Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent. 2.0

After 5 days in a row getting World of Darkness via Alliance Roulette, I finally had enough of it and decided to eat the 30m penalty while I afk. Come back later to queue and I got... a clown fiesta Orbonne ;)! I live for this chaos

Queued into Orbonne. Whole alliance wrecked the bosses, even with a couple deaths from minor mistakes.

Ultima? Got killed before she released her Redemption Mechanic (Labyrinth). We skipped Labyrinth, and I didn't know that was possible until then. Everyone must have been DPSing really well. x) I think that was a 20ish minute run for an alliance raid, which was surprisingly fast.

Got a curebot and single target black mage in Prae earlier.

I got the tanks comm. Probably for actually aoeing.

I just witnessed a WoD slaughter.

I mean most people there were sprouts who didn't know mechanics anyways, but to top it all off there was some weird stuff going on with the tanks. Tanks decided to cleave the party multiple times by 5-headed, the person who was mting cere decided they wanted to be vored so a couple people got whacked before the only tank that didn't jump into the belly voked and then people started dying again as the adds started beating them up. Oh and someone pulled early on cloud lady while a third of the alliance was cutsceneing.

I really should just stay on my main character. All I have to do is log in and do BTs on that. I don't have to deal with this stress unless I force myself to.

It has been a month and half but felt ages since last A9N, gotta say it felt embarrassing wiping the whole party due to dragging the big mob in the lava, ops.

Always loving it when you start from bottom rock points in Frontline but because of your farmed battle highs early on, you won the match eventually from slaughtering two opposing sides where they stand.

This is why I personally think objectives in FLs are semi-traps.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

This is why I personally think objectives in FLs are semi-traps.

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Hey! Without objectives how would my alliance team mates know where to stand still in packs of at least 4, close to our base while the other teams take the lead?

Quick question, when's the last time anyone here wiped on A1N? Did anyone here even know A1N has an add phase that isn't the cloned bot that self-destructs? Because I sure didn't.

Had a run of Brayflox's Longstop as a Paladin. Didn't update my gear and i guess karma paid a visit. Scholar was only using Physick even after i asked to use Adlo. Both DPS seemed to distance themselves as far as possible from me and also pulled more. Good idea after several wipes... I finally exploded in chat. Scholar ignored the thing about Adlo but said he needed to heal himself because he had aggro. I suggested not staying 5 miles away from me and pulling enemies we could avoid. All in all horrible. Makes you wanna quit sometimes.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

Quick question, when's the last time anyone here wiped on A1N? Did anyone here even know A1N has an add phase that isn't the cloned bot that self-destructs? Because I sure didn't.

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I was on voice chat with my static a while back and commented, "Did you know that the atomos in Labyrinth of the Ancients have an enrage? 'cause that was a thing I had sure forgotten until the other day."

My housemate -- another FFXIV player -- in the other room overheard this and was startled into an involuntary laugh so loud the people on voice could hear it through my mic.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

Quick question, when's the last time anyone here wiped on A1N? Did anyone here even know A1N has an add phase that isn't the cloned bot that self-destructs? Because I sure didn't.

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The alarums? In savage you kill them under the falling missiles. In normal you usually skip it to wipe on self destruct because everyone tunnels one and then the dps magically drops for the second.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

I was on voice chat with my static a while back and commented, "Did you know that the atomos in Labyrinth of the Ancients have an enrage? 'cause that was a thing I had sure forgotten until the other day."

My housemate -- another FFXIV player -- in the other room overheard this and was startled into an involuntary laugh so loud the people on voice could hear it through my mic.

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It's like seeing Scylla cast Daybreak or God forbid, the add phase on Cloud of Darkness with the snakes. So rare it should be an impossibility at this point.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

It's like seeing Scylla cast Daybreak or God forbid, the add phase on Cloud of Darkness with the snakes. So rare it should be an impossibility at this point.

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So rare they need to retune those raids so that it actually has mechanics.

Apparently if I am not playing my GNB I somehow end up tanking anyroad. Went from RPR tank to MCH tank.

GNB on both characters are maxed level FFXIV. WAR is not being unlocked on my main rn and same with PLD. Stop trying to force me to tank please and thank you.

As for my party... I know it was a meme in the (now old) MSQ Castrum about "MCH tank when?" but MCH is, surprise surprise not a tank. The tank equivilant of MCH => GNB.

....AND I SWEAR TO THE TWELVE IF MY POOR SMN GETS TO TANK NEXT!!!!

Running Vanaspati, everyone but one of the DPS and myself die to the meteors. I use Nascent Flash and Shake It Off to try and keep them up, but it's just not enough, so I take Svarbhanu on from 15% by myself. Pull out a win through sheer moxie.

