The Warrior, The Healer and The ... Squeal?

Levelling in company is always much easier for me. Not just because you can take on creatures and quests that would otherwise be impossible for you, but because having someone to chat to and to share the experience makes it much less likely for my brain to start dribbling out of my ears.

Today I was fortunate enough to have a levelling partner for the entire day (or at least the portion of it that I was online). This particular levelling partner even uses close to the same levelling system that I use (see my previous post for details). The only difference being that she has never levelled a warrior and almost every character she has levelled (a lot of them) is a healer. This lead to a confliction of instincts and reactions as to how we killed everything in sight.

How could this possibly cause a problem?

Well for a Warrior your basic approach is to kill one mob at a time moving fast from one to the next to make the greatest advantage of your rage and abilities, while minimising the impact on your heath bar since that little green bar is all you have. Where as to a class that can heal your health bar is just another resource that can easily be replenished.

This meant that while I was shooting off at random mobs with the intent of beating them into the ground as fast as possible and moving on tho the next one, my levelling partner was riding around gathering a bunch of mobs to beat up. It was in fact rather like playing with a hyperactive sheep dog watching the way she rounded them up before joyously jumping into the thick of them. Being a chivalrously sort of fellow (and never liking to be left out of a good scrap) I would charge or intercept my way over to help her out dragging whatever I was beating on along with me. Cue chaotic fight.

That's not so bad?

Truth be told that was rather fun and a nice change of pace to my normal style of killing spree. What did cause arguments however was the healing/cooldown issue. Never having levelled a warrior she could not get her head around why I would start, popping cooldowns/health potions/explosives/panicking whenever I got a low health warning. Her argument was that a heal was coming and there was no reason to panic.

What she had failed to realise is that ingrained into every Warrior's bone marrow is the knowledge that the low health warning is the knell of doom. This is something you only hear when nasty people are doing bad bad things to your person. At this point you know (from a wealth of experience of falling face down) that it's too late to start running away, just using your remaining health just wont carry you far enough to escape the nasty people.

The sound of the low health warning acts as a sort of a subconscious trigger flipping your warrior switch from "God of Destruction" to "Panic Survival Mode". Once Panic Survival Mode (tm) has been activated you go into a frenzy to achieve one of four things based on available cooldowns and health of your enemy.

Option one, Frenzy. This is a basic kill it before it kills you tactic usually invoked only when the foe is on reasonably low health (usually the preferred option). Anything you can do to do more damage is pulled out of your bag of tricks and its a race to the finish of the health bar.

Option two, Green Is Good. Health Potions, Health Stones, Enraged Regeneration, Last Stand, Trinkets, a randomly passing healer in shouting distance. Get more health and get it now.


Option three, Not The Face. The use of debuff's and/or defensive cooldowns to reduce the incoming damage to the point where you can finish off the opponent before he finishes you. This is basically the inverse of option one.

Option four, Mummy. Do something, anything at all to stop the bad bad men from touching you. Fear, Target Dummy, Stuns, Disarm, snare and run. Do whatever you can to stop them and run like all the demons of hell where after you. This is usually invoked only when all other options have been exhausted and your only recourse is to run like a little girl.

This isn't so bad right? So I get a low health warning and start spilling out some crazy ability animations, random weapons, potions, gadgets, bombs and the kitchen sink. Warriors do that all the time and it never causes arguments with their friends.

Well this would be ok except for one tiny little detail. Panic Survival Mode has the unfortunate side effect of making me scream like a little girl on vent. I can't help it. The process kinda goes like this.

[Low Health Warning]
[Panic Survival Mode activated]
[Push-to-Talk Button Pressed]
[Commence Effeminate Squeal]

It tends to make your companions feel very guilty that they managed to make a grown man emit that kind of noise. Although in my defence it's not always a girlish squeal it is on occasion replace with a strangled "Help", "Shit", "Whoops", "Fuck", or, in extreme cases "Mummy".

Thats about all from me for now, I've been sitting here typing and retyping this in the hope that it would come out in some sort of coherent fashion, when it occurred to me that this isn't anything like what I set out to write. I had intended to tell you amusing anecdotes of today's levelling experience with the lovely Bompi on her Paladin alt but as usual my mind got sidetracked and this completely random post was born. Well I hope it entertained you in some fashion cuz I'm damned well not rewriting it ... again.

Welcome to the return of The Incompetent Warrior.