One thing I’ve never really been a fan of, is how players of XYZ video game constantly say you “HAVE” to have this sort of group make up to defeat a specific encounter. If my little guild has discovered anything, it’s that ANY group can be a great group if you know how to work together. I’ve known Ultann and Ibeogur (as well as Hamal who joined us later) for over 5 years now, and in that time EQ2 has been our main game of choice. So when the decision on what to do came out last night, we decided what the heck lets try Harrow’s End, just us three (to start).
The group consisted of:
- Shadowknight (tank)
- Inquisitor
- Defiler (myself)
- Berserker
That’s right, we went into HE with NO traditional DPS role, NO power regen, just two tanks and two healers. Ibeogur and myself are not raid geared, and the inquisitor was being boxed. Could we defeat the zone? We had no idea but we were going to try.
I won’t lie, it was tough. It also took quite a bit of time, but the joy of playing with friends is that it was 100% enjoyable. Ibeogur died, a lot. For some reason berserkers in reckless still draw aggro and gain hate positions even though they’re not supposed to. Plus it makes them as delicate as a baby so on memory bouncing encounters he went down quickly.
But we did it.
We made it all the way to Drinal just the three of us, and then Hamal (an assassin) logged in and joined the group. With him we defeated Drinal and decided to give the instance another run. We had been there so long that the timer had re-set.
So we did it again.
Unfortunately this time Drinal must have heard about us because we wiped to him at least 15 times. Was it annoying? Sure. Did we get frustrated and give up? Nope. We kept at it until we defeated him again. Of course he didn’t drop his mount, but that’s alright. It was one of the best game nights I’ve had in a long time. I doubt that a regular PUG would have stuck with the final named that long, and we challenged ourselves (and had a great time doing it).
So don’t let game mechanics fool you into thinking you can only defeat them one way. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Most of all, have fun doing it.