Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[KaivaC]

I actually had to abandon a party for once. Holy hell what a bad run this turned out to be. Queued into Doma Castle to get my WAR up to level 69, had a WHM, BLM, and a SAM. The first trash pack took forever to kill. Not the usual double pull there with the large group of adds - no, literally the first three adds. I went through five CDs. FIVE! Anticipation, Raw Intuition + Awareness, Rampart, Vengeance, back to Anticipation - just like that. And even by then, even with me going Berserk + Steel Cyclone x 3, there was still an add at nearly half health by the time I got back to Anticipation again. I don't make a habit to really saying any particular player is bad but omg, this was bad. The WHM ...I don't even know what even the hell they were doing, but I ended up dying on a double pull right before the first boss.

The six adds that you have in total after the Iron Colossus? Yeah, that's where I died. Even with using Holmgang to give the healer some extra time to...do something. Looking at their profile, the only problem is they were walking about with a 260 weapon. Or maybe they were bad at healing, I dunno. The other gear they were wearing were 360 and above. To say nothing of the SAM and the BLM - both of whom single-targeted a lot, more so the BLM. Smh.

The straw that finally broke the camel's back was the last boss. One of them, I don't know who, dropped the proximity marker right on top of the boss, right in the corner where I was tanking them. So I said something in chat. "Really?" Because no - really, why would you do something stupid like that? I was already so damn annoyed with this group that I barely moved the boss, because what was the point.

Naturally, I ate big damage, the healer ate big damage because for whatever reason, they didn't get away from the proximity - nor did they heal themselves, and thus died to the gatling gun's bullets. Then I died because I had to Holmgang the spider add outside of the boss room.

Then the BLM died. Then the SAM. It was at that moment I just finally admitted to myself that I might have run into some of the true bads that I hear a lot of about, but never really seen. I've played with some below average players before...but this run took the damn cake and ran with it, in my personal experience.

So I asked for a kick. As I was doing that, the WHM raged quit. Which suited me just fine because I was gonna try to kick them anyways if nobody would kick me. When I noticed that the WHM had left, I didn't waste any time.

I dipped out of that instance immediately. The WHM was one of the problems - the other two were the SAM and BLM. So nope - they can figure it out on their own. This tank is gone from them.

Gotta remember to blacklist them next time I log on.

[Adrestia]

Question, I always thought PLD was main tank and warrior was always an off tank due to its higher dps. Also what's the dps rotation for war? I'm still learning it. Please help.

When I talked about PLD MTing earlier that was specifically at level 50 cap content when the only combo they have is the high threat combo, making it unrealistic and often impossible for the PLD to not be the one holding hate.

Good advice from Maria above, but to clarify when she says

you’d have whichever tank has the best mitigation to deal with upcoming tankbusters/mechanics main tanking

What this is describing is that in high end XIV content the term “main tank” does not mean what it means in other MMOs. It’s more like “current tank” because tank swaps aren’t just for mechanics that force them, but also for optimizing cooldown usage. You have “the tank that pulls” (usually WAR, DRK if no WAR) and the “current tank,” which changes fairly often. There’s no one “main tank” that you just automatically go back to as soon as possible.

And yes, warrior does higher DPS than paladin, but its DPS doesn’t suffer by standing in front. So it can still be the active tank without losing anything. Paladin actually gains some benefit while tanking from shield swipe procs, but you can make up most of that when you block various AoEs anyway.

[Cincierta]

So I just ran through four roulettes, one of which nearly made me pull my hair out on my alt healer. The entire run I had to ride my enmity dump/+healing cooldowns.

Queued up, got Stone Vigil. WAR admits its their first run through here. Soon as I pop protect they're off to the first trash...and immediately remove their Defiance. The mobs die slowly (we had a MCH and MNK, and both seemed to focus target different mobs from the tank), and while I'm healing them, the tank keeps all of the mobs facing the group. Since he had turned off Defiance, the rest of us easily rip hate from them. We begged him to turn it back on, and finally after the first trash they flip it back on.

