Duty Anxiety

I get that way when I tank on my paladin for the first time I do a new dungeon or raid. I prefer to go DPS, but I get more gratification doing something for the first time as a tank. I’m not really into role-play, but I like to imagine that the fight is “thrust upon me” and I have “no choice”. It makes my gaming experience more interesting, and I always feel more accomplished. It’s kind of silly, but it’s how I like to play the game.

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Originally Posted by PhantomDave

Having just completed the 2.0 storyline, I'm at a point in the game where dungeons and bosses are becoming more involved than simply moving forward and fighting everything we see. Whenever I come upon a new challenge, I always end up putting it off for fear that I won't perform well enough.

I enjoy playing this game, and I don't want this hang-up to get in the way of my fun. Any advice for getting over this?

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Going into Heavensward, you can just ask your party for tips on facing the bosses, some of which are tricky. By Stormblood, you may have to do some homework and watch MTQcapture's Dungeon Guide. Though personally, I find MTQcapture's videos more mandatory for Trials as the boss difficulty curve for some of the Stormblood Primals is as steep as a cliff.

My advice: You're going to have bad runs; You'll even have such bad experiences you may not want to log in again for a while. I can't say "don't let it bother you!" because that's stupid. If it was so easy to let bad experiences roll of your shoulders you wouldn't have anxiety to begin with.

So, I'm sorry I can't help you 'get over it' but I can assure you, without a doubt, you will have good runs. This game is a lot of fun and there are actually some pretty cool people playing it. If you communicate with people, for the most part, they'll be very understanding. Plus, most of the time you'll be with experienced players who're doing a dungeon for the five hundred millionth time and really don't care and if they're new they won't know much better, haha.

I can't speak as a tank, only a DPS, but recently I've been too anxious to try anything in game that involved other people.. Just tonight I actually summed up enough courage to finally enter the latest StormBlood dungeon and it actually turned out to be rather painless.. Though I know I was under-performing badly, haha. Go at your own pace and do things when you're ready to do them, don't rush! ShadowBringers is still a few months away, you've got plenty of time to get more comfortable.

Read or watch a guide. Make sure your gear is up to date. If you feel prepared, your anxiety will lessen, and while you're in the fight you won't have much time to feel anxious even if you do forget. The best way to combat anxiety is to dive in head first. If someone's mean to you, remember it's just words on a monitor. We've all taken hits before. You just have to relax and move on. Everyone has the potential to be competent at whatever content they want to play, so if you remember that it should help as well.

So the first 2 level 50 dungeons(the 8 man ones) give a little bit of a false sense of whats to come. There are no other 8 man dungeons(trials and raids will be 8 man instances however), you revert back to 4 man for the next story dungeon(roughly halfway through the patch-line quests). I would tell you not to worry about dungeons much(i know, easier said then done). You find a few strange mechanics here and there, but most fights are either very straightforward or what you need to do is fairly obvious. As others have mentioned, tell people that youre new at the start. The good ones will cut you slack for most screw ups and possibly offer tips to help, the bad ones will show themselves to be bad and you can avoid them(the bad ones are never worth your time). Its also good advice i read to try to keep your gear up to date(one less thing to worry about when you know your gear isnt holding you back). Beyond that, keep learning your class. Know what your skills do, how and when to use them, and in what order they work best. You can possibly find a player to work with you, but even just practicing on a dummy can be a big help. If you still feel anxious you can look up guides for the fight youre about to enter, and even bring a friend or two along you know to be supportive. But ultimately what will probly help the most is getting the experience of running the content. Youre nervous about something new, but something youve done a dozen times? So keep putting yourself out there, and these feelings should pass. Best of luck!

One thing I didn't see mentioned yet, or missed in which case I apologize, is getting your feet wet in new duties through a Party Finder group rather than jumping into the Duty Finder on your own.
It let's you tell people up front that you're new to the duty, may need some time to adjust to the place and thus might make mistakes. Anyone joining the group knows what they're in for and you get to avoid the worst of the DF speedrunners.

If you also need some 'practice' running dungeons or trying different roles, I would highly recommend the GC Squadron Command Missions... I've actually been using them to level from 60 to 70 and find it a lot of fun. Sure there is a lot of repetition, I've run Sohm Al close to 100 times already, but I've also nailed down some dungeon achievements along the way too. I've found doing the Command Missions to be a great way of learning new roles and practicing without infuriating other players. ;)

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Originally Posted by ADarklore

If you also need some 'practice' running dungeons or trying different roles, I would highly recommend the GC Squadron Command Missions... I've actually been using them to level from 60 to 70 and find it a lot of fun. Sure there is a lot of repetition, I've run Sohm Al close to 100 times already, but I've also nailed down some dungeon achievements along the way too. I've found doing the Command Missions to be a great way of learning new roles and practicing without infuriating other players. ;)

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I was going to say something similar to this. I wish that you could run ALL the command missions with your squadron before you do the real thing with other players. It would lessen the anxiety and stress if you know what mechanics are like ahead of time and how hard the mobs hit overall. Because of this I can run Brayflox literally in my sleep.

I would joke when I was levelling SCH.

I would enter the dungeon and say "Oh no, this healer sucks". We wiped once and the tank said - "You did warn us".

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Originally Posted by PhantomDave

Having just completed the 2.0 storyline, I'm at a point in the game where dungeons and bosses are becoming more involved than simply moving forward and fighting everything we see.

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I'm struggling to recall any dungeons post Ultima Weapon that can really be considered that involving for the tank, at least I assume you're tanking given the character you have selected on your profile. I guess an argument could be made for the Yeti in Snowcloak since someone has to hit a snowball into him during his room wide AoE, or for the last boss in Keeper of the Lake due to the amount of AoEs and the insta-wipe mechanic? I wouldn't say that the mechanics get that hard in dungeons. Just keep up aggro and use your defensive cooldowns and most people won't complain. It'd help if you read up on mechanics, especially since the content is so old, but they're usually intuitive enough that you should be able to figure it out.