The average df player should not be regarded as the standard though. For every normal player, Alex Normal is a pushover.
If he was 53, using Minuet would probably have just been a DPS loss, considering at that point you have none of the only-usable-in-Minuet skills that actually make Minuet worth using. When you first get Minuet, it's kinda trash. I didn't start using it until 54.Quote:
He wouldn't even sing Army's Paeon for himself even though he needed the TP badly. I noticed he wasn't using minuet and kinda got annoyed. I understand some BRDs don't like it. Me personally? I love minuet and get upset when I get synced down so low that I can't use it.
Unless you think most people do their Alex normal runs in premades (which I don't think is the case), it absolutely should be regarded as the standard because that's pretty much what it is.Quote:
The average df player should not be regarded as the standard though. For every normal player, Alex Normal is a pushover.
Couldn't be more true. To some people, who run statics those df runs seem such a joke, but for casual players they are not. Half the time people just aimlessly dying. And they know the strat, it's just hard for them that's all. Hell, I saw topics stating that if you're ilvl165 and struggle in clearing bis ex youre a loser and junk player... The thing is when you're in a premade group everythig seems SO EASY to you because you can coordinate! DF is just a bunch of random people running around.
Below 20 I have Protect instead, and doing 200 instead of 170 damage on dots is not worth it when I don't know the people and/or in sub-30 dungeons. Rather be safer than sorry with DF. With a premade of friends I'll go all out. I know they're not stupid, are generally geared and know their job. If something happens, it'll be a d/c or weird bug.Quote:
Actually I feel cleric stance at lower levels is very well worth it since cleric stance gives 10% dmg boost on top of switching your int/mind.
He was 54. I'm pretty sure minuet isn't a DPS loss considering as it gives a 30% attack buff which makes up for your auto attacks being disabled. To be honest I think it's best to start using it as soon as you get it so you're used to it so by the time you hit 54 to get Emperyal Arrow it won't feel so weird to you anymore. That's just my opinion though.
Yes it does have a basline damage boost of 30%.
I was helping a friend of mine to lvl up his character and we used the DF to run The Sunken Temple of Qarn, I was the healer, after 2 cures I had all the mobs on me, tank was a Warrior then I saw that he was not using Defiance I asked him why he was not using it and he just said "I just started tanking", I explained about the skill but he said that he didn't have it, I gave up and after that I literally tanked the whole dungeon, a Dragoon in the party had the patience to explain the dungeon mechanics to the tank ( not that it mattered ) we got to the last boss and we wiped 3 times, the dragoon then said that he will tank the boss, in the middle of the fight I saw that the tank used Defiance -_-, we finished it and I was so upset that I said "thanks for the party, please never tank again" and left, since then when I get a bad tank or healer I just leave the party and take the 30 min penalty.
Going Cleric as your first cross class is pretty standard, especially for people who main healers. You only don't have Protect for the first 2-3 dungeons and the damage in them is pretty pathetic so not having Protect doesn't effect much.
Besides, Eos/Selene can solo heal up until Haukke just fine. So a SCH can easily full time DPS without having to worry at all.
I had a dungeon with a really bad whm, like so bad he never would heal people, even the tank, unless you were about to die, and sometimes not even then. I tried to give him some advice and him and the tank start ripping me a new one claiming I just want to be carried and insulting me. I was playing smn at the time.
As I've been leveling mch recently, whenever I see a brd as the second dps in the party I cry and prepare myself for a long run.
Sounds like my first run of SV HM (the week it was released) -- went in with a group of friends trying to figure the mechanics out as we go, which was a LOT of fun ^_^
And on the last boss, the healer and one dd die, leaving me (WAR) and the bard to kill the overly friendly lizards xD We kept expecting to wipe due to no healer, but nope.
(Though the amount of times we wiped on the first boss of Tam-tara HM before figuring out the mechanics.... DF groups would have disbanded ages ago xD)
Well... I can understand wanting to see the fights without getting it spoiled, especially if it's still early after release. But for crying out loud, at least say you'd like that at the start, instead of getting upset when people give you spoilers when they don't even know you don't want them. Is it really so hard to say, "Please don't explain the boss fights; I'd like to go in blind."
