Tank Girl, the sequel

It’s been a really tough week or so – with apologies to Firefall, too many hopes fading that can’t be found, dreams leaving me waiting, and oh, those friends who’ve let me down.

Plus I’ve never had much confidence in Even’s tanking ability. A big part of this stems from her being chewed out by a former guildie; he was looking for a Horoth tank for ToD, I asked to bring Even, he proceeded to rip her apart – in guild chat, on guild weekend, no less – before declining her. (Both of us have since gone to other guilds.)

Saturday night I was doing some favor cleanup with Acanthia and was attempting, mostly in vain, to solve the puzzle in the Siegebreaker end fight (stupid hireling Albus, despite being in “DON’T MOVE, YOU MORON!” mode, kept walking on the runes), when Hitme sent me a tell saying that his party was looking for a tank for hard ToD, and asking if I’d bring Even.

Um. Gulp. I’m down on myself to begin with. The lack of puzzle success is not helping. And the party had quite a few people I recognized as some of the better players on Thelanis. But Hitme was persistent, and frankly I was tired of rezzing Albus.

So off we head to the Tower Cave. Judge down, jailer down, Nytherios down. Nothing left but the big red guy and one very nervous paladin. Raste/hage, boots on, and we were off.

To my surprise, Even not only got Horoth’s aggro right away, she held it. And to my even bigger surprise, she wasn’t taking a ton of damage – which was good, because either the healer assigned to her forgot to put his Boots of Anchoring on, or they glitched, because he got banished shortly after Sully came down. I didn’t even realize it until our light monk started yelling on voice, “We need a healer on Even!” Which surprised me until I found out the healer got banished, ’cause Even was still at pretty much full health (and she wasn’t even blocking).

Our remaining healer did a spectacular job keeping both me and the Sully party healed, although I’m sure we were all glad when Sully went down and everybody was bunched together on Horoth. I think Even might’ve lost aggro for about two seconds once when she got stunned, but she grabbed it right back and never lost it again.

This will probably sound stupid, but like I said, rough week and I’m a stupid emo girl – when Horoth went down and we got the completion, I was so proud I teared up. And then I got a big doofy grin on my face that didn’t want to go away. I didn’t even care that I got skunked on the loot, it was that nice to feel like I wasn’t totally useless/worthless for a few minutes.

Say what you want about Hitme (and most people do, LOL) – as much as he annoys the hell out of me sometimes, I can count on him not to cut me down. He might spend too much time showing off his gear, but I’m usually laughing by the time we’re done questing even though I often have the urge to take his name literally and – well, hit him. When it comes to personal stuff, he’s never made me feel like I’m not pretty/thin/rich/young enough to bother with – quite the opposite. I’ve told him many times that would change in a hurry if he ever met me in person, but since that’s not likely to ever happen, I think I’m just going to enjoy those few hours and try to forget the rest.