When MMO love is complicated. The ambiguous relationship of a seasoned raider with LOTRO

I have an ambiguous relationship with Lord of the Rings Online: I seem to be part of an eternal cycle of embracing and rejecting the game. On the one hand, virtual Middle Earth calls to me, always. I love immersing myself in its gorgeous landscapes and if there's something new, I want to check it out. On the other hand, it's hard for me (as a seasoned MMO progression raider) to ignore fundamental flaws in its combat system. For reasons already stated elsewhere, the gameplay simply isn't what it used to be.

Who is Tyth? The War for Iokath and the Old Gods: SWTOR raid boss speculation

After having focused on storytelling since Knights of the Fallen Empire, the call of SWTOR players for multiplayer content (the "MMO part of SWTOR") in Star Wars: the Old Republic has become stronger and stronger. While the Knights expansions have attracted new players that were looking for a KOTOR experience, many old time players - endgame oriented ones in particular - have left the game in search for new multiplayer challenges. It is this MMO focused playerbase that the SWTOR dev team addresses with their latest announcement: SWTOR will release a new raid this year.

As an endgame fuelled gamer, I am thrilled by this news. It means that the year has barely started and my number one wish of SWTOR changes I'd love to see this year has already come true! Even better news is that we won't have to wait until the end of the year. You can listen to everything the developers had to say about the upcoming content at their January 26th devstream.

Of course I don't want any stone left unturned, so in this post I will get you up to date with the news, and then I will share some of the suspicions I have about the bosses we may come to fight in this upcoming raid.

Worldbreaker monolith photoshoot

Some days are so stressful that it's hard to keep to my posting schedule. Today was one of those days. I was contacted by my university that something went wrong somewhere in the bureaucratic mill for my pending departure to study in Sweden (I still don't know for sure if that's going to happen) and then had to fix stuff for my upcoming holiday in the United Kingdom. So I hope you will forgive me for this one being short.

I hung something on the wall and now you'll have to read this whole post about it

What is sorcerer Fárah doing on Oricon? Shouldn't she be busy defeating Revan or something? Well, Fárah is here to bring you news of her latest personal victory. Last weekend, she finally managed to defeat dread master Brontes on nightmare mode.

Aerial photography in the Old Republic

I have a friend that uses drones to map dunes, which results in pretty pictures to dissect for science. I think her favourite pet in-game is a drone too. Unfortunately, you can't really make pictures with a drone in Star Wars. But did you know you can create the same views by zooming out really far?

The Revanite Commanders and the "only-the-end-counts" type of boss fight

The Revanite Commanders hardmode are no more. We took them down on the 15th of February (I know, I know, I've been slacking with posting progression raiding). I don't have pretty graphs this time, but I do have a video and some thoughts about this type of boss fight.

In which the Underlurker lurks no more and hardmode raid statistics are analyzed

I have been slacking with writing about our raid progression. Somehow I ended up writing about other things instead (the Blood Hunt FP post took a lot of my time in particular) and now I'm already two boss kills behind on schedule. I'll make up for it, though, by posting pretty videos of our takedowns.

The mystery unveiled: how I ended up playing a shadow tank

If you visit this blog regularly, you might have noticed a mysterious mirialan lady wielding a double-bladed lightsaber appearing in the top banners (I have no idea if anyone actually looks at those, but let's presume you do). Seemingly, there are barely any Ravanels around anymore. And that after 2014 was the 'year of Ravanel'. What's going on?

On 'slow raiding' and disassembling two walkers

Some raid groups require their members to read up on tactics before turning up. This is an alien concept to me. My raid group on Imp side has the opposite attitude: we don't want to look up tactics, but rather want to figure them out by ourselves.

Slot machines: it's hard to wield the nerf bat

Since the nerf of the popular slot machines, blogs all around are buzzing with the news. As you might remember, I advocated against the large amount of purple crating items they dropped and explained in what detrimental ways they disrupted the in-game economy.

When the developers realized what was going on in the community, they took their nerf hammer and hit the slot machine. Only they underestimated their own strength and nerfed it into the ground. 

Am I surprised? Not really. Disappointed? Maybe a little.

Now where's that wookiee rug?!

We had been stuck on Torque HM (in the Ravagers raid) for several weeks. Not stuck as in the annoying "we don't know how to continue from here" fashion, but in the (maybe just as annoying) "we almost killed it, gah, just one more try" manner.