(Also... for that it's usually best to go in with a full group who is new to the place, since mechanics tend to get 'spoiled' even without explanations by the not-new team members performing them perfectly...)
Silly Ninjas... *shakes head*
Well, to me the 'first time experience' kind of involves boss mechanics ^_~ But if I haven't asked people not to explain mechanics, I'm not going to be upset with them for doing so ^^; That's just... unreasonable.
You break my heart :'( Whenever I have a MCH or 2nd BRD in my party, and if this one uses their stance, the run takes about 2 minutes longer, I think that's something I can live with *shrug*
Had a Brayflox NM run as AST recently, the tank wore a Goblin Cap (not as glamour, it was his headpiece). He told me the dungeons he did didn't drop anything yet (DRK lv47 - couldn't he simply buy something?). Yet we ran the dungeon quite well until before the Hellbender - I accidentally pulled a single mob, both DPS accidentally pulled a group of mobs each, at the same time the tank pulled another group. Yeah. Spammed heals, was sad about not having time to DPS or draw any cards, then after we made it out alive I sat in front of the PC, laughing manically.
Oh I know what you are talking about. I absolutely adore those runs where everything goes south, and you actually have to put in effort healing, reviving, etc. and you save the run despite half the team being dead at some point (had such for example in Titan HM a few times). It's such a great rush of adrenaline!
Nahahahaha no a long run is two DRG where one does not use any DOTS at all.
In the vault... I was waiting, I didn't say anything because one, didn't know which one wasn't doing it and two, I couldn't remember anything about DRG. Then one of them DC'd before the boss and I saw noooo DOTS. None. Asked the DRG why they weren't applying htem and they said they were...so I said "ok" and went on with it. Didn't want to press the issue since we were doing fine...just took foreverrrrr
Then we wiped once on the boss , no big deal it happens, and that DRG leaves.
SMN comes in and we finish quickly.
What is it with Brayflox and terrible groups?
Also, try to avoid running anything in the Chaos datacentre during the day. It's awful.
Levelling, Paladin, pop into Brayflox. Sigh. Put on Sword Oath. Look at party list to see a synched-down ARC and a blm whose name is clearly a plug for a youtube channel, neither of which are good signs. Open search info, level 36 archer with PUG to 9. Maybe he's working on it, give the benefit of the doubt. Everything seems fine until the first boss, where the dps decide killing adds is beneath them and I get swarmed, but the healer manages to keep me alive (shoutout to Alexia Garcia of Moogle, you did a fab job!). After that it goes downhill rapidly, with the bard pulling ahead of me every time while I wait for our healer's MP to recover from the extra healing she had to do, the add not dying in the second boss, the archer constantly running in circles and pulling extra mobs in the big room and wiping us no less than three times. I persevered until we got to the third boss, where the archer decided to pull again and lock out the healer. ARC and BLM were clearly together as blm "threatened" to leave if I kicked the archer, so I just left. No time for that drama.
I did feel bad for the astro though =(
Tbh i find the Chaos data centre terrible at any time of the day :L which is why i only ever PUG leveling roulette and absolutely nothing else, and i've found a clear correlation to the bad players, but i'll probably get temp banned from the forums again for saying it so i won't :p
I'm going to quote myself though, this is my general experience having a full PUG in Chaos...... at any level of content
And just FYI that run took 87 mins >.<
Dunno, Brayflox is actually quite okay as long as the tank is good and the rest knows the basic mechanics (means: don't pull as non-tank, don't stand in aoe, don't heal before or during pull, etc.), but there's no dungeon where the DF morons fail in knowing the basics as hard as in Brayflox.
Tanked a run in Brayflox (lol) with an obvious Pre-made. After the first boss, the NIN decides to strip down to a bikini (not glamoured) , pull crap because "I don't wanna waste my mudras", the MCH keeps knocking stuff back and they all decide to pull even more crap and THEN tell me they wanted a full run ;-; I don't even know why I stuck it out >_>
My last Fractal run was an adventure.
