Post Your Healing Horror Stories.

[Erit]

Putting this here on behalf of my static WHM, because she's too shy to forum.

You guys know the Vault, yeah? In particular, the final boss of the Vault, "sickness must be purged" and all that rot. Well, I have a story to tell about an inept Dark Knight (me), a tunnel-visioned Summoner, a "typically" disrespectful Ninja (the primary antagonist of our tale [yes I know a lot of Ninjas don't actually do this crap, I have a few on my friends list]) and a poor, put-upon healer who by the end of the run desperately needed a hug.

I, as a tank, struggle to remind myself about the charging knights in that fight, so I usually keep my camera angled facing the south end of the arena because of how I pull the boss. This meant I was eating knights more than I care to admit, making the WHM's job more difficult than I wanted to. On top of this, the SMN liked sitting as far away from the rest of the party as possible because apparently all caster DPS I get stuck with in DF have been told that you take less damage the farther away from the tank you are. And this Ninja sat in the center of the room DPSing the boss. Even when he got chained. Actually, especially when he got chained; I watched him move to dodge Heavensflame and knights with ease. Yes, that old chestnut; the SMN died at least once per each of our three attempts.

We push phase very easily, and I deal with the orbs in my usual fashion of taking out the northernmost one first because it spawns on top of where I usually sit, Plunging to the next and throwing Salted on the third while I work. The other DPS work opposite me like I'd hoped them to, so we clean out the orbs well enough every time. The problem comes when we hit the second leg of the fight; the NIN makes it his mission is life to always be on the opposite end of the arena from the healer, and the SMN is having to run around all the time because of Heavensflames and knights and being chained to the NIN constantly. So naturally everyone is very far away from each other and a WHM's AoE heals can't really do much to hit everyone, and because that fight is insane and both the WHM and I are still getting the hang of it, we wipe a couple of times. After the second failure the NIN (who I soon checked and saw that he had neither CNJ nor ARC levelled) starts to get smarmy with the healer, saying tripe such as "You shouldn't be using cure when people take damage" "You have AoE heals" "The best ones in the game in fact. Hint hint wink wink, it has a two in it". I stay silent because it's the internet and outputting righteous indignation oftentimes doesn't go well, and I convince the WHM of the same, so we just keep going. The first Altar Pyre comes out and everyone takes a chunk of damage but, again, no one is close enough to each other for a Medica II to be anything but a waste of MP. So she starts running around throwing out Cures where needed, and the NIN actually takes the time during the fight to say "wrong spell". We push phase, kill the orbs, and everyone's actually bunched up for once because I was faster at my work this time, so the WHM has a chance to throw out that lovely AoE healing regen goodness, and they snark out a "there ya go". We kill the boss that attempt, no thanks to the NIN, and before he leaves he tells my WHM to "youtube whm my god" and leave before I can chew him out.

I will now take this moment to inform you all that my WHM goes through great pains and spent weeks researching and practicing her job because she wants to be the best healer that she can possibly be. And she's very much the best one I have the honor of knowing and tanking for. That NIN, meanwhile, was one of the more inept DPS I've seen in my short time running HW content.

Thank you, and have a nice day; I sincerely hope you don't need to deal with this nonsense too often.

[NessaWyvern]

Once, before heavenward came out, I was trying to get the ifrit pony as sch in DF. Turns out, the other healer was a leech, he purposefully d/c'd himself at the start of battle, just as the tank pulled (you can't vote kick in battle). The party wiped the first time, the other healer came back at the end of battle, waited till the tank pulled again, then d/c'd again. I managed to successfully solo heal it this time (the dps were more careful this time also and loved my heals ), and the healer joined back right at the end (again) and grabs the horse. :| I was not amused. I saw him next in a titan ex DF group, I chewed him out after he was yelling at people to do their roles. something along the lines of "HAHA!!!! LIKE YOU DID WHEN YOU LEECHED THE IFRIT HORSE!!!!????" Since he managed to piss off everyone else, not just me, we managed to vote kick him out, and we defeated titan ex with the next healer that came along, sadly no horse dropped. :<

Not the first time I have had leeches, this one time, waaay back, I was in the LotA, and my healer partner was a healer that was famous for selling ex kills on our server. I thought "Oh cool, at least my partner is a decent healer" NOPE! He stood still at the start and didn't do sh*t the entire time, every time we vote kicked him, he just joined back in. Made me so mad. He also kept trying to bribe wolves den wins from our pvp linkshell. (our pvp linkshell doesn't win trade, we go head to head at full force for fun :P)

[Serilda]

I was levelling up my AST and decided to clear the last unfinished guildhest from my list for the bonus and for a change of pace. It was Ward Up. I'm pretty familiar with the role (and it's not a very difficult fight to heal) so I was looking forward to a quick, simple experience bonus before moving on to something more challenging.

