Post Your Tanking Horror Stories!

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Gotta say Jspec has the right of it here. Expert runs on average are 20-25 mins with a decent group. I haven't done a lv60 roulette since the last patch, so maybe those are faster now but before with a great group it was around 15-20 mins.

He didn't claim you couldn't do them in less time, of course with really good dps it can be a bit faster. "as short as maybe 20 minutes on a good day"

20 mins for a DF expert (with a completely DF group) is an above average clear speed in my own personal experience.

No justification for ad-hominem attacks

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It's not in my experience. Even then, 20 minutes is definitely not a good day. A good day is like 14~17 minutes. 20~22 minutes is pretty average. Anything more and there were probably some issues like a wipe.

Your standards for group performance are just low. Fractaal and Neverreap 16-20 minutes = great? Back when they were the EX roulette 14-16 minute DF runs were great. 18-20 were pretty average. These days, a great 60 roulette group can clear in ~12 minutes.

I don't really care much for the e-peen measuring and the differences in clear speeds don't matter much but for the sake of community quality, can we stop sugar coating sub-par play to make people feel better about themselves? You don't improve unless you have the proper perspective. If you're bad, you're bad. Nothing wrong with that unless you don't know it or refuse to acknowledge it.

Even the excuse of falling back on PLD. PLD is perfectly fine and is actually better in ways than WAR and DRK. You lose like 200-300 DPS for the entire run which your healer can kind of make up for since you will get 2 HG activations on probably 2 of the largest pulls in the dungeon.

20min for current DREX is definitely not that good, considering most of runs for me end up in the region of 14-17mins for most, rarely 12-13mins.

However, we have to consider the fact that DF in JP servers have more players aware of doing their personal best DPS, comparing to EN that is. Therefore, the benchmark is quite different if you want to say.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

...For the sake of community quality, can we stop sugar coating sub-par play to make people feel better about themselves?

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I remember when what is now called 'sugar coating' was once genially referred to as 'politeness.' Oh, those were the days! When being 'honest' wasn't considered a license for pointless discourtesy towards strangers you're likely never to meet again.

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

I remember when what is now called 'sugar coating' was once genially referred to as 'politeness.' Oh, those were the days! When being 'honest' wasn't considered a license for pointless discourtesy towards strangers you're likely never to meet again.

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Please let me know the polite way to tell people they suck.

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Originally Posted by Immut

Please let me know the polite way to tell people they suck.

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Can I offer some advice? Followed with a useful pointer. Or, if you're going to leave anyway, say: This isn't working out. Feeling the need to denigrate these poor fools on the way out is just mean. Life is punishing them anyway, right? I mean they already stink which is going to impact their gains, so why bother spitting on the floor as you're leaving?

Your mustache is awesome.

I just did a 50 roll in which 1 Dps and the healer seemed obsessed with staying as close to me as possible.

I was in the second boss fight (big airship that shits out fire puddles) and the Brd comes to stand right next to me during the Flame thrower AoE. I turn the boss away, he follows me again. Flame thrower goes off, and I move out of cone. Brd barbecues himself and eats the paste. After the second time this happens the healer just leaves him dead. At least the healer had some sense ...

Only we get to the final boss and she repeatedly runs in front of the dragons to dodge other AoE's. The Bard hits the floor early and the healer doesn't even bother to wake him up (I don't blame her, since I think this guy was AFK or suffering a stroke), but she's having trouble keeping the rest of us up because she practically soaked every frontal cone with me.

I kept trying to turn the dragons away from her, but she keeps wiggling closer and closer to me each time Midgarsormr shoots off an AoE. Before long I'm scrambling to cast stone skins on the party to try and buy her some healing time, because she's getting smacked around and havnig her casts interrupted. She eventually figured out that holding my hand was not the best way to avoid damage, but it took half the fight.

The Bard, on the other hand, was licking the bus window the entire time. Pretty much fed himself to every AoE that he could (even kited a few extras on top of me) and was barely more than auto-attacking. I felt bad for the other Dps (mnk) who pretty much had to carrying all the dmg in that run.

For comparison, had a PS HM run last night where the tank single pulled the entire place. Took 27 minutes.

Shenanigans are fun.