Okay, I thought, now that he's got it back in his hands, the rest of the run should be alright. I was so f*cking wrong. Hallway up to the first gang-bang pack is a bit on the slow side, and the tank only used Overpower once per trash pull. This was then proceeded with their single-target aggro combo AND keeping mobs facing the party. We round the corner and I kept my finger on my Lucid, and sure enough, pulls the whole room. Overpowers once and doesn't get all the mobs and he starts taking a lot of damage, THEN proceeds to use all of his tanking cooldowns (Rampart, Convalesence, Anticipation, etc.). The second I pop a regen on him, I immediately get hate. Oh, and did I mention he didn't bother to turn the mobs around? The poor MNK ate a couple aoes to the face, the MCH was still single-targetting mobs, and I end up popping Lucid and Largesse. I kept having to dodge aoe-spam right as I would cast Medica, and the tank almost dies. I then kindly remind them to turn mobs around from the party so the rest of the party doesn't eat a ton of damage.

We manage to get through it and to the first boss. I warn the tank to run with the boss and get behind them when they start using Swinge. "LOL I know what I'm doing." was their response. They then proceed to eat two Swinges to the face. Hallway up to the second boss was still slow-going with the tank stopping at. Every. Single. Trash pack. We finally get to the second boss and the tank has the BRILLIANT idea of not only keeping the boss RIDICULOUSLY CLOSE to the cannons, but FACING ONE OF THE CANNONS. Can you guess which one? The one Isgebind for this run liked to CAMP. I was too busy healing the group to tell him to move away from the cannons to tell him to get away from them. We down him and we continue on to the final boss. Oh, did I mention not only did they stop at every single trash pack, but they ALWAYS KEPT THE MOBS FACING THE GROUP? I pleaded with them to turn the mobs around, but still nothing.

We finally get to the final boss, and I told him to keep the boss facing away from the group, or we WILL die. THEN the MCH chimes in with 'oh hay you need to watch out for xyz mechanic too!' While we fight it, the boss takes longer than usual (the mnk ate an ice breath to the face, poor thing), and when we finally down it, the war thanks the mch for the tips and leaves. No comms for carrying a group.

*sigh*

[Adrestia]

Since he had turned off Defiance, the rest of us easily rip hate from them.

This isn’t why anyone pulled hate off of him. If he was crushing everything’s face with Overpower (which is the only sensible solution both for threat and for damage), the threat mod on the attack alone would put him well ahead. Either he wasn’t pushing buttons, wasn’t pushing the right buttons, wasn’t actually aiming Overpower so as to actually hit things (0 threat in Defiance or not), or his gear was terrible and he had no business being there. Based on everything else in your story, I suspect some or all of these were true and this player has fundamental gameplay still to learn to be a passable tank.

Whether a low level WAR wants to use Defiance so they get access to the few perks of it or not is another choice, and if the rest of the party plays half decently it won’t matter much either way. But Defiance’s +20% threat mod isn’t how they hold hate on trash. It’s the massive threat mod on Overpower itself.

[Cincierta]

This isn’t why anyone pulled hate off of him. If he was crushing everything’s face with Overpower (which is the only sensible solution both for threat and for damage), the threat mod on the attack alone would put him well ahead. Either he wasn’t pushing buttons, wasn’t pushing the right buttons, wasn’t actually aiming Overpower so as to actually hit things (0 threat in Defiance or not), or his gear was terrible and he had no business being there. Based on everything else in your story, I suspect some or all of these were true and this player has fundamental gameplay still to learn to be a passable tank.

Whether a low level WAR wants to use Defiance so they get access to the few perks of it or not is another choice, and if the rest of the party plays half decently it won’t matter much either way. But Defiance’s +20% threat mod isn’t how they hold hate on trash. It’s the massive threat mod on Overpower itself.

The war tank I ran with was wearing a mix of 35-38 gear, which is a tad bit on the low end but not severely undergeared like I've seen them before. And since he was only using Overpower once per pull (like I would see it right at the start of each trash pull and then never again after that), he would lose threat buildup leads to everyone else that was attacking everything else, including me just healing them. Normally when it comes to learning how to tank, I'm happy to give a bit of a pointer here and there, but the amount of healing I had to do to keep the little squishy lalafell from eating dirt, followed by the rest of the party, it made it difficult to tell him so.

