Products We Love – Razer Naga, The Ultimate WoW Gaming Mouse

Click Here To Order Yours!

We’re a big fan of nifty peripherals here at DYS, just in case you hadn’t noticed, but every now and then even we get blown away.  Every month or two we test a new product in the market to see if it offers something more for our readers.  In order to get a review at this site, the thing really has to add something to the wow experience for the novice and pro alike.  Not making our cut doesn’t mean it’s a bad product, just that it doesn’t meet our Dominating and demanding flavor.

But every now and again we come across something that actually changes the way we play.  The Sennheiser headphones are great, but won’t really make you a terrific player.  The G13 game pad will – I still use both of them every single time I play.  But the Razer Naga blows away everything we’ve ever reviewed by such a huge margin that it’s a little hard to know where to start saying just how good it really is.

First things first, then.  It’s a standard size mouse (even though the button field looks pretty intimidating in the pic above) with 12 extra keys on the thumb side (for righties anyway).  That is the big difference between the Naga and every other mouse on the planet.  It has the standard left, right, scroll, scroll click, four and five buttons as most gaming mice – but adds twelve more keys for your thumb.  One look and we KNEW we had to give it a spin.

How Does It Feel?

In just ten seconds it was apparent it was the most comfortable mouse ever.  It’s like holding hands with your sweetheart.  The texture is just smooth enough to be soft, just matte enough to be completely slip free.  Not only do your index and middle finger glide into the perfect rest position, but there is a little shelf for your ring finger and a cup for your pinky that actually make it more relaxing to have your hand on your mouse than anywhere else.  You hate to let go of the thing to type.  So in the tactile area the Naga gets a 10+ out of 10.

Cursor Response

The drivers are super easy to install both on Mac and PC.  The interface is clean and offers a degree of movement control that is nothing short of outstanding.  It supports Dpi ranges from 100 to 5600 – which is a range from nearly dead turtle to fighter jet speed.  You can also adjust the acceleration factor and frequency response over broad ranges.  But the really slick part is that you can set it to control the X and Y axis Dpi independently.  That is a real WoW factor.  If you use a wide screen setup it is so nice to have the cursor move faster from left to right than up and down.  Cursor response and setup = 10 of 10

Movement and Function

Most mice have a few little slip pads on the bottom and a big bright lazer or whatever.  This beauty has a slip ring around the entire perimeter of the bottom, which makes it glide like butter.  It even has an extra slip ring that completely surrounds the invisible lazer orifice.  One thing is for certain, if your mousing surface isn’t completely clean, you’ll know it in about half a second. (we also prefer the Lazer exact mat for all our mice, but it’s especially nice with the Naga).  I prefer a free-wheeling mouse, but since very few have that option I can’t deduct too much for the incremental scroll.  The four and five buttons are right up at the very front and absolutely WILL give your a hand cramp if you try to use them very often, but we’ll get to why this makes almost no difference later.  And, finally the button clicks are easy enough to make without much force, but firm enough to avoid lots of accidental clicks – pretty much perfect.  Movement and function = 9 of 10

Extra Juice

Now we get to the good stuff.  Those 12 extra buttons are so good it’s not even fair to rate this thing against other mice.  It turns all those other mice into meece.  There’s everything else – and then there’s the Naga.  I pitched my G3 in a drawer for good and didn’t have a qualm in the world about doing so – and I loved that mouse.  Even apart from the extended functionality, the Naga is just a much better overall mouse, but those extra keys are WAY past incredible.  And then I played with them.

I fully intended to try to use as little hyperbole as possible, but that’s completely impossible in this situation.  Compared to every other mouse I’ve ever used – and I go through mice like a tomcat, the Naga would have no peer, leaving even the G3 completely in the dust.  But those extra buttons make it so different that it becomes completely unfair to all the other mice in the world.  If the G3 (a really good mouse) rated a 45 out of 50, the Naga (even without the buttons) would have raised the bar to 60, and that’s no kidding.  Those 12 new buttons put the bar at 100, and we’ll put the Naga right there 95 out of 100, which means there really isn’t any way to compare apples to apples.  everything else just got pwned.

That extra button pad automatically binds to either the: 1 through = keys on your keyboard or the number pad keys, whichever you prefer.  I already had bar one and two in Bartender assigned to those suckers as it is, so with the flip of a switch I can use my one mouse to toggle 24 keys – it’s so slick you have to use it to believe it.  And then comes Vuhdo – yikes.

