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

[Mysterysword]

Bardam's Mettle as AST.

Actually, nothing went wrong there, I just found myself questioning why the devs decided to blow their creative load on the AST 60-70 skills, and then phone in SCH and WHM. Also, whoever decided Confession stacks should only last 10 seconds needs to be kicked.

[DubiousDisk]

Bardam's Mettle as AST.

Actually, nothing went wrong there, I just found myself questioning why the devs decided to blow their creative load on the AST 60-70 skills, and then phone in SCH and WHM. Also, whoever decided Confession stacks should only last 10 seconds needs to be kicked.

Thank you for this post, I chuckled for a solid few minutes.

[Ametrine]

Regen, Medica 2, Diurnal Aspected Benefict, and Helios are gargantuan aggro hits. It seems super counter-intuitive to hold off using a regenerating health during pulls, especially big pulls, but it makes it much harder on your tank. Their Aggro grabbing skills, Ultimatum and Provoke, have long cooldown periods, so doing this consistently puts your tank at a big disadvantage since it gets harder and harder to get the mobs off of you. Their regular aggro are in turn expensive (IE, they can't spam them without running low on Mana and TP fast), so it's just a bad deal for the tank all around.

Conversely, mitigating heals, such as Adlo and Noctunal Aspects, don't have this same sort of issue. You can cast these on the tank between (be sure it's between!) pulls to help cover them during the first seconds of a bigger pull so that you can start your series of healing casts.

[SilverObi]

Did Snowcloak for story on an alt and got one actual new person and two people with 70 classes. All was pretty well and everyone was chit chatting while we blew through the dungeon until we got to the Yeti. Tank sort of forgot to make the spriggans into snowballs but only for a moment so that wasn't a problem. The silly part was that both the tank and other dps thought the snowballs were ONLY for stunning the aoe and didn't do damage... and tried reprimanding me for burning down the boss with our 5 fullsize snowballs while stunning its one and only aoe it had the time to cast -_-

[MoroMurasaki]

Took like a week or so off from the game, logged back in to do my weekly Omega runs. Afterwords I noticed healer as AiN for Levelling Roulette and as I just replaced some gear I figured why not queue and get a free cracked cluster.

Oh how wrong I was.


Dropped into Castrum Abania with a new PLD and RDM and a mentor BRD. The trash pulls were painful enough, the PLD only had around 32k health. In his defence he was making up for some of it with clemency but then he was losing threat to the BRD. The BRD (trying to help I assume) would use an enmity dump and then the enemies would rush me. This exact scenario happened at least 3 times over the course of the dungeon.

I was on WHM so I didn't have a really strong shield option but I did make it through the vast majority (something like 60%) of the second boss with just the BRD and I alive. No matter how much the BRD and I yelled in group chat about which circle to enter they would not listen.

By the time we get to the final boss I am so ready to be done. I've spent the dungeon mostly healing a BRD tank.

I forget to bring Esuna.

The bleed debuff ticks for so much at one point it kills the tank while adds are out. I raise him and he dies again because he eats the impact damage and a ground AoE. At that point the boss was around 10% so I just want to kill him. The RDM starts spamming vercure on the BRD which, okay, I guess technically helpful but also mildly annoying.

So we finished that fight with the BRD tanking, RDM healing, me (WHM) DPSing and the PLD doing his best DRG immitation.

[HyoMinPark]

Pre-pull regens are fine. If you can't catch aggro with a regen on you, that's on you bud. Definitely in 50/60 dungeons.
It doesn't mess with aggro. You walk to the mob, you Unleash/Overpower/Flash before they walk away and you have aggro, if you're doing it properly they won't even scratch the healer.
Regen will never take that aggro away from you as long as you actually hit them with your aggro generating ability.

I'm sure there are 70 dungeons which are harder to pick stuff up on with a regen on you, but in 50/60 you should have no problem at all catching aggro and if the healer catches all the aggro, it means either you just walk up to the mobs or you have trouble hitting your AoE emnity generating abilities. You not having aggro in those dungeons is on you and you alone.

Remember kids, just walking up to mobs is NOT pulling.

