted to kill me but Thrall was like “No, don’t kill her!” which was cool because they didn’t.

Next I got to go with my buddies King Val and Lady Jaina to invade this place called Undercity which is like a city ‘cept it’s underground because the people who live there are dead but they aren’t really dead and they aren’t ghosts either which is good because ghosts are scary.

King Val is really cool, except at holding aggro, so Lady Jaina put this buff on me and basically I just healed through it all while we destrimated these armies of slimes. Fatso didn’t like the sewers very much and he hid behind me, trying to look incos... inconspick... look like he wasn’t there. He’s so cute.

We finally broke into the city proper and found some apothemist. The king was mad at him because of how he killed Bolvar. To be honest, I didn’t catch who Bolvar was but he must have been King Val’s mount which explains why the king was so mad like I would be too if someone killed Fatso. Whenever I got aggro on his minions, Fatso stomped them for me which was handy since King Val wasn’t paying much attention to the adds.

After the apothemist died, I couldn't really listen to what was going on ‘cause I was busy looting. All of a sudden Lady Jaina started yelling at the king who was running off. Woah! I began chasing King Val who went up this tunnel and then this other tunnel and we got to this big round room and there was my other king buddy, Thrall. I waved but he didn’t remember me.

Soon everyone started yelling and getting angry and it got a bit confusing. Then Lady Jaina came in and was all like “it did not have to be like this” except no one would tell me what “this” meant 'cause they were busy shouting and King Val drew his sword and then Thrall got up and he had all these orgs with him and I got a bit scared when suddenly Fatso sensed my fear and ran in and stomped the entire room - which froze everybody - I swear to Elune!

This gave Lady Jaina time to teleport us back to Stormwind and King Val was all grateful to me and Lady Jaina but he didn’t even mention Fatso. It’s a bit unfair since he saved his life, but whatever, Fatso is a hero to me. I don’t know many mounts that have saved a king so he’s pretty damn special and my best friend forever.

Death of a Salesman

2010-07-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Something you don't see so often on Aman'Thul is the gold seller. Don't get me wrong. They exist. They're in the trade channel stealing our moolah. They're just less prominent.

Aman'Thul is a high-population Oceanic PVE server. Nothing special about it. I've only been back here three months and don't know many people and the dungeon finder is more conducive to befriending people from your battlegroup rather than server. One thing really stands out. Where are all the friendly neighborhood gold spammers?

Background (skip if you want)

I first made a character here back in 2006 when the oceanic servers launched because my guild rolled here. I ended up quitting the game for a while, came back in TBC with friends and we chose a PvP server Jubei'Thos where I played, ganked and raided for some time. Eventually I quit the addiction (again) and relapsed (again). Because nothing was left for me on JT, everyone I loved had moved on, I decided I wanted to be Alliance this time and rolled on AT simply because I had alts floating here to buy starter bags and crap. And it was nice having a character with an original PvP title.

A tale of two servers

Yesterday, I posted this story about my druid who I haven't played in 2 years and it made me miss her a little. I decided to revisit her on Jubei'Thos. The saddest thing was logging on and seeing a full friends list, all offline. But what shocked me was the immediate flood of whispers, tells, yells, channel flood and even say emanating from the top of Org bank. What the... Aman'Thul is nothing like this and I don't even remember Jubei'Thos being this bad (see note below about filter).

Where have all the farmers gone?

So why have the sales farmers died on my current server? Is it a PvE vs PvP thing? Aman'Thul doesn't do GDKP runs either. People are friendly on the forums. You don't see many @ posts and there isn't a lot of trolling. JT was terrible for forum trolls. It's a completely different culture on the two servers.