Same deal in Malikah's Well against Storge, but due to his lower unavoidable AoE output and the DPS being a melee (so access to Bloodbath) we were able to get him down from 30% as a duo.

I know there's a lot of hub-bub about how tanks have OP sustain and healers can feel superfluous in Endwalker, but damn do you feel like a badass after pulling that off.

FL Shatter... right at the end all 3 teams were close with points and a big ice spawned near our side but at same time other 3 small ices close to us so we gambled on getting the small firsts since they should give us enough points to win.

I was a Gunbreaker using DPS Junction and noticed no one went to a small ice near our base and big ice was almost done giving either the other 2 teams the victory, our points were around 1530 while others 1.4k or close to 1.5k
It was a rush, I almost solo the thing in less than a minute or such, unleashing full buffed burst with LB (No Mercy plus full LB stack debuff) and my BH was not even that high. A teammate paladin joined right at 20% of health and we destroyed it, giving us the victory.

Normally these kind of stuff are nothing too exciting but knowing even a single person can make a big difference in moments like this made me happy, for real.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

Running Vanaspati, everyone but one of the DPS and myself die to the meteors. I use Nascent Flash and Shake It Off to try and keep them up, but it's just not enough, so I take Svarbhanu on from 15% by myself. Pull out a win through sheer moxie.

Same deal in Malikah's Well against Storge, but due to his lower unavoidable AoE output and the DPS being a melee (so access to Bloodbath) we were able to get him down from 30% as a duo.

I know there's a lot of hub-bub about how tanks have OP sustain and healers can feel superfluous in Endwalker, but damn do you feel like a badass after pulling that off.

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And that's why I wouldn't want SE to take it away even as someone who generally gravitates towards healers.
These badass "I saved the day" moments are great and instead of taking it away to make everything easy, safe and padded with lots of cotton I'd rather they give classes more possibilites to pull something off that requires playing well. So take your badass-medal and enjoy it.

Every tank who thinks you need to be on the literal wall when "wall to wall pulling" when you can just bring the preceding packs ontop of the last pack of a section then kill them there to prevent CD dsync.

Also to every tank who pulls stuff out of my doton, I hope your pets run away.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

I know there's a lot of hub-bub about how tanks have OP sustain and healers can feel superfluous in Endwalker, but damn do you feel like a badass after pulling that off.

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Honestly it's the fact that things hit like wet noodles that makes healers feel superfluous. You can run 90 dungeons with no tanks or with no dps too. Tanks having sustain is great and the potential for glory moments gives players something to play and master their job for.

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Originally Posted by Yeastyloins

Every tank who thinks you need to be on the literal wall when "wall to wall pulling" when you can just bring the preceding packs ontop of the last pack of a section then kill them there to prevent CD dsync.

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Had a tank do that in Dead Ends the other day...and boy was it annoying since they would stop for a second or two right at the last pack, then move to the gate.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Honestly it's the fact that things hit like wet noodles that makes healers feel superfluous. You can run 90 dungeons with no tanks or with no dps too. Tanks having sustain is great and the potential for glory moments gives players something to play and master their job for.

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They might not know where the last pack is. Either forgetting or just camt remember. Some sections have two trash packs, some might 3 or more, and they dont know for sure until they literally run into a wall.

Carried a RPR through Anamnesis as RDM, they were dead half the time. Ressed the healer towards the end. Not a single commendation.

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Originally Posted by Avatre

Had a tank do that in Dead Ends the other day...and boy was it annoying since they would stop for a second or two right at the last pack, then move to the gate.

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Ah yes, I remember when I dropped my Ley Lines at where people with a brain would assume the pull would stop, the tank was like "yeah screw this BLM in particular" and pulled them out from my max range. Same dungeon too.

Edit: sorry for double post.

Gods - just quit the most annoying instance of Alzadaal's Legacy.

Granted I was tired - it was almost midnight at the time, and probably wasn't playing at my best (which is saying something as I'm not very good even when I am playing at my best!). However, I know Alzadaal's Legacy pretty well now and it's one of the few pieces of content I'm not completely useless at.

Anyway, was playing as Bard, the job I'm most comfortable with - and one of the team members kept criticising me for not using my DOTs. I was though - DOTs and Songs - and I said so, only to get "lol no your not", which prompted a 'lol' from someone else in the team. I persisted as far as the final boss and admittedly failed to notice that one of the players was watching cutscenes before firing off Caustic Bite and drawing attention to myself. I'll acknowledge that this was stupid and entirely my fault, and I certainly couldn't solo it and ended up dead and received a round of 'lol's for it. Somewhat deserved I guess - as I said, I'll admit that I didn't think before I acted on that one at least. Sadly it also prompted the first bigmouth to make several unnecessary remarks about how terrible and ineffective I was.