No, pre-pull regens, or regens made between packs during a chain pull are never okay. The minute a tank moves towards the mobs to Flash/Unleash or Abysmal Drain/Overpower, any mobs NOT hit with the tank's ability will zone in immediately on the healer. WARs no longer have access to Flash, so they have to position themselves more in order to aim Overpower (since it is a conal AOE), and secure aggro. A pre-pull regen makes that more difficult than it needs to be, since the mobs are going to immediately run to the healer, which most in DF do not have the sense to run to the tank with their new friends, but rather kite them around endlessly.

Anytime a healer casts a pre-pull regen on me, or a regen between packs, I immediately tell them not to do that, because it just causes unnecessary aggro towards them in the event that mobs are spread out enough that a single Flash/Unleash/Abysmal Drain/Overpower won't hit them all (see: Big Daddy Pull in Gubal HM after the second boss--a lot of the mammets are not close enough together to get hit with a single skill, and require a bit of repositioning to secure aggro on all of them). I actually had a healer do this during that very same pull, and three mammets that I was unable to grab with my first Abysmal Drain prompty ran to them and chewed their face off. What did they do? Well, they didn't bring them to me. Second time doing the pull, they actually listened to my advice and did not regen me until the end of the pull, which is what a healer should do.

Blaming tanks for poor healing practices is not right, and it is on the healer for mistiming their regens. Not on the tank if they are actively using their AOE enmity skills while pulling. The radius of Flash/Unleash/Abysmal Drain and range of Overpower are not as large as you seem to think they are.

@MoroMurasaki: Helpful tip if you ever run that dungeon on BRD with a healer that doesn't Esuna the bleed: You can Warden's Paeon it off. :3 Since Berserk no longer causes Pacification, WARs no longer exclusively own a BRD's Esuna (not that I ever used it exclusively for Berserk Pacification--I always used it when needed, and still do). ;3

[MoroMurasaki]

No, pre-pull regens, or regens made between packs during a chain pull are never okay. The minute a tank moves towards the mobs to Flash/Unleash or Abysmal Drain/Overpower, any mobs NOT hit with the tank's ability will zone in immediately on the healer. WARs no longer have access to Flash, so they have to position themselves more in order to aim Overpower (since it is a conal AOE), and secure aggro. A pre-pull regen makes that more difficult than it needs to be, since the mobs are going to immediately run to the healer, which most in DF do not have the sense to run to the tank with their new friends, but rather kite them around endlessly.

Anytime a healer casts a pre-pull regen on me, or a regen between packs, I immediately tell them not to do that, because it just causes unnecessary aggro towards them in the event that mobs are spread out enough that a single Flash/Unleash/Abysmal Drain/Overpower won't hit them all (see: Big Daddy Pull in Gubal HM after the second boss--a lot of the mammets are not close enough together to get hit with a single skill, and require a bit of repositioning to secure aggro on all of them). I actually had a healer do this during that very same pull, and three mammets that I was unable to grab with my first Abysmal Drain prompty ran to them and chewed their face off. What did they do? Well, they didn't bring them to me. Second time doing the pull, they actually listened to my advice and did not regen me until the end of the pull, which is what a healer should do.

Blaming tanks for poor healing practices is not right, and it is on the healer for mistiming their regens. Not on the tank if they are actively using their AOE enmity skills while pulling. The radius of Flash/Unleash/Abysmal Drain and range of Overpower are not as large as you seem to think they are.

My own opinion on this has evolved over time. For a while I ran dungeons almost exclusively as a tank/healer pair with my boyfriend. I could have a regen ticking on him (and often did in the days of Cleric Stance and Sprint costing TP - dark times) because I would pull to him with Sprint on and he would Flash/Overpower forward as he ran. I took some damage but overall it made long pulls a bit easier with all the auto attack damage tanks took before free Sprint. Kinda like using my health pool to suppliment his.

I assumed that any other tank and healer could function similarly - it doesn't take a ton of coordination, just the healer saying 'oh, enemies on me, let me drop them at the tank' and the tank saying 'oh look, they're eating the healer, lemme stop that'... but sadly those are mighty high expectations for DF a lot of the time.

I personally always take damage as a healer during that specific Gubal HM pull. I think I've only wiped to it once though. I've never had a non-PLD tank not require some heals to keep him up there before he has a handle on everything, I usually aggro a mammet or two.