Our FC healer was trying on different pieces of gear for glamour so she could see how they looked when dyed. After she'd finally settled on one, we went into a dungeon, and I was having to work my arse off to survive. She commented on how squishy I was, and I was feeling it, too. I had no idea what was going on. I triple-checked my stance, made sure I had my right gear equipped, but through it all, I was having to double- and triple-up on cooldowns just to survive.

We get to the end of the dungeon, and her staff drops. She leaves the dungeon, and goes quiet for a few minutes. And when she finally speaks up, we understood why.

She'd healed the entire dungeon with a level 30 staff.

We had a good laugh about it, but I was honestly impressed that she was able to pull it off.

And in all fairness to her, I've done the exact same thing, only with a level 11 shield.

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Originally Posted by Astrelle_hyperion

For comparison, had a PS HM run last night where the tank single pulled the entire place. Took 27 minutes.

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This shows that "speed run" mechanics are only speedy if you have the right combination of well-geared DPS. You can pull all you want to, but unless your group can output shittons of AoE DPS, it isn't going to help the run go any faster.

EDIT: Missed the bold part. Herp. My bad. But that's about how long my slow-pull runs generally are.

I think you missed my point, 27 minutes as a data point for a slow/small pull, non-train wreck run. It didn't feel like a waste of time, but it did feel unexciting. While I've seen some sub-20s I think around 22-23 is the usual.

Or then there was the brd when I was talking arboretum, and decided that since I wasnt doing the pulls he wanted he would just auto- attack the rest of the dungeon.... Mobs had been dying very slow before was worse after... But I have a high tolerance before kicking, so whatever.

Bah, right you are. Still, good to see that my non-speedy-pull pace is consistent. I typically wind up pulling the final bosses with ~65 minutes left on the clock, depending on DPS.

I've only got just the one tank horror story so far, but this is mostly due to I haven't done that much with Paladin yet (at least not in terms of difficult content).

I'd just gotten Paladin to 50, and I thought I"d use some of my POetics to get some of my Ironworks gear. By the time of this particular story, I'd gotten my shield, my bodypiece, and my augmented sword. To try and get some practice tanking for 8-man trials, I thought I'd queue into the Trial Roulette. It chucks me over into a group for Shiva, with a new tank and two new DPS. I don't recall that anyone else had levelled a tank to that point, and if they had then they weren't saying anything, so naturally nobody knows what to do to tank it. Best way to learn is charging forward, sword drawn, I figure, and the other tank (also a Paladin) agrees to Main Tank. (continued on next post due to character limit)

(from last post) We get to Phase 2 before things go south.

The MT had died at this point, so naturally i pop Shield Oath, use Provoke and chuck my shield at him to try and get aggro back. Again, I didn't know how to tank the fight, and even though I main BRD it had been some time since I'd done the fight in general, so I didn't remember a lot of the mechanics anyway.

Not sure why, but before I knew it everyone had died except for myself and one of the healers, a SCH, I think, leaving me as the only damage dealer. I had mentioned that I had about 3 pieces of Ironworks gear; however, everything else I had on were either my job gear or crap accessories.

What this amounts to is 10-12 solid minutes of me having whole thirds of my health being knocked out of me while desperately trying to buy time for the healer to pop Swiftcast and Raise the other healer to get back to normal.

Most harrowing ten minutes of my entire tanking career thus far. :'D

I usually get 16 min runs in DF as tank or healer. If it's lower it's usually when one or more isn't well geared.

Back to topic, just remembered a Syrcus Tower that I queued for last year. Got ready for the pull, went in, and right during my first combo the entire floor's worth of trash hit me and I didn't get a single heal. Before I got off any cooldowns I was dead on the floor. I didn't even want to off tank the rest of that dungeon. I refused to pull any more encounters because I could not trust the healers. Kept adds off my party and didn't say a word. I won't rage on people who don't do their job but god I wanted to say something.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

Back to topic, just remembered a Syrcus Tower ...

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You just reminded me of the worst run of World of Darkness I ever did, and the main reason why I absolutely HATE 24-man raids. This one's a doozy, so I apologize for the wall of text.

An FC mate guilt tripped me into tanking it for them because they didn't want to put up with a random. I was already starting to hate the 24-man scene because of toxic players and massive tank penis envy, but I agreed. We get in. Someone points out that Alliance C has an "archer." Seemed weird, but no big deal. At this point, everyone was over-geared for the raids anyway (I myself was rocking a finished zeta). A few people are joking about it in the Alliance chat, but some of them seem to know the guy, so whatever.