Normally I run Experts with my FC and I guess I'd been spoiled by how nice and easy and quick we can chew through them, but it was late and everyone was tired for the day. So I solo queued after a half-hour wait and ended up with three others from the same server - I think two of them (the BRD and AST) were a premade, but they seemed to be familiar with the PLD as well. They're very chatty and having quite the conversation just standing at the start, which is fine with me, I'm generally patient and try to be friendly, and did contribute a bit as well. It ends up taking nearly 20 minutes to clear the first few rooms because they're just talking away mid-pull, I run out of TP maybe a third of the way into these huge AOE pulls and having to just run on fumes...but hey at least I can fit a Litany in on each pull?
By the time we're at the first boss their convo (which is still ongoing, with me occasionally tanking while the tank is unable to help mid-text) ends up steering waaaay into TMI territory, but at this point I'm pretty entertained by how strange it is? Eventually they start talking to me directly and began pelting me with thrusting jokes...I'm not about to forget that part. o___o
All in all the run ended up taking over an hour, we wiped on the last boss since the healer forgot to cure the bomb status twice and the tank and I ate it. At the end one of them said that this was one of their best runs ever, since 9 times out of 10 they have been kicked for the above reasons. I love DF.
Ran multiple Stone Vigil Normal runs... please for the love of god, wear proper tank gear & if it isn't dungeon/melded gear, don't expect healers to heal you through mass pulls :mad:
So many DPS wannabe tanks who don't have proper gear and end up being the squishiest thing ever... 800 damage a second is not ok...
I don't have many problems with Chaos either... I mean I use DF all the time and almost all my dungeon runs have random people in it so the examples here are mayb elike.
ten percent of my total runs so....
You're lucky then :p
In my experience everything sub 55 is mostly on the lower end of the spectrum and absolutely terrible to PUG, especially brayflox, always without fail there's a lv 32 DRK who has no clue how to tank, with the occasional brilliant run but these very rare. On the other hand 55+ tends to be hit and miss mostly and i'd describe it as mediocre on average.
I guess i attract all the "bads" then :L
Either that, or you just see "bads" everywhere because of confirmation bias or you simply have high standards.
If I'm holding every player to the standard of the top 10%, 90% of the playerbase will be considered bad. People do that all the time in MOBAs and then wonder why there are so many "bads".
Personally, I can't complain about the duty finder. Some runs are rocky, some are smooth, but they all are successful in the end. Even the Brayflox ones where the DRK decides to use toadskin armor >_>
I actually had a Brayflox run, where the Tank was losing aggro all run long (that wouldn't be a problem), but they were unable to dodge the linear AoE of the last boss and died to it 4 times (= it hit him more than 6 times). If after 6 times you can't dodge this easy AoE, that won't change, so we had to kick him...
And there you go making assumptions, just because i have quantifiable evidence. For your information my standards are about the same the game sets for itself, i expect a minimum contribution from people and nothing more. Which is pretty much expecting people to have basic reading skills and use buttons in the right order which i could train a monkey to do in all honestly. I'm thrilled when someone cares enough to contribute more, but i gave up expecting anything from players years ago in any game. But eventually you have to draw the line.
And once again someone's response to any criticism is stupid and outlandish. What prompted you to give that example? Are you saying you expect players whose only job in most cases is hitting buttons to do damage to get out DPS'd by a healer juggling far more responsibility. AND A HEALER ROUGHLY 70 ILV'S BEHIND THEM IN GEAR. at that!? No one is expecting world expert levels of play, only the god damn basic play level even the game wants to you achieve. If you think anyone really expects randoms to get that good, you need to stop spilling these incorrect and stupid thoughts and keep them to yourself, because you devalue not only your own argument but promote it in others which leads no where...
Im sorry but if there's that large a discrepancy and they still can't outperform me they are clearly BAD no way around that. If you think otherwise you are incredibly ignorant.