I should note that I play on a Japanese world which has various advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that people tend to be reasonably respectful in DF and the cringeworthy confrontations that I've seen described in other posts in this thread are extremely rare. Even if you do something outrageously stupid (and I've been guilty of this a few times...) people will generally keep their thoughts to themselves and try to salvage the situation as best as they can. In other words, I've become accustomed to getting great parties in DF and having a bad experience that wasn't caused by myself is extremely rare.

The principle of the Ward Up guildhest, for those who might not know or remember, is that your party has to bring five monsters close to death then kill them all in quick succession or they respawn at full health. I think you can see where this story is going.

We started off well enough; the Dark Knight was tanking effortlessly and I was able to join in and deal some damage. The MNK advised us that he was a relatively new player and hadn't tried this hest before, but he was doing ok. Suddenly, we noticed one of the monsters had died and was about to respawn at full health. "You mustn't kill them," advised the tank politely, "We have to kill them all at the same time."

This happened a few times, and the DRK's tone of voice gradually became more and more strained as he explained the mechanics in detail and gave tips on avoiding DoT abilities and other possible mistakes. I don't usually pay a huge amount of attention to killing blows but I started watching the DPS a little more closely and noticed that it was the DRG who kept deliberately running to the enemies we had burned down and poking them until they died. I checked the party list; his client language was set to Japanese. I joined in with the tank and begged this guy to take notice of our instructions, even switching to English in case he wasn't a native speaker and was genuinely confused.

He ignored everything we said. We tried emotes, sound effects, shouting, begging; the guy wouldn't say a single word in response or stop killing the demons. The maddening thing was that his damage was high enough that he could successfully hold the entire party to ransom in this maddening deadlock for the entire duration of the hest, and because he was only poking the enemies which were already close to death it was surprisingly difficult to let him die (believe me, I tried) - even though he would only have respawned and run back in within seconds. I couldn't kick him because I was stuck in combat. I couldn't even dish out enough DPS of my own to help counter what he was doing.

The tank wondered whether he was a bot. His playstyle seemed far too accurate for that, yet I have no idea whatsoever what he was trying to achieve by making the hest unwinnable until the timer ran out. After 25 minutes of emotional torture the tank apologised and left, probably to go and get some strong alcohol. I persuaded the newbie MNK that we should do the same.

In the end I was too traumatised to go back into DF for the rest of the day and spent 45 minutes writing an extremely passionate report for the customer services team instead begging them to do something about that awful, awful DRG.

[Erim-Nelhah]

In the end I was too traumatised to go back into DF for the rest of the day and spent 45 minutes writing an extremely passionate report for the customer services team instead begging them to do something about that awful, awful DRG.

Good for you on the report, but I wouldn't have put up with a troll (yep, that was a bona-fide troll) for as long as you or your tank did. Next time you see something like this (someone intentionally wiping you by doing mechanics incorrectly), you should give them one warning to stop, then jot their name down to report them, and boot them. After the duty, you can file a report. Enough reports will very likely end up with the person getting banned.

--Erim Nelhah

[Daralii]

Aurum Vale, DRK tank refused to use grit because it reduced their damage.

Still cleared, somehow.

[sarehptar]

I had a healing horror story last night that actually resulted in my first vote abandon of a four-man dungeon in a longgggg time.

Queue'd up for the Vault to level my AST, and we made it to through the trash okay, no problem. First boss took a while but damage in that fight is minimal, so we were fine. I started noticing problems at the second boss. The DPS was so slow in the fight that we had so many aetherial tears up that there were no longer ANY safe spaces put your back to. Many of the tears were overlapping other tears. There was just a big black circle around the outside of the arena. The fight was dragging on way too long, and any time the knockback move happened, players would immediately go sailing into multiple tears and come very close to death. Both tank and one DPS had five stacks of vulnerability towards the end. I was completely out of mana despite using Aether and an x-ether, AND desperately trying to draw Ewer cards. But we held it together and made it through, some how. I was already thinking "Oh god, what is the last boss going to be like..."

Got to the last boss, and sure enough, we have problems immediately because one of the DPS makes no effort to break the chain, so I'm trying to heal massive damage right from the start of the fight and playing catch up from that point on. We make to the fire orbs. DPS is slow, the tank decides to switch into sword oath, and that's really understandable because I am not DPSing that much because I am trying hard to conserve mp because I know I'm gonna need it. We clear orbs, and first big problem: tank doesn't switch back to shield oath. So he starts taking a lot more damage at the same time that the mechanics get more complicated and the DPS who wasn't dodging before... dodges even less now and dies after eating fire and chess pieces and probably also chain to the face. I swiftcast raise that DPS but that and the intense heals needed on the tank drains the mana away so quickly, and I'm ending up taking damage myself trying frantically to heal the others... Eventually, the damage just becomes too much from lack of dodging and the fight dragging on and I go out of mana again. We wipe.

