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

Well, it finally happened. I found a "melee" RDM. It was a fairly typical trial roulette Susano normal fight, and while we were winning (after one wipe mind you, which was fine since we had like 4 new people) it was going awfully slow. At first I thought this was because of the poor SMN who just kept getting shafted on mechanics and had died at least a dozen times by the end of things, but then I chanced to look at my party menu and saw that our RDM had no TP and a nearly full mana bar. Now, my RDM is only 53, but I've played enough to know that your best approach to the class is going to use more MP than TP by a long shot.

So i started to pay a bit more attention to this RDM. Sure enough, there was no dancing in and out of ranged and melee, but rather a complete focus on melee, to the seemingly total exclusion of casting. That RDM was just up there with us tanks and the melee dps, auto-attacking to his hearts content, waiting patiently for his TP to regen enough to continue his 100 TP-per-move combo. The cherry on top was when I used my "Hey melee, use the LB!" macro and the RDM died, then blamed my macro for "breaking" his "concentration." Buddy, let me tell you....if you're a "melee" RDM in FF14, my macro is the least of your worries. Try replaying your job quests where it's beaten into your head that a RDM is a mage first and a sword fighter second, using spells to power their blade before unleashing a flurry of blows and retreating back to a safe distance.

I started to have flashbacks to FF11 where RDM/NIN's would swear that they could close Skillchains with just as much damage as a fuidama THF, oh and solo just as well as BST/WHM, and also burst almost as good as a BLM!

"Oh, what's that Mr.WHM? I'm on low HP but you're gonna hard cast res on the other dps that died? Oh look, now I'm dead due to boss party AoE."

I just helped a friend of mine through Lakshmi HM. Now, my friend was healing as AST while I was tanking as PLD. What you need to know beforehand is that my friend has issues with anxiety and gets easily stressed, which also affects her confidence often.

So, she was worried about how she would do during the Lakshmi fight, since it would literally be the second time she would heal a primal fight (she hadn't done that before SB, she exclusively healed dungeons before). So, I explained the Vril mechanic as best I could (I'd only done the fight once so far myself so I couldn't explain all the details on the other mechanics) and we zoned in.

We wiped once because people got knocked off the platform when you use Vril the second time. No worries, that's to be expected tbh and my friend understood.

Second time though, we just barely made it. We had a SCH healer that was dead more often than not, along with one of the dps. This caused my friend's MP to run dangerously low at points, and I did my best to help keep her alive so she could keep the party alive (thank god for Clemency buffed by Requiescat). Side note, the offtank was another paladin that did nothing but dps. Some Clemencies would've been helpful buddy!

We had an awesome MCH that was on point with the refresh crossclass, and my friend was drawing Ewer's at just the right times to keep mana up. We also had a RDM that would help with raising, though ultimately it was a waste of MP since the people ressed just died almost instantly again. I was almost always running low on mana because of Clemencies, and nearly lost aggro on Lakshmi because I had to divide my attention between healing, watching my MP, managing my cooldowns to make it easier on my friend and managing aggro (because I had to spam Riot Blade near-constantly to keep my mana up, Sheltron doesn't really help much).

We barely pulled through, nearly wiping on the last %'s of Lakshmi's life, and my friend sadly enough died right there. We cleared, and I honestly expected her to be a total wreck at this point, with the amount of work she had to do basically solo-healing the fight.

Instead, she got a major confidence boost out of it because she did so incredibly well :) She encountered every 'new' healer's horror story and pulled through amazingly.

That said, the party we had was not the greatest, but because a few players were on point it was manageable. Barely.

Ran Kugane Castle yesterday for tomes.

During the first run we wipe on the boss because the BLM who is in the party doesn't understand that the adds explode and places both of them on the tank. Second attempt at this boss they wipe the healer (who is new to the dungeon) with the adds. Third attempt they luckily killed themselves during the stacking mechanic as they run away from everyone when we attempt to save them. We beat the boss with WAR, WHM and me as BRD.

