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

[Mysterysword]

So here's one from a couple of weeks ago:

A12 normal. I'm an ilvl. 260+ BLM. I load in, see a WAR that has over 30k base HP, and the other tank is a DRK... watching the cutscene... with 22k base HP. Which is less HP than some of the melee DPS, and as a BLM, I have 21k HP.

Guess who had a bonus? Guess who kept trying to tank? Guess who had absolutely no idea what to do with mechanics, or even how to dodge Sacrament? Guess who kept dying to tankbuster despite the healers' best efforts? Guess who was wearing a mixture of ilvl 230 lore gear and SLAYING ACCESSORIES, THE BRACELET OF WHICH WAS ILVL 195? Guess who decided to queue for a raid they had never been in before, with low-durability gear, so that of course it breaks after two wipes?

Guess who, despite clearly having run this trial many times before, had apparently never MTed, which somehow translated to "I have no idea how to pick up a boss when I have to take over tanking, and also I don't know how to cast LB. At all"?

This is one of those occasions when you just really really really despise WAR and DRK for being the "edgelord" jobs that morons all flock to.

Unfortunately, no matter how godlike the DPS and healers were (and anyone who says that we were anything less than deities in that horror show, you can suck it), we simply couldn't carry them. And it was abundantly clear that this DRK was fully expecting to be carried, which is cute considering they had clearly never even bothered to look at a guide for the raid.

As an addendum, after we disbanded, I put up a PF, picked up a couple of DPS from that run, requeued as PLD, successfully MTed A12 for the very first time in 1 attempt, and got 2 comms out of it. Sometimes all it takes is having a brain, using it, and observing how real tanks do their jobs. But clearly, that escapes a lot of people.

I was reminded of this run because of another (of course) Dun Scaith run from this week, which wasn't all that bad, except for the newbie BLM with all of 16k base HP without Weakness/Brink of Death, who was new, yet refused to mention this, constantly died to roomwide AoEs because as it turns out, losing 30% of your VIT takes you from 16k HP to 11k HP, and that is no bueno at all, and for some reason, decided that they simply had to apologise for this in alliance chat.

But even that wouldn't have made them anything special, were it not for one fact: They refused to watch or read a guide before queuing for this raid, because they didn't want spoilers.

"Good call," one of the healers said, "don't want to be too helpful". Because healers definitely have nothing better to do than waste all their MP raising your useless, undergeared ass off the ground repeatedly. It was a good thing I wasn't the MT for that run.

I agreed with that healer, of course, and now that I think about it, I regret not taking the opportunity to slap that BLM a few times at the end.

[bardaboo]

I'm ok with people free balling stuff like that, but at some point certain people who aren't very bright need to realize that they aren't very bright.
If you go into something and the only way you can get through it is by dying to every single mechanic, maybe look up a guide next time.
Had a no bonus dunscathe last night and 2 people in party had the same last name. I'm convinced it might have been one person trying to dual box. Because. Oh. My. God. They took turns dying throughout the entirety of the run. One would die raise. Then the other would die. Then the first. Then the second. After the second boss i straight up asked them if they knew any of the mechanics in there. It was saaaad. And the bard would frequently have looong stretches between attacks. More than once I'd see him iron jaws. Then nothing for 10 to 15 seconds then another iron jaws. They were both awful.
Awful

[Wyntir]

Because healers definitely have nothing better to do than waste all their MP raising your useless, undergeared ass off the ground repeatedly.

Had a similar situation in my Dun Scaith this week. A summoner with all crafted gear, obviously who had never done the fights and prob didnt watch a video either. It was apparent in the first encounter they had no idea what they were doing, and from that point on, they got 0 heals or reses from me. They were resed I think 4-5 times on the first boss alone. :/

[SaitoHikari]

I ended up with a Paladin in Baelsar's Wall that had a crafted HQ Bismarck sword (yes, the ilvl 180 sword), a Shire shield and pants, and everything else being a mix of item level 220-245 lore gear/dungeon drops. He only had about 21k HP - the lowest of everyone in the party.

However, I say that Paladin has a bright future. Why? Apparently nobody ever told him how/helped him out to get a better sword (and it doesn't help that nobody seems to craft item level 250 weapons anymore), but as a result of that, he's had to learn how to really use his abilities to survive. I told him the name of the tankbuster that the last boss does, so I watched in awe as he Sheltron'd each Claw of the Griffin along with other CDs (plus the Scholar shielding him) to take virtually no damage.

(He explained afterwards that he also only began playing a month ago, and wanted to rush to prepare for Stormblood. To get there that quickly is kinda mindblowing. Alas, he's not in my server, so I couldn't craft him a 250 sword.)

[Rymm]

So last night my husband and I do the Final Steps of Faith trial.

I queued as PLD and he was running WHM and as we load in there were a lot of groans at the 'first timer' message that popped up in chat and almost half the raid admitted to being new. The other tank (WAR) confessed that they haven't tanked it in forever and don't remember it all that well so after all the buffs were up, I trotted up to the boss and threw my shield, got him in position and the raid went to town on him. At least a couple people ate AoEs during the first phase but the healers scraped them off the floor and we kept going. Adds popped out but the dps were sort of all over the place and we only got 2 of the 3 down (it was very, very close though) and we wiped in his big nuke. It was explained (again) that the adds needed to be focused down in the correct order and the WAR offered to mark them as they spawned so we went again. Got through the add phase with time to spare on the second attempt (still a lot of deaths to the various AoEs, though) but we trucked along until the final phase and the first Akh Morn destroyed half the raid. We wiped again and it was explained (again) that everyone had to stack for it and a detailed description of the spell was given to the dpser who couldn't wrap his head around the 'giant yellow circle with arrows' spell effect.

