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

Not DF, but PF:

Since I'm having company atm I'm a little short on time atm but I choose to join a "clear for a friend"-nidhogg-party while my friend was busy - "clear for a friend" should be done in about 30 minutes, right? It means "Most of us have the kill/full exp and just this one guy needs a bit help now", right?

Apparently this group thought it meant "at least half of us has never seen the fight before and would like to practice it" - thats at least the vibe I got from four of them dying within the first phase. So I asked them about it - wether they want to practice it or clear it for a friend as their PF claimed... and I got greeted with some pretty nasty comments about how this wasnt a farm party and how some of them simply dont know the fight (I even explained I wasnt looking to farm and that I was merely wondering because the performance clearly didnt meet the PF-description) We even pulled again with a DPS missing so "they could see a bit more of the fight" - excuse me? "See a bit more of the fight?" as in: See the adds (but not be able to kill them anyways) within a party that was supposed to just kill this for a friend...?
Dont get me wrong, normally I'm up for helping but its always nice to see that there are not only people who cant read PF-descriptions but also those who cant write them properly... or did "Kill for a friend" means "We will practice this for half of the party from the start" today?

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I choose to join a "clear for a friend"-nidhogg-party

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I've always wondered about these "clear for 'a friend'" parties. If you need a clear for a fight, why not make a party finder yourself, stating "Clear for myself, got experienced friends helping", why have "your friend" set it up for you? And if it truly is set up by an experienced player for their friend who is trying to get a clear, why demand (as they usually do) everyone else to have previous clears when your friend does not? The whole concept just doesn't make any sense to me. :D

I mean, why would I spend my time to help someone's friend to clear a fight, if they can't even bother to put up a party finder for it?!

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Originally Posted by Rymm

... Final Steps of Faith ... there were a lot of groans at the 'first timer' message that popped up ...

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That is a mandatory duty of the MSQ, if you don't get new players there, I wonder were else they must be. That groans seems misplaced and unreasonable.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

That is a mandatory duty of the MSQ, if you don't get new players there, I wonder were else they must be. That groans seems misplaced and unreasonable.

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I actually love doing Final Steps of Faith. It's such an epic fight. Last time I got it, I joined in progress and most of the party had left the newbie before the first pull. So we re-filled, I asked an FC mate to join in progress and take the last dps slot, and it was a bit difficult - people kept dying in the last phase, I kept raising my co healer and other party members over and over again, finally died at the very end but we managed a clear by the skin of our teeth and it felt epic.

It's always so cool to get first timers through that fight.

Worst. Dungeon. Run. Ever.
At least for me.

Queued up into Leveling on Astro and got Cutter's Cry. What do I notice first? The tank only has 100 more HP than I do. We literally wipe to the first pack of mobs because he proceeds to stand on the geysers. A quick of his accessories and... it's all level 1. The fun doesn't stop there though! He's a Gladiator. A joy to heal, let me tell you. In all fairness, he was entirely new to the game. I'd be a bit less... frustrated if he dodged aoes though. By some miracle, we actually make it to Chimera. And this is where it all goes horribly, horrible wrong. Said tank gets hit by nearly ever aoe as per usual but no one can consistently dodge Ram's voice. Seven. Yes, seven attempts and we wound up vote abandoning with only two minutes left. Adding to it all, both DPS were mentors. Nice and a little chatty, especially trying to help the tank, I'll give them that. Unfortunately, like I said... they couldn't dodge any better either.

I swear to god, if I get one more AST using Nocturnal Sect when I'm on SCH...

And like...to make things worse, these ASTs are almost always lazy and/or bad. I just got out of a Ravana run (I know it's not even a remotely hard trial, but still...) when the AST spent the whole time spamming Aspected Helios and couldn't be bothered to dodge anything. At one point they died and I just sat there debating whether or not it was even worth it to rez them because between the two of us, we've spent more time healing her and her alone that the rest of the party combined.

The other night, I queued as PLD with my healer friend for Expert Roulette. We usually go with folks from our FC, but we were having to run a bit later than usual, so we decided to take our chances with just the two of us.