SWTOR: I have saved the galaxy

To jump or not to jump - can the voices in my head please shut up?

It's been over a month or so since the new raids on Oricon have been launched, and yet I haven't spoken a word about it. What is happening? Have I grown fat and have I retired from raids? I can comfort you and tell you that this is not the case. In fact, I have been meaning to write something about our raid progression, but I always end up feeling that my writing about raids is so utterly boring. Somehow it seems more fun to write about trivial things such as a funny billboard or in-game fashion, and thus you all believe I'm frisking about, looking at flowers while sometimes participating in a raid, while it is actually more the other way around.

As my Republic guild has ceased to do progression raids for now, my actual 'main' in terms of who I play the most and accumulates the best gear has switched from sage Ravanel to my sorcerer Fárah. It is a nice feeling to play with great players and discover the new raids with them. The Dread Fortress was easily overcome (I'm not counting getting terribly lost in the crystal-maze here!) on hardmode, with the exception of the last boss, the one with those arms and fingers randomly emerging from the ground.

It took us a couple of tries to conclude that our unintentional handicap of having four melee DPS was really holding us back in this case. Somehow our best DPSers tend to play marauders (3x) and operative (1x). Not a conscious choice, but something that just came to be as a result of personal preference of the players. At the end there is a phase in which everyone needs to be physically close to a finger (each has one) and everyone takes a lot of damage. Once we let our operative spec heals and our healing merc DPS we could focus these fingers a little bit better, and apparently having one ranged DPS saved us just enough damage taken to clear the fight in one go. Our merc had never played DPS in raids before and both switched players did not have gear for their role, and yet it made all the difference. Funny how these things work sometimes.

Then there was the Dread Palace. We were amazed at how easy the first boss was: we did it on our first try without knowing of any tactics. The second boss was trickier, but worked out fine when we had figured the right way of dealing with the tiles. The third boss with present and past took some time to work out, but was very much fun. I really like the fight's design. After that there's the arena-in-space boss (picture above) which wasn't that complicated, but struck us with movement, range and boss mechanics bugs that I, simple healer, too obsessed with looking at health bars, didn't all get but were holding as back. So we need a couple of tries here each week, depending on our luck factor with the bugs - sometimes it's done in one go, sometimes not.

Uhm yeah. Sorry about the "arena-in-space boss" terminology, but there are so many dread masters and they keep on returning from death during the various raids that I can't hold them apart anymore. I'll just have to hope you understand.

The last fight of the Dread Palace took us weeks to figure out, though. I experienced the fight as very healing intensive and the fact that I got much better gear throughout the weeks didn't make a noticeable difference. I came in that state caused by repetition, I don't know if you know the feeling: I knew exactly when to use which heal on who at the first part of the fight. It's like your hands take over the keyboard, working together with your brain in a sync at a pace that your own thoughts cannot follow anymore. It is this rarely occurring flow that I really like about end game raiding.

This Sunday the time was there: we finally took down the last boss of the Dread Palace on hardmode and it was great. Bye bye, dread masters!

Dread master Tyrans having a bad day: defeated by Rav and her team

There is no nightmare mode of the Oricron raids (yet), so we have beaten the new content. What now? Luckily Bioware has provided us with many ways of saving the galaxy over and over again. After our final victory the night was still young, so we cleared the first boss of Scum & Villany on nightmare mode. We haven't looked further inside there yet, so working on that will be our next goal.

ABC4: Picture of the day

I found an old box full of pictures and thought I could share one.

This was the first time I fought in the Rift, where the great Balrog Thaurlach was enchained. I was late to the party, because it was already in the days of Moria, or was it even Mirkwood? Butterfly-winged staves were still in fashion. Either way, I was excited to see the raid that everyone had been going on for so long. Of course it wasn't really a challenge anymore (we were 10 levels too high), but I very much enjoyed it. I liked how we were almost crushed by the Eldgang, who only found out at the end that we were not 'evil'. My reputation with them is still among the lowest of many peoples, simply because I wasn't in there at the start, when everyone was sucking up to them. I spent 'too much time playing with the Halflings', they say. In reality, I was taking my time to explore the whole of Eriador, where I had not been before. I met many friends during my travels, of which more perhaps another time.

I also remember how I thought my burgundy-with-yellow dress matched perfect with the Balrog - some things never change.

In June, 'the other Ravanel' takes over Ravalation to ponder about her life as an avatar in the light of the Avatar Blogger Challenge (ABC).