During my second run of the dungeon I got in with AST, DRK and another BLM. This BLM is at least decent and doesn't keep doing silly stuff. This run goes well until we get to Yojimbo. The BLM asks if I can pick up the gold by myself while they dps the boss. I tell them you can't damage Yojimbo during this part of the fight but they ignore me and insists on focusing boss. Tank also tells them that he can't be damaged and BLM persists. Healer, who has been silent for most the run, finally speaks and tells the BLM that if they don't pick up coins then no one else will and we'll let them get Zanmato'd. BLM resolves to pick up coins.

The skill games between tanks seems to have gotten larger. I'm either having to keep reapplying Adlo and spamming Psysick just to keep them above water or I can throw down Sacred Soil and adlo and that'll be enough. There is no inbetween. I ran the 67 dungeon with my FC friend, who I'm pretty sure has been a WAR since 1.x. At least since I've known them, they've mained WAR. They know the class inside and out. Healing them was so easy. I got to keep my hacks and DOTs up for every fight and had no MP problems.

Same day, I got a DF WAR for TamTara HM. It's my favorite dungeon, ran it so many times. Everytime I think it's safe to throw a miasma or bio, his health plummeted. Nothing I threw seemed too help. Everything broke my Adlos in a couple hits, critlo survived three. And his gear wasn't bad, so I don't know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Heliantheae

Everytime I think it's safe to throw a miasma or bio, his health plummeted. Nothing I threw seemed too help. Everything broke my Adlos in a couple hits, critlo survived three. And his gear wasn't bad, so I don't know.

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It's my understanding that SCH is hands down the worst healer now, due to some very bad and poorly conceived nerfs. I feel for anyone who mains SCH, I was gonna make it my main healer class (although I really main tank) but even in HW it was pretty poor and too hard to play well, now it's just worse.

Just a friendly advice to tanks: the time you save by rushing to final room and pulling the boss ASAP will be lost if you lock the first-timer DPS out of the battle - especially if your 3-man group eventually wipes when boss is at 18%.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

SCH is hands down the worst healer now

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I honestly don't know what you're talking about here. SCH doesn't play differently from what it was like in HW, in my experience, at least. I find it the most fun out of all 3 healers to play - requires more strategy than WHM, relies less on RNG than AST - and even in HW it was nowhere near difficult to play well.

Sorry to the tank on my first run of the 69 dungeon today. Near the end, with 2-3% left, tank went down. I'd been trying to use Divine Benision when it was up for the tank buster and was having no problems keeping people out of the danger zone so not sure what happened. When tank went down I fired off some Stones to help finish it quick (under 10 seconds). I'm not for or against dps as a healer, though I choose to heal first. But no sense risking a wipe after already screwing up and letting the tank die.

Anyway, before that happened, I was going to say that the new expansion honeymoon phase of people being patient and understanding seems to be ending. Noticed a big difference this weekend with people being snarky, rude, blame-shifting, etc, for the new group content. Oh well. Was nice while it lasted.

Had an ... interesting PotD party for floor 90-100, I'm PLD, Healer is AST, and two DPS (one BLM and one RDM)

On floor 98, party runs off into a room, gets killed. Now this entire time we do have a healer, the problem is the AST doesn't know how to do anything. Based on their gear they couldn't have been above level 40. So since I saw this coming when the BLM turned into a frog I backed away, and used Kuribu to kill the mobs that still came after me. Then I went and cleared a path to the revive spot. Now this floor was also set to gloom. So once the three party members revive, what does the AST do? keep casting aspected helios. No hp is recovering. So I quickly tried to point out Benefic/Benefic II.

Anyway, everyone heads off again and gets killed, again.

So third time I pull every mob one-by-one out of the room. By the time we cleared floor 99 there was about 24 minutes remaining. Then we get to the boss room. I ask the AST to try focus on healing. So that works until the boss gets to about 10% and then the AST dies, then one of the DPS uses Kuribu and dies, and then I die with like 2% left on the boss. The last DPS uses the last Kuribu and just squeeks under without getting killed. The AST's gear wasn't red either, and they did blame their gear.

Suffice it to say, if you're going to use PotD to level, please please please setup your hotbar with the most important skills for your role, otherwise you're not helping.

On floor 50-70 I also had an AST that didn't know how to use Esuna.

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