Plug this thing into Vuhdo and you are one little macro command away from complete and total healing Domination.  And, in reality, it could almost make the choice between Healbot, Grid/Clique and Vuhdo closer to meaningless than ever before.  We’ll discuss that macro in the next article since it’s so slick and useful for so many other situations, but just know that you probably would never use it nearly as much without the Naga.

You’re Wasting Time Here!

All there is left to say is get one.  Get one right this minute.  Do not pass go, do not argue, just get it and Dominate.  Ask for it for Thanksgiving, your birthday, Christmas and New Years.  Beg, borrow, cheat, lie, steal or work like a fiend until you can get one.  Get up from your chair right now and go to the store – yes, it’s THAT good.  Once you plug this dude in, you’ll find 50 new ways it can improve your WoW life in about 5 minutes.  I am seriously excited about this thing, as if you couldn’t tell, but it really is the single best gaming peripheral I have ever seen.

If you can’t stand it, and we’ve done our job, you can click on the pic at the top of this article (or below) to go directly to Amazon and get one for yourself.  You don’t have to use our link, of course, but honestly, once you use the Naga you’ll never know how you played with anything else.   Go get one, and bring your Domination to a whole new level of pwn.

Order The Razer Naga Now

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Mods We Love – Skada Vs. Recount And Omen

These days healers never worry much about threat.  As a matter of fact, besides the odd mage or lock aggro pig, it rarely comes into play.  But since I recently began playing a mage just to fiddle with, I began to have to pay more attention to aggro.  Remember, we never level alone, so I’m running the mage with an Arms warrior.  It’s a lot more fun to just stand back and nuke mobs til they glow, and without all the prot aggro abilities, a young mage has to watch themselves.

So as a result, I decided to go ahead and download Omen, since I was familiar with using it from back in the BC days.  Opened up Wowmatrix and typed in aggro to the search frame and there was no Omen in sight.  Apparently only Curse carries Omen. So, for one of the few times, however, I did no real research and decided to try out another mod in the list.  I’m just not a huge fan of curse, but that’s a personal thing.

The reason I chose the mod I did was because it claimed to replace both Omen and Recount.  I like consolidation, it cleans things up and keeps you from having to manage too many different things.  I run a lot of little mods for things like moving frames and gear comparisons and mailing tons of crud to bankers and other minor tasks – but when it comes to UI mods I stick with DBM, Bartender, Xperl and Recount.  I don’t want 500 things running in a big raid to kill my frame rates.  But a threat meter was in order, and so I thought I would give this new one a try.

And I love it.  The mod is Skada, and it was perhaps the best accidental mod find ever.  Like any mod interface and configuration, it takes a  little fiddling with and getting used to, but it does everything the other two do all in one package and you can configure it to suit yourself better than either Recount or Omen.

The one thing I really like is the ability to open multiple windows and name them for what they are tracking.  So now I keep three little windows up all the time.  There is one for DPS which shows overall damage plus DPS.  The next one shows healing, since I’m always interested in that sort of thing.  And the last – threat.

Now, when I’m healing, the threat window doesn’t help all that much, except to know who is messing up and nuking too hard at the start of a fight.  You actually can use it to tell who is about to get one-shot and maybe wind up a life saving heal.  Having DPS open let’s you know how you are doing against enrage timers and if you need to call out on vent for “MORE DOTS!”  And the healing window tells me who needs to step up their game or if we’re just fine and I can throw out a few dots myself during the fight just for grins.

Another nice thing about Skada is that the configuration is saved on the Interface level, so it spans across all accounts and realms.  Set it up once and you’re done.  You can have it do character specific windows as well, though – so whatever floats your boat it will do.  Fonts, window sizes, number of rows, number of fights to save – you can set it all with Skada and report any window to chat or whisper just like Recount.

Recount does a nice little graph, but I don’t necessarily need more visuals, I can make my own pie charts in my head.  With Skada, all you have to do is mouseover a bar in the chart and it will tooltip all the stats for that particular player without a single click.  It’s the same information with instant access for your entire raid.

All of this might be most helpful to those of you who regularly lead raids or have at least a leadership role.  Or maybe you’re just interested in winning, and more information about what happened can get you much closer to what you want to happen.  If you don’t know what is happening you have no idea how to fix what is wrong.  You might just tweak something that is working and get worse if you are just guessing.

Skada makes it easy to have all the combat data right in front of you in whatever way makes sense to you.  You can get too many mods and end up suffering from information overload, but for the raid leader who is used to watching what is going on Skada is a great way to take your Domination to a whole new, and easier level.