SWTOR: Zorn & Toth (Nightmare mode)

 TfB - I keep expecting the Cardassians to pop out behind me

After we killed the last boss of Terror from Beyond (TfB) Hard mode, my fellow guild mates had an enthusiastic idea. When we went into Explosive Conflict (EC) Nightmare mode a few minutes later, I really thought it would be like this (hilarious video by Shintar)... but I was wrong! Our third try, we actually got Zorn and Toth down but wiped afterwards, and at that point we got so close that we knew we could do it. I think we made it the fifth time, me of course dying just at the end, so they had to do the final boss with just one healer. It has to stay Nightmare mode, eh? To reward me for messing up so it stayed a challenge, I even got the Dreadguard earpiece that dropped.

The following days, my guild did the second and third boss on Nightmare mode, while I was ill and jealously watched over Tiger's shoulder. Luckily we did manage to do the third boss some months ago already with me healing. Just wanted to say I'm proud of my guild mates, yay!

Me providing the 'nightmare mode part' while my guild mates are being heroes

LOTRO: In defence of Erebor, a first peek inside

This Thursday, it was time to check out the new raid cluster, called In Defence of Erebor. The underlying story is that we're fast forwarded to the time that the ring is about to be destroyed and the dwarves and the men of Dale are being attacked by the Easterlings. It seems like Turbine managed to get something around The Hobbit theme in after all! I think it's a bit confusing, as the ring is still alive and kicking in the storyline as far as we're following it in-game, but alright, I'll try to follow.

Following new LotRO fashion, the raid consists of three parts, each of which separately accessible through the instance finder. No long runs through instances anymore. I find this fashion a bit unromantic and immersion-breaking, but then again I'm old and it does has its practical advantages. The different instances are called:

• Flight to the Lonely Mountain
• The Battle for Erebor
• The Fires of Smaug

For starters, we went in on tier 1 to get an idea about what everything's like.

Flight to the Lonely Mountain

This fight is a sort of Barad Guldur gauntlet thing, but different. You get waves of enemies that you have to defeat, until the timer (visualized through a bar that slowly fills with yellow) is up. This was a total joke on tier 1, meaning it will be easy to pug it. We spent minutes just hanging around and waiting for the following wave to come (as depicted above), which was sort of okay, since the environment looks nice. Finally a raid in the open air again, hurray! Away with you, dark dungeons!

I expect this wing to be tough on tier 2, though. I bet those green puddles will heal the mobs for quite a bit more so we actually have to move them out, just like those Heartseeker-addicted archers will probably be a major pain. It will be fun to find out!

The Battle for Erebor

In this part, there's two bosses to fight at the same time. On tier 1, you choose two banners which define the terms - we choose Catapults and Inferno. This meant that we had to change targets when the bosses changed their shields around, there were some circles on the floor we should not stand in (no shit, Sherlock), and at the end there was some fire all over the floor, but that was it. Of course, things will become a lot more complicated on tier 2, where you have to choose four banners, or on tier 2 challenge mode, where you have to pick all six (!) banners.

If you start the fight, make sure everyone is at the bottom of the stairs. We learned this the hard way: 3 of our raid got locked out while still being on the stairs. However, we still steamrolled the place with just 9, so this part is possibly even easier than the previous.

The Fires of Smaug

The Easterlings are trying to smoke the dwarves out of their mountain. To us to close the steam emitting valves and kill the evil fire spirit fueling them. This is possibly the most challenging of the three raid parts on tier 1 to pug, because it requires some kind of coordination and planning. There are two bars that you have to consider: a yellow one, representing a time limit, and a red one, that you can prevent from tiering up by closing valves. There are also some adds. The goal on tier 1 is to kill the boss before any of the bars has filled.

We actually failed the first time, because we didn't know yet how to divide our players over the different tasks correctly, but we did make it the second time.

First thoughts

The new raid on tier 1 is easy, easier than Tower of Orthanc on tier 1. This kind of difficulty should allow people to pug it, and might be a good difficulty level for casual kinships. I personally do hope tier 2 is much, much harder! I'm positive so far: I like the general setup of the instances and there's definitely room for interesting extra mechanics on tier 2 which might result in challenging fights. I'm looking forward to trying that out!