We kick off. I let someone else MT, because I don't want to deal with the whole, "I have the bigger stick" tug-o-war that was oh so common back then (I generally take the prisoner's attitude of, "Do your own time" into 24-man raids. I look after my party, and my party only, unless the other 2 tanks are cocking it up so badly that I absolutely have to do something about it). We get to the first boss without problems. A Tank pulls.

A short time into the fight, they lose aggro. I saw a Voke go off, so I assume that the other tank is fighting for enmity. nothing unusual there, only the boss is moving around all over the place. It's anarchy, and I notice that it is chasing a Dps around the edge of the arena. The tank Vokes back and re-positions, but people start bitching to high heavens about Tanks not doing their jobs.

The fight continues ... and the tank loses aggro again. Someone voked, and the boss goes on a rampage. The tank seems to be having trouble getting enmity back, and it's happened twice now, so I step up. I pull the boss, re-position him, and hold him down. Near the end of the fight, someone Vokes him off of me. I figure the MT wants enmity back, and think nothing of it. That said, I don't trust the MT, so I hold aggro. Boss wiggles on the spot for a second, but I keep him. Someone complains almost immediately about Tank enmity.

At this point I'm starting to get suspicious, because I noticed that each time the tank lost the boss, a voke had gone off, and when I lost the boss, a voke had also gone off, but the boss was always chasing around a non-tank player. I have a bad feeling I know what's happening, so, I start to keep my eyes open.

We get to the next boss, and sure enough, the tank loses enmity. Someone voked, and it wasn't a tank. The Archer has been voking the boss on cooldown and kiting him around the map. When I see it happen this time, I voke the boss, and re-position. I know what the archer is up to, and I call him out in the chat. No one kicks him, even after he vokes again. I was waiting for it, so I had voke at the ready followed by a proc'd enmity strike. He keeps trying, the entire time, to get the boss off of me, but I hold him in one spot (with a bit of wiggling).

Fight ends and I hit up the Alliance Chat to tell them to kick that moron. No one does. I got the impression that Alliance C was a pre-made and they all knew the guy. They were intentionally trolling.

I take over MT position for the rest of the fights because I was best geared and knew how to deal with the situation, but it was a royal pain in the ass. After all of the toxic players I've seen in the 24-man raids, this was the straw that broke the camels back. I renounced ever doing them. I basically did what was required for my weekly for the rest of the 2.x lifespan, and I never Q'd for them again. I've held that attitude for Void Ark as well. I never tank it, and I only do it once a week to avoid the pool of toxic waste that Q for those raids.

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Originally Posted by MusicGamer

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Fyi, you can avoid the character limit by editing your original text ... unless you're on a cellphone, that is. It's a stupid feature, and everyone hates it, but there is a way around it.

I'm kind of surprised the entire party died... Shiva is kind of a sissy. The only mech I can even think of that would have killed everyone is if the golums weren't dead before Diamond Dust. In which case, you did nothing wrong. The Dps were too slow. I'm assume you lived through this encounter, though. So good job! It's always exciting to come back from the brink of death in a Trial or Raid.

Also, welcome to the ranks of Pld. I hope you enjoyed learning it, because it's supposedly changing in 3.2 ... so you're gonna have to re-learn some stuff.

T11 :') Im the WAR OT in my static my tank bro is a PLD. I tunnel Vision so hard focusing on pushing out my deeps. Well i notice TS is really quiet and then suddenly my tank bro start to go "OMMMMM" and then start screaming my name. I tunnel visioned so hard i didnt provoke the head. He died then we all ended up dying :')

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Originally Posted by Februs

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Oh, well that explains it then. Thanks for that tip!

And actually, that's exactly what happened - DPS didn't kill the adds quickly enough. :'D It also didn't help that I was also tanking said adds since the tank was dead by the time they spawned. ^^;

And yeah, I lived through the encounter, but to this day I'm still a little wary about tanking for Shiva (or any trial for that matter) as I'm afraid that it'll just happen again. :'D

And I heard they were changing up Paladin in 3.2. I figured I'd have to relearn it eventually anyway, it was just a matter of sooner (patch adjustments) vs later (expansion + potentially new skills/level cap).

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Originally Posted by MusicGamer

Oh, well that explains it then. Thanks for that tip!

