New player: Party formation & strategy Q.

My friends and I are new to the game and we got our first pt last night. It was basically 5 mobs pulled and a mass slaughter while everyone overlapped aoe ss and needed cures. I'm only 31 so I had to single cast SS as whm. But they would cast protect non stop like they didn't know it was on. I couldn't use an assist BC I didn't know who to assist so id use occasional AoE nuke if people were cured. And kept getting cured over, war got hit was in yellow tossed a cure saw 3 others cast it, so it was wasted mp. first is this what pts are like? What am I too expect? Or was this a fluke? I'm use to 11, but I understand it won't work like that. But last night was just...nasty. So im curious on party mechanics basically and how close the one I had last night compares.

You appear to have picked up a (excuse the pun) pick up group.
PUGs tend to be that sort of spastic unless you got experienced players and even then it still requires a little bit of planning. As it is it looks like you guys had no idea who needed to do what and so everybody tried to cover all bases.
Most parties aren't really like that, though i'm only experienced in partying with my own friends, however.

what levels were the other ppl in the party and what level mobs were you fighting? If you guys are all 30-31 and pulling lvl 40 mobs then yes things are going to get nasty (you should be doing lvl 35-37ish mobs at that range). Also, fighting 5 mobs at once can get a little tricky even if they are in your level range.

This is not generally how a party goes. Normal parties consist of a CNJ/WHM healing and then either a tank or an archer pulling mobs. If you designate one puller and they only target one mob usually you will only get 2-3 mobs total. It sounds like you had multiple ppl pulling different mobs and thats why you were getting so many. Also, if you do have a group of 2 or 3 mobs everyone should still focus on whatever the main tank is fighting so he will drop faster. If each player takes his own mob then it will take forever to kill anything = lots of death.

Sometimes a tank will throw out a protect if its down in order to draw more hate, but like you said to keep casting it over top of each other is ridiculous. Protect does not go away with damage like Stone Skin does so it is a wast to do it over and over. PPL should be watching the party list to see if buffs are up or not.

Good luck finding other parties and hope you enjoy the game!

Usually when you get to raptors or Natalan from 40-50 you'll see the organization. Most parties I've had from 20-39 were hectic cure fests and everyone casting Fire (including melee) instead of using weaponskills and stuff... It gets better!

I am 1 of those friend he speaks of. Yes it was a pickup party that we were randomly invited to by a linkshell we are in, but we really expected more. I told him that they probably were just carelessly playing. In fact, he playing as a conjurer/whm, I as the gladiator/paladin come, and a friend third frdriendon ranger played much better than that players. Pick up parties in 11 or even better than this. Maybe we just need 8 more organized and more experienced linkshell to be a part of Ad US players.

maybe we are missing something. Without battery seems is there a reason to organize or orchestrate the battle flow? is there something similar, or are we just taking on rolls and fulfilling them.

long story short, we just don't like noob play.

Erm- Pardon my incapacities as I am not native to english but "without battery seems is there a reason to organize..." looks like a terribly broken phrase, if you could perhaps explain it in more words, I could perhaps offer some enlightenment.
Although even when levelling it is generally a good idea to organize the party and not everyone just do your own random thing, although the closer your approach to the enemy's level the less that need arises. I do know that i've suffered a fair few times due to having a small derp moment and attacking far before the Gladiator had set himself.

Well thank you all for your advice, I think now we can build a pt. Take that pt and know what direction to take it in. I was concerned that going berserk on everything at once was the norm. We will build a light pt, use our assist macros and see what we can't learn by doing. Still any advice is always welcome. hmm now that I think about it that were raptors. Nasty little critters! I guess we will use mooglebox to find where to level and work from there

Ah, well if it was raptors, make absolutely sure you're not hitting them from behind. If you get hit from the tail ability, you and everyone else will take a lot of damage.

A standard setup is PLD/WARx1 DRG/MNK/BLMx5 BRD WHM, you can also use the BRD as a buffing DD and bring two WHM along instead. (Classes work too of course but the BRD will be DDing only and maybe tossing out a cure or two)

Yeah, for raptors DD must stand at the sides to avoid front and rear conal AOE.

Your tank should be the one initiating the fights for initial hate and avoid healing or buffing them until they've gotten hate on every enemy (Rampart and either Second Wind or self-Cure are perfect for this). Stoneskin on the tank before every pull is extremely useful for this.

You might even want to stick with a small group of just your friends until you get Sacred Prism. Small party XP is perfectly fine and with a smaller group you will get less enemies at once, just make sure to fight enemies closer to your level. 5 Levels or so above you should be fine. Once you get Sacred Prism you will be able to AOE Stoneskin and it becomes so much easier to manage a large group.

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Originally Posted by Skies

Erm- Pardon my incapacities as I am not native to english but "without battery seems is there a reason to organize..." looks like a terribly broken phrase, if you could perhaps explain it in more words, I could perhaps offer some enlightenment.
Although even when levelling it is generally a good idea to organize the party and not everyone just do your own random thing, although the closer your approach to the enemy's level the less that need arises. I do know that i've suffered a fair few times due to having a small derp moment and attacking far before the Gladiator had set himself.

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No forgive me, I was on my mobile phone. I think I intended to say without battle tactics or skill chaining (ffxi term I know), I see little use for a full time tank. I know there are better parties out there. I just want in them!

When you're levelling, so long as you're not trying to tank things 6-8 things higher than you, then you don't need a "tank" per se. What you want to do in that situation is spread out the hate: make sure the melee get some form of hate on every linked mob, that way a random Protect from a CNJ won't immediately draw aggro. After that, just burn them down one by one and be sure not to stand in the spawn areas if they're aggro mobs. Use Second Wind liberally. If you've got 2-3 Conjurers, you may want to figure out if one of you is on healing duty while the other attacks with Stone/Aero. Each person should be figuring out how much damage they can take over a period of time from any given mob. No hard numbers, just- "can I solo this without dipping into yellow/red health." If your parties get very large, the amount of mobs that will link will go up as well, making coordination even more important.

Hilariously though, when doing stronghold levelling at 45+, "going berserk on everything at once" will indeed be the norm.