LOTRO: Lore-master of many colours

I may have moaned a bit about my kinship's raid activity of the past weeks (although I always try to see things positively), but things have changed for the better. There is currently no official end-game content in Lord of the Rings Online, and everyone is still questing and leveling their characters to level 85. However, I believe it is a good thing to keep doing fairly challenging raid content to keep in shape, especially if there are achievements that you have not completed yet. The only thing that comes close are the T2 Challenges of the Tower of Orthanc raid (intended for level 75, the current cap is 85).

Last Thursday, we had eight signups or our Fire & Frost T2 Challenge attempt, which we had been trying for weeks. We had the tactics settled, the only thing that was stopping us had been stupid misses of the tanks force taunts. I don't want to think about how many times we've reset this particular boss fight the last month. Either way, this particular night we persuaded some friends to come and help us out, and... we did it!

Of course it was a lot easier, because we were over leveled. Even though player DPS hasn't raised that much at all in 10 levels, it was a huge difference, because we didn't miss any skills on the bosses anymore. (That miss chance mechanic really creates a ridiculous randomness, I wish they would remove it from the game.) Also, the force taunts of our tanks didn't miss anymore, which brought an end to our burglars ending up tanking the boss and having to reset the fight.

The defeat of Fire & Frost Challenge brought a burst of enthusiasm to the kinship, and all of a sudden we had overflowing raid groups again. And if you're a bit informed and you know what's on the pictures, you already know what comes next. The next raid was on Sunday, and we managed Shadow T2 Challenge after just a few tries. On Tuesday we beat Saruman T2 Challenge. And then we had completed all challenge modes.

Although I'm still a bit disappointed by not having done all challenges on level, the amazing Steed of Many Colours made up for a lot. I did have to do the Foundry T1 for it after all the raid heroism, but it was worth it: this elder brother of the Prized Isengard War-steed wears a drapery that shifts colour! From blue to green, to yellow, to rose, all soft colours. Do put your graphics above medium, though, otherwise it will just show up white.

 Lore-master of many colours 

• Turquoise summer circlet
• Long-sleeved elven dress
• Cloak of the dragonfly

• Steed of Many Colours

This is what Ravanel will look like the coming weeks!

You receive the steed by completing all Tower of Orthanc deeds, including the 3- and 6-mans (on both tiers) and the ToO T2 Challenges.

SWTOR: On customer service and Opses

Since my last report on not being able to subscribe to SWTOR, we managed to get it working after all and I have been raiding with my guild again a bit, hurray!

Customer service

After not getting any answers on e-mails for about two weeks, the trick seemed to be to call the customer service directly. I was actually surprised how easy this was. We could call for free using Google (also possible through Skype) and the issue was resolved within half an hour. We only had to wait for a few minutes, got directed to another person once and both our accounts were fixed within a matter of minutes. Next time something happens, we won't bother with the e-mail and call right away.

Healing in Explosive Conflict

In between the studying and exploring Rohan in LotRO, I've had the chance to raid several times with my guild in SWTOR the past weeks. The only thing we did in that game, was actually running Opses (err, 1 Ops, 2 Opses?). We once did the first three bosses of the new raid, Terror from Beyond (picture above), and that was really cool, but most times we've been doing EC Hardmode. The most fun were the second bosses (the giant turrets), when I was explained how to run around on the floor, removing bad effects on myself now and then, healing left and right while avoiding scary places on the floor. The other healer had been trying the same for the past week, and was totally fed up with trying. We wiped a few times, but I was so happy (and a little bit proud) that we pulled it off afterwards! I've now healed both left and right turret (which is actually different for a healer) - the left one was definitely the most challenging, but both sides are fun.

There are quite some people who play healers as their main in MMOs. Some even write whole blogs about it. I was just thinking about it, and although my heart lies in support roles, healing is not my main delight in life. In LotRO, I'll play lore-master and captain as mains this expansion. I really much like healing on rune-keeper, but minstrels are much more in demand in raids. Poor Ravalinde will have to live with being leveled as third. In SWTOR, there is no other support role apart from healing (you can either pick "tank", "DPS or  "healer" as role), so my choice was quickly made. I only have one level capped character, and that is my Jedi Sage Ravanel. I think healing there makes up a bit for not being able to heal in groups in LotRO for a while.

I learned something new in today's raid. Sometimes, if you don't retreat after a wipe and people come back to revive you, you might not show up on their monitor: you're simply invisible. This is a very common bug. The solution is to right-click the person who is trying to revive you and select "Follow". Unfortunately, you have to wait longer before accepting an in-combat rez if you've been revived before the fight. If it's a hard fight in which it's likely that people will die, it's better to all retreat and travel that annoyingly long path to the last boss.

