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

Went into Saint Mocianne's Arboretum as part of a tank and two DPS premade on my BLM. First healer we get has good gear but plays like they bought the account or was carried and AFKs out. Second healer we get comes in muttering some gibberish about the moon guiding her or something. Proceeds to try and argue with the tank DURING the Queen Hawk fight over us skipping adds. Somehow we make it through the fight and by now we're getting pretty sick of her entitled self as she tries to call the shots. Then she lets the whole group wipe to prove some kind of point. At this point I'm not sure if I should refer to this little punk as a bad healer or bad human being. Group decides to kick her, of course... she's refusing to do her job in favor of argueing. She even dares us to saying she was leaving anyway. Never seen three people trip over themselves so badly to initiate a vote kick in my life. We get a pretty great healer after and proceed to clear it without issue moments later.

I had the Qarn run from Hell today... <.<; I was leveling my ninja. I have a bad habit of randomly examining people, so I already had a certain sense of foreboding when I noticed that the tank was in all Dragoon gear. He and the bard were both clearly first timers, though. I figured maybe it was just the gear he had and we'd be fine... First pull, I throw out a Katon and suddenly I have three angry mobs looking right at me. So I hit Shade Shift and burn one, praying someone will take the other two--but when their agro goes away, I realize it's the healer they've decided to murder. Being a good healer, he survived and we killed the pack, though. Afterward I'm still trying to be nice. "I think syncing down turned off your Defiance," I tell the tank... Nope, no Defiance, next pull is much the same. I suggest he should aoe more and the healer says overpower should be his best friend, but it still takes a couple more pulls for him to actually listen.

When he finally turned on Defiance, he could keep agro at least. But then we get to the first boss, I explain the Doom mechanic, and we pull--well, after a long wait, did I mention this guy started randomly rp slow walking at times? And would wait like 30sec between pulls? And suddenly boss is facing me, not because I have agro but because this warrior has decided to spin in a circle, which he did throughout the whole boss, cleaving me more than once. First Doom and the bard dies and goes back to start... Tanks lasts maybe two more, never touching the bees as I kill them all, before he eats a Doom too. So then I'm dps tanking the last 30% of the boss, because the tank got resed but didn't have Provoke. Despite a poorly-timed Blood for Blood, I survived!

So we trudge onward. Tank holds agro fine when he had Defiance on, but sometimes it would randomly just turn off and I don't even... begin to know what was going through this guy's head. >.>; I tell him we have to kill the faces on the glowy platforms but he refuses to move them, leaving it to me to tag them when they come back to life and drag them into place. Fine, whatever... Getting to the second boss, I notice that the Bard has been playing Mage's Ballade non-stop the whole dungeon. <_<; I ask her to only use it if someone needs mp, because it's really hurting her dps, and amazingly she listens. Again the tank plays spin-the-boss with the golem, but at least people manage to dodge the aoes pretty well.

Final boss goes off without a hitch at least. Always found that one really easy compared to the other two... Despite that I had a nasty headache and was gnashing my teeth the whole way through, though, I made myself stay polite and still explained the bosses--at least that much paid off when I got all three commendations. XD One of the rare times I've had more than one as a dps. I kinda desperately wish I could've given that healer more than one commendation, though, because in addition to all his other shortcomings, our dear warrior was pretty damn squishy, too. And he barely out-dpsed the freaking -astro- healer.

...one amusing thing, though. At one point I accidentally gave a Goad to the astro instead of the warrior. A moment later, I noticed he'd reciprocated with an Ewer. XD;;;;

I had a run through the Praetorium the other day. Had a SCH who was new to the duty, so I (PLD MT for the run, the other tank was undergeared) made an effort to wait for them (didn't take long, they were going through cutscenes very quickly) and give them a brief overview of each boss.
At the Magitek Armor bit, the SCH missed interacting with the identification console, so I went back down the lift, and guided them where to go with the armor. Group reaches the end of the section as we get to the lift to the research level, leaving us to get there on foot. An impatient NIN barely waits for us to get in visual range before pulling the next boss, and the NIN starts pulling each boss from there. For the second part of the Ultima fight, I gave the SCH a tip - that they could swap to Cleric Stance when it teleports to the middle, as there was no more outgoing damage - before pulling Ultima. Immediately after that fight, the other tank informs me that "someone needs to file a hurt feelings report", because someone (presumably the impatient NIN) tried to kick me.