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Raid gearing guide for the new 80.

(We’ve had some reports that this article didn’t come up properly so I had to update it)
“So i made it to 80 now what do i do?? I  am lost: HELP!!”

We hear it or read it in chat every day and once again it came up in the replies to Law’s wonderful article on Lore. Now I must admit: if it wasn’t for my fellow guildies at DOMINATE I would still be totally lost apart from all the new reputations to work for and daily quest for professions and the factions, you have all the other dailies for rep and the heroic dailies and all the new instances. And you can’t even get a group to do any of them.

You see in trade: “LFM HTOC” or “LF2M Heals+ DPS for H CoS (Daily)” or what ever and you whisper said person only to receive a whisper back 4 to 5 mins later: “Sorry, full” and you sit there thinking how do these others get their whisper in 1st? Don’t I type quick enough? Then you find out it is down to your gear score “Sorry your gear score is too low” and you don’t want to ask because you already feel as useful as a chocolate tea pot.

Whether you’re new to the game or it’s your 17th 80 these steps are a must for anyone that even remotely wants to raid.  Since patch 3.2 gear has become more and more easily available so we thought we’d publish a quick reference guide to Raid gearing. None of these steps require you to enter a single 10-man raid.

There are 5 things you should focus on:

Reputation with the right Faction for your Head Enchant:

This is one of those things that nobody can do for you, yet will be using for every single spec and every single head slot piece of gear you will ever wear.  Depending on what you choose to do,  you will need to raise your reputation for a different Faction: You need only hit Revered for the best Enchant. Go pick up the tabard of the appropriate faction and wear it in every heroic you do.

Kirin’Tor: Caster DPS

Argent Crusade: Tank

Knights of the Ebon Blade: Melee DPS

Wyrmrest Accord: Healing

Reputation with Sons of Hodir for your Shoulder Enchant:

Again this is another one of those things that nobody can do for you but are worth it since they will be applicable to every piece of gear you ever equip on that character regardless of talent choices.

It used to be that you had to complete the entire quest chain and do the dailies for a whole month to get to Exalted, then Blizzard saw fit to simplify the process and allow you to trade in the (Back then BoP) Relics of Ulduar for some Rep with Sons of Hodir. Next they made the relics BoE so you now could theoreticaly buy your way to exalted .

Recelty Blizzard has introduced yet another way to get faction rep with the only faction in the game that gives lvl 80 Shoulder enchant: Comendation Badge: Sons of Hodir. They can be obtained from doing the REGULAR Daily. This is fantastic since you can complete the quest while doing it on Heroic as well and pick up the Emblems of Conquest that every boss will be happy to drop for you.
(Note: Scribes (Character that level the Inscription trade skill) can do a much upgraded, self-only version to shoulder enchant but that’s another matter all together)

Crusader’s Coluseum: Trial of the Champion: Reg + Heroic

This new instance (since 3.2) is your easiest stop for level 200-219 gear. Regular ToC will drop level 200 gear from every boss. You can clear it on Regular, step out, reset the instance and do it all over again. In fact you should do your best to run through that place as many times as you possibly can and pick up all the drops that you can. If you run it often enough it’s also a great place to gear up your second spec.

Running the Heroic give you Ulduar-level gear from every boss, including weapons and shoulders. By far the easiest place to pick up 219 starter gear.

Doing the Daily Heroic for the Emblems of Triumph:

Every time you turn in the Heroic Daily quest you will be rewarded with gold as well as 2  Emblems of Triumph. These are your all access pass to Tier 9 and level 245 gear. They can be obtained at a rate of 2/day this way. Emblems of Conquest are the fringe benefit that doubles your payout for these runs along with the actual gear that may or may not drop for you. You can also obtain them from the fire bosses in VoA and Onyxia.

Running Heroics for the Emblems of Conquest:

At this point there is nothing stopping you from doing more Heroics and picking up Emblems of Conquest. Emblems of Conquest: Pick up ~250 of them to obtain 2-piece T-8 (Head and Chest), Neck, Waist, Hands, Pants and Ranged. All of the Conquest gear is level 226 and will contribute greatly to your cause (Gearing up)

Knowing where you stand:

With that being said, you should also have tools to tell you where you stand and what you still need to work on. For both of the web sites below: enter your time zone, your realm(server) and your character’s name and look yourself up.

www.WoW-Heroes.com for a very good overall picture of your current situation gear-wise (My personal favorite).

www.WoWHead.com/?Profiles For the same thing (slightly different) from WoWHead.