So, to be honest since I was really fed up of being told how bad I was, as well as being over tired, I quit and logged out (although blacklisted Bigmouth before I left). Possibly the wrong thing to do(?) but still - I don't mind admitting that I'm not very good at the game when am doing things wrong (and getting killed frequently), but I really don't think I was in this case. :(

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Anyway, was playing as Bard, the job I'm most comfortable with - and one of the team members kept criticising me for not using my DOTs. I was though - DOTs and Songs - and I said so, only to get "lol no your not", which prompted a 'lol' from someone else in the team.

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Sucks to have such a negative experience. They didn't even give helpfull feedback. What where you suppossed to do? Use your 2 DoTs on EVERY enemy? I only use them on bosses and more resistant mobs. One tip: Use "Stormbite" first because the DoT deals more damage. As for the songs... do you always have 1 up? I sometimes use Radiant Finale on trash, so i can use another song without wasting that sticker.

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Originally Posted by BRVV

Sucks to have such a negative experience. They didn't even give helpfull feedback. What where you suppossed to do? Use your 2 DoTs on EVERY enemy? I only use them on bosses and more resistant mobs. One tip: Use "Stormbite" first because the DoT deals more damage. As for the songs... do you always have 1 up? I sometimes use Radiant Finale on trash, so i can use another song without wasting that sticker.

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Nope - no feedback, only criticism. Which, as have noted, I actually don't mind if it's valid, but I don't feel that it was on this occasion.

As noted, I was using DOTs as appropriately as I could, refreshing them with Iron Jaws when the countdown on the effects was appropriately low, and I always have a Song active. I do all I can to follow the rotation recommended by 'The Balance' on Discord.

I shouldn't really let this bother me, but I've played as a Bard for as long as I've played the game (about eight months at this point) and would say that, after playing the entire (to the current point) MSQ as a Bard and doing all I could to learn the job, it's probably the one job I've got a fairly good grasp of and I therefore felt a little more offended than I probably should've about being told I was doing it wrong.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Gods - just quit the most annoying instance of Alzadaal's Legacy.[...]

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Well that's one $h!tty encounter to experience. Sorry to hear that. That sort of like a public humiliation ngl.

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So, to be honest since I was really fed up of being told how bad I was, as well as being over tired, I quit and logged out (although blacklisted Bigmouth before I left). Possibly the wrong thing to do(?) but still - I don't mind admitting that I'm not very good at the game when am doing things wrong (and getting killed frequently), but I really don't think I was in this case. :(

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Personally I would've blacklisted such individual myself for being an a$$hat by putting you on the spotlight. But setting that aside for a moment...

After I took a peek on one of your runs out of curiosity in 'that website that should not be named' then compared it to another random, average BRD, I could for sure tell you that songs are definitely not the main issue nor your DoTs. At least NOT solely. Sure they are not pitch perfect play (pun intended, however unrealistically) but I could see the pattern that you're clearly playing the songs in correct order, you're trying to have those DoT up - you are trying to practice what you've seen in those guide. Which is great!

What I could also tell from that, you have a major trouble at keeping your uptime even as a physical ranged who has full access to infinite mobility. This means using any weaponskills at all to keep your hotbar GCD 'rolling' even while running around. The other average random BRD fired 3 times as much Burst Shots (mostly in boss encounters ofc) & 5 times as much Ladonbites (mostly in trash pulls) in the same dungeon run but about 2m shorter. These two buttons are where their largest contribution of total damage comes from whereas yours actually comes from the built-in auto attacks. A glimpse to this figure kinda tells me that you pretty likely focusing a lot more to dodge/do mechanics correctly before resuming your own things. Have you ever tried to move and attack at the same time? Because that's one of the main perks of picking up physical ranged: access to full movement and still able to attack freely.

Do correct me if I pictured a wrong scenario of you.

Also, will you be updating your personal thread?

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Nope - no feedback, only criticism. Which, as have noted, I actually don't mind if it's valid, but I don't feel that it was on this occasion.

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Sorry to hear you had a bad experience, there's no excuse for direct rudeness.

At a glance, you're doing ok with DoT's. Your main issue in dungeons is lack of aoe and uptime. Chances are someone in your group was running a meter, saw low damage but didn't know how Bard works and threw out bad advice. No excuse for that, it doesn't help you at all.
On large pulls tab between mobs and apply Stormbite while you're running for free damage and once they stop nuke them with Ladonsbite and Shadowbite when it procs. Make sure you're hitting multiple targets.

