Not sure if this is the right place (PF vs DF)

I'm working on leveling my other DoM jobs now that I have Summoner to lvl 50 (endgame content looks scary ;_; ) and I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to do something I never did (well, never needed to) on my Summoner:

Run dungeons outside of story-purposes.

During my story runs, I was always queued in with a friend of mine who explained dungeon mechanics to me as well as mentioned my role in dealing with boss fights as ranged DPS. However, in my experiences with CNJ and THM (soon to be WHM and BLM now that I have both at 30 ^_^), I've been a bit wary of how others do dungeons and have tried to adapt. But one thing I fear will be a problem: the non-story dungeons I unlocked but never ran.

Now, the question: what do I use for first timing things like Sunken Temple of Qarn and Cutter's Cry and beyond? DF or PF?

Usually I only see people using PF for like Ex fights, Coil, ST, etc. So I would honestly use df for the dungeons.

If you use PF you can talk beforehand to your team mates and plan to do several runs. People are shy to start teams in the PF.

In the DF, you can have nice or not so nice people but you too can hide behind the fact that you will probably not ever see them again.

duty finder is good for when you need to just jump right into a dungeon and do it. Party finder is good if you need to specify anything for your party before doing a dungeon. For example you are new to a dungeon, so if you make a party in party finder, you could put in the comments that it's a learning run or something like that. This will increase your chances of getting new people but also people who don't mind helping people new to the dungeon.

Party Finder for <50 dungeons does not usually fill up fast at all - unless it's specifically for EXP (eg Dzemael Darkhold first room spam)

Duty Finder is sufficient. Just say you've never done them before and you'll likely get a quick explanation of them. Even though places like Qarn are fairly challenging to new players, to you - who's already been to 50 - they shouldn't be a problem.

Garlyle, I guess you brought up what made me create this thread in the first place: non-standard dungeon runs. If these kinds of things are usually organized beforehand I'm okay, but I guess I'm a little afraid of being dumped into a speedrun or other non-standard run through DF for my first time for these dungeons I've never been in. If I queue as THM/BLM, I think I wouldn't have too much trouble going with the flow, but as CNJ/WHM, it would be a bit disorienting (and I just got through a run last night of Copperbell where the party DIDN'T blitz the final boss, meaning I was stuck with the tank trying to grab adds and the LNC/DRG ended up tanking the boss... although that's more communication error, I suppose).

In general, nobody will speedrun any dungeon below Lv.50 so you can rest easy on that. Also, speedruns do require a minimum amount of equipment to work, so DF parties are not likely to do it unless everyone is i90 or higher. Most players when they receive the message informing them there's a new player, will not do a full speedrun. If enough players are overgeared, they may pull 1 or 2 mobs at once, but never the entire train. Good parties who do this will tell you specifically when they are going to stop and teach you the speedrun mechanic. If you run normally, there usually is only 1 trick you need to know for each type of enemy to handle them. They'll tell you the basic boss mechanics though as those are always the same whether it's a speedrun or not.

As for the Copperbell Mines boss, it sounds like somebody did not explain the fight or the intended strategy to the tank. The adds on the last boss cannot be tanked. They will relentlessly attack the wall until it breaks and release a flood of adds. Once that wall breaks, the adds can be tanked, but usually, the boss is dead by then. DPS can delay them by killing the adds, but melee have a hard time running back and forth between the adds and boss. Tanks will sometimes move the boss closer to adds for the dps' benefit, but there's no point for tanks to build up enmity on the adds. The strategy where you simply focus on the boss and ignore the adds is the anomaly, called the burn strategy.

The burn strategy for copperbell boss was not the standard run but one that evolved for getting new players past it. It is designed to be simplified, especially on the dps and tanks who might not know where to position themselves optimally to direct the boss' aoe attacks away from the other party members and help the dps constantly attack the adds and boss. It also places some pressure on players being overgeared (more than the lv.15 quest armor/weapon and lv.5 accessories most players would have on the first time) to kill the boss before the adds pile up and kill you. It makes the fight simpler but the downside is that after enough new players have been taught that method, it becomes the new standard, although it is intuitively not how the classes should be playing in that fight. Another case-in-point is Coil T2. I highly doubt the developers intended for players to wait 8 minutes dancing outside the last boss for the countdown to reach 0, nor to break the usual party dynamic of 2 tanks, 4 dps, and 2 healers.

If your tank was trying to grab adds on the Copperbell boss, that's players not actually knowing how the bosses work, not a non-standard strategy, as mentioned. And it's a good reason to speak up when you're doing something you're unfamiliar with (it is Copperbell though, where the damage is hilariously low)

Speedruns don't really happen in low-level dungeons, especially not in Duty Finder. Largely because speedrunning the level 50 dungeons is reliant on the fact you can be 30 levels overgeared for them to create the power gap, it's actually very difficult to speedrun them. You only get two types of clears - full clears (all rooms, chests, etc.) and quick clears (skipping unnecessary trash/treasures/side rooms but that's it; mob groups will still be pulled one group at a time almost always).

The ONLY time you see 'speciality' runs of low-level dungeons is when they're specifically organized - largely because they arent practically via Duty Finder (Dzemael Darkhold EXP runs, for instance, involving clearing all the trash mobs in the first leg, abandoning before the first boss, and re-entering the dungeon).

there is a simple advice on what to do with dungeons you don't know, be it low level or lvl 50 dungeons: Tell the party right away and ask them to explain things to you. In most cases they will, and if they don't, they can't blame you for not knowing the mechanics. Usually i also said it when it was my second or third time in a dungeon and asked them to tell me if i do something wrong. By then i was usually confident enough about knowing what to do.

Now, when it's about the hard and extreme mode primal fights, it's best to read/watch a guide beforehand, as well as tell the party, but mention that you read/watched some guide. The guides give you a good idea on what to expect, but nothing beats the actual experience.