Then this same exact thing proceeds to happen two more times. Complete with the whole shield oath/sword oath business and the non-dodging DPS. I felt terrible, thinking maybe I just wasn't healing as well as I should be and that it was somehow me causing the problems... But that was my sixth time doing that dungeon that day and my first time ever wiping on that boss, so... There are just limits on what I can heal through, and that group well exceeded the limits. D;

[dayspring83]

Complete with the whole shield oath/sword oath business and the non-dodging DPS. I felt terrible, thinking maybe I just wasn't healing as well as I should be and that it was somehow me causing the problems... But that was my sixth time doing that dungeon that day and my first time ever wiping on that boss, so... There are just limits on what I can heal through, and that group well exceeded the limits. D;

I've been hitting people with a

/p Please mind the AOEs

lately and most people receive that as a polite "hey man, get your @$## together, and stop making me heal more than I have to". A couple of the recent roulette runs I've had DPS who just eat AOEs for no reason and after saying that it seems to stop. Could just be lucky too...

[Rydiah]

I felt terrible, thinking maybe I just wasn't healing as well as I should be and that it was somehow me causing the problems...

You're not alone there! Even if I know a wipe isn't my fault, I still feel bad and blame myself...I've been healing the Vault a lot on my AST too. It usually goes well, but if nobody is paying attention to mechanics its horrible.

I have another story from last night. I've been running WoD a lot with my friend lately. I'm STILL trying to get Puff of Darkness and he's going for the Onion Knight card. Usually these runs are pretty painful, I guess a lot of new people are running them or something? Anyways, last night my co healer was another WHM. It was awful. She liked to cast Medica II before every pull...in Cleric Stance. Yea, she stayed in Cleric Stance the whole time, which I would have been ok with if she was doing any DPS. I'd see the occasional Stone II, then she'd continue healing like that. I don't even know if she used anything besides Medica II, I think I saw one Regen that wasn't mine, and I'm pretty sure it was from another alliance's healer. I also had to raise her at least twice every boss, because she liked to stand behind the tank. I don't even think she was a troll, just genuinely horrible at WHM. Oh, and for the first time I died to 150 Death because nobody left the circle, yay!

I thought healers like this were a myth!

[Lunaxia]

Thornmarch the other day:

(I explain the general mechanics - don't attack the king, kill the moogles in the order they're marked, BLM first, which tanks take what, etc. No questions or complaints, so I assume they get it. We wipe at the King.)
Tank: What happened?
Me: King took too much damage. You're not supposed to attack him until the moogles are dead.
Tank: Why?
Me: Because if too many moogles are left alive, we wipe. We need to kill the moogles in the order they're marked first.
Tank: Why?
Me: Because otherwise we'll wipe.
Tank: Why?
Me: Because their AoEs are high damage.
DPS: Which one is the King?
Me: The big fat one we were just fighting.
DPS2: What order do we kill them in?
Me: ...the order they're marked.
DPS: So that's why we wiped, because we killed the BLM first.
Me: No, that's what you're supposed to do.
Tank: Why?
Me: Because his attacks deal a lot of damage.
DPS: But the BLM is marked 'one.'
Me: Yes?
DPS: So we go in reverse order?
Me: No?!
Tank: Why do I tank the King?
Me:

[Amiaze]

I went into Aurum Vale to level AST the other day. The tank was a little impatient and ran way ahead of the party in the first room, moving around a corner so that he broke my LoS and I couldn't heal him. As he was already near death, I stopped a little short to pull off a single heal and aggro'd two additional enemies.

Insert wipe here. Comment from tank: "You okay, AST?"

Yes, I'm okay. Just getting used to AST's lower potency is all. No biggie. It was probably my fault, there was more that I could have done on my part, right? The tank gives me some advice, which I immediately put to use. Admittedly, I'm still learning the class.

Insert aggro problems here. Insert wipe here.

After some struggle, we make it to the first boss. One DPS runs to the other side of the room, near the exit, far outside of healing range. My remaining fruit is too far away. I move in a little too close to save him and die. We wipe.

Rather than try to blame a DPS for the wipe, I ask a question: "Can we switch fruit so that everyone's within healing range and I can more easily access fruit? Mine was gone."

Comment from tank is berating and tells me to just "stand in the back" and don't get hit, and that there is fruit back there, even though I clearly said my fruit was gone.

We switch fruit. We clear the boss. Insert sarcastic remark about my want to switch fruit locations for healing range.

We continue on through the dungeon with some aggro complications.

We proceed to the next boss. A DPS is killed by Coincounter. In my attempt to resurrect them, I am also killed. Insert tank's remark about "already accepting his death" before our second attempt.

We defeat the final boss without a word said.


My thoughts: Aurum Vale is always a hard dungeon when you're going through it with a new class, especially since your gear will likely be a little underleveled. In my experience, it is the first dungeon in which every party member has to consider their other party members or else mechanical issues will cause consistent wipes. A little mistake here or there is easily fixed when there are no bad attitudes or berating of party members.