Lo and behold, we get Baelsar's Wall, with a SMN and a BLM. Both of them have flowers, but I've seen some badass flowers, and so here I am thinking we've hit the speedrun jackpot.

First pull I do small to try and gauge how our damage output, and...it takes five minutes. Literally. The first pull of five mobs takes five minutes to die with a BLM and an SMN, both in 230ish gear.

Oh boy.

In order to not give my healer a heart attack when my CDs are cooling down and the mobs still have 70% HP, and in order to let these flowers hopefully find their feet, I continue to do tiny pulls to get to the first boss. But as we're fighting, I decide to take a look at the party frame, and to pay close attention to enemy debuffs so I can see what they're doing.

The SMN has Ifrit out on trash (with Sic on instead of Obey), and is only spamming Ruin (I never see any castbar for Miasma or Bio II). From the debuffs? They're only using Tri-Disaster, and filling in the blanks with Bio. I don't think I actually saw them use Aetherflow, either, and they certainly weren't using Dreadwyrm Trance.

The BLM? Fire and Blizzard spam, no Fire III, no Thunder, and never once used Enochian.

But DPS seemed to be getting slightly better as we progressed, so I had hope for the boss.

This hope was misplaced.

SMN switches to Garuda for the boss. The encounter goes decently until the adds drop. Neither the SMN nor the BLM switches, despite being tethered. SMN dies, healer revives, I try to Clemency the BLM back up, but they go down. One of the adds tethers to me, the other to the healer. Healer goes down. SMN does not revive, and we wipe.

Running back, my healing friend tells the group that the adds need to die ASAP. They are silent. Once again, we start the fight, and it goes well until the adds spawn. It seems they listened, though, because the adds go down just before both of the flowers have died (the BLM is left with less than a thousand HP, and the SMN is toast). SMN gets revived and they get healed, but we're not as lucky on the next round of adds, which kills them, then the healer, then me.

We try it one more time, and I can tell my friend is getting irritated with these people. With her working her ass off to heal us (and me throwing out as many Clemencies and Stoneskins as I can), we get the boss down to 20% before she OOMs and we are overwhelmed.

The vote-abandon passed faster than I have ever seen.

Perhaps it would have gone a little better if I'd taken the time to explain what I knew of these jobs to these folks (such as: Aetherflow is important, Fire III is your nuke, keep your DoTs up at all times, etc.), but when it was already late, I didn't expect these folks to take too kindly to having their jobs explained to them (after all, if someone tried to tell me how to play PLD, I might get a little annoyed).

At the very least, karma was kind to us, as we were paired in full 270 DDs when we requeued, and were out of the dungeon in 15 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Taika

I've always wondered about these "clear for 'a friend'" parties.

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I believe its to "lure" people in - worked with me yesterday xD
"Oh, they're helping a friend to get the kill, so they must know what to do!" - or maybe the friend in question didnt feel confident enough to set up a PF and they were dragged along...? Some might be looking for a carry for their friend when they demand full exp or the kill, so theres that...
To be fair: I get parties that only need a last person or a little extra push often enough when I'm helping out a bunch of strangers in the PF - so normally my experience arent as bad as yesterday (with a healer literally asking what to do with the marks in the first phase - showing that they clearly had no idea of the fight at all...)

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Originally Posted by Galaktica

I swear to god, if I get one more AST using Nocturnal Sect when I'm on SCH...

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i've done this before on accident ._.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

That is a mandatory duty of the MSQ, if you don't get new players there, I wonder were else they must be. That groans seems misplaced and unreasonable.

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I got the feeling it was more of an "Aw man, why couldn't we get an easy roulette?" reaction than anything else. I'll say this for the people who weren't new- no one bailed, even after we wiped a few times and they were very patient in explaining it (multiple times) for the new people who apparently hadn't bothered to watch any guides. No one got snippy or started finger-pointing, they just picked themselves up and were like, "Okay, next time remember to do X mechanic." They might have been a little exasperated, but were far from the level of the toxicity you unfortunately tend to see these days.