And actually, that's exactly what happened - DPS didn't kill the adds quickly enough. :'D It also didn't help that I was also tanking said adds since the tank was dead by the time they spawned. ^^;

And yeah, I lived through the encounter, but to this day I'm still a little wary about tanking for Shiva (or any trial for that matter) as I'm afraid that it'll just happen again. :'D

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No problem. Everyone hates that character limit.

And I wouldn't worry too much. Most of the Trials don't go that badly (with some exceptions. Steps/Nabrieles tend to still get fail groups on occasion). So long as the tanks and healers are not pants on head stupid, things work out. That said, there has been a sudden surplus of new subs into the game recently, and most of them don't have a clue how to do their jobs or what any of the boss mechanics are. If you see that new player bonus notification come up, beware, especially if the new player is a Tank or healer (you can usually tell based on who is watching the whole cut scene).

It's possible you may have also faced her towards the party while she was in sword stance (it goes off during adds a couple times). It's the right method for EX but for HRD mode it'll bring about some quick disaster.

Just going to share one I've already posted in the dungeon stories thread:

So, let me preface this to say, this morning I was NOT in a hurry. I had sufficient time before I had to get ready for work to do one dungeon, which happened to be brayflox as I just started leveling DRK. I have full cavalry gear from when I leveled WAR, and I know what I'm doing.


Basically, we zoned in, said hi, the healer had protected all of us but the newbie watching cutscenes. I run forward a few feet, making sure healers ready, pop my buff and grab the first two mobs. This goes smoothly, but I notice I didn't get a single heal and am around half health for next pull. Healer isn't topping me off, just sits there, so I pop a defensive cd and grab the next group of two. I get no heals, and promptly die. Res, take remaining add off the dps. Wait for other dps to run back, and another protect. No protect, and healer pulls next group. Allmywat.jpg. I'm not doing this. I run back to entrance and watch healer die, dps by my side. Here's a screenshot of ensuing conversation.



http://i.imgur.com/REAfr9b.png

Oh, did I mention the healer was level 60? Not new by any means, should know by that level that you're supposed to heal the tank.

We kicked, got another healer, and got thru the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Februs

That said, there has been a sudden surplus of new subs into the game recently, and most of them don't have a clue how to do their jobs or what any of the boss mechanics are. If you see that new player bonus notification come up, beware, especially if the new player is a Tank or healer (you can usually tell based on who is watching the whole cut scene).

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I've found good use for that video watching time is to line out few key tactics (at least those that can fail miserably if handled wrong) in he party chat in the meanwhile. Maybe the new ones have checked it beforehand, maybe not, but either way it doesn't hurt and you'll wait them to exit the video anyway.

I'm running the main story scenario on an alt. Got him to 50, and I'm in Eastern Thanalan doing some breadcrumb quests when a fate pops up next to me. I've already initiated my quest, and while I'm chopping up my enemies I notice this little Black Mage trying to solo the fate. It isn't going well. I've got my enemies well in hand, but then I think: "F*** it. I'll step in. I'll be her hero. It's what I do." So I level synced to the fate (level 15). And I step in and start overpowering like the boss level white tiger that I am.

I haven't finished off the enemies from my quest yet. "Ha, I'll get to you monkeys in a minute," I think confidently to myself. I'm a warrior. Death is what I deal. That's how cool I am.

When I level synced to 15, I shed about 7,000 hit points and lost a lot of defense. I now have about 300 hit points. The other guys are still level 50 mobs. They crunched me in one hit and the black mage died anyway.

Don't ever be a hero, boys.

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

Don't ever be a hero, boys.

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“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.”

Stone Vigil. I had run this dungeon a few times as tank before and it went well. No complaints either. But not this time.
The healer was a lvl 50 WHM. Didn't work with regen - because someone had said so. Oh, okay.
The WHM did dps tho, which was fine, if it wasn't for my HP dropping lower and lower and lower. At that time I had pushed every DEF button I had - and we still wiped. Yah, it was interesting.
So, this repeated a few times and when I told him to stop doing dps, since I didn't feel secure with him at all, another groupmember said I just should f*ck the hell off and - what a suprise - they let me die and kicked me afterwards. Thank you.

I feel there are more and more WoW-Mentalities coming to this game and it kind of scares me O_O

Not so much a "horror story" as it is a face palm.

