Operation Heathrow

Chapter 1: Monseigneur Tanking

"Remember, everyone, next week is the race to world first. I took the week off from work for this, so we need to make it count, especially since the main guilds to watch out for are subsidized and we aren't!" Karine, the raid leader of the prime team of the guild Death Fiscalists, yells in the guild's Discord voice server for the game MAA (Massacre à l'Alcool)

"Speaking of which, even in fatal mode (the highest), there seems to be fights where you only need one tank, at least for the specs we run. Do you have a DPS character or spec you can use?" Ram, the guild's other tank, asks her.

"I could ask the same of you. I play bishop tank and DPS on an alcohol wizard into this tier"

"As for me, I plan on tanking on a bard, and, if, for a given fight needing only one tank, melee is better than ranged, I guess I can play templar; it's my best melee DPS spec"

"We seem to be running two ranged, high-evasion tanks; are you sure it's a good idea?" Francis, one of the guild's healers, asks the two tanks. "As much as I would like to say not to obsess over healer numbers, sometimes picking the wrong tank spec can hurt"

In MAA, every class can play all 3 roles. Its players tend to classify tank specs based on range and ability to take hits; for instance, bards and bishops are ranged high-evasion tanks because of their agility and ability to blind enemies respectively. However, they both pay the price for it under the form of being unable to wear better armor than their DPS specs.

"How do bards and bishops differ in their play style?" a follower on Karine's stream asks her, apparently new to MAA tanking.

"Bards provide buffs to your team by music, and have a ginormous HP pool, while bishops debuff enemies, either by sleeping or blinding them, causing them to miss fairly often. But when you get hit as a bishop, you get hit like a truck, the same as if you were to take the hit on another priest spec" Karine explains on stream.

And then comes talk about comparisons of tanking gameplay between games on her stream.

"How does this game's tanking gameplay compare to other games?" a new viewer asks Karine in her chat as she prepares to run a dungeon on her bishop, knowing that often people didn't want to tank.

"This game is a game where you actually have viable ranged tanks that rely on something other than just taking the hit. However, bishop is perhaps the most difficult ranged tank in the game, because you need to time buffs, debuffs and crowd control" Karine explains on air.

A bad bishop player won't pop the bright line, which blinds enemies crossing it, or target painting, which is a buff increasing critical hits for a few seconds, Karine thinks, while she invites players in-game from her chat to run a dungeon released this patch, complete with the bonus boss since it's easy to miss due to the tendency of players to bum-rush dungeons.

"Tonight, this run through fatal mode Upper Perseria is brought to you by Monseigneur Tanking!" Karine, known to the MAA streaming community under the name Monseigneur Tanking, announces to her followers before she starts running the dungeon with viewers watching her.

As the party of one tank, three DPS and one healer, Saronium, wades through this labyrinthine upper city, the most impatient of the DPS can be tempted to pull a trash pack when Karine seems to be a little slow. When the resulting blob of trash mobs gets too big, she pops the high mass, which is a long-cooldown ability allowing a bishop to temporarily put masses of mobs to sleep within a certain area.

"Monseigneur, it would be easier to fight the bonus boss if you kill that huge blob of mobs!" a viewer comments on chat.

But Karine isn't paying attention to the chat; she traces a bright line behind the party so that, when the mobs awaken, they can be blinded and then the DPS can mow them down the road.