Last night I was in EQ2 again, playing my newbie Fury (who is now 22). Angela was on her 24 Troubadour.

This Fury is the first healer I’ve played. Generally I gravitate towards DPS classes. Angela generally plays healer types.

Now would be a good time to admit that we’ve encountered some friction playing EQ2 together in the past. She knows the game far, far better than I do, but my male ego has trouble accepting that fact. She tends to be very helpful which I tend to hear as her being patronizing. It makes sense that she be in the lead when we’re together, but I make a lousy follower. Mind you, it isn’t like we get into yelling arguments or anything, but there’s a reason we often play different MMOs. 🙂

So back to last night. I was waiting for a named to spawn and she logged in her Troubadour to come make sure I was in the right spot. I knew I was in the right spot but she always assumes I’m lost in EQ2, and about 90% of the time she’s right. She has some add-on map module that shows Points of Interest provided by the community so she wanted to double check that I was at the mob’s spawn point.

Of course, I was in the right spot /smugsmile but as long as she was there, we decided to group up. Now, if you haven’t played New Halas you might not understand just how easy the zone is. I’m almost finished and I’ve never been below 3/4ers health, always playing solo up to now. It’s really one long tutorial with no combat-challenge to it at all, assuming you do all the quests (which will keep you comfortably leveled up so you’re always doing green/blue quests).

And now we were grouped, a 22 & a 24, doing quests that were easily done solo by the 22.

Had you been a fly on the wall, you probably would’ve been very amused. First, I kept running headlong at baddies and dumping my DoTs on them, immediately getting 100% aggro, until her Troubadour engaged, which would normally pull aggro off me. This would frustrate me since I’m used to her being the healer and so used to doing everything I can to keep mobs off her. And she kept reminding me “Don’t forget to heal me!” even though her health never dipped below about 90% without me ever touching my heals.

It was so clear we were both in the opposite roles we’re normally in… me charging into fight after fight, doing damage as quickly as possible. Her fretting about the group having enough healing when no healing was needed. Both of us getting stressed out and a tiny bit annoyed with each other, even though we were rolling over mobs and finishing quests without breaking the slightest hint of a sweat.

I had to laugh, after the fact.

We’re going to have to find someplace more challenging to fight, and we’re going to have to do it soon if I’m going to learn to break my “First into the breach” habits and develop the pattern of staying in the back debuffing, healing, and dropping DoTs after she’s gotten aggro.

It just amused me how we slip into familiar patterns, regardless of the class we play.

I’m finally to where I got a quest that leads me into the actual city of New Halas. My inventory is bursting at the seams with house items I’ve got from quests, as well as discarded items that I’ve been saving for tinkering or whatever its called (no idea if any of it will be of use for that).

I still think the Sarnak starter area (I always forget the name of it) is my favorite so far, but the Sarnak city is a major PITA to navigate around.