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

I had a nice high roulette today.
I was tanking, since I have to level my PLD, I get all loaded and the healer says he's new. Cool, cool. Other two DPS are good bards, so things die quick.
Overall lots of fun, we all talked to each other and OF COURSE I DC right as the Yeti dies.
They were nice enough to wait though. One of the bards DCs right after I come back.. oops. We wait of course.

I like nice friendly parties, especially when I'm tanking because I don't like to do it by myself (without friends), so it helps a lot.

Runnin an alt through the story, got to the first dungeons as a Gladiator. Sastasha went like normal, one other newbie there and the other two were in their 30s, nice run. Tam-Tara though...lvl 60 ninja who's damage spiked hard right at the start of each fight that was ripping hate off me half the time (though luckily the last, and really only for that dungeon, boss I kept on me), and a lvl 57 WHM who for some reason spammed Medica a good bit and also ripped hate off me because of it. No deaths and none of em went under half but it was not exactly a fun time for me. Though I guess better me then an actual newbie tank having to deal with that run.

Also no tank drops at all from that run! Was in all whites but for a shield, which probably wasn't helping anything at all.

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Originally Posted by Morgan

Bole is def card. Ewer is mana. Just in case something was wixed up.

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Oops... yeah... so, I got all the mana cards, that's what I meant ^^' Sorry.

I did the Stone Vigil as part of my main story questline last night. Now I hadn't played the game for some time but I still remember that dungeon as being one of the ones I hated.

The other DPS, Healer and Tank were freshmans to the Stone Vigil so at different parts throughout I tried to offer advice as best I could from memory from what my FC told me when I went through their as a Tank (GLA/PLD).

The abuse I got off the Tank was horrific the same as the other DPS. I used to really like doing DF to kill time and get some XP but the keyboard warriors is getting annoying.

Running Cutter's as BLM, I screw up during second boss because I wasn't paying attention, healer makes snide, snarky statement. I bite my tongue. We get to last boss. No one remembers what it does. I explain the fight.

We wipe about 5-6 times because healer and DRG keep dying seconds into the fight. After the first few wipes though, the drg starts dodging and it's the healer that keeps messing up. Last run, boss is almost down, healer dies again, drg dies shortly after popping the LB, tank dies, and I kill the boss myself with about 5% left. Healer says nothing. I wish everyone a good night and be on my way.

Not the most exciting story by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to think that there's a moral in here somewhere about not being a jerk.

Girlfriend and I had a pretty miserable run of... Aery I think it was? That or Sohm Al. The one with Nidhogg's dragon-waifu.

Run started out pretty messy. The Dark knight ran away from protect, and also didn't bother turning Grit or Darkside on. He's levelsynched so I can forgive forgetting grit but I'd think any Dark knight worth their salt would check for dark side... oh well. We both point it out to him politely and he turns it on. No problem.

First pull starts - both the dragoon and I pull threat off him at some point.
Second pull - same issue.

We keep doing pulls like this until we get to the first boss.

It hadn't been so terrible so far that I couldnt' heal it but you could tell the fight was slow. Having us both have to hold back made for a pretty bad time. Well, at least a boss was different. You can be terrible and usually reliably hold hate on a single boss. We all agree to a burn method.

Something wierd happens though. While watching the Dark Knight, I notice his name is grey. He's not out of range - or rather, neitehr of us had moved. The reason his name is grey is because he was devoured by the first boss. Ok, no problem, I can heal that easily.

Then he gets devoured again.
And again.
And again.
And again.

Every time the boss uses devour, he gets hit by the aoe. We finally both start typing 'stop standing in the AoE' 'you can dodge that' 'please dont' get hit by it'

His response?
It's my job to tank and to take damage. You worry about healing.

We both feel our jaw drop. Between this guy and the Black Mage - who we realised is constantly losing their Astral Fire / Umbral Ice stacks and is constantly putting the DRG on follow between pulls - we realise something is fishy with these two.

So we both point out that he wasn't really tanking, and that he was taking damage that lead to him losing threat even easier.

After he tries to defend his tanking, he says "Fine, I'll turn off Darkside and focus on my aggro generation."

I think we both felt the facepalm and laughter even though we werent' in the same room. Ultimately it ended with somoene getting kicked, and I just left in the same instant as did my girlfriend.

