Saving the day

The most fun moments in a raid are never when you down a boss flawlessly, but when things go hilariously wrong.

Today I joined a guild group for ten-man Trial of the Crusader, consisting of a couple of main raiders, a few guild members who don't usually raid with us and a bunch of alts. We one-shot the first three bosses, if not flawlessly, and then wiped a few times on the Twin Val'kyr as those unfamiliar with the fight struggled to get to grips with the whole colour-swapping concept.

To summarise it for non-raiders: You fight two val'kyr and there's some stuff with white and black swirlies that you have to either seek out or avoid.

Oh yeah, and I was main-tanking on my paladin.

On our third or fourth attempt the tank of the other val'kyr went down when the boss was at about thirty-five percent health. Within only a few seconds a whole bunch of thoughts raced through my head:

Ok, the other tank is down. This already happened on a previous attempt but we managed to recover from that particular mishap due to the feral dps druid taking over tanking for a bit while one of the other druids combat-resed the dead tank. Can we do this again? Nope, the feral druid went down very early in the fight this time. Any combat reses at all? Nope, both of the other druids used theirs on the previous attempt and they are still on cooldown. Hm.

I targetted the loose val'kyr and saw our enhancement shaman attempting to tank her, the fool. He took a hit or two and lived, but it was obvious that he'd be dead meat soon. So I did what any tank would do in such a situation: I taunted.

There was no real logic to it. After all every guide will tell you that you need two tanks for this fight, though I couldn't remember why. Something about the two val'kyr healing or buffing each other if they are close? All I knew was that a boss was hitting someone she wasn't supposed to be hitting, and even if we were going down it was only right that we should be going down with everything beating on me, the tank, until the very last moment.

Healers have a similar instinct, which often annoys our raid leader when he calls for a wipe and we drag it out endlessly by desperately healing whatever we can until we're all dead. It's what healers do, damn it, we can't just stop because you say so!

Anyway, there I was, tanking both of the winged ladies at once. Somehow I managed to keep aggro on both of them too, only losing the one I wasn't supposed to tank briefly once but taunting her right back again immediately. The healers were frantically spamming heals on me as is their way. The dps kept nuking. A smile started to spread across my face. I felt invincible!

Slowly, very slowly, the twins went down. They did a couple more of their special moves and we lost more people, but somehow we kept going. Even though I wasn't moving, suddenly all the little buffing swirls seemed to be attracted to me, and before I knew it I became a giant among elves and started to radiate light. (No really, it's what that buff does!) And then they both fell down at my feet at once, I ran around like a loon and laughed at my screen.

People congratulated me on my tanking and on saving the day, but the fact of the matter is that I didn't really do anything that amazing. Just doing my "normal" job on the previous three bosses had involved more work than that one taunt really.

Nonetheless I have to say that it felt really great. It's one thing to beat an encounter because you're doing it right, but there's also something to be said for doing it outrageously wrong and still coming out on top.