Take it from someone who’s been described as totally lacking in any kind of evil— when you roll with Shattered Knights, you either need a thick skin or you’d better be able to grow one quickly. Boss and bro don’t mince words, not even for me. Whenever I roll out another character for guild runs— and bless them for taking the time to even do what they do— they pretty much devote at least an evening to, for lack of a better word, “reconstruction.”

Unless you’ve played that same class before, how you play in getting to 85 and how you play after that… two completely different things. We like to call the pre-85 trip “survival mode” in which you craft your playstyle along the way. It gets you from A to B, and since you’re alone for much of it, it’s okay if it’s not the most DPS-efficient or what-have-you since you’re going at your own pace and nobody’s there to call you out.

And then when those two get a hold of you… oh man. First it’s respec time (and if my brother’s running the operation, he tends to additionally send you to ElitistJerks to read the specifics); if Boss isn’t on hand, and unless he says otherwise, it’s allowed and expected to copypasta a relevant build off one of his characters in the name of saving time. Your glyphs and gems are redone as needed, and sometimes equipment if we have the materials available, and then you’re brought over to the dummies for a new rotation, and finally you get carted into instances for live field testing. Be a quiet little sponge and do what they tell you— if you slack off, they’ll know and call you on it right away— and you should get through the night with much of your dignity intact.

It’s not that they mean to be douchebags, because they’re not (at least, not so much in the “we hate everyone, especially you” type). It’s just how they are. It’s a dude thing.

Yoshi and Hynderia got put through “SK School,” and they do perform much better because of it. And Phil is probably next— we’ve some fresh 85s popping up and they’re all DPS classes, and we can’t have my brother healing all the time, so I may as well throw old man back into the pool.