Even with comparably geared players at 60 i out perform many them just by throwing some dots out and letting my fairy heal while i watch anime. If i can out perform them with bare minimum effort on my part as a healer what does that say about dedicated damage dealers and their skill level? That it is absurdly pathetically low to the point i might as well solo the dungeon...
As the gear discrepancy closes and mechanics force me to heal harder, so does my DPS lead shrink, but 90% of the time i am on par with DPS in DF. Even under geared compared to me, if they had even a single braincell they can out DPS me by miles.
And i see this level of play ALL THE DAMN TIME
Healers standing there like a statue for like 2 minutes when the tank actually doesnt need heal.
95% of dps player base that doesnt know how to press the key for LB (This actually pissed me a lot)
I had a qarn hm run with a warrior who literally never used an enmity generating skill. Not even once through the whole dungeon. And had the nerve to mark targets. If it weren't for myself and the black mage being uber geared we would not have cleared.
Here are some fun ones:
Running Brayflox as AST, checking the tank's gear and it's level 23-24 gear... Alright. Good thing I have a regen and I was lucky that a few Boles dropped early. Fortunately a few tank pieces dropped during the dungeon so it became progressively easier to heal, but aggro was still all over the place even though the tank did seem to have some idea of what they were doing (like they knew when to stun bosses). The NIN died from a cleave attack by the first boss that got the tank and myself as well (who, of course, have healing priority), but other than that there were no casualties. The BLM kneeled to me (xD) and I got all the comms.
Then there was the Fractal run I did (as DRG) with a BRD friend of mine. Went off fine except half way through the final boss my friend's cat decides to power down his PC. :rolleyes: Still went fine though and we finished the boss in good time despite being one dps down and the lack of LB.
And finally, trial roulette (as BLM) dropped me in an in progress Steps of Faith.... which turned out to be a flawless run. So thanks to whoever decided to ragequit before they'd even started. :)
I'm not entirely sure the tank who used nothing but Riot Blade until our healer lost his shit with him and initiated a vote kick wasn't some kind of bot.
I sympathize with the undergeared, though. I had to buy most gear while leveling bard because I got almost exclusivelyHotel CaliforniaTam-Tara in roulette and queuing for specific instances could take an hour with no usable drops, anyway. On a small server, some low-level items can spike to ridiculous prices (or have no listings at all).
Another story.
Doing Titan Hard on my alt because doing relic for the lols. Anyway get a group that seems to have least 4 newbs. Quick recap(whiny WHM doing it) and LET'S GO! Wipe. Another recap, LET'S GO! Wipe #2. WHM starts whining people to stay away from "brown stuff" because it's impossible for him/her to keep people alive(other healer doing better job than he/she but newb still) and I'm like ok(?)
My inner WHM is telling me to check her/his gear and I cry salty tears. His/her best gear is AF2, accessories aroun 35 (RINGS WERE 28) and weapon 35lvl. We win on 3rd try and I tell WHM to upgrade his/her gear asap, least the accessories.
So yesterday we ventured into alex for those last 10 esos we needed for the weekly cap.
We got A4. I was a NIN.
For some reason I felt The Manipulator hated me to no end. It literally wanted me dead. Outside of the Aggro systems all the mechanics have some RNG factor to them in this one fight... but even so...
OT died at some point doing the spheres that were targetting me while I was happily hitting the one leg. I spyed the spheres coming my way and no one else braving to intercept them. The solution? RUN AWAY!! I literally kitted the spheres for nearly 20 seconds :| (Yup, NIN can outrun them). I survived that somehow...
After that it was a trainwreck, I got targetted by lasers 2 times in a row, then quarenteened, then lasers again, quarenteened once more and by the time we returned, everyone else was dead... then I got targetted by lasers again and was the end of that one try :T
Seriously, I swear that at one point the healers were focusing more on me than the tanks themselves out of how much the mechanics wanted me dead... and yet I died last \o/!!!
We did beat it in 2 more tries, since on the 2nd try the one Tank killed half the party XD
Got my Esos for capping, the last Shaft I needed for a body piece, and and 3 comms for the comic relief.