I got Quarn HM for my roulette late last night (technically early morning). I rolled as Pld. I popped Shield Oath just before the Q went through (cuz I clearly was not thinking). The actual status indicator came up just as Quarn loaded. I saw it, and my fatigued brain said, "Shield Oath is up." The healer buffs, and I pull without so much as hesitating.

First pull goes all the way from entrance to the locked door. I tank everything. I start with HG, followed by Sentinel when HG expires. The pull goes well. Hp does not drop below 50% and I keep aggro on everything. By the time Sentinel wore off, there was only three adds left, so I did not bother with another buff ... and my Hp started to dip. It wasn't a lot, but for three adds it felt like more than normal. Regardless, I didn't drop below 50%, so I just assumed the healer was Dps'ing and I ran with it.

Second pull, I get the 3 adds by the door, the Blm opens the next door, and I pull everything in the trap room. Sentinel and HG are down (obviously), so I open up with weaker CD's. I have Fracture and Convo up, and I'm taking WAY more dmg than normal. My Hp is still well above 50%, but I notice that the healer is spam healing. Given that I have Convo up, I thought this was very odd ... and then I suddenly lose aggro on a target, and it clicks. Shield Oath.

I check, and sure enough, it's not up. Commence FLASH DANCE AND EMERGENCY BUFF PROCEDURES!!

I grab aggro on everything again, and pop another couple of CD's (Awareness +Bulwark) on top of Fracture to help make up the difference in dmg. We clear the mob. No deaths, and I kept aggro. Even the Healer's Mp pool came out okay, but the rest of the party is looking at me like I grew a second head. Thankfully, they were a very understanding group. Moral of the story is that level sync sucks, and it's probably not a good idea to do your roulette's at 3 AM.

Long ago, when ST was new, I decided to level PLD. I'd run it many times on DRG, and since it was a leveling dungeon and everyone was synced but me, I figured everyone knew not to spread out in the first room. Nope, had a bard run out of the hallway on the first pull and aggro pretty much everything. Me, trying to be a good pld, pop CD's and Flash everything up. Tough going, but the healer is doing a fantastic job of keeping me up. We get the pack down to a couple mobs left, and the bard runs off and aggros the back section of the room and we wipe. He does this twice before the vote abandon pops up.

While leveling DRK, I managed to get DD with 3 new people. No problem, I was synced down, they were both at minimum level. I explain about the Crystal Veil buff for the first third of the dungeon. The blm doesn't seem to understand that "stay in the purple light or take 1000 damage when the eye flies by" means STAY IN THE LIGHT. She eats dirt in the second pull (I used the first 2 mobs, the hippocerf things, to gauge the party strength) since she, for some reason, refused to stay in the light. Whm gets her up, and she runs back out of the light and eats dirt again. WHM leaves her down, we kill the pack. Instead of warping back and just running up, she asks for raise. WHM obliges, and I explain again about the crystal veil buff. Rest of that part goes smooth and even clear the Eye just fine.

We get to the second part, where the cliffs are. I explain that they need to stay near the arch to avoid aggroing the frogs and knocking us off into more mobs. I pull, keep my back to where the frogs come up from. It's going well until for some reason, the blm runs behind me and aggros both frogs, which of course ends up knocking her off into the lower part. She brings the mobs back and we wipe. We get back, I mark an A marker and just tell the party to stay there. Ended up working quite nicely, so now anytime I get DD in roulette with new folks, I use the marker to avoid frustration.

After not tanking dungeons in a while I made the mistake of thinking that I wouldn't have any problems at all tanking Dzemael Darkhold after already running it once as a DPS, with a tank that seemingly knew the dungeon like the back of his hand. Boy was I wrong! I think I died 5 or 6 times in that place, with the dragoon in the group not even dying once. :O As kind of a backhanded compliment I got free gear after the final boss, since everyone else just left in a hurry and didn't even bother rolling. So I think from here on out I'm only tanking for my FC, who might be more understanding than the random strangers who (presumably) say we all had to start somewhere,.......... just as long as it's not with them.

P.S. And I did tell them at the start of the dungeon that I had only been there once as a DPS and noone left, so there's that as well.

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Originally Posted by Joe_Schmoe

After not tanking dungeons in a while I made the mistake of thinking that I wouldn't have any problems at all tanking Dzemael Darkhold after already running it once as a DPS, with a tank that seemingly knew the dungeon like the back of his hand. Boy was I wrong! I think I died 5 or 6 times in that place, with the dragoon in the group not even dying once. :O As kind of a backhanded compliment I got free gear after the final boss, since everyone else just left in a hurry and didn't even bother rolling. So I think from here on out I'm only tanking for my FC, who might be more understanding than the random strangers who (presumably) say we all had to start somewhere,.......... just as long as it's not with them.