Forgot about another from hauuke Manor when leveling my dragoon- tank would pull and then literally spin in circles. Guess he was bored but I've got my heavy thrust positional so it kinda ticked me off, so I quit even trying to hit thr flank because every pull was spin spin spin. Fuck tanks who do that.

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Originally Posted by Veralidaine

Forgot about another from hauuke Manor when leveling my dragoon- tank would pull and then literally spin in circles. Guess he was bored but I've got my heavy thrust positional so it kinda ticked me off, so I quit even trying to hit thr flank because every pull was spin spin spin. Fuck tanks who do that.

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Had the same problem when I played the ninja.
That was in Cutter's Cry, the tank spinned the Chimera like mad while the healer screwed up every single ram voice and dragon voice (guess they were confused about the range of those skills). I cried because I screwed up my combo every single time, the other ninja too...

Oh, got another thing. I met a bard in Netherreap who performed quite an interesting... stance dance. They started with WM on, then turned it off, then turned it on again to use Iron Jaws, then off...
I main the bard. Before I became a bard, I mained the BLM. And when I learned WM, I turned it on and then I never turned it off again. For me, dealing with the cast times is as easy as breathing, yet I understand that some people struggle with it. So, I've met bards using WM all the time as well as bards who never turn it on. But I have never seen a bard performing a stance dance, I mean, how is that even possible? WM has a CD of 15 seconds, just like Empyreal Arrow, and you need Iron Jaws every ~17 seconds, so how on earth does a stance dance work!? Someone tell me!

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Originally Posted by Veralidaine

Running sunken temple on DRG, sprout tank, that's ok, says he needs fights explained, np. Well, get to 2nd boss after a few wipes. Wipe twice on soulstone boss because tank can't keep control of it on first phase and it bashes either my face or the healer. (In first phase tank holds aggro, after first soulstone is dead it kind of does its own thing). All my gear was broke after 5 wipes overall, so I left and went to bed since it was nearly 1am.Nothin against newbie tanks but man it sucks when they can't hold hate. Always a PLD too.

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Just for the record, you do realize that that boss random agros on a healer or dps and runs after them with two aoes regardless of tank's threat, right? Not that agro isn't still something you need to keep, of course, but since that mechanic only starts after you kill the soulstone fotr the first time, it wasn't entirely clear if agro was actually being lost. As far as it always being paladins, sadly paladins only get their tank stance at 40, instead of at 30 like the other two tanks, so they do tend to struggle more with agro. A good player can obviously overcome that, but it is something of a handicap comparatively.

For a story of my own, I was running Tam-Tara as a ninja earlier with this bard who apparently thought the tank was going too slow, because she kept trying to pull extra mobs. The tank almost let her die a couple times, before asking her to stop pulling more--I was personally censuring the bard by denying her Goad while she pulled. She finally did stop again, but she still ran ahead on every pack and later on she started trying to nag the tank to pull more. When I pointed out she was free to run as a tank herself if she was so freaking intent on setting the pace--I especially had no sympathy because her Paladin and Warrior were both 50 like her bard--she answered something along the lines of "I do tank but I need exp" and I just...

I dunno, I guess very few things in an MMO bother me as much as dps trying to pull/force their pace. It reminds me a lot of the WoW community and why I hated tanking undertuned leveling dungeons over there, which was one of the worst parts of playing there and something I was very glad to have escaped here. If I was tanking, would I have pulled more? Probably, though I would've been cautious even so when the healer was a new leaf/first time bonus, but that's me--I'm a somewhat jaded, experienced tank, and that's the pace I find comfortable, healer permitting. It obviously wasn't what our tank was inclined to do, and that's something I think should be respected. Between a TP-limited bard (who did get Goads after she stopped pulling >_>) and a ninja, it's not even like we had stellar aoe dps, so I just... have zero respect for that kind of person and their attitude. She slapped the air at the end too, probably trying to slap the poor tank...

First Story: Aurum Vale while leveling my AST. Had a MNK tank because the PLD wouldn't use shield oath or flash even when repeatedly requested. We somehow got to the last boss eventually then failed the duty because the tank couldn't hold aoe aggro, kept eating fruit even with no debuffs or 1 stack, and kept standing in bad breath.

Second story: Pharaos Sirius HM. BLM rotation for the dungeon was Blizzard IIIx2 Transpose Fire IIIx2 Blizzard III. We eventually asked the to use Fire IV some and they did...twice between Blizzard IIIx2. their MP never dropped below 70%.