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

[Avidria]

Had a healer in Weeping City yesterday who died to pretty much every mechanic. We wiped on the second boss after both of my alliance's healers failed to stand in the green goo for megadeath (more than once!)... and then that one healer died again to every single megadeath on the second attempt. After we explained, in at least three different ways/phrasings - from multiple people - how to survive it. Then, after we cleared the boss, he asked how to survive it. Just...what?

And then he died to the stone face guy's big aoe. After several people told him to get in the shield/stand on the B marker/move literally 2 steps to the right please. :/

Wouldn't have been much of an issue... except his being constantly dead and the other healer being not-so-great either meant that our tank and dps ended up dying to things that shouldn't have killed them a lot.

[PharisHanasaki]

The reason why I stopped playing WHM:
I started playing right before HW, so I went straight through the MSQ, took me around 3 months to get to HW (playing mostly during the weekends).

I got to the Vault. My first run was okay, beat it on the first try. Then I helped my sister, and we got paired with a tough tank. She always did big pulls, and I had to mostly Cure II because her life was going down too fast.

I ran oom and we died. I asked her nicely to do smaller pulls, she said no and continued to pull full rooms. We wiped once more. She then began complaining about how I didn't spam Holy, and that being the reason we wiped. His/her dps friend proceeded to defend her, and after a while and I saw a Vote Kick being cast on my sister's pc. It didn't go through, and we continued until the last boss. The tank was getting beat so badly I couldn't do anything besides healing her, and I struggled to keep us alive. We wiped 2 more times until I decided to leave because of the constant harassment. They got an AST as a replacement, and I saw them beat the boss on my sister's PC, everyone died and the AST had to finish the job. Both the tank and her friend were 60 in almost all of their classes, so I figured they had more experience, but that's no reason to act that way :/

After that I didn't touch WHM for months. Then I picked it up to get it to 60 and never played it again. AST suits my play style better anyways.

[PidgeRinbalt]

Mentor Roulette, queued as BRD. First time since release getting an Extreme Primal. My first thought: "Oh this should be interesting. All these stories on the "Tales from the Duty Finder" thread..."

Well, I wasn't wrong. Small group of newbies looking for a clear. Party consisted of PLD, WAR, WHM, SCH, BRD, MCH, BLM, DRG/MNK (fuzzy on that detail. EITHER WAY MELEE DPS <3). No problem. That's why I queued for this, right? WELL.

Pull #1: Tank pulls sans explanation to the newbies so hope and pray for the best... Everything goes fine until Gaol, the DPS and healer were too close together and a couple others had gotten knocked off so there wasn't enough DPS to clear them. It happens.

Pull #2. Tank still leaves no time for explanation. Tell people to stay, keywords, RIGHT BEHIND TITAN so they have a better chance of NOT getting knocked off. the MCH and BLM ignore me and get knocked off the 2nd time. Gaol failed to be cleared.

Pull #3. Get past Gaol, so yay progress! BLM ignored the warning about the knock off mechs, but other than that, things going smoothy. Suddenly MT dies. Eh, wut. OT isnt picking up Titan so I, as the heavily overgeared BRD, am now tanking. Both healers die, one had fallen/jumped off (was too busy tanking Titan to notice which, I'd wager it was a knock off), we wipe. MT asks OT to provoke off of him, as I and one sprout tell about the "swap at 3" mechanic. OT says nothing. Remind people AGAIN that they need to be closer to Titan, especially during Gaol phase, so they don't get sent flying.

Pull #4: Try telling OT to provoke off of MT. He does nothing. I check their search info. 51 WAR, 15 GLD. Nothing else. Note this in party chat, suggest the WAR pull next time so hate trading won't be so difficult. Get ignored by entire party. PLD pulls as I and the sprout healer are basically screaming at him that the WAR doesn't have Provoke. People get knocked off again from being too far away from Titan. "Oh jeez." (PLD words, not mine.)

Pull #5: WAR pulls. Loses hate after about a minute to the WHM. Barely gets it back. Dies due to no cooldowns.

Respawn: One DPS leaves. I tell the WAR they should really get PLD to 22 before attempting content like this with a swap mechanic in it. Casual agreement by party.

WAR: I don't need it

Myself + Sprout healer: Yes you do. Provoke is required to pull a monster off of your party's other tank. (Tank and one more DPS leave right here.)

WAR: u wrong

Me + Sprout healer: This is how enmity works... Me: Provoke instantly gives you top hate +1 so you can hold a mob off someone.

WAR: mine is 15. i have plenty of enmity skills. i held hate off the party for like 45 seconds lol

Me: *thinking: that's not good enough for party content, friend.* ... Hands-on lesson. I'm going to brb and try to come back in on my tank.

I leave. Nobody was rejoining in this short message exchange anyways so it was unlikely it was going to fill back up. The game wouldn't let me rejoin it either so I guess they all disbanded when I left. That WAR though. I didn't even think I'd ever find someone like that, beyond this other WAR I had in Sastasha HM that popped EVERY. SINGLE. COOLDOWN. AND A DEX POTION (???) between pulls. Couldn't hold hate very well, either, wouldn't listen to advice given to him...

[RLofOBFL]

WHM is fine. It has more reliable mp regen(assize & shroud plus free cure 2 proc) and better heals that AST aoe(assize/medica 2/Asyleum) & single target(Tetra & Bene) & dps aoe & single target (assize/holy/aero 3/2/1/stone 3)



Just saying... -3-

[Crescents]

WHM is fine. It has more reliable mp regen(assize & shroud plus free cure 2 proc) and better heals that AST aoe(assize/medica 2/Asyleum) & single target(Tetra & Bene) & dps aoe & single target (assize/holy/aero 3/2/1/stone 3)



Just saying... -3-

AST (on diurnal) is much faster and much more mobile and doesn't really need 2 panic buttons, and I've never out out of mp during raids luminiferous aether and keeping a ewer on my spread seemed to work just as well. they both have strengths and weaknesses you can't really say one has better heals when they take twice as long to cast and hemorrhage mp.