Uptime is to try to always be pressing buttons constantly, even while moving or doing mechanics. Even if you press the wrong things by mistake, it's better than a correct rotation done with downtime. Focus on getting GCD uptime right first before the finer points of the rotation.

It'll only get better the more you play so stick with it and good luck :)

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

*Snip, because character limit*

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

*Snip because character limit*

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Thanks for the replies - this is exactly the sort of feedback/advice I need since I'm clearly oblivious to the specifics of where my performance is lacking - and to be honest you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I will confess that I DO try to remain mobile, but I'm also mindful of the fact that I'm aware of what my biggest, most obvious, failing is - mechanics. I'm still pretty useless with regard to reaction time and admittedly sometimes tend to focus too much on rotation and not enough on positioning, the consequence being stupid mistakes and, often, KO. I really need to work on this, as whilst have worked hard at learning to play Bard and Red Mage better, my understanding of the mechanics is sorely lacking.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Also, will you be updating your personal thread?

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I'd all but forgotten about that to be honest! Will have to revisit it!

Was leveling my DNC and only 2mil shy of hitting 90, so how about a quick trial roulette.
Of course I get Hydaelyn...

Usually not a problem for me but I'm currently getting used to a new keyboard and the key placement is slightly different from my old one and I kept fatfingering buttons. Rotation was still okayish but whenever I had to move quickly, I actually had to look at what my fingers were doing because instead of moving forward, I often ended up strafing.
And finally, I strafed straight into the wall like a pro during add phase while meaning to dodge the middle cleave. They had a good chuckle in party chat, I got ressed and we continued. Then came the lightwaves and... yeeepp, DNC strafed into the lightwave instead of dodging it.
Next raid day is going to be interesting.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

... Usually not a problem for me but I'm currently getting used to a new keyboard and the key placement is slightly different from my old one ...

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I've got this too, in spades.

Picked up an Azeron Cyborg (Azeron website) to replace my old dying (and no longer manufactured) Logitech G13. The Cyborg is a great product (and made by a small business in Latvia, not out-sourced to a massive contract manufacturer in China like so much is these days) but you can't just slap it down and go.

You need to fit it to your hand, which involves loosening and tightening ... let's see ... more than thirty tiny screws, each (or each pair in some cases) of which controls how some element is positioned.

When you're done, and the Cyborg is fitted to you, you've got two dozen programmable buttons you can reach with one hand without even moving your palm. But until you get that adjustment correct, you'll be accidentally hitting buttons all the time -- the activation force is not much for most of them.

And even when it is fitted, you have to decide what to put on each button, and then retrain yourself, and build the new muscle memory.

Fortunately, I'm leveling three new alts from scratch right now, so there are less buttons to worry about as I retrain myself and less stress over all, since low- and mid-level fights are pretty simple. I'm having a great time, too: I enjoy replaying the story on alts, which somewhat explains why I have 12 characters at levels ranging from 37 to endgame at the moment.

BTW, I use reWASD with the Cyborg, because the Cyborg doesn't natively support auto-repeat-on-hold-down yet. I'm very impressed by reWASD's options for configuring the analog thumbstick on the Cyborg, and I've barely started exploring the other capabilites that reWASD has.

Yeeted myself off the platform with Gyoten during Ozma's fight.
Lesson learned.

There's nothing like playing res roulette with the one out of 6 party members that seem to be dying randomly. There was never any more than 4 people alive at once.

I don't mind a challenge but people are so ungrateful too. I'd hope that the tank that didn't die got all the commends at least but I can almost feel that it was the chatterbox sage who sat there chatting with the rest of the dummies as I dragged them out of the dirt... And no I didn't tell them that, I'm just bitter that they really sat there having a full on conversation as if nothing happened.

I have a few stories back from when I was a sprout, heres one.

Back in 5.5 I had been playing Red Mage to catch up to my over leveled White I had from roulettes, and was going into the Shinriu Trial. I had never really had a chance to use my Rez as a RDM and knew the potential it had to rez a lot of people really fast.
Watched the cutscene and I pop in with 5 other sprouts, most of whom also just saw the cutscene. I think a tank and a summoner were the only non-sprouts. This wasn't abnormal for the time because this was around the time the huge wave of new players started.
We got to the second phase with a relatively low amount of deaths, ~2-4 but then the platforms start breaking. Every single sprout died and it was just the Summoner and the tank. I'm thinking ok, that sucks, I might not be up for a while, but then the pop-up appears.
The Summoner rezzed me instead of a healer.