P.S. And I did tell them at the start of the dungeon that I had only been there once as a DPS and noone left, so there's that as well.

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Don't let it bum you out, Joe. Duty finder groups are what's known as "human sacrifices." If you master the dungeon quickly and get great results, well hell, that's great! If not, then so what? It's a duty finder group. They'll take what they're given, and they'll like it! What're they gonna do about it, not give you any commendations? Noooooo, the humanity!

I ran AV many times recently as I leveled all three tank classes through it. Some runs were great, some I was dying a lot for no reason. One of these with our FC healer (not his main, thankfully) in a tow. After me dying in a pull that had caused no trouble with some other groups, he apologises in FC chat and tells his tanks always keep dying there, even if he pre-regen and chain casts Cure, and Cure II when free cure procs. I asked him had it come to his mind, maybe, use Cur II when the incoming damage exceeds the healing of cure I. His answer, "no, I thought there was some other tool for that I was unaware of". Sigh, and it didn't even click on me back then that yes, he just had admitted he pre-regens. Noticed it on next pull and yelled at him of it. His answer "what, it's not good idea? Oh, after about 0.5 second of thinking, it's propably not wise."

What I'm saying is, if you keep dying a lot it might be bad pulls, ie tank trouble. It might also be healer who hasn't figured out the extent of their toolkit available and how to use it efficiently.

on Thordan Ex,I was WARrioring, I joined a random Thordan Ex kill party, the pally MT told everyone to go full burst damage since the start, we all agreed... So I went FULL BURST DPS and after roughly 40-45 secs (something like that) from the start I chopped off his aggron, I didn't expect a triple crit fell cleave with hq draco STR potion, Thordan turned around (I was behind) used Ascalon Might and killed 6 players.

And I was like: "my deeps so high, it's like smokin weed everyday"

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

Don't let it bum you out, Joe. Duty finder groups are what's known as "human sacrifices."

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True fact. Each new boss that SE develops is created by melding together all of the souls of sacrificed DF players. Extreme Trials and Savage Raids are forged by melting down the most anguished souls from the most notorious dungeons in a kiln that was created from the skin and bones of fallen DF players.

Four words: 40 minute Arboretum run.

Thanks to a WHM that apparently didn't have Cleric Stance or any offensive spells on his hotbar, and two Law geared DPSes (SMN and BRD, respectively) who I was handily outdamaging even in Grit and 3/5 Fending, just from a look at the in-game combat log. To make matters worse, they pretty much didn't even TRY to dodge most of the bad stuff, particularly on the last boss.

Admittedly, my suffering is at least partly of my own design. All I had to do was just diva on out as soon as it became clear that the damage just wasn't there - which was on the very first pull, which lasted long enough for me to Salted Earth twice - but like a fool, I kept on going because "well I've suffered through it THIS long, why bail now and waste all that time?"

/em stumbles over to the bar, grabs a bottle, pours out a shot, then starts chugging from the bottle.

Was in stone vigil normal last night, leveling my MNK. First time message, likely on tank ( others had 50s/or were synced. Tank is a MRD ( no job stone). Blm, WHM, and I keep playing ping pong with hate. I switch to earth stance to reduce enmity/ help healer.

After second pull healer dings a level and leaves. We start chatting with tank, explaining job stone. Tank was aware of it, but felt leveling GLA was too slow.( had it to 12). We explained hunting log & leve quests. Tank left, hopeful to go level. Got an awesome replacement tank, who slightly chained pulled, letting me keep my gl stacks :)

Hope the former tracks gets his stone and sees what he'd been missing!

I got paired with a tank in SMA the other day, and not only did he ask me if it was okay to do big pulls, he waited for me to cast SS between mobs, chatted with the party, waited for the everyone to get to bosses before pulling, and before the second boss, when asked why he was just standing there, replied, "waiting for Rin's MP!" I'm so used to tanks pulling when I'm on 1k - 2k even I didn't notice.

Not a horror story, you might say, but the fact that this so impressed me to the point I told him as much and immediately gave him my comm speaks volumes about the quality of tanks these days.