I love WHM for that whole section though - I get ready for a Holy spam and the stun usually keeps me pretty safe while the tank picks up what I grabbed. The one way to avoid the attack queued on a healer is for a tank to grab the enemy while it's stunned.

All in all the simplest answer in current content is to avoid prepull regens. If you need something to do with your GCDs DoT some stuff - unless the tank facepulled (and there is still no excuse for that) there is always something to DoT. If your tank is taking so much damage you need a regen use an instant cast heal instead once he has threat.

A healer calling a tank bad because something hit them during a pull due to pregen is like a tank calling a healer bad because he lost threat to the healer during a large pull due to him taking so much damage he needed to be healed. The tank should still be able to hold threat. The healer should still be able to keep the tank alive. Those are their jobs.

@MoroMurasaki: Helpful tip if you ever run that dungeon on BRD with a healer that doesn't Esuna the bleed: You can Warden's Paeon it off. :3 Since Berserk no longer causes Pacification, WARs no longer exclusively own a BRD's Esuna (not that I ever used it exclusively for Berserk Pacification--I always used it when needed, and still do). ;3

I feel so silly for not thinking of this o.o

My silliness is somewhat assuaged by the mentor BRD also not thinking of it though. In his defence he was a wonderful BRD in almoat every other way, so much AoE, it made my heart happy <3

[Ilenya]

The reason I'm posting is because on the second boss fight (where Brayflox comes flaying in with a pieste or w/e on his tail) the BLM we are running with, waits for me to get aggro on both beasts and then.... sleeps the Inferno Drake!!!! Then the party dps's down the small drake before the big dude wakes up... etc etc the fight is won.

This used to be the way it was done whenever you had a BLM/WHM there (Not always, but often enough back in 2.0). Since not every job happens to have the sleep, I suppose it stopped being taught to do it that way anymore, but I like to tell people about it if the option comes up.

[Meillquei]

Had an interesting expert roulette today. Got Temple of the Fist with PLD tank, SCH heals, RDM dps, and me as monk.

It was a mostly uneventful run until we got to the last boss. RDM disconnected early on in the fight. SCH ended up dying when the boss had around half health. So it was just me and the PLD. PLD used Clemency on me as much as he could. I had to constantly run out of melee range to keep Spirit Wave away from the boss. The SCH ran back and the RDM eventually came back, so they both watched from outside as we slowly took down the boss. It took a while, but we ended up downing him. PLD got my commendation. I ended up with the other three.

[Luciel-Nyx]

Not necessarily bad story, but I admit I was annoyed at the end of the dungeon. I decided to level mch and as much as I disliked it in HW, in SB it's actually fun. I load in Bardam's mettle with pld, whm and sam. Right from the start pld starts with small pulls - no biggie. I don't pay much attention, but as we progress, it kind of becomes apparent whm struggles with healing, a lot. At first boss whm dies at about 30 % left of the boss (or sooner), but we easily dps it down. At that point I realize pld has to clemency himself all the time or he would die, but it didn't occur to me until last boss to actually look at whm's gear - all 260, which... is probably not optimal, but okay. And 230 ilvl anima. He was healing for so little it finally made sense - so I told him in Idyllshire you can get 260-270 weap no problem. No answer.

We proceed to the last boss, it's a wipe. Whm dies after about two hits of wind unbound. Fine, let's try again! Another wipe. Okay, apparently it's not going to work, so I try to kick the healer. Ofc it's dejected and the pld says: "C'mon, now we destroy him! " I cried a bit, but proceed to go for another wipe.

Which happened. It was obvious the pld and whm were together, so fine. Another try and then I leave, I told myself. By some miracle and with minimal hp left, we killed the boss. I bitterly left with telling the whm to at least get geared with HW gear before putting the party through this. Got two comms for some reason.

Then I looked them all up on lodestone and the pld, whm and even sam were from the same fc. I was a testing rabbit there >.> I mean, I'd be probably fine with it IF they told me beforehand they are carrying the lazy whm ass there. But seriously... We wiped about five times (once on trash mobs too if I remember correctly), it stopped to be fun after the second wipe.