Microblog: Stagger is a Hell of a Drug

Tanking something that hits hard feels so damn good on a monk. When I see my stagger reach really high numbers, and I purify it mostly away, it’s like a drug. I get a little surge of happy brain chemicals, like you get with most games, but it’s built into the class.

On any other tanking class, you can imagine how much damage you just reduced. Maybe you got hit by the same attack without active mitigation up before, and now you see just how much more health you have remaining when you got your timing right the second time. But the feedback is nowhere near as obvious as on a brewmaster. You can see exactly how hard that hit was in how much stagger you have. And then you can see exactly how much damage you’re throwing off with every purify.

I always want more of it. When I see my stagger start to rise, I want to Purify at the highest point, before it goes back down. There’s some gambling there, trying to get the pool high before cashing out, or before losing it all. I crave that big purify.

Whenever I fight weaker bosses, that low level of stagger leaves me unsatisfied. Why should I ever purify such a small number? It’s such a chore, to have to purify in a dungeon when I just faced off against Guarm, a tiny 10% stagger compared to my earlier 110%. It’s like I built a tolerance to it, always craving a stagger that’s higher than the one before.