"This is it" "This is the opportunity I've been waiting for!" I immediately pop lucid and do nothing but dodge and heal until the entire party is up, but at this point its become compete chaos.
I get both healers and they help rez but with the platforms gone and everyone running off edges, I hardly get a chance to spend my mana on dps and spend the rest of the fight picking up bodies.

As a healer main, I still don't think I will feel as powerful as I did when I got 7 commends for rezing everyone as RDM and helping the party struggle to the end.

So I have two stories as of last night. One as a tank and the other as a healer.

First the tank one. We are doing the ghost ship area one I think that is in Stormblood and I'm the PLD ( I'm in the process of using tanks/healers I do not use often to learn them to the point I feel like I really know it ) and the healer ( this story is about them ) is a WHM. We are doing pretty good at first but then I started to notice that the healer isn't really healing and actually won't even use Regen on me. I mean that's fine and all cause I'm using my CDs and defensives when needed and as a PLD I don't need healer that much because of my shield. They would only use Benediction and that is it.

It's when we get to the 2nd boss though it becomes an issue. One of the DPS is not running away when they get dragged in so they are getting stacks quickly. They get nailed by the next raidwide pretty hard so I knew I had to do something so I covered them to help with the damage. I'm at 20% health now and the auto attacks are putting me close to 10%.Normally they would use Benediction bu tthey used that less than 1 minute ago when another DPS took a strong hit so I knew it was on CD. Ok...I don't really have magic attacks at this point so I clemency and carry on. Apparently this infuriated the WHM...they stopped healing EVERYONE and go on full Green DPS. That's fine...I got healing covered.

Once we get to the end the WHM had the audacity to be like "Hey...you don't need to use Clemency" and then IMMEDIATELY exits. If you have something to say buddy then have the conviction to stick around for the rebuttal you coward. I had a laugh and got my two comms.

Now this one I was the Healer. The GNB tank ( The story is about them ) was mixing it up between single and multiple pulls. They kept me guessing on that front. Now I'm not exactly 100% on my AST just yet since I main SCH so I need to think slightly more on my actions ahead of time. Well this guy between his erratic pulling and he refused to use any of his CDs period was making me do guess work if I should be DPSing or forgo my DPSing to really be on top of healing. He was taking damage about as fast as I could heal it. It was getting so bad that I would have used all of my oGCD heals and had to spam my Benefic 2...in which he'd lose all that health and then some between castings.

But hey...he only died twice because what even is an invulnerability state huh? At least he would only die once the mobs were mostly down so the DPS could burn what was left. Actually the DPS tanked as well if not better than he did anyway.

So we get to the final boss....and what do I see? Arms Length...on a boss...that has no KB abilities and can't be slowed. Awesome.

i'm doing alphascape for mogtomes and ShB relic quest and ending the co-healer just went

"??
bruh you cant even align chain
stop"

and honestly that threw me off guard so much that I'm just laughing, can't believe someone is actually monitoring whenever someone's buff misalign on normal trials.

This was a while back, but it still makes me chuckle a bit

one of my FC-mates was catching up in MSQ and got to the Endsinger fight, so we all joined in to help. I was the tank - the only tank, because another FC-mate was "pretty sure" there were no two-tank mechanics in the fight

Minutes later: "Oh, right, there's a double tankbuster." *squish*

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Originally Posted by MonsterHugger

This was a while back, but it still makes me chuckle a bit

one of my FC-mates was catching up in MSQ and got to the Endsinger fight, so we all joined in to help. I was the tank - the only tank, because another FC-mate was "pretty sure" there were no two-tank mechanics in the fight

Minutes later: "Oh, right, there's a double tankbuster." *squish*

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When the DNC decides who lives and who dies to a squishbuster.
Suddenly doing really good dps sounds less appealing. At least your FC mate can now be "pretty sure" that two tanks are indeed recommended for once :p

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Originally Posted by MonsterHugger

This was a while back, but it still makes me chuckle a bit

one of my FC-mates was catching up in MSQ and got to the Endsinger fight, so we all joined in to help. I was the tank - the only tank, because another FC-mate was "pretty sure" there were no two-tank mechanics in the fight

Minutes later: "Oh, right, there's a double tankbuster." *squish*

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Even without that, you'd still need a full party for the mandatory LB3 later in the fight.

Doing ex3 yesterday, partly a FC run, plugged a couple slots. Everyone who joined was dead weight. Healers complaining about peoples performance while they're dead on the floor. Red mages not taking advantage of Stone/Fire procs, casting Jolt 2 while ignoring the two dead healers on the floor. Took a good minute of auto-translate "please use verraise" spam before they actually rezzed anyone. By that point it was too late and everyone leaves. Good stuff