Hey, Y'all, Watch This! Here, Hold My Beer*.

In general, I play cautiously. I don't like death. Not because of debt. I barely notice the debt. Anymore. It's the frustration of being stopped, and sometimes having to start over again. With Fyre's self-rez, that's not such a big deal. Click, get back up. And, the mobs are handily stunned at the same time. Whee. Yeah, sometimes she just gets dropped right away again. Case in point, the RWZ debt-farm I was on last week, with a team of 6 blasters, a clueless side-kicked tank, and a mostly-afk defender, all fighting Vanguard. Purple Vanguard. Yeah, this is one of those PuGs that you should run from and never look back. But some morbid curiosity kept me in for two missions. Oddly, we did complete the rescue-Lady-Grey mission, without getting Lady Grey killed. Either they've made that mission easier, or it was an honest-to-goodness miracle.

Fyre's pretty tough, though, and I've noticed my cautiousness has slowly diminished. I've caught myself playing "blapper" on occasion. (Clarification: Fyre's still nowhere near being classified as a blapper. Promise! It's only short application of Fire Sword to finish off a mob, or using Combustion and then running back to a safer, more sane and less annoying distance.) It's still been a cautious, steady, yet relatively quick play style.

Until yesterday.

I had a spare hour, so I set myself to the red search flag, cranked up the mp3 player, and logged in to blow some sh-- er, stuff up. Two random-whatever-they-were missions, and the only thing up for scanner missions was Council (bleh), and a random kidnap-- er, rescue mission. Kidnap/rescues bore me. Hostages stop following for no known reason, they get stuck in elevators, they refuse to jump off ledges, whatever. So, the other option was Arachnos. Not my favorite. Half-tech salvage, and worse at high levels, Bane Spiders.

Bane Spider: Assassin Strike!
All but ten of my hit points go away.
Me: ...huh? Ow!
Bane Spider: Placate!
Me: ...son of a--
Two and a half minutes of
pointless clicking and swearing commence while the Bane Spider points and
laughs, then disappears and runs away just as placate wears off, which is
another two and a half minutes of waiting for him to come sauntering back with
the decaff soy latte he wandered off to buy while I hit tab 7,000 times trying
to find him.

So, not my favorite. And the first room there's a Bane Spider minion, and a Bane Spider lieutenant in the same group, and another similar group on the far side of the room, with a Fortunata or two for added fun. They're all yellow and orange, by the way. Fyre runs at Rugged solo. (I probably ought to up that. Except for the odd Illusionist or Bane Spider lieutenant, she never breaks a sweat, or sometimes doesn't even stop forward momentum.) And this is when the evil little light bulb goes off above my head. This room would be perfect to herd, and then Inferno, I think. But, I'm not a tank, I say to me. So?

So, I pop a purple, a yellow, and a red, and run through both groups and back around the corner. They take a shot or two, but no one follows me. Huh. Another little light bulb. I throw on Blazing Aura, and they all follow me back though the room. I duck around the corner, wait for them to pack in, hit Build-Up, Inferno... and the room is clear, and I'm nowhere near dead.

I herded with my blaster.

It was a fluke, right? Halfway through the mission, I did the exact same thing. Same results.

Yeah, I'm probably not the first person to think of this. I'm more than likely not the first person to do this. There are probably some people who can do it with a 8-person-team-size-set-at-Invincible spawn. Whatever. It was fun, it was out of character, and I'm probably gonna do it again.



* Much more likely to be wine, cognac, or a margarita. At the time, Sobe Life Water.