So far the healer-talk for today.

The times I was in EC HM, we completed everything apart from the last boss. Tonight we came very close. Tomorrow there's another ops planned, so hopefully I can be in the group again. It would be so cool if we'd make it! And after that hopefully Terror from Beyond. Good times.

LOTRO: Almost there

We're almost there! Tomorrow at 12 pm (GMT +1) the servers will go down and the Riders of Rohan expansion will fire off. Luckily I have pre-ordered now, so I should be able to get going as soon as the servers are set free. I've always been impressed by LotRO's environment and vistas, so I'm really looking forward to exploring Rohan. I'm so curious to see what it will look like!

Back in August, when we all thought RoR would be released in September, I made a checklist of things to do before the expansion: On the menu. Let's see how I did:

1) Get virtues up to 14 on Ravalinde (rune-keeper) and Ravenwyn (captain)

Ravalinde

Ravenwyn

Failed, but it was a good effort, especially if you knew the state of my captain's virtues before (zeal on 9 and that sort of painful stuff).
 

2) Skirmisher deed finished on lore-master Ravanel

I honestly tried and even did my least favourite skirmish, Stand on Amon Sûl, like six times, but kept getting the wrong encounters.

Failed.

3) Gather iXP runes and guild symbols

In addition to these runes, I got around 40 symbols of various sizes on each of my three level capped characters. I think this counts as completed!

4) Finish the last golden Farmer tier on lore-master Ravanel

Completed!

5) Take down Saruman

See my post Turn of the tide: Completed!

Total: 3/5, not too bad for a lazy elf like me!

The next goal

This was to get all ToO Challenges done, but we haven't managed that yet. My kin's achievement in RoI:

Lightning T2 + CM - Acid T2 + CM - Fire & Frost T2 - Shadow T2 - Saruman T2

I was at all the takedowns save the Shadow one. It's a pity we didn't get to do all the Challenge modes, but still I'm extremely proud of my kinship to have achieved so much in such a difficult raid. It was so much fun to work out all the fights and to grow. It's a good memory to look back at.

Tonight we'll go back in there, to the, as the event description reads, "only raid to ever defeat Asylum" for the last time and show our teeth. I can't wait! 

LOTRO/ME/SWTOR: October update

It's been a while, so I thought I'd give a small update to tell what I'm up to these days (apart from studying and not having enough time to write as many blog posts as I want!).

LotRO

We've had a period of less signups, but this has changed for the better and lately we've been doing great on Fire and Frost Challenge mode. Fire and Frost T2 is quite easy, but Challenge mode requires some fine tuning. At least we got well-trained at resetting the fight! We have been close a few times and hopefully we'll get it done before the update with a bit of luck. That would be totally epic. It's a shame we won't get all the Challenge modes done in time, but then again, some of them are extremely hard (and indeed, none on our server has completed them all).

After the introduction of Riders of Rohan we can of course still run ToO, but it won't have the same value to me: gaining even just a few levels already has such an effect on the overall difficulty.

On another note, I had great fun when I found that someone had linked to my Raiding rabbits post on Reddit and talked about "the Bear Flattener" as if it was a factual name. Of course I just made it up because I didn't want to call them Rabbit 1, 2 and 3 or something (besides, I wouldn't know which rabbit to give which number anyway)! It did give me loads of pageviews.

Mass Effect

It's been ages already since I finished Mass Effect 3 with the original ending, and I still need to write about what I thought about it. I just feel that so many people have been saying something about it already, it's sort of hard to add something at all. However, I wrote a Mass Effect article for iRez: Avatar & Identity - Mass Effect (1). It's about how the 'Mass Effect experience' works and in what way one gets immersed in that world. I'm really happy how it turned out. In fact, I got so enthusiastic about Mass Effect again that I decided to extend it to two articles, and I feel I should really get the DLC and play the new ending soon. I might also finally write my Mass Effect 3 Ending story here on Ravalation.

SWTOR

Just at the day the new raid was released, our subscriptions ended and we had to renew them. The annoying thing is that you need a credit card for it, and those aren't that normal where I live. You need to pay money to get one, and you don't need it for anything. The only use for one would be if I'd need a hotel in another country (which I never do) or for Star Wars, which is not good enough of a reason for me. So far we've been using Tiger's foreign one which was free, but it now was empty and would take a few days for new money on it to arrive. On the SWTOR website we found it was now possible to pay with Paypal as well and use your normal bank account. However, we didn't get it to work and the customer service isn't replying to our mails. 