Do those 5 things and it really won’t talk long to get a 2250 gear score and more. Gear score is what quite a few people will judge you by when you ask to get into a raid. It is not a complete picture however since it doesn’t account for experience or knowledge of the game but it is here for you and you should take full advantage of resources at your disposal.

There are far too many items in each category to list them all: That’s what WoWHead.com is there for you. Hopefully this will give you a sense of direction to get geared up.

Now get out there and DOMINATE.

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Dominate Your Server Launches Alliance Faction Guild In Two Flavors

You’ve been asking about it for a while now, and Dominate Your Server is always listening.  Last October we launched the Dominate Horde guild on the Fenris realm, and now it’s time we did the same for Alliance.

We’ve been getting ready in advance this time, and have a couple of options for all of you ally freaks out there.  First of all, we took a little flak for the horde guild being on a pansy-wansy PvE server.  None of that this time.  Our Alliance guild is on a full out warfare PvP server.

Our experience with the Horde guild also taught us that we needed to be pretty certain that we picked the right time zone so that both late night and early raiders can all get in on the action, so the new server is Pacific Time to ensure that those folks on the East Coast have a good shot at getting their fill of raiding at peak server pop times.

Next, we also wanted to make sure that everyone got the experience they needed from the guild.  We have a lot of casual players in Dominate, but also a group of pretty serious folks who really want to kick some butt and take some names.  To make sure that everyone has a place without rubbing each other the wrong way, we’re not just announcing one Alliance guild – but two.

For the casual player who just wants to hang out with folks and have a good time with people who have their WoW screwed on straight, thee is the DYS guild.  DYS will be the nub and learning friendly place to come hang out and get geared up or hone your skills until you are ready to join a much more elite group of raiding folks.

From the very top of the Dominate guild, a group of our senior officers have agreed to defect to Alliance and have formed a sister guild – Dyssention.  Dyssention is a hard core raiding team with one goal in mind – clear content now and let Arthas beware.  These guys will be raiding all the time, I kid you not, and will have some of the best players we’ve ever seen.  You’ll need to apply for Dyssention and you can get details for that during the first live DYS guild meeting.

The meeting will be this Friday at 6pm server time, which (in case you missed it) is pacific.  That means 9pm on the east coast.  If you’re out of the country you’ll need to figure it out on your own, but I’m sure you’re used to that by now.  We’ll meet right outside the front gate of Stormwind to sign everyone up.  So come and join the fun, or come to find out more about Dyssention.  Either way, DYS wants to give fair and equal treatment to both sides in the Horde vs. Alliance debate.

And even though Law and Gavin are snowed under with an exciting new project these days, you’ll be able to catch them sneaking about the Ally guilds in the coming weeks as Dyssention clears content like a bunch of crazed dogs.  So come meet the crew, and make some new friends with DYS and Dyssention this Friday at 6pm server time on the Kalecgos realm.  Whether you already DOminate, or want to learn how, you’re sure to find a place in DYS.  See everyone Friday!

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Draenei Protection Paladin

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Professions for the Tank: an exercise in futility if you get it wrong

My personal choice for professions is based solely on what they bring to the fight. As a Tank you are expected to be the best you can be and nothing less. As much as I like some of these professions and most of them can be quite useful, they are not all equal for the role we play in a group.

This article will help you determine what professions are best for you as a Paladin Tank:

• Herbalism: a Heal over time every 2 minutes that will sometimes save you … but it’s a HoT and if your healers are on the ball it’s relatively useless.

• Alchemy: Twice as long potions/flasks and a minor effect increase: that’s nice

• Inscription: No farming Sons of Hodir rep for the shoulder enchants, “scroll of Recall” is handy but overall, lacks a little luster for my tastes.

• Skinning: Crit bonus: not exactly our most praised stat as a tank.

• Leatherworking: Utterly USELESS in a raid.

• Engineering: Handy and fun to tinker with, expensive to level, it had its uses when Palys didn’t have any ranged abilities, but now is not nearly as efficient as other professions.

• Enchanting: Extremely profitable if you’re using the AH Mastery Guide but useless to a Tank… better suited to Tailors/Cloth wearers)

• Tailoring: Even more useless then leather working, unless you absolutely MUST ride your flying carpet into battle!

• Blacksmithing: Expensive to level, but adds 2 Prismatic sockets to your gear: extremely convenient and very useful.

• Mining: 60 Stam bonus when maxed along with the  ability to make Titansteel, and gather Ore.

