ToD: First time this life.

When I started DDO in September of '09 the Devils of Shavarath Adventure Pack was the crown jewel of high level (but not Epic) DDO adventures. And of those adventures, the crown jewel was the Tower of Despair -- a raid comprised of a series of fights culminating in the ultimate fight with General Horoth.

Frequently, both in game and on the message boards, people would hold up the battle with Horoth as a touchstone. "Oh sure" they'd say "your hairbrained idea might be situationaly useful, but General Horoth has..." and then they'd shoot the idea down. "Horoth has true seeing so blurry doesn't work on him" "Horoth casts disintegrate for waaay more than you have hitpoints, therefore CON is not a dumpstat." Or most commonly, "No one cares about your special love for your boots. If you're not wearing the Anchoring boots you will eventualy roll a 1 and Horoth will banish you!" That was the big threat: Horoth will Banish you! No one ever said what it looks like but my imagination filled in the blank.

Imagination: Clearly, the choice of phrase "(NAME) is banished" is a reference to Shakespere's "Romeo and Juliet." So, imagine a pitfiend like Harry or Suulomades except wearing a plumed venician hat. Horoth stands over the bloody and broken body of Tibbles decrying to the assembled crowd "Romeo! Is! Banish! Edddd!" And then Horoth gains a quarter billion hitpoints.

Which is to say, I was a noob.

But on my last life I had twenty successful completions under my belt and that makes me an expert. I had alot of fun in ToD last life. I pulled a +3 STR tome, won a Kilau's band in a roll, and selected 'crusty for my 20th completion. Back then we did everything perfectly and nothing ever went wrong because of our professionalism. But now, there's all these noobs running aroud with a Stone of XP's worth of swagger and a CP's worth of sense ToD is more difficult than ever.

My first run this life was ruined by just such noobery. We failed, just like all ToD fails BECAUSE THE TANK DIDN'T. Didn't hold aggro, didn't get aggro, didn't wear boots, didn't survive the unlucky double disintegration, didn't get a heal, didn't get a rez. Whenever we fail in ToD, we fail because the tank didn't. In this case it was a caster who was tanking the shadows, but from the point of view of the 11 of us who were frozen by shadows instead of roasted by devils it makes no difference. The tank didn't -- therefore we failed.

Durring that particular fail, I tried an experiment. I intimidated to grab the aggro of the shadows, kite them away long enough for the rest of the party to recover. I knew I probably wouldn't succeed, but if I did we could win. I didn't.

Next run was different. The shadowmaster was in a terrible position but thanks to the player's skill and experience he tanked the shadowmaster back to where he needed to be and we advanced to the ultimate fight with Horoth. It was cool. And for me, inspirational, because I wanted to tank someday. A good tank makes all the difference.

We enterered the final chamber. I had a bit of a panic because I've got two boots that look the same. The Boots of Anchoring (correct!) have the same icon as the Jet Propultion boots (You! Are! Banish! Ed!).  I had to read the tooltip to be sure.

The tank established aggro. It took a bit of time but it but it's such an important job it pays to be thourough. Finaly he felt confident and called for DPS. A second later our group of DPS was huddled safely behind Horoth, his hatred focused solely on our mighty tank.

Later on, the raid gets difficult again, but this is the easy part. How easy? Try it and see! Can you find the number 4 on your keyboard? Can you press it? Congradulations! You're better at DDO than I am. I pressed 3.

My character intimidated Horoth.

I hoped for an instant that Horoth would ignore my intimidate, just like those shadows ignored me, and Xy'zzy, and a thousand other mobs. But Horoth immediately turned away from the tank. As he spun clockwise his outstretched claw spun through our ranks of DPS like a scythe. We scattered under his onslaught. An explosion of Running, Jumping, Featherfalling, Tumbling characters. And at the center of this expanding ring of failure? Me DPSing. Horoth rampant.

Everyone with a Mic thought this was bad. They said so loudly. Many blamed the tank for my error but the more experienced players knew that this could have only happened via sabotage. I typed "Ididsorry" into the storm of accusations and tried to find a tactically adventageous place to die. Where was the real tank? I ran behind Horoth where our tank had been but I couldn't see him. Just hear him over the microphone as he fought on three fronts to regain Horoth's aggro, defend his reputation, and lecture me on how I could avoid this problem in a theoretical sense. I say, "theoretical" because his solution required traveling back in time and not doing what I had done. Outside of that we were doomed.

Then, our leader spoke up. He promoted me to main tank, and sent everyone else after Suulomades. Now, the person he picked to heal me is widely regarded as the best healer on our server so I can't take all the credit, but I didn't fail and that's something. I even had a moment of self sufficiency! The healer shouted that she was stunned and couldn't heal. She shouted that someone, anyone, should heal me quick. And so I did, I hit myself with two uninterrupted Maximized Empowered Cure Serious Wounds. I don't always make that concentration roll, but this time I did.

I did, therefore we won.

Afterwards the PUG people said they were cool with my apologies, mostly glad for the chance at the optional chest. The optional isn't guarenteed now with all these stoned noobs on the loose! Several rings dropped. One was cherished by an obscure build. Afterwards four of us shortmanned Against the Demon Queen (ADQ). They asked me, "Do you want to be the healer AND the tank?"

I did. ;)