So now we don't have a subscription running and I'm not sure how much use it is with Riders of Rohan coming up so soon. I barely have time to game at all with the study load I got. I got a SWTOR post ready (just need to get one more screenshot in game) and I do plan on continuing to play the game, but with all the stuff going on this might be something of a short break.

LOTRO: Bear tanking

Busy studies

As you may have noticed, my blog has been a bit more quiet lately than it used to be. This is not due to a lack of enthusiasm, but rather due to an overflow of study load. I've just started a new master in September, and I love it, but it does mean less frequent posts. Don't worry, I promise I won't disappear: a one post a week minimum should be doable.

Because I've been so busy studying, I haven't been able to play much either. At the same time, the "final days before the expansion" are very present in the general atmosphere in LotRO: not everyone is as enthusiastic about raiding ToO anymore, and we sometimes struggle for the right numbers or classes. In a weird way, this is actually positive for me: I wouldn't be able to keep up with raiding four days a week with the amount of homework I got. 

Bear tanking

Some failed raids resulted with very fun stuff, for instance the realization of an old dream of me: bear tanking the Twins fight in Barad Guldur ("BG"). As expected, six-manning BG wasn't that challenging, but it was a blast. We went right through the gauntlet, and after that I plus a captain had to "off-tank" Durchest. Lore-master tanks for the win! After that it was off to the Twins, probably the hardest of the three boss fights for over-leveled characters. Stress when it turned out my bear food stock was depleted! So I went out and quickly made some, and then the fun began. It was actually a bit challenging, and I had to be main DPS on Cargaraf (traited reds), while the captain was tanking it.

Advantages of bear tanking:

• No tank player needed, so it opens up a spot in your raid, which can be filled with an extra DPS class (not relevant here in BG, as we were under-manning, but I guess we were actually effectively 7-manning instead of 6-manning it, if you include the bear)
• The bear might not take all negative effects (in this case the Immolate effect from Morgaraf, so it didn't have to run away every so many seconds), which sometimes makes up for having inferior sturdyness compared to a real tank

How to bear tank:

• Feed the bear pots of Honey and Oats for +15% perceived threat
• Use a legacied Sign of the Wild: Rage on the bear for + 25% perceived threat
• Damage the target yourself and use Inner Flame to transfer your threat to the bear
• Burglars use traited Provoke on the bear
• Champions use Rising Ire on the bear
• Optional: also use a legacied Sign of the Wild: Protection on the bear for extra survivability (Master of Beasts trait needed to be able to apply both signs)

To the right: Zwartje moaning about having the aggro of an imaginary fabricated nazgûl (he's such a whimp!).

With all these buffs, the bear should be able to tank sufficiently. You don't need its force taunt Roaring Challenge unless there's an emergency. This skill doesn't give the bear any aggro, but just forces the target to attack the bear for a set amount of time. It doesn't have much to do with actual (permanent) tanking.

A debated tactic

In the past, bear tanking has been looked at with mistrust. The tricky part is in the "bear might not take all negative effects" part. If the bear is able to avoid a total game mechanic and ridicules the fight, you might speak of an exploit. This happened in Moria times, when a lore-master and a minstrel were able to duo the Turtle with a bear tank. The bear didn't get the acid dot that would force real tanks to swap aggro. Thus a fight designed for twelve could be completed by two. 

It must've been a very long fight, mind you. They had no champions or burglars to give the bear aggro, so the players weren't able to deal much damage to the Turtle, otherwise it would loose it. The bear would be main DPS. Meanwhile, the lore-master would be pulling power to supply the minstrel, who had to heal the bear with an increasing intensity. Seriously, it must've taken ages!

In the case of the Turtle, I can can understand how this was considered an exploit and why they changed it so it cannot be done anymore: people were using this to farm for first age symbols without having to roll against many others. However, bear tanking is usually harmless, as most people take the bear with them as a tank to approach fights in a different way and have some fun. Bear tanking isn't something you can do mindlessly: you need to make up a tactic and people need to coordinate and put effort in to let the bear keep having aggro. Also, healers will have to heal the bear more than they would a normal tank, because it's just a bit more squishy. Bear tanking in BG doesn't make the fights easier, rather harder. It did make it faster, though. If done the right way, bear tanking can be very much fun, like it was for us.

Finally, hurray for Zwartje, proud tank of Morgaraf!