Most of my DF adventures are pretty much a hit and miss sort of thing... on the same day I got two disastrous trial runs (one steps of faith where everyone simply refused to man the second canon and a chrysalis where people would not take orbs and tank would not run to meteors fast enough) and an amazing dusk vigil run where the healer greeted everyone with a joke and everything was all fun and laughs until the end. Admittedly, the runs where I leave feeling frustrated and more frequent then the ones that leave me feeling content but well at this point I can't really claim to not know what I'm signing up for...
There's just... one run that left me scarred for life.
It was my first time running dezmael darkhold (on white mage), and two of the other three people were also new to the dungeon.
Tank was overall okay at holding aggro and such but didn't know he was supposed to tank the adds before first boss on the purple zones and for some reason refused to listen to the ninja (who was the only one not new to the dungeon) when he said to go there - I'd like to excuse him by adding that the ninja wasn't really providing any reasons to go to the purple zones, but tbh when you're new and have no clue what you're doing the best option is really to follow the advice that you're given... So basically it was hell for me to heal everyone from the fairly strong aoes the boss kept dropping.
Come first boss, andtank finally realizes he's supposed to go to the purple zones to avoid excessive damage, but doesn't pull boss to said zone because he was apparently blind and saw neither party chat not the invulnerability mark on the boss.
Wiped during trash pulls between first and second boss because of those annoying frogs and tank not being sure how and where to pull the trash.
Second boss was terrible because the black mage refused to interrupt casts to avoid aoes and I depleted my MP reviving them, while keeping the tank alive who was not very good at dodging either. We wipe again.
Last trash pulls were relatively uneventful... but on the last boss mage kept dying because again they refused to avoid the column aoe, and took ages to switch from the boss to the crystals. I run out of MP from reviving them and healing everyone else, tank dies because I have no MP left, I try to apologize and get killed myself. Ninja leaves while cursing us all D: everyone else leaves without further comments and I touch neither WHM nor dezmael darkhold for some time after this.
i cri ;o;
Had a fellow blm in a Fractal Continuum run absolutely refuse to use AOE on anything in the dungeon. Looking at his cast bar, without fail, every pull he would Blizzard III, Thunder I, then Fire I until oom, transpose and wait for a tick then repeat
WHM called him out and asked why he wasn't using aoe, he goes "I am", whm responds with "I have you on focus target, no, you're not, the other blm (me) is"
on top of that, on bosses or single targets, maybe once or twice he popped enochian and got off a single Fire IV or Blizzard IV, so basically just terrible all around
a bit into the run, whm starts helping out on mob pulls with holy spam, I give him a /clap
made it through the run, but man, I've had plenty of blm's in lv 60 dungeons that refuse to use enochian and F4/B4, but rarely one that just didn't aoe :/
I don't understand people. Why not use abilities... Granted for blm it's about positioning but still. I ran Fractal two times today and both times I was second on dps (as a whm). People won't use AOE, especially melee classes, ninja just hits one target even tho tank pulled 7 mobs. It makes me cringe.
Not a dungeon horror story - although actually it was freakishly scary. Our Twin didn't turn invisible; she decided to come out of the arena after us during a wipe! Scariest thing you can imagine, this HUGE, MAN-EATING thing tearing up the ramp out of the arena towards you after you've just got up, humbled and confused. So much squealing on Skype. I think one of us screen-spotted it, wonder if they still have it. It was pretty funny once we all recovered from the shock and the fact they we'd all run around shrieking instead of being bad-ass adventurers
I've got some stories while waiting on my dungeon queue! Not all are bad...okay we'll start with the bad one.