I don't remember seeing so much yellow hate buildup just from healing the party in a single dungeon run in a while. Either I need to pull away from healing and level a tank again or bite the bullet and go level a dps instead.

[Raldo]

Defiance’s +20% threat mod isn’t how they hold hate on trash.

Just to nip this misconception in the bud... Defiance (and all tank stances) are far closer to 2x enmity (technically it's 2.7x, but with the damage penalty, it feels like less).

[Adrestia]

Just to nip this misconception in the bud... Defiance (and all tank stances) are far closer to 2x enmity (technically it's 2.7x, but with the damage penalty, it feels like less).

You're right. They've upped threat mods a great many times and I've sometimes failed to keep track. On the ground people should be watching the aggro meters, but repeating incredibly old information was my bad.

Regardless, and I think the poster with the story has commented on this in both her posts now: this WAR was failing to hold aggro because he wasn't AoEing (nearly enough). There's no reason to be switching to single target that rapidly. Yes, if the DPS is terrible and you have no incoming Goad, you may be unable to Overpower until the mobs are dead, but you should have such an astronomical threat lead by then that it won't matter. I unfortunately tend to see this a lot with tanks who mark a target 1 in a pile that should be fully AoE'd anyway and then expect the party to actually obey that marker because they don't understand how this game is played. And those tend to be the tanks who then complain about the "meta" of AoEing like it's some arbitrary thing and they're fighting the system.

[Iscah]

Guess Cid should have taken a cue from Kingdom Hearts 2 and yelled "GET UP ON THE BISMARCK'S BACK!!" several dozen times :P

Oh goodness. That still comes to mind any time we fight a hydra, or (indeed) need to get on an enemy's back during a fight. Etched in permanently, I think.

[rrtsquirrel]

Unfortunately "actually degrading" players is not that uncommon in dungeons. Not to say that the majority of FF14 players are toxic, but you are bound to run into some eventually. That's part of the reason this very thread exists: it's less of a 'feedback' thread and more of a place to do the venting that is so desperately needed, as you yourself have mentioned.

As for your specific case, I can see where the GMs are coming from. Sometimes friends like to give each other sh*t in chat and it can be hard for an outsider to distinguish this from actual harassment. I am certainly not suggesting this was the case with your group (I wasn't there so I can't form an opinion one way or the other) but such situations do happen and I imagine that is at least partially responsible for the current policy. If the target of the harassment isn't bothered by it enough to file a report, then I wouldn't expect a GM to step in unless there was some other breach in the ToS as well; such as racism, foul language, or mention of parsers. Be that as it may, you shouldn't be discouraged from comforting and/or standing up for someone who you think is being needlessly attacked. Maybe gently remind them that that reporting the harassers is an option that is open to them.

Thank you for your comment. I left out a few details that might show some bias in the situation. I did tell the other player to report and they did. A GM replied to them asap. I can think of many reasons why privacy could be a concern. I can see where most privacy issues could be avoided. That is why I have also posted this situation in another thread. Thanks for your comment.

[Driskus]

You're right. They've upped threat mods a great many times and I've sometimes failed to keep track. On the ground people should be watching the aggro meters, but repeating incredibly old information was my bad.

Regardless, and I think the poster with the story has commented on this in both her posts now: this WAR was failing to hold aggro because he wasn't AoEing (nearly enough). There's no reason to be switching to single target that rapidly. Yes, if the DPS is terrible and you have no incoming Goad, you may be unable to Overpower until the mobs are dead, but you should have such an astronomical threat lead by then that it won't matter. I unfortunately tend to see this a lot with tanks who mark a target 1 in a pile that should be fully AoE'd anyway and then expect the party to actually obey that marker because they don't understand how this game is played. And those tend to be the tanks who then complain about the "meta" of AoEing like it's some arbitrary thing and they're fighting the system.

Every time I see a marker like that I just ignore it altogether unless its something that makes sense (like exploding roomwide aoe adds, mobs in a pack that summon other mobs if not killed, a mob a DPS pulled and they're getting smacked around by it, etc). Many of them seem to get the hint once their enemy list starts going green and then they regain hate, but a few just keep focusing one target at a time which gets annoying fast. For those few, even telling them in chat they should be using AoE moves usually gets nothing done.