• Jewel crafting: Finally the BEST (and arguably the most expensive) profession for a tank:  Jewelers’ gems baby … that’s what it’s all about. Especially at early levels this single ability can make the difference between sitting out a raid at 535 Def rating and picking up all the gear that drops in a single run just because nobody needs it. This will allow you to customize your character more then any other profession in the game, it gives you versatility and is an absolute MUST when upgrading gear since you may have to re-socket  2-3 pieces just to be able to wear the new whatever you just won.

For my money Mining and JC are the best. Some will argue Blacksmithing for the two extra sockets that will hold prismatic gems. All I have to say about that is: if you’re going to fill those up with Stamina (like you should) then Mining is a direct equivalent with the 60 Stam Mining bonus (2x 30Stam gems), it’s far cheaper to level, you’ll actually MAKE money with it and it will subsidize your other expensive profession: Jewel crafting!
For other classes that would like to add versatility or fill the need for a very specific stat (Druids & Armor Pen) then Blacksmithing and JC are the better (and most expensive) way to go.

Gems you want:

• Blue:  Stamina, Stamina and MORE STAMINA!
• Red:  Strength > Expertise > Attack Power
• Yellow: Defense Rating > Hit Rating > Crit.
• Orange, Green, Purple: Pick any of the stats above and get the corresponding mixed one.

Now let’s go over what enchants/Gems you want to have on your gear.

Head

• Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector: 37 Stam; 20 Def – Argent Crusade: Revered
• Arcanum of the Defender: 16 Def; 17 Dodge – Keepers of Time: revered

You’ll want to get to Revered with Argent Crusade as soon as possible since you’ll be putting that on every helm you will ever wear during your career as a tank.

Meta Socket

• Austere Earthsiege Diamond 32 Stam; +2% Armor from gear
• Eternal Earthsiege Diamond 21 Def; +5% Block Value
  

In the beginning you might want to consider the Eternal for the Def bonus but could easily migrate to the Austere as your gear gets better (2% of 25,000+ is nothing to sneeze at)

Shoulder

• Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle: 20 Dodge; 15 Def – Sons of Hodir: Exalted
• Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle: 15 Dodge; 10 Def – Sons of Hodir: Revered
• Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle: 52 Dodge; 15 Def – Inscription (400)

Sons of Hodir are the only faction that sell Shoulder Enchants. You will have to grind that rep eventually, so might as well get the (super) long quest chain going while you’re making your way to 80. This is a must since you’ll need that rep for every shoulder enchant regardless of what you choose to do with your Paladin Character.

Cloak

• Enchant Cloak: Titanweave 16 Def
• Enchant Cloak: Major Agility 22 Agi
• Enchant Cloak: Mighty Armor 225 Armor
• Enchant Cloak: Superior Agility 16 Agi
• Enchant Cloak: Steelweave 12 Def

Agility is far from being the best stat for Tanking but it goes a long way when it comes to avoidance. In this particular scenario when you start having choices you can keep the Titanweave enchant and start changing out some of your Gems instead.

Chest

• Enchant Chest: Super Health275 Health (roughly equivalent to 21 Stamina for Paladins)
• Enchant Chest: Powerful Stats +10 to All stats
• Enchant Chest: Greater Defense 22 Def
• Enchant Chest: Super Stats +8 to All Stats
• Heavy Borean Armor Kit 18 Stam
  

Greater Def has most itemization and will definitely help with reaching the Def cap initially but you might want to consider Powerful Stats as your end-game raiding chest enchant since Paladins are one of the few classes that actually benefit from most of the 5 stats (Str, Agi, Stam, Int, and less from Spirit)

Wrists

• Enchant Brace: Major Stamina 40 Stamina
• Enchant Bracer: Major Defense 12 Def
• Fur Lining: Stamina 90 Stam (Leatherworking 400)

Here again Defense until you reach the Cap and then switch to Stam. You can never have too much Stam: Ask any healer.

Hands

• Enchant Gloves: Armsman 10 Parry; +2% Threat
• Enchant Gloves: Major Agility 20 Agi
• Enchant Gloves: Precision 20 Hit
• Enchant Gloves: Expertise 20 Expertise
• Enchant Gloves: Major Strength 15 Str
• Reticulated Armor Webbing 885 Armor (Engineering 400)
• Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket 1654-2020 Fire Damage on a 45 sec CD (Engineering 400)

Armsman is your best bet initially from a Defensive stand point, although you may want to consider the Strength (even if it is a Burning Crusade Enchant) for more DPS  down the line.

