Breaking Sheep

You may be among the 3 people in the world who do not play World of Warcraft and so do not get the reference. The Mage class has a spell called Sheep. This turns an enemy into, you guessed it, a sheep. This effectively keeps the critter out of combat and makes it easier to battle large groups. Sheep has a limited duration and can be broken if the Sheeped enemy takes damage. Breaking Sheep is obviously quite bad and can get everyone killed.

I have a regular Tuesday night WoW group and we run 5-man instances (encounters designed for a team of 5 people). We have a good group (Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Shaman, and Rogue (me)) and in general are pretty efficient. I Sap (stun) one enemy, the Warrior pulls the mobs, the Mage Sheeps and we kill the rest. However, a few games ago, whilst questing through Zul-Farrak there was a whole string of sheeps being broken.

Generally, we are a finely honed killing machine, plowing through dungeons without any real problems save for the occasional tough boss. We are rarely threatened, rarely really challenged. We are just too efficient. However, when the sheeps were broken, things got interesting. The Mage was running in circles, the Warrior was trying to get agro, the Cleric was keeping the Mage alive, the Shaman was trying to figure out who to hit and I was backstabbing anything that got near the Cleric. It was chaotic, confusing, and several other words beginning with C.

It was fun. It was really fun.

We were in danger. We were threatened. Foul language was used. We persevered. We summoned Gahz-Rillah and kicked his butt. We won.

Later, I was chatting with one of the other players about the game. We agreed that breaking sheep was bad. We discussed what when wrong. We considered. We pondered. We both admitted we had a lot of fun. Maybe breaking sheep every once in a while is not such a bad thing.

Cheers,
-Jason