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

[KaivaC]

snip

I've seen posts for Hell's Lid a few times - is this an actual widespread issue with the boss here?

[Sida]

Here's where it gets not so fun. I've only done this maybe 3 times myself and the water ball mechanic thing is still a bit hazy to me so I try to stay on the middle tile because that seems to be the safer one more often than not. --- WHM asks a question about how to avoid the water, and gets "watch the tiles" as a reply.

I guess you might have got this already but here goes. On the water ball the the tiles turn into arrows. The ball itself will move from tile to tile into the direction the arrow points until some arrow points it out of the field. It is sort of mini puzzle in itself and takes quick thinking. Check on which tile the ball starts, visually trace it's route how the arrows point, and try to mentally check the safe tile that is not on that route. You can also try to time yourself with the ball movement but that is only feasible once you've learned to read the arrows.

And yes, I know that can be daunting when seeing it first time. I hope that run didn't ruin the place for you and your sister.

[Frizze]

Here's where it gets not so fun. I've only done this maybe 3 times myself and the water ball mechanic thing is still a bit hazy to me

Yeah, i didnt understand the ball at all the first time or two i ran it. You need to quickly do a couple things for that mechanic. So obviously, first you have to spot which tile the ball is over. Now look at the glyph on the floor. First time through i thought it was just some pattern, but its actually a stylized arrow. So each tile has an arrow pointing somewhere. Now when the ball drops it will follow the flow of the arrows from one tile to the next til it gets sent off the edge of the platform, so you need to quickly trace in your head what that path looks like. Then if you're in the pathway, figure out where to move. As a BLM i pick a tile and try to stand near the intersection where i can quickly step over into two others. Then if all 3 end up in the path(unlikely but possible), ill stand in the last one and dodge directly into the first one as the ball passes(can also AM over to the other side of the room if you have a teammate safely out of the way). Its not too hard with a few practice runs, so keep at it and good luck to both of you!

[Apoptomon]

My story for today: TIL my home internet can't handle gaming and streaming at the same time
I needed to practice level 70 tanking, so I was working my way through the dungeons and today it was time for Skalla (which I had done plenty of times on Dragoon so no big deal really). I queued in, told the party I was tnaking it for the first time, and it turned out the healer was new to the dungeon after a long break from the game. Easy enough, so i pulled only one or two group at a time and nobody said to go faster. Part way during the first boss, I notice a lot of skipping and unresponsiveness. i called out to the lounge "are you watching something?". the response is affirmative. Great. But I tab over to Resource Monitor and it's not causing latency (probably just packet loss) so I continued but felt bad for the group and apologised. They said it was okay, but it continued to be awful all the way through to the end.

At the last boss, one of the dps says something in all caps about the origins of Mewtwo, which caught me off guard, but there was no follow up so I started the battle. Part way through, the healer is killed and releases, but the dps and I manage to complete the fight. I thank the team for putting up with my awful internet, and the all-caps dps goes something like "no thank you for being a tank monster" (to which I was like "???") and when the healer got back to the exit they said something about hating novice network because it "hid warnings" (does anyone know what they meant by that?). I told them they did okay (and internally was kicking myself for not offering to explain anything, since i felt i might be at fault for any issues they had). Somehow still managed to get 2 comms.
Afterwards I thought "well at least it was only a dungeon that i was having packet loss in", since I had been thinking of starting on Omega.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I kinda agree with the last comment in that pic, you shouldn't have to watch YouTube to be able to play a game. That's bad game design imo. I think Dark Souls did it pretty well, you got a short tutorial on how to play the game and then let you loose. Tbh, I honestly feel a lot of these fights are poorly designed and the classes are poorly designed. As much as I think some of the stuff in this game is hard, I've played Dark Souls and I never had to bring up YouTube to play or defeat a boss (tbh I thought Dark Souls was easy compared to a lot of other people, but maybe different types of games click for me better than others.)

Agreed. FF14 really drops the ball on in game teaching.

That said Dark Souls approach doesn't work for anyone even though I wish it did. I actually missed the DS hype train all these years. I was over a buddies house saw he had DS3 and was like yo can I try this? He said it was a shit game he couldn't even beat the tutorial. So we booted it up and took turns trying to beat Gundyr. He was so discouraged he simply gave me the game, but I couldn't put it down.