[RLofOBFL]

AST (on diurnal) is much faster and much more mobile and doesn't really need 2 panic buttons, and I've never out out of mp during raids luminiferous aether and keeping a ewer on my spread seemed to work just as well. they both have strengths and weaknesses you can't really say one has better heals when they take twice as long to cast and hemorrhage mp.

I never said AST was bad, I was just saying bc the above poster seems to think WHM is bad. Diurnal has faster casts sure by .15 seconds, which is exactly why they lose mp faster than WHM <.<, though honestly I think only SCH has completely reliable mp, AST & WHM got the short ends of the stick. Really though AST isn't as good as WHM in pure heals but it has party buffs & shields or speed to compensate. AST gets time dialation & celestial opposition where WHM gets assize & tetra. AST gets balance arrow & spear where WHM gets stone 3 & aero 3(the real mp hemorrhage).

[MissPudgyPorgus]

In Brayflox Longstop. I was SMN and my mate was DRG. We had WHM and GLA with us. Everyone did good, except the tank. He didn't use flash the way he should, instead of pulling the enemies and using flash x3, then hit, he flashed the air and then charged the enemies. Also, he never used flash again.
He ran around pulling too many enemies . So we tried telling him politely what he could do to make it easier for all of us. But no response, we tried again with auto-translate and emotes - nothing. It seemed like he wasn't there.

In the end we had to switch roles. The DRG tanked & I healed the healer. The healer had no mana and had to dps... The only way we could win the dungeon, was to let the GLA die.....
Tank could've been a bot, but he moved blissfully ignorant. Didn't know where to go, left us and came back when the healer went afk. Or maybe he just did his thing, without paying attention to the chat. Nevertheless, we ended up succeeding.

[Rita1989]

At least in dungeons WHM is probably the hardest to play well as it requires you to be comfortable managing cooldowns/ mp while using holy as much as possible to maximize damage but putting up over 1000 dps over an entire dungeon as healer is pretty good

[Cnidarian]

Was running DR: Mentor Friday night and ended with an in progress Final Steps of Faith. There was only a single PLD in there when I entered and he informed me that everyone dropped the group after one wipe. I stuck around and explained the fight to the PLD while we were waiting on others to join. After a while, it was down to waiting on a dps, a healer, and a tank. I managed to get a FC member to join to fill the dps slot, someone from the Novice Network joined to fill the healer spot and just before a tank from my FC could join, we had a DRK (I think) join the group. Pretty much everyone was a first timer there except for myself, FC member, and the other mentor healer who joined when I asked for assistance through the NN.

Needless to say, we did some quick explaining of the different abilities and what to look out for. First attempt made it to add phase with a BRD and MCH on the ground, healers got them up and we missed the dps check. Second attempt, only the MCH was down at the start of add phase and we missed the dps check by about 10 seconds. Third attempt, managed to miss the dps check by about 2 seconds. At this point, I put a marker on myself to assist the MCH and BRD as they were having trouble avoiding the aoes and they informed me that anything to help would be appreciated.

Fourth attempt, we cleared the dps check but wiped due to people going down from the aoes and also from not having everyone stacking when required. Fifth attempt, we managed to get him down to roughly 16% hp when the trial ran out of time.

The thing that surprised me the most was the fact that nobody complained once about wiping and people were actually willing to learn and were making progress with each attempt. It isn't often that I'm able to get into a duty like this and I hope those first timers were able to get their clear in their next attempt.

The strange thing was, my first WCoM run last week ended in a clear where we had wiped to each boss except Calofisteri. Nobody complained about wiping or were being toxic. Overall, people were keeping an eye out for where mistakes were being made and were offering advice on how to handle the mechanics in a polite manner. Nobody got upset or angry and the overall chat in alliance was that of friendly banter. The run took us roughly 45 minutes to clear with nobody dropping out or rage quitting halfway through.

Overall, both experiences were unexpected due to the number of complaints and horror stories surrounding both of these instances.

[PharisHanasaki]

I never said AST was bad, I was just saying bc the above poster seems to think WHM is bad. Diurnal has faster casts sure by .15 seconds, which is exactly why they lose mp faster than WHM <.<, though honestly I think only SCH has completely reliable mp, AST & WHM got the short ends of the stick. Really though AST isn't as good as WHM in pure heals but it has party buffs & shields or speed to compensate. AST gets time dialation & celestial opposition where WHM gets assize & tetra. AST gets balance arrow & spear where WHM gets stone 3 & aero 3(the real mp hemorrhage).

If you are referring to me, I didn't mean to say WHM was bad, I just got tired of people complaining about how you play a two year old class as a newbie (Complaining mostly, probably 1 person sincerely gave me advice), so I decided to try the new class.
I swear I had one tank let me die, and then the party wipe because I didn't know popping a regen before a pull generated emnity (It was in the middle of the pull to be precise, he was dying and I panicked). I was like, I can understand just fine if you tell me. This guy said "You aggro it, you tank it. That's why you don't pop shit during pulls". Mostly I did good, and got lots of commendations. But when there were bad times, they were really shitty (sorry ;o; ).

And I did read guides, but it's a lot of info to process in one sitting when you're new to the game. You learn it as you progress.

Also, as an AST I almost never run out of MP o.o 29 secs of Luminiferous Aether (+ Collective Unconscious). Plus the random Ewer card, which I mostly use on my pair healer so I can Time dilate it and make the most of it. O even a spire before popping LA.