Walked out of there with 6 commendations and a hint of rage that someone would attempt to kick a person who was trying to be nice, helping a newbie.

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Originally Posted by CyberForte

Again the tank plays spin-the-boss with the golem, but at least people manage to dodge the aoes pretty well.

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That golem actually doesn't have a proper aggro table. It'll aim aoe attacks at random people.

As for the rest of it... maybe he was roleplaying as a bad tank? o.O

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...one amusing thing, though. At one point I accidentally gave a Goad to the astro instead of the warrior. A moment later, I noticed he'd reciprocated with an Ewer. XD;;;;

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Lmao. Sounds like something I would've done. xD

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

That golem actually doesn't have a proper aggro table. It'll aim aoe attacks at random people.

As for the rest of it... maybe he was roleplaying as a bad tank? o.O

Lmao. Sounds like something I would've done. xD

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I know--I meant while he was tanking he would spin it around, not just the random agro portion where it goes off to chase down a healer/dps. It actually does have a normal agro table too, part of the time. I think the frontal cone it does toward the tank is like "Boulder Blow," but then after the first soulstone shatter, it also will go off toward someone and do "True Grit" (cone) -> Avalanche (line) -> ??? (stun) -> Obliterate (room-wide aoe). But yeah. XD;;; It was... quite the run. <.<; I liked the healer though!

This moment when an astrologian draws the cards they actually need. My co-healer died in Void Ark, I picked her up and then drew three ewers in a row for her :o

Dusk Vigil, me(healer) plus two FC buddies (DerPS)

Lovely patch of 3.15 hit us and we all got to point where we have to do HW lvling dungeons, we que up and get WAR tank. First two pulls I'm wondering why this guy is getting hit like a trainwreck, I'm barely keeping him alive. Friend notices that he forgot Defiance and we ask him to put it on. He does and apologizes, np it happens.
This guy is STILL getting hit like crazy and I have to WORK IT. I start watching him move closely and notice, he isn't using any defesive cooldowns, nothing at all. Nothing to make my job little bit easier. Few close calls but we manage to get Dusk Vigil done.
We decide to take little break and que up 5 mins later to Sohm Al. GUESS WHO WE FIND. Yep, the SAME WAR.

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Originally Posted by Cylestea

currently in a void ark where we wiped on port ventilation room due to people not killing knots and standing on the short circuiting pads

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Hey I think I was there with you. That was a tough carry.
You know my party kicked me for trying to explain shit? I mean yeah I was a little snarky about it but you wipe 3 times to not standing on the pad, get it explained to you, then continue blaming the tank that pulled the wrong morbol while you stood there trying to provoke it instead of fighting the one that was running wild killing everybody resulting in a giant clusterfuck entirely on one side of the arena opposite a pad, you kinda deserve snark.

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Originally Posted by Heliantheae

And to stay on topic, I have Void Ark story to share too. I was on my third run in a row trying to get a MNK equip. And sometime during the second boss I picked up a couple of the other DPSes. The were following me around and staying around where I was. At first I didn't think much of it. With 24 other people running around it's not like there's a designated spot. But the hat dropped and everyone else took off, but me and the other two. And then I got it and equiped and took off and then they followed. It was like that the rest of the dungeon, they stuck with me and did what I did. But here's the scary thing, I never learned the mechanics of Void Ark. I learned by doing what they were doing: by following other people.