I found that it's not a hard game, but it is a VERY punishing game. I found that every single one of my deaths was my fault. It was because I got greedy. It's because I went for 1 more attack, or a heavy when I went for a light, or I rolled poorly.

The only boss in that game I needed a video on was the one boss in Anor Londo. I couldn't figure out his fire phase and died to it way too many times. I must have died 20 times on that guy when most took me 4-5. Once I trained myself to be patient the game opened its doors. I then went on to play BB and DS2 and am very eagerly awaiting the DS1 remaster.

altho i will say what's more frustrating is joining clear parties and having people leave/party disband after 2 wipes. i get it-- i'm frustrated and mad too, but leaving after a wipe isn't helping anyone, especially those who want a clear. one of those times i wish i had a static or a dedicated group of friends to run this kind of stuff with... ;_;

It is possible that they expected a clear party, saw clear mechanics issues and possibly DPS issues and decided their time was better spent in a new group. God knows I've done it.

.This is the attitude that breeds this sort of behavior. The tank doesn't get to make everyone accommodate THEIR style of play either. Most of the time we are forced to, because of role mechanics but that doesn't give tanks carte blanc to make everyone work twice as hard to cover their ass. If he would have asked, instead of just assumed, I'm sure that duty would have gone very differently. Maybe the group would have treated it as a challenge instead of getting yanked along by TANK GOD-MODE. "Doing what they're supposed to do" is doing right by the team, not just themselves. Pressing buttons in the correct order at the correct time is a trick anyone can learn, but responsibility? Not so much.

In actuality he does. Just like a DPS can hamstring the group by doing awful damage or being AFK. They get to dictate the speed. Much like a healer gets to dictate the safety of the run. Each role has aspects it is in charge of, and the pace is up to the tank. You can volunteer it away if you'd like, but that's the hallmark of an inexperienced tank. A good tank can judge his peers and adjust dynamically. I do it every single run.

This 'Community Standard' of 'Go Big or Go Home' for tanks is really just role-stereotyping based on bad behavior and memes.

No, it's based on optimal play. Something that should be striven towards. Sometimes you can't play optimally (due to gear/skill differentials), and it's up to the tank to analyze that, as well as players with deficiencies to speak up. I cannot read your mind. If you want me to do something specific to accommodate you just ask and I'll gladly accommodate you.

[MistakeNot]

No, it's based on optimal play.

Optimal only if you are optimizing for speed. Personally I much prefer optimizing for ease and/or completeness.

[Tridus]

and when the healer got back to the exit they said something about hating novice network because it "hid warnings" (does anyone know what they meant by that?).

I'd guess that a bunch of mentors were being chatty in NN (some of them use it as a private chat channel) and that caused text to scroll by too fast to see the boss emoting something.

[Tridus]

So I've done EX many many times now, and I'm seeing a pattern. Why does EVERYONE flub the Sophia mechanic in Fractal Hard? I actually kind of yelled at someone last night because I died after getting hit by Citadel Buster because I was chasing after someone with rings while they RAN AWAY FROM ME (I was healing). I apologized because I really hate that sort of thing and I understand that not everyone has done Warring Triad, but it's literally every. Single. Time. *screams*

The marker on that isn't at all clear in what it wants you to do (and isn't one you'll see in many other things), so it'll take some time before knowledge of the correct action works its way through to everyone.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Optimal only if you are optimizing for speed. Personally I much prefer optimizing for ease and/or completeness.

It's still optimal play. If I can be as safe and complete as you and do it in 1/3 the time. It's more optimal. That is a fact.

[Tridus]

It's still optimal play. If I can be as safe and complete as you and do it in 1/3 the time. It's more optimal. That is a fact.

You're both right. It depends on what your success rate is. If it's 100%, then you optimize for speed.

If it's not 100% (and yes, people do wipe on this stuff), trying to go faster is going to make it go slower.

That math changes between people, it's not something that has a single always correct answer when done in a vaccum. For example: Some people do the pulls between bosses 1 & 2 in Ala Mhigo as one pull. I do them as two, because I've had too many wipes caused by trying to do it as one and it's not a net gain for me.