Buffed

Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind, decided some time ago to graciously lend his strength to all intrepid explorers of the Icecream Citadel, increasing our total health, healing done, damage absorption and damage dealt.

This buff started out at 5% and has been increased every 4 weeks in 5%-increments and is since Wednesday at 20%.

This buff has also been the object of many heated discussions and has some less than flattering names, like the pity buff or the l2play buff, like it is somehow demeaning or insulting to be offered some extra help – you can politely refuse the help and carry on without it if you so choose.

I’m not gonna delve into the pro’s and con’s of this buff anymore because Chas over at Righteous Orbs has already done so most splendidly and eloquently quite a long time ago and I can only say I agree with him completely.

(Incidentally, that pretty bear sitting in the screenshot in the first part of his post is me! Mah bear!)

I am just going to say that last night me and my guild went into ICC once again and made full use of the 20% increase from the buff.

Thanks to our sweetest Guild Master (sadly, soon to be ex Guild Master) we did Flu Shot Shortage especially for me! (probably because I keep pestering the RL’s about achievements) and it went like a charm. I am convinced we could have done it last week as well but never got around to ask for it then.

Then we went for Rotface heroic and in one of the messiest fights ever we got him down on the first try with just a few people still standing at the end, a bear tanking, a few dps’ers and me healing and popping off a Shock whenever I could to help bring him down those slow long last percent.

Could we have done it without the 20% buff? Not in this particular go but doubtless in another.

Was it easy? No, it was messy and frantic and hectic and hard, there were definitely no facerolling involved.

Was it fun? Hell yes, scrambling around to keep people alive and do some abysmal dps and stay alive myself with a pounding heart and sweaty fingers.

And then after having killed the Gooey Newsman (on normal, not pushing our luck) we proceeded onto the Princes and after a few messy tries the pale belf trio bit the dust as well.

Same here, not easy at all but so much fun. Not moving while trying to be in range of as many as possible for heals, shooting at kinetic bomb balloons, popping heals at whomever ran past, bracing for that fire ballon explosion, punding heart and sweaty fingers here too.

Doubtless we will be throwing ourselves at long wipe nights again when we face other heroic encounters, but it is fun to once in a while one-shot encounters, albeit very precariously hanging by the proverbial thread.

The Strength of Wrynn is like the lazy man’s version of running heroics for Emblem gear – I don’t have the time or inclination for excessive emblem farming to get me that 5% incremental increase in output so I freely admit I like the buff.

It gives me freedom to play the game at my leisure and do what I enjoy in Azeroth. And that’s my reason for playing.

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