Story time #1: While I was leveling AST, I got a Dzemael with a drk tank. He was seeming an okay guy, was chatting which I enjoy, we made some jokes. I noticed that, while he was using grit, he'd turn it off to turn darkside on, use blood weapon, then turn darkside off and grit back on. The fact he was turning them on and off so often, which actually used a lot of mp with how often he was switching grit, I wondered if he realised you could have both on at the same time (even though I get turning off grit for blood weapon, although with blood price it's never needed at that lvl)
Instead, he immediately started snapping at me, that having both on lowers your dps. "Huh? No it doesnt" Points out how grit is -20% damage dealt, it's pointless to have darkside on "Yeah but with them both on it'd only be -5% total" he kept going on and on that I dont know how to play DRK, despite I was using one of the titles that comes from tanking x amount of 8 man instances as DRK, so on and on. I just wanted to get the dungeon done, was willing to let it go and reminded him just the way he was acting made me wonder if he didnt realise they could both be on. Even when I wasnt saying anything, he just. kept. going. Constantly grumbling about how he did his research, I dont know what it's like to play drk, until I just got tired and left.
Story time #2: Back when ST was the current towers raid, I was trying to clear CT on my alt to unlock it, and of course, it was just filled with people being trolls. Could never get past the first boss because people would kill skeles next to each other, if they killed them at all, kept turning the dragon etc. After several weeks of wiping, I finally said in alliance chat how I've been trying to beat this for 3+ weeks and never can because every group keeps trolling and then abandoning. Im not one to usually talk in alliance chat, because I dont like to troll, or invite people to troll. When I did that though, I was pleasantly surprised when people started saying stuff like 'okay guys, lets pull this together and stop messing around now, someone needs to clear.' After that, the run was as smooth as could be, I thanked everyone in alliance at the end, and had a good day.
Story time #3: ...actually my dungeon finally popped so maybe later
Got a party in DF for Copperbell Mines yesterday. I queued as a Thaumaturge,, we got a scholar, an arcanist and a warrior as tank. Everything was going well untill the scholar dc'd and tank went ahead and pulled mobs because the healer didn't move along so we all didn't see untill then that he dc'd. Anyways, no problem we managed to pull off because I kept the tank alive. Healer came back online and was displeased that we went into first boss without him. We explained him that he dc'd without us seeing the dc symbol next to his name.
So we proceed, ARC somehow summoned a yellow carbuncle, so I tell him "You can better summon the blue carbuncle, the yellow one may annoy the tank". The ARC apologised and said that he forgot to summon the blue one. Upon this the Scholar started being rude. He said: "No matter what I do I will get the agro anyway". I told him that I was talking to the Arcanist since he's the one who summoned the wrong carbuncle and not the scholar. The scholar continued to say "I'm a lvl 60 scholar, and I queued for duty roulette, I will get the agro so what is your point exactly? You missed my point"
I told him that I got his point perfectly fine, but I was not talking to him, sigh.
So we continue again, during the entire run the scholar keeps ketting the agro because he is more focused on dps'ing than healing. The tank had major issues keeping the agro and he always stood on the brink of dying all the time. We get to last boss, so I politely ask the scholar to stop showing off and concentrate himself on healing only so the tank can learn his job because he was a newbie.
The scholar basically tells me to shut up and keep dps'ing. I told him that I wouldn't help him because he was being very rude and not helpful towards the tank at all. We managed to kill the boss and before we leave the dungeon, scholar continues to say that I am terrible and that I won't care for newbies if I were a max level character as well. I told him that I already have a max lvl character and that I, unlike him, love to help newbies out and don't like to be an ass like him.
Sigh, that was one terrible scholar and ashame that others in the party didn't say anything this whole time other than that be both were bad because we were arguing.
And ofcourse, I didn't get any player recommendation, meh :(
As it is start of the week I decided to do few Fractal runs in DF for the tomes. Right at the first pack it was obvious that mobs died at snail pace. The reason behind it was a monk who used neither positionals, neither aoes.
On the second pack he just stood on the spot doing nothing. When the pack was killed, he decided to go afk for a minute.
After a while we killed the first boss and the monk decided to inform us that they were going afk again and that we should kill the trash before they return...
I put on my "are you kidding me face" and started to search for the vote kick button. Before I could reach it, the vote kick had been already started by our tank and the slacker removed afterwards.
As the replacement we got a new monk who was tearing down mobs like they were made of butter and finished the run in record time.