Dylan McIver regretted PUGing the latest wing of Vein of Talos in Colossus 4: Online.

Things had seemed innocent enough, at first. Folks were jumping off the arena when he spawned in, and they were either respawning harmlessly at the entrance behind him, or demanding healers resurrect them since the new tank had arrived. If they accepted the raise, they'd stand up with the standard debuff; however, that didn't seem to matter to them.

What was 10% reduced HP and damage to a squishy melee damage dealer?

But that was business as usual, and something he had come to expect. Pick up groups were filled with little more than nose pickers out for a Sunday stroll. Dylan had been tanking for years in this mess of an MMO, and he was used to these types of shenanigans. He'd herd the cats, get in his attempts, and then log out frustrated and unsatisfied.

That was the life of a PUG tank.

There were other little things that were standard operating procedure, too. The group was bitching in chat about the previous tank. Apparently, the Wildskeeper had left in some dramatic huff, from what Dylan could tell. Perhaps he told off a few on his way out.

Then there was the off tank. At quick glance (without even checking his character profile), Dylan could see the Templar was in basically entry-level gear. He had just shy of 2,500 HP (compared to Dylan's own 4,800) and Dylan honestly wasn't even sure how he had gotten past the gear check. Perhaps he had a DPS off spec, and had higher level gear just sitting in his inventory. It was a pretty common tactic, but not one people usually employed for tank spots. There were only two per raid, and so queue times were on the longer side.

The under-geared Templar still had his aggro aura on, even though Dylan was clearly the more impressive tank. It was a recipe for disaster. Or at least a wipe.

Dylan had done his due diligence. When he joined, he messaged the guy, asking him to turn off the aura. He also explained how the tank swap mechanics worked, and what they'd need to do in the last phase, since it was a unique mechanic.

There had been no response. Either the guy didn't understand how chat boxes worked, or he was ignoring Dylan. The aura stayed on, and Dylan wasn't even sure he knew how the fight would go. As it stood, this scrub was going to die to the first tank mechanic, and it would cause a massive wipe. Dylan expected the Templar would rage quit immediately after, blaming the healers for not keeping him up, and Dylan for not keeping the boss off him.

A bead of frustration wormed its way across Dylan's brow and he thought of just Alt F4-ing.

But, all said, this didn't seem like the worst PUG he'd ever been in. The healers were well geared, and so after they lost the idiot Templar, and everyone had a handful of wipes under their belt together, they might actually get a clear on this boss. Then he'd only have two more to do for the week before he got his upgrade piece.

So, he felt hopeful. Maybe like he was even looking forward to this.

Until about the four second mark on the countdown.

Dylan, as the Trella Warrior named Kaldalis, and the Templar “off tank” were moving in tandem towards the boss as the counter ticked down overhead. They were angling to both get there first, so that they could get out that initial bit of threat generation. Kaldalis' slim hooves were in the lead, but it was a close thing.

But just before his Dash Attack icon lit up, Dylan watched as a single Arcane Arrow flew over his character's head and found its mark.

Which just so happened to be the HP bar of the boss.

A Ranger pull. Of course.

He should have just let it be a wipe. The boss was already out of position, and it had some very important placement mechanics later in the fight. If the boss stayed in the center of the room, it would just throw off the entire run because no one would know how to react to the mechanics. But Dylan wasn't going to let the Ranger have the satisfaction of causing a wipe.

Not if he could help it.

Dylan could see one chance at recovery, but it would take everything he had. With a frustrated growl he hammered on his keybind for Dash Attack, and Kaldalis deftly closed the gap between the charging boss and the trigger-happy idiot Ranger.

"Oh no you don't," Dylan said aloud to the small bedroom slash living room slash kitchen of his studio apartment. "We're going back."

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Inch by inch, he wrangled the boss back into place.

The Templar off tank fought him every step of the way. With a gusto usually reserved for, you know, actual tanking, the Templar was casting every spell and using every ability imaginable as he attempted to wrangle the boss out of Dylan's grasp.

Even though the boss would then be literally facing the rest of their party.

"What do you think is going to happen if you win?" Dylan snarled as if the Templar were in voice chat and could hear him. "You'll just be the cause of the wipe instead of the Ranger!"

Unsurprisingly, the Templar didn't stop trying to get aggro.

But Dylan was too good for that.

The first tank mechanic went out, and a huge chunk vanished off Kaldalis' HP bar. He gained a stack of vulnerability, too, which meant he was going to end up taking more damage the next time the ability went out. But he just burned Life Steal and allowed his light attacks to heal himself as he painfully re-positioned the boss. All the while, he danced in and out of the AOE markers that came his way, deftly dodging cones and circular markers that would spell his eventual doom.

