A question about meeles

[Elvin]

I want to share one thought that has been bothering me a long time.


Ever since the game come out in 2.0, I've seen this situation in 4 man dungeons:

SMN/BLM+Meele


Tank makes big pulls. Healer can heal it easily and even spread poisons/holy.
SMN/BLM uses areas.


And the meele.... Decides that the better thing they can do is to furiously focus 1 mob out of the 12 mobs that are hitting the tank.

I even imagine that they smile feeling some kind of acomplisment if they manage to get agro from the tank.




Why? Why do they do this? I mean, it should be pretty easy to realize that if the main damage is area damage, if you kill one mob much faster than the others you are just reducing the total DPS output of the party. You should be also using areas, and, if you can't (Because your areas suck/take too much tp, whateever) attack the mobs with more HP.


It could be argued that if you take out one mob faster, the tank recieve less damage,and you improve survival chances, but.... If you see that the healer is even swiching to cleric stance and maybe even outdpsing you with his AOE damage, chances are that there's no need for that, right?



Well, the question is... Why? Because it's a behaviour that I find in almost all the meeles I see. I think I found one that didn't do this, but it's already being more than one year since I saw him.


As a meele, you do this? If you do it, why? If you don't, why do you think that others do it?

As a non-meele, have you noticed this?


Of course I'm talking about Duty Finder, not about pre made groups.

[F_Maximillian]

Most common reason I've heard is how TP heavy the AoEs that melee have are. However I think it's simply a case of not seeing the big picture and being able to quick math out that when you use a 100 or whatever potency TP attack that costs 120 TP but hits 6+ mobs its more potency per TP spent than single targeting something down. I suspect that training hall or whatever they'll come out with will have something to hopefully clear that up for the majority.

[Colorful]

As a melee, I try to use as much AoEs as possible (Ninja AoE isn't the greatest, but it gets the job done I guess) until I run low on TP, and then just focus on mudra AoE. Why do they do it? Well it's either because they're bad players (not unique to melee by any standards), lazy, or uninformed. It's no different than Tanks not doing decent DPS, or healers not DPSing, it boils down to pure laziness for the most part I'd think.

[AriaEnia]

I usually when playing ninja (my only melee dps), when the mobs are 4 or more, I spam aoe and doton, until I run out of tp, then use invigorate and then continue my aoe attacks, because if I count the potency overall, it's more effective than just focusing on one mob. But when there are only 2 or 3 mobs, I'm focusing on the one that the tank pull 1st with his ranged agro attack. Usually the tank will single agro focus that particular mob in response of my act, and after it dies, I switch to the one that has the lowest hp of the 2. If I see my agro is almost exceeding the tank's when I'm focusing on one mob, I'll switch to another mob.

[Immut]

Why? Why do they do this?

Because dumb.

That's going to be the answer to most of your questions about this game and the people who play it.

[WellFooled]

I tend to focus one target when I dps (except for certain pulls), though I know it isn't always the most effective. To be honest, I do this because AoEing tends to just be spamming a single ability, which is terribly boring, but when focus targeting I can at least stay engaged by maintaining an effective rotation.

[PArcher]

This really depends on what dungeon you're running (got a DRG before DD? Yeah, you'll never see AoE out of him cause he HAS no AoE) and what DPS the melee is (DRG and MNK should AoE for 3+ mobs, NIN should Katon for 2+ and AoE for 4+ cause theirs sucks so much). Then there's the TP issues and exactly which pull it is and whether the tank is slowing down to let TP regenerate (right before a boss and tank isn't stopping? I'm not wasting TP I'll need on AoE)

Yes, there are melee who won't AoE. I've also seen SMN who don't know what Bane is and BLM who can't find their Fire II (but can find Freeze...yeah, I've seen some weird things), and BRD and MCH who can't seem to figure out they can AoE in their caster stances.

[Aethaeryn]

Lately I'm running into black mages that choose to single target on huge pulls a lot more than melee... Both drive me craaaaaaazy. I don't know why it annoys me so much. FFXIV is srs bsns.

[PArcher]

Lately I'm running into black mages that choose to single target on huge pulls a lot more than melee... Both drive me craaaaaaazy. I don't know why it annoys me so much. FFXIV is srs bsns.

I just remembered; week or two ago I was telling a (decently well-geared) BLM to AoE a large group I'd pulled (can't remember Fractal or Neverreap), and he insisted he did more DPS using his single-target rotation on the group over AoEing since Fire 4 is more potency than Flare. Said he read it in a guide somewhere. So misinformation may be a culprit here besides just the base stupidity that happens.

[Meimi_chan]

It depends on the dungeon, if it's too low level there is a chance that AOE abilities are locked.
I usually AOE a lot as a monk, but if in the middle of the pack there is an enemy that needs to be stunned (Fractal dungeon comes to mind) I am going to concentrate on that before doing AOEs.
And it depends on the other DPS I am paired to... If it's a BLM with terrible AOE, I will probably run out of TP before everything is dead.