Waist

• Eternal Belt Buckle Adds a Prismatic Socket to your Belt

A must have for EVERY belt you ever buy. Being a Jewel Crafter this gives you Options.

Legs

• Frosthide Leg Armor 55 Stam; 22 Agi
• Jormungar Leg Armor 45 Stam; 15 Agi

The Jormungar Leg armor is far cheaper than the Frosthide, so if you plan to upgrade soon you may want to hold back if money is an issue.

Feet

• Enchant Boots: Greater Fortitude 22 Stam
• Enchant Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality 15 Stam +8% Run speed Increase

Greater Fortitude if you have PoJ, Tuskarr’s if you don’t.

Weapon

• Enchant Weapon: Mongoose the Agility on proc is worth quite a bit of Avoidance.
• Enchant Weapon: Blood Draining The BEST enchant you can get (worth ~200 Stam)
• Enchant Weapon: Blade Ward Possibly the 2nd Best enchant
• Enchant Weapon: Accuracy 25 Hit; 25 Crit
• Enchant Weapon: Potency +20 Str
• Enchant WEapon: Titanguard +50 Stam
• Titanium Weapons Chain 28 hit; -50% disarm duration

As expensive as you think Blood Draining might be, an instant heal worth 2000 health that only procs when you need it (fall below 35% health) is about as good as it gets. It’s the equivalent of 200 Stamina … no other enchant even comes close.

Shield

• Enchant Shield: Defense 20 Def
• Enchant Shield:  Major Stamina 18 Stam
• Titanium Plating 81 Block Value

As with other pieces of gear, initially you’ll want the Def to reach the Cap but should switch to Stam or Block Value down the line. (81 Block value is far from negligible).

This should cover most of our bases when it comes to upgrading our gear and will show you most of your options. Knowing is half the battle, now you KNOW: get out there and Dominate!

Articles in this thread:

Part 1 – The Basics

Part 2 – Combat Ratings

Part 3 – Armor: Mitigation vs. Avoidance

Part 4 – Hit Table and Threat Generation

Part 5  – Abilities and Rotation

Part 6 – Professions and Upgrades (you are here)

Part 7 – Buffs and Starter Gear

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When we left off, I had just left Tankzilla’s group because he pulled a whole room and we wiped and the hunter ninja-hearthed after winning an EPIC (:roll:) two-handed mace.

About 2 minutes later, I got an invite to another group from someone we’ll call Dwarfadin. “To [Compy]: Please heal DM, we have a good group.”

He was at least polite, so I joined. Too bad Dwarfadin’s and my ideas of a “good” group seemed to be radically different. On paper, sure, the group seemed OK. Dwarfadin himself was only level 16, a bit low for Deadmines, but there was a 22 Rogue, a 20 Warrior, and an 18 Hunter. Before we got inside, the warrior felt the need to announce to everyone that he wasn’t a tank, and Dwarfadin said it was ok because he was.

Ok. Level 16 tank. I felt like perhaps I could heal him through it, although Van Cleef might have been trouble. I really didn’t care if we killed Van Cleef, I already had my Staff of Westfall. I was just there for XP.

As we fought our way to the entrance, I kept expecting Dwarfadin to pull out his shield. While we were outside, away from any elites, it didn’t really matter, after all. But, after we get in and he starts pulling, and by pulling I mean running around and attacking everything randomly, I noticed he still had his 2H Axe.

I figured he may have just forgotten to put on his shield. I can understand how melee classes can get caught up in fighting, especially when they’re attacking things randomly and ignoring the casters, who are lobbing giant fireballs at the healer, and not killing the mobs who run off with 4 hp to bring back 3 friends who go straight for the healer who decides to just spam Holy Nova over and over…

So I asked Dwarfadin where his shield was. He said he didn’t have one. I was shocked (well, maybe not so much); ANOTHER paladin who thinks he can tank sans-shield! Having horrible, Tankzilla flashbacks, I told him he was “[expletive deleted] stupid.” Then he said he had a shield, and he would use it on the boss. Fine, I said, “then I might heal you on the boss.”

For the rest of our adventure, Dwarfadin asked me to heal him with increasing intensity. Eventually he was yelling:

“COMPY YOUR MANA HAS NEVER BEEN BELOW 500 HEAL ME!”

I healed the rogue, the “fury” warrior, and the hunter’s pet, Bongles, but I never healed Dwarfadin.

I calmly explained that if he’d had a shield, I would heal him.

Then he said, “I’m a DPS tank!” and called me a terrible healer, and I was kicked out of the group.

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