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Originally Posted by Mirch

on Thordan Ex,I was WARrioring, I joined a random Thordan Ex kill party, the pally MT told everyone to go full burst damage since the start, we all agreed... So I went FULL BURST DPS and after roughly 40-45 secs (something like that) from the start I chopped off his aggron, I didn't expect a triple crit fell cleave with hq draco STR potion, Thordan turned around (I was behind) used Ascalon Might and killed 6 players.

And I was like: "my deeps so high, it's like smokin weed everyday"

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Part of me dearly wishes Fell Cleave would get nerfed so I never have to see another "DID YOU SEE MY FELL CREAVE CRIT OMG LOL" comment ever again.

So, I have a new tanking horror story that I didn’t realize was as much of a horror story until this weekend –when I was levelling my SCH. I speak of the Vault (oh glorious Vault) just after the first boss, going up those stairs and pulling that entire hallway – including the 2 enemies around the corner, but not the statues in the next room.

I have leveled all 3 tanks through dungeon runs as my primary source for EXP (as well as my MNK), so I would say that my knowledge on this particular dungeon is quite strong, and I know how to pull and mitigate that hallway with no issue. However, when levelling several months ago, my last few runs as DRK were…. ODD. I would pull that hallway as usual, mitigate liberally and sit in tank stance, but the healer would have an absolute conniption fit. I had one literally go off on a rant saying how no one ever pulls it like that, it is too taxing on the healer and so on. Another went so far as to yell at me for not using cd’s at all, and he didn’t like it very much when I responded with my exact cd rotation and where I popped each one, and then asked why he wasn’t able to manage that pull when his gear was close to being fully on level as was mine.

So I thought to myself that maybe that is a really difficult pull for a healer, maybe I only had success on this type of pull early on in 3.0 because I was running with more experienced healers. Then, I ran it as a SCH this weekend. By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a very good healer. I am not sure I would consider myself good either, closer to an average healer. So in my very first Vault healing run, the tank decides to pull it all, I sit at the edge of my chair, staring a hole through my screen at the tanks HP bar, watching it like that creepy old guy at the end of the bar watches college girls. We get to the end, 1 Lustrate was used, nobody died, tank said “GJ” and I was like……. Was that it?? I was rather dumbfounded at the lack of difficulty that had been portrayed to me as a tank (and a few times as dd) during this pull.

I know the exact pull you're talking about, I've leveled all three tanks through Vault as well, and got to the point I was nervous if not running it with my main healer. Then I maxed and moved on to other jobs. I was so nervous my first time healing the Vault. When I got through, my reaction was "...that's it?" It's not the Vault that is hard, it's bad tanks.

Back on topic, I was running a leveling roulette a couple days ago and the healer repeatedly let me get down to 60 hp or so - and me without Holmgang - and I started wondering if they were just seeing how low they could get without dying. One time I did, in fact, die. Kind of felt like they were either distracted or doing it on purpose.

Remembered a few when i was farming Thordan for a few weeks.

Joined a random farm party, everyone said they knew what they were doing, there was no bonus so sounding good so far. We got to the 3 chargers, AST in our party got destroyed. Thought it was a slip, didn't mind it. wiped due to lack of heals. 2nd round, got to towers, AST stood in a tower........ while still in AoE. Died, then wiped. 3rd round, got to chargers, AST died AGAIN. 4th round, we told the AST to follow a tank. (no one else was getting hit by it.) got to chargers again. At the last second i see the AST run towards me, only to see him do the epic knee slide by me. Kicked then reformed.

2nd story. Again joined a random farm party, only this time we got which was either a dumb or troll BLM. Got hit by EVERY single gaze. Died to chargers. 2nd round, we separate for lightning, but for some reason he didn't even join back with the group. Died due to no heals with his Vuln. BLM got raised again, but this time he ran straight to wall, deeming him useless. Immediate kick.

3rd story. Joined a clear party. But this time the DPS was just bad. Which was confusing, since all 4 of them looked to be at least at i200+. Got to the 2 PLDs, DPS was so slow that the knights did their 3rd dance.... with their buffs up. Wiped. Someone with a parser or whatever it's called said they were barely beating me and the other Tank. (2 DRKs) Tried again, DPS was just too poor. Abandoned ship.

I can think of several stories, but the most recent one could be summarized as: Aurum Vale + Conjurer (No WHM) + Ice mage = Classic DF Sunday.