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

[Dogempire]

Snipity snap

Yeah, I hate it when I'm waiting for an orb to hit me since I'm standing far enough from them to heal between orbs and the offtank decides to trudge through. I tend to let them take a dirt nap if that happens.

[SuzumeWolfe]

So, a couple of stories. I'll probably break it up a bit.

Some of my favorite times in Duty Finder were when I was when I grouped with a friend I'd met when we were both unlocking Sch and Smn. We ran some dungeons as a tank healer pair (I was the war) and were pretty much guaranteed instant dungeon runs. Somehow I found just how fast we had a group to be kind of hilarious. And I really just enjoyed the runs. Much more relaxed, which made a big difference.

I also had a lot fun on a run in Satasha, when one of the books for my relic weapon sent me there. I queued up, ...and we were all lvl 50 plus. I imagine everyone else wondered "What are we doing here?" but since we all obviously knew what we were doing, we had fun with it.

I have typically played healer in the past. While I think Guild Wars would be the only one where I've reached "end-game" I've also healed in WoW, LOTRO, and City of Heroes, each of which is fairly different, but I was at least competent regardless. Here, I prefer Sch, but I like WHM. Ast... I'm not ready for it yet. I don't really want to deal with the whole card system yet. I have no real interest in DPS. But, this is the first game where I've tried tanking. Between some dungeons with my friend as mentioned before, my helpful chocobo, and really quick dungeon queues, leveling has been very easy and fairly enjoyable. But I want to point out that it wasn't until around lvl 40 that I started feeling more confident in what I was doing as a tank. I'm still not really comfortable with it, and often run a dungeon as SCH before trying as WAR.

[SuzumeWolfe]

So, to stick with the topic.

I had one run at lvl 28 or 29 in Haukke Manor (before I got Defiance)... and everyone else was lvl 30 or above. I had so much trouble holding aggro. I could overpower, flash, aggro rotation, and still, after just a bit, a monster would try to wander off. The others were very patient and reassured me it would get better when I hit 30, but I was still frustrated the whole time. I had a similar run more recently with a Paladin in Brayflox normal. I was healing, and I hadn't realized Paladins didn't get their tanking stance until 40, which meant that our two blm kept grabbing aggro. It was rough.

Final story, I went on a run as WAR just before I hit 50 in Dzemael Darkhold. It seemed like a friendly group, we were talking about any trouble we had. There was some confusion in the first stage about why I was running to the purple patches. One guy thought I was speed running when I was just avoiding the wandering eye aoe. I think this also threw them off because both the dps had asked to do a full run and get all the chests. As a note, I had enjoyed Dzemael as a healer for some reason, and looked forward to tanking it. The first boss was disappointingly annoying, because I couldn't see around all the crystals. Man it was annoying. But we made it. Second stage, we get to the cliffs... someone get knocked off a level maybe, however it happened, we pull extra enemies and wipe. We try again and the same thing happens. We talk about it, but don't really seem to have much of a better solution than "just try again ...even slower?" I should note at this point that three of us were talking, but I never actually heard a word from the healer. On our third try I noticed him standing in the passage leading away from the cliffs, and I guess he was trying to guide us over, but ... he never said a word. So, we still got knocked off and wiped again... and he quit. We waited for a bit, got a new healer, went straight to that passage since I finally realized what he was trying to tell us (I assume) and made it. Got all the chests. ...I was so tired by the end of that run.

[Nicolepwned]

Shoutout to the group I had this morning for a poops-and-laughs Aurum Vale run on my Ninja. Even though we wiped like two or three times it was fun.

Dango... dango... dango? -missing you in Spanish-

[Cilia]

After finishing my DRK Anima Weapon I was at a loss as to what to do now, since at i209 I'm virtually at the apex of what's achievable right now, so I decided to start leveling AST.

Got Tam-Tara today. I hate the place from my DRK 30 - 50 experience, but whatevs. I notice problems on the first pull - the tank isn't using Flash at all, and everyone's pulling aggro off him. The ACN asks him to use Flash twice, nothing. The ACN switches to Topaz Carbuncle, and it tanks the bosses instead. Even though I can't stance dance at that level, I'm healing, DPSing, and tanking whatever gets pulled onto me. Despite the fact we have an incompetent Lv31 GLA for a tank, we make it through with no deaths.

The kicker? Not one commendation (though I gave mine to the ACN).

[GleepWurp]

Leveling roulette run of The Dusk Vigil on my 58 Dragoon. I had just recently moved several actions around on my hotbars to make room for the two new attacks I got at 58 plus the last one I'll get at 60. Had a look at the Dragoon guide and was trying to make an initial stab (heh) at the level 60 opener. Practiced just a little bit by running the rank 3 daily hunts, but it's far from feeling natural.

Did OK for the most part (I thought) on the first two-thirds of Dusk Vigil. Had some miscues with the moved actions to be sure, but not doing too badly. On the final boss I got thrown around in the air twice on Whirling Gaol because I was spending too much time thinking about getting attacks in the right order, and not enough time noticing where undamaged piles of rubble were still standing.

Then after clearing the final boss, one of the group members mentions that this was the only time they've ever commended a Dragoon. Felt pretty good. :-)

[AskaRay]

After finishing my DRK Anima Weapon I was at a loss as to what to do now, since at i209 I'm virtually at the apex of what's achievable right now, so I decided to start leveling AST.

Got Tam-Tara today. I hate the place from my DRK 30 - 50 experience, but whatevs. I notice problems on the first pull - the tank isn't using Flash at all, and everyone's pulling aggro off him. The ACN asks him to use Flash twice, nothing. The ACN switches to Topaz Carbuncle, and it tanks the bosses instead. Even though I can't stance dance at that level, I'm healing, DPSing, and tanking whatever gets pulled onto me. Despite the fact we have an incompetent Lv31 GLA for a tank, we make it through with no deaths.

The kicker? Not one commendation (though I gave mine to the ACN).

I stance dance... I just put CS as my first crossclass. Screw Protect.

[Stupiduglytaru]

I stance dance... I just put CS as my first crossclass. Screw Protect.

This, at that level a healer is frigging op dpsing

[Fenral]

Finally saw 10 stacks of the burn debuff on Wanderer's Palace hard today. I was running as PLD for my relic (tanking alone was already a mistake), and we wiped on the first boss when the DPS decided to ignore the spears (oh, actually it was entirely my fault for not pointing cleaves at the melee to help). Terrible MCH (who thought she was just the hottest shit) decided to just blame me for everything, gave me lip the entire time, always ran ahead to silently demand big pulls (which I hate). So I pulled the entire middle section exactly like she wanted, pretty sure it would fail horribly (though I have succeeded at it before), and we did. (I had aggro on every enemy in my list, but the 16-target maximum on Flash is a bitch). Of course I get blamed for it, but rather than waste any more time tanking for assholes, I just left without a word, grateful for the 30-minute penalty and hoping I'd never see any of them ever again.

Then I got a /tell from that same person who just had to let me know how terrible I was and what a laugh it was for her morning (don't you just love finding out they're on your server?). So I /blisted and reported for harassment, and once more lost any and all motivation to keep working on my next Relic. I hate people.

[nukemind]

Today, leveling my my SCH. Wanted to have fun so said,
"Hey my name is Keyalios, I will be your 3rd DPS, this is Eos, the healer. I can off heal, but she will pretty much be the primary healer."
What did the tank say? "All hail Saint Eos, the best healer in all of Eorzea." And then Eos kept him pretty much topped up. It was only Hatali but it was amusing. Though she did steal aggro from him twice. He asked if he could give her a commendation XD.