Reno: Hey Dyl, you around?

The message appeared in his chat box, distracting him for just a second. There was no time to respond to Nakala, also known as Reno, even though she would be hurt that he was PUGing without her.

He'd just have to deal with it later. There were slightly more important things going on.

Dylan growled once more as he saw the boss winding up to hit him with a second round of the mechanic. His vulnerability stack was still around, which meant this was going to hurt. A lot. Normally he would have let the off tank take over as soon as that first hit went out, but the daft Templar still had his back to the rest of the raid, and also, he wouldn't survive the attack anyway. Better to just show off.

Right before the attack went out, Dylan slammed on his macro for Shield Wall. A bright animation surrounded his character and the incoming damage was mitigated slightly. It still hurt, but nowhere near where it should be.

For half a second, Dylan looked down at his chat log. Not only did he have more messages from Nakala, but now there was chatter from the PUG raid group about how Dylan was hogging the boss and was going to get them all killed.

Within a hair's breadth, the chatter turned mean.

They were calling him names. Racist and sexist epitaphs. Insinuating things about him and his gender and/or genitalia.

One of the healers threatened to stop healing him.

Dylan grimaced.

Somehow, that was the last straw. An odd exhaustion crept in to his shoulders. And he realized, very quickly, that he was tired. Tired of trying to micromanage the fights. Tired of PUGing for people who were either twelve or had the emotional capacity of a toaster oven. Here he was, trying to do a job none of them were qualified to do, and he was being told that he was doing it wrong. And there was insistence that, by doing it wrong, there was something wrong with him.

In that moment, Dylan took his hands off his keyboard.

At first, he thought maybe he'd just sit back and watch the carnage. Without his constant strafing around the boss' attacks, Kaldalis was done. And then the off tank, and the rest of the raid, would get their wish. The Templar would get the boss' attention, it would one-hit KO him, and then it would systematically make it around the arena, decimating each person as it went.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, the first positional attack went out since the boss had hit 75% HP.

All of the characters on the screen were pulled in against the boss’ feet, and a huge pulsing AOE marker radiated from him in a half moon that filled the majority of the fighting space. Dylan wanted to just let it go out with Kaldalis still in it. He wanted to give up, to just let the fight end so that he could log out faster.

But he was too good at his job. Too proud of his abilities as a tank.

His fingers defaulted back to their starting position and Kaldalis was moving before anyone else. He led the charge out of the AOE marker, and before the swooping attack finished going across the arena, Kaldalis was already charging back in with a Dashing Strike.

He zoned out. Ignored the chat and chatter. The hate and the vitriol.

Instead, he focused on outmaneuvering the mechanics as if he were the only one there.

A boss fight, after all, was a delicate balance of numbers in, and numbers out. As a kick-ass accountant, Dylan had a pretty good idea of the cost of risk. He could assess a situation from early on and just know, within a hundredth of a percentile, if he was going to be able to pull ahead.

And this fight? It was in the bag. He had more cooldowns than the boss had attacks. Dylan was skilled at managing his HP recovery tools, and so even if the healers left him to his own devices, he wouldn't be shit out of luck. He was also pretty good at resource management, and his rage bar seemed endless.

That and the normal-difficulty bosses in Vein of Talos were designed for these mouth breathers.

Dylan almost didn't notice when the boss staggered and died.

Solo tanking an encounter, even one at this difficulty level, should have felt like a victory. A rush of pride and self-satisfaction.

Instead, Dylan felt hollow.

There was no teamwork here. No overcoming the odds. He had outmatched foe and ally alike, and had beat the challenge... but it was almost too easy.

As Kaldalis made his way across the arena towards the sad little treasure box that would hold gear too low item level for him to use, Dylan realized he missed his raid team. They'd disbanded due to real life getting in the way too often, but until last patch they'd been unstoppable. And now he was just an over-geared and over-prepared PUG tank. It was embarrassing, and a little demoralizing.

Upon exiting the raid, Kaldalis spawned back in town. Dylan checked his chat box and saw that Nakala had messaged him a bunch more, each one a little snippier. At first they had been playful, with her pouting about being ignore and then also a little teasing about him PUGing without her. But then...

Reno: Look, all joking aside, something big is happening. I need your help. Let's talk tomorrow at work, okay? Smell ya later.

Dylan stared at the screen for a long time. What the hell had he missed?