I don't bemoan the lack of gold sales (compared to JT anyway) but there is something about Aman'Thul that doesn't sparkle for me. Maybe it's playing alliance after years of horde. Maybe the pve factor. I don't want to say niceness equates to blandness because there are still a lot of dumbasses on the server. Which is great. They provide future material to rant about on here. I think it's the lack of hardcore. There is no "best" guild on the server. Sure, some lead in progress relative to the rest of the server but overall progression is so casual. Every guild advertises in trade with the same message:

"Want to join a friendly, social guild with over 300 members? We help each other and have 6 bank tabs. When we get enough people we'll start raiding"

300 members and no raid team, GG.

There's not much gold seller spam because the market just doesn't exist. Everyone is obsessed with gear score and since no-one on AT trades raids for gold, gold cannot buy the items they need. There's not much loyalty. People leave their 300 member guilds to go join the one with over 500. Everyone gets along with everyone pretty much. Most raids are pugged, even guild runs fill out with pugged members.

Culture clash

The culture on JT is different. No idea if they are very progressed now, they weren't when I was there, but the mentality is much more hardcore. Even the casual guilds are "casual hardcore". I'm willing to bet they do have GDKP runs. The massive gold seller spam occurs because there is a market for it.

I don't miss JT but I do miss being around people who know how to gem/enchant, what to itemize for before they apply for a guild, and that it makes a difference to being accepted. AT is all about mass recruitment on the trade channel and guild chat is full of arguments about why the guild keeps wiping on X encounter.

So does harcore equal gold sales? I had an addon when I was on Jubei'Thos that filtered spam. Don't need it on Aman'Thul. Right-click, ignore works just fine. Does not having a market for RMT make a server dull?

Physiotherapy

I don't miss my old server or its guilds, trolls and juvenile players but I really do miss people who take raiding seriously - and I only play casually this xpac. I just hate carrying people, bad back and all that.

Shaman, heal

2010-07-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

This is a short conversation that took place in Azjol-Nerub. This is the instance with the spiders where group members are targeted and encased in a giant web. To free them, you just attack the web.

me: webbed
group no response, randomly attack everything except the skirmishers
healer dies
me: webbed!
mage: shaman, heal
me: webbed, pally heal
pally (dying) no response, busy attacking
mage: he can't heal, he's ret
mage: ret pallies don't have the mana pool to heal, are you new or something?
me: no, I'm webbed
group wipes, I ankh and resurrect everyone
group: why didn't you heal?! *grumble* *mumble*
mage: ew, we can't kick him for another 9 minutes

Note: I give them too much credit for grammar.

I should add, I'm elemental spec with a resto off-spec and will switch to heals on the inevitable occasions a group loses a healer. I intentionally suffer longer queue times for DPS in order to play in my chosen style. I still watch health bars and throw heals, especially on the healer if incapacitated or just struggling. In a case like above where the healer dies, I automatically switch to heals - unless webbed. Cheers.

In vino veritas

2010-07-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Recently I commented on a great post by Larisa from The Pink Pigtail Inn an excellent mage blog. The post was about loot in WoW and the changing values we place on it, as well as the emotional attachment/baggage that comes with it. My comment related to a story from TBC when I played a resto druid and it brought back a strong memory - or lack of - involving red wine that I'd like to share.

I never really obsessed over gear.

In TBC I did my first Karazhan at level 68 - back when you couldn't do it before 70 - it was a druid hax. I leveled up and and had a shiny set of Tier 4 waiting in the bank. I bypassed SSC and TK something I always regretted and went straight into Black Temple. I was there for every progression night, every wipe. I healed. I ressurected. I repaired.

At some point I developed an odd paranoia over my shoulders. You can see in the picture how they had these giant glowing globes on them. They stood out a mile away, screaming Kara noob. Karazhan, at level, by the way, is my favorite instance by far of anything in this game. Having bypassed T5 content, I was the only person not equipped in it and was holding out for T6 which I shared a token for with warriors (main tanks in my guild) and priests (preferred healers).

So I continued to wear my newbie shoulders as we ventured into Sunwell which meant less farm nights in BT.