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In general you start to recognize patterns. The pads in the morbol pit make the same noise as the pads in Labyrinth of the Ancients. Obviously you have to stand on them to do something. Knots grow. So do bombs shortly before they detonate and wipe you. Obviously you should kill them before they do something nasty. If there's something to punch that isn't the boss you should probably punch it. If you punch it and die, look for buffs or debuffs that you don't recognize.

Doing Aery today for relic. Boyfriend randomly d/c's right before the last boss. I'm on Skype with him via his phone and he starts swearing up a storm, he's not getting any connection at all. We wait for him for about 10 minutes while he's on the phone with ISP.

Apprently his area in NYC is completely without net and it won't be back until at least 6am EST. Poor guy went to bed so upset.

Got Library today in Leveling roulette as Scholar. Seems to be going a bit slow and there were a couple of facepull moments, but I kinda chalked it up to 'whatever, it's a leveling dungeon' until we got to the first boss. That's when I had my first inkling of something being severely wrong with the party. Firstly, the Dragoon and Ninja (who had the same last name on their character) kept standing in either the frost or the slow/heavy AoE. Secondly, the Dragoon died every time the boss used Disclosure. After 3 deaths I just quit res'ing him and dps'ed as much as I could with the NIN being bad (seriously, Ninjas run fast, how do you stand in things?).

We finish the boss and things go back to semi-normal, the worst that happens is another Dragoon facepull on a trash pack (which is getting more and more annoying). The Paladin was in Sword Oath for awhile until I flat-out asked him to change because he wasn't keeping hate off of either me or the DPS. We get to the second boss and the Dragoon facepulls it. Then it turns out he and the Ninja don't seem to understand how the tether/fireball mechanic works. The DRG gets one and just kites it around the room till it disappears. The NIN starts to do the same till I tell her to hit the boss with it. They both stand in Gale Cut a few times and I'm getting more and more peeved at the fact that they don't want to move out of things.

After the second boss dies, the Dragoon goes and facepulls the 3 Imps. The Paladin and I stand there and just sort of watch him die, then he picks up the mobs and I resume healing and DPS'ing as normal. At this point I'm wondering to myself how the Dragoon ever got to level 60. There's not much more in the way of shenanigans until we get to the last boss, aside from things dying more slowly than they should. Whatever, we're almost done. (Later when I checked out of sheer morbid curiosity, I was doing more DPS on the trash packs than either of the DPS were and almost as much as they were on the bosses. Ugh. Just... ugh.)

Then we get to the last boss and the real fun starts. The Dragoon doesn't bother moving void sparks to the edge of the map. He just drops them right on top of himself while he tunnel visions the boss, which means that there's 3 people picking up the stacks. At one point the tank had 8. We still manage to fumble through till the last set of gates with only one add in the second set. I can't even DPS because everyone's taking such massive damage every time the boss twitches in their general direction due to all the stacks. Me and the tank stack on one of the open gates with 3 rings on it. The DRG and NIN keep hitting the boss for several seconds... then both run to the other gate. I sprint after them but don't get there in time. Both adds get summoned and we die a horrible death because the entire fight has been vuln stack hell for everyone in melee range, which means I'm alone very quickly.

I say to the party to quit dropping void sparks right on top of people and ask that they be moved to the edge of the map instead. No response from either the DRG or the NIN (though the NIN was doing it correctly). We get back to the boss room and... the DRG facepulls it. The NIN starts fighting too. I've had it at this point. I tell the party that I'm not going in and I stand way back so my fairy is out of range. The Paladin stands outside with me and we watch them both die. I start a vote kick on the DRG, which passes (so I can only assume that the PLD was as annoyed at this point as I was) and we instantly get a MNK replacement. The NIN drops party (lol enjoy that penalty) and we end up waiting around 5 minutes for another DPS. We get a Bard, the boss dies without a hitch.

I seriously think the DRG was trolling. Nobody can be that freaking awful without actively trying.