So we went again. We made it all the way to the final phase but the healers were under a huge amount of strain from all of the people they had to keep rezing over and over. We (mostly) survived all the Akh Morns but both the WHMs were completely out of MP from healing and rezing all of the people who weren't getting out of the AoEs in time. They even had to use the 3 bar LB to pick up most of the raid and we were just scraping by. We dropped the boss under 10% hp but by then it was just too much and both of the healers went down because they couldn't even heal themselves anymore. The dps we had left burned like crazy until they went down too and at 3% hp, it was just me and the WAR left. He was throwing all the damage he could at the boss and I was chaining every survival cooldown I had left. I burned all my mana on clemency trying to stay alive as long as I could and keep him topped off for when I went down. I was dead, I knew I was dead, but when I glanced at my hp bar with 1% left and knew the next hit was going to finish me off... the cutscene started up.

I still can't believe how close it was. We managed to scrape by on our third attempt by the skin of our teeth. I netted 6 of the 8 possible coms for that run and even if it was just a MSQ trial and not one of the endgame raids, I have never I felt so accomplished for downing a FF boss.

It was my first run.

[CuteWhisper]

Yesterday, a friend and I get into Ifrit HM. I am AST and hes a DRK. My friend kept wondering why he kept grabbing aggro from the other tank when he was not provoking until he realized it was a level 59 GLD..... How did he go this far without nobody telling to grab PLD?!

[dragonseth07]

Yesterday, a friend and I get into Ifrit HM. I am AST and hes a DRK. My friend kept wondering why he kept grabbing aggro from the other tank when he was not provoking until he realized it was a level 59 GLD..... How did he go this far without nobody telling to grab PLD?!

Oh, he's been told. I promise. He doesn't care.

[ViolaCrossfire]

Oh, he's been told. I promise. He doesn't care.

I once queued as base class in aurum vale because I was screwing around with gear sets. Did not do it on purpose

[DaikiKiyoshi]

So last night my husband and I do the Final Steps of Faith trial.

I queued as PLD and he was running WHM and as we load in there were a lot of groans at the 'first timer' message that popped up in chat and almost half the raid admitted to being new. The other tank (WAR) confessed that they haven't tanked it in forever and don't remember it all that well so after all the buffs were up, I trotted up to the boss and threw my shield, got him in position and the raid went to town on him. At least a couple people ate AoEs during the first phase but the healers scraped them off the floor and we kept going. Adds popped out but the dps were sort of all over the place and we only got 2 of the 3 down (it was very, very close though) and we wiped in his big nuke. It was explained (again) that the adds needed to be focused down in the correct order and the WAR offered to mark them as they spawned so we went again. Got through the add phase with time to spare on the second attempt (still a lot of deaths to the various AoEs, though) but we trucked along until the final phase and the first Akh Morn destroyed half the raid. We wiped again and it was explained (again) that everyone had to stack for it and a detailed description of the spell was given to the dpser who couldn't wrap his head around the 'giant yellow circle with arrows' spell effect.

So we went again. We made it all the way to the final phase but the healers were under a huge amount of strain from all of the people they had to keep rezing over and over. We (mostly) survived all the Akh Morns but both the WHMs were completely out of MP from healing and rezing all of the people who weren't getting out of the AoEs in time. They even had to use the 3 bar LB to pick up most of the raid and we were just scraping by. We dropped the boss under 10% hp but by then it was just too much and both of the healers went down because they couldn't even heal themselves anymore. The dps we had left burned like crazy until they went down too and at 3% hp, it was just me and the WAR left. He was throwing all the damage he could at the boss and I was chaining every survival cooldown I had left. I burned all my mana on clemency trying to stay alive as long as I could and keep him topped off for when I went down. I was dead, I knew I was dead, but when I glanced at my hp bar with 1% left and knew the next hit was going to finish me off... the cutscene started up.

I still can't believe how close it was. We managed to scrape by on our third attempt by the skin of our teeth. I netted 6 of the 8 possible coms for that run and even if it was just a MSQ trial and not one of the endgame raids, I have never I felt so accomplished for downing a FF boss.

It was my first run.

It's always nice to down things on the first try when everyone performs perfectly and all that but there IS something immensely satisfying about those runs where you barely manage to pull through and most of the party is dead. The sense of "Omg....I can't believe we pulled that off!!! That was awesome!!!" is amazing.

[Rysir]

Speaking of barely managed victories I had one of my own last night in some heart of the creator spam.

First time through it was shaky since one person missed the jump action and got left behind to be blasted, then we didnt focus down the spheres fast enough so one stayed up and we wipe. We try again and no one dies at surf mode and it all goes well till 20% hp which apparently is where most hiccups happen and a chunk of people die but everyone is back up.

Then the Oh crap happened: at 2% the big yellow AOEs show up and the whole party is slammed leaving just me barely alive and the main tank at less than half health, so Im firing away as hard as I can and cruise chaser's hp hits 1% and is barely existing on the bar then the tank dies and it comes flying at me. Meanwhile I got no procs loaded as most everything was on cooldown leaving me with only head graze which I used and killed it!Staying alive at 300ish health at the end, I think Machinist may be my new main for a while.