New players joined the guild and started mocking me for my gear. WTF. I didn't care about gear. I just thought these shoulders were the ugliest things I'd ever seen. I'd stay perpetually shape-shifted so noone could see my giant globes of noobness.

I continued to lose the roll on the shoulders. Back then we didn't get any DKP on progression/wipe nights. I was losing them to people who only turned up for kills. I got some lovely upgrades in between but who cares. The old gear looked fine. Meanwhile the same two jerks in vent kept mocking my shoulders.

It sounds like I care about loot doesn't it?

I got fabulously drunk one night on a bottle or more of red. Can't remember why I was drinking or how I ended up on vent. Cannot remember the vent conversation at all. Woke up feeling great, logged on in the evening and started getting whispers. And noone would tell me what I said. Somehow I threw a major fit over those dumb shoulders. In tears apparantly. Why wouldn't they tell me what I said? They just changed the subject.

Of course the token dropped next run. Silence in vent. Everyone passed. I got a bit frantic (still feeling paranoid over what I might have said). I kept begging everyone to roll on them. Noone did. I got my shoulders. A brief silence again. A whisper from a guildy saying I was alienating people who cared about me.

Oh geez. Does noone else ever drink?

I was so ashamed. No idea what I was ashamed of since everyone was avoiding my questions. I had beautiful new shoulders and was too embarrassed to wear them. I stayed in permanent tree form for the rest of TBC, no joke. And everything went back to normal and the jerks left the guild which eventually broke up. And vent was fine. But I could never convince anyone that I didn't care about gear. I know deep down it was more a sense of feeling under appreciated. It became this whole symbolic thing for me.

Kind of dumb, eh?

And the funny thing is, I do care about gear now. Wrath did something to me where by the time I began leveling my shaman I was already planning what she would wear at 80, and what she would do next and the whole progression thing. In TBC I was so excited to reach cap and get to raid. I never raided in Vanilla. I think I quit when my druid was 45 or so which took forever then. My TBC druid was a new roll on a new server with friends. They didn't end up raiding and for me it felt like an achievement (this is before achievements). Now to me raiding is just about the gear. That makes me sad. Maybe it's the residual burnout from TBC raiding. I just can't get excited about it.

Cataclysm on the other hand, I'm really looking forward to, especially raiding. And not for the gear.
.

Tanks who can't, shouldn't

2010-07-15T05:24:00.000-07:00

Tanks who can't, shouldn't. It's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to Cataclysm with promises of skilled based play coming back to the scene.

There is a syndrome called tank envy. This was particularly prominent in the Burning Crusade. Gone were the days of 40 man raids and in was ushered a new era of 10 man entry level and 25 man advanced raids along with 5 man heroic dungeons. Tanks were the leaders, the tough guy. The ones who didn't die unless their team let them down. Guilds literally fell apart when their main tank left.

This led to a rush of new tanks. Kids who were bullied at schools. Ret paladins who hoped for a raid spot. Attention seekers. People who wanted to feel important, to be the cornerstone of their guild or raid. Warriors were no longer king although the perception remained strong that these were THE main tank. Druids and paladins began leading their own raids. Raiding and entire guilds were focused around their main tank. Even when he was an asshole.

So, tank envy. A whole new breed of tanks who thought they could. They leveled through instances asking the group if anyone knew the way. The group would have to tell a tank to go buy a shield and then run to the summon stone to bring him back. Off-spec tanks who thought they were fine because they did have a shield. The glory that was tankage.

Usher in Wrath of the Lich King. Leveling-wise, all a tank has to do is attempt to hold as many mobs as possible while the team randomly nukes the lot at once. No more cc, no positioning the mobs. The only person who might comment on the lack of a shield, is the healer, usually to be ignored.

The LFD or Duneon Finder tool brought a new wave of a different kind of tank. These weren't the tank envy lot. These guys just wanted quick queues and fast leveling. It didn't matter if you knew the way. Just run through the whole thing, aggro the lot, burn, burn, burn.

Suddenly at 80 when a margin of skill kicks in, many pseudo-tanks realize they have no idea how to. These are the ones you find in your level 70 instance, usually UK or Nexus, completely overgeared for the content, ready to "practice" on your lowbie group. They tend to run through and pull the entire instance in one swoop while everyone chases frantically, usually oom. The boss downed in record time, they pat themselves on the back for their excellent tankage and start looking for a VoA group.

The numbers of tanks at 80 is low. And the number who can actually tank is even lower. The fast queue guys spec back to pew pew mode and bemoan the lack of tanks. There is no more tank envy (except envy towards groups who manage to find one).

Cataclysm promises a return to skill-based grouping. Crowd control, aggro management, careful positioning of both group members and the mobs, having to study an encounter before you turn up and the need for competence. I don't like the way the game has been dumbed down; there needs to be content to suit different play styles. Of course this will see the return of tank envy. When the hapless young lads watch a brilliant tank in action and think, if I roll one of these, I can has skillz too.

RealID vs PlayerID

2010-07-14T03:41:00.000-07:00

The debacle over RealID has been covered extensively by just about everyone so there's no need to rehash the same things that others have said better. Blizzzard's backflip over displaying player's real first and last names was probably inevitable. It couldn't have gone ahead.

In all fairness, every indication is that the initial decision to do so was made by Activision (who own Blizzard) and Blizz was just as unhappy as anyone else. That being said, the reasoning behind it was not a bad thing and here's why.

RealID on the forums was supposed to raise the quality of the official forums which really are a joke in terms of the amount of crap you have to wade through to find good information by not letting trolls hide behind pseudonyms.

One of the reasons so many people lurk on Elitist Jerks to get accurate and indepth information on game mechanics is their strictly enforced rule set. The banned section is quite entertaining. No-one really wants the WoW forums to be quite that tight that but more moderation would be a definite improvement, just to avoid having 25 posts on the same topic and to stop all the lazies from not reading the stickies. Not to the extremes that EJ goes to although I love them for it.

Blizzard has upped their moderation somewhat, especially on their technical and customer service forums and particularly on the EU site. It's a first step.

RealID was never the solution to this. It just drives away genuine posters and encourages trolls to make fake account details. As a girl, the implications were worrying. I have a unique name that comes up with my workplace address when googled. There are enough stories about sickos tracking down people down irl to settle an in-game grievance like this, this and this. Scary times.

One solution that worked really well in a little game I played a few years back was to have a log-in name that was separate from your PlayerID name. You log in with your LoginID but anyone in could look up your character and see the public name, or PlayerID, associated with your various characters. Players couldn't hide behind alts. Forum posts were made under the PlayerID. Very little trolling.

Since Blizzard changed our log-in ID to our email addresses, I changed my email address to something unique, associated only with logging into the game.

I wish they would introduce an PlayerID that is displayed on all forum posts, that is separate from what we use to log in, I hope they continue to step up moderation because the forums are mostly useless at the moment.

Mages who don't buff

2010-07-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

Mages who don't buff shit me to tears. Really. this is referring to 5 man randoms and by mages I actually mean mages, paladins, druids and to a lesser extent priests. I would say it would be okay if they could at least buff the tank and healer but you know, that actually pisses me off more. The boomkin who shifts out long enough to toss MotW on the healer and noone else. Sometimes mages buff me because they *think* I'm the healer. Heh, heh, heh.

Huntards

2010-07-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

I have a new theory about them. Really, there are a lot of bad players. I don't mean new players who are learning, but intrinsically awful players who never learn. These players are bad no matter which class they choose. They make miserable mages, terrible tanks and horrible healers. It's just harder to notice. There's a huntard hiding inside most of the people you pug with. Sometimes it spawns into an actual huntard. That's when the proverbial shit hits the fan.