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

[Nestama]

[*]AoE does not damage all mobs equally anyways. Scatter might hit every enemy with the same potency but it may Crit one, DH another and Crit/DH a third. Things already don't die at the same rate.

And even then, if it's just three mobs, one of them is going to die sooner than the others anyway because any good RDM will use Scatter and then either Verthunder or Veraero.

[MoroMurasaki]

And even then, if it's just three mobs, one of them is going to die sooner than the others anyway because any good RDM will use Scatter and then either Verthunder or Veraero.

True, though I still try to rotate through the enemies. Even on the first pull of Hell's Lid that's just the 3 crabs between Fleche and Contra Sixte if I hit an enemy more than once with a Ver spell (or hit the enemy I Fleche'd with a Ver spell at all) I tend to pull off of the tank. It isn't a huge deal, those crabs don't hit hard, but I'd rather not distract my tank and healer when they see me taking some damage.

I like to save Diversion for the pull after the fire walls because a lot of the time that's an Embolden-buffed 5 Moulinet pull.

[Azper]

Aaanyyywayyyy, in an effort to get the thread back on track...

I queued for Alliance Roulette over the weekend. I've actually liked running it as the 24-mans are generally fun and not that difficult, plus I've seen Healer on bonus quite frequently so I'll snatch up a few easy Grade V materia to sell in addition to 50 Mendacity towards my weekly cap. Win/win in my book, am I right?

I load in and find that the RNG gods have blessed with Syrcus Tower, quite possibly the most face-roll raid in the bunch... or so I thought. Immediately after the gate drops, three people instantly drop from my alliance, but overconfident me is like, "Pfft... joke's on them! This is the easiest raid ever!" I should have taken it as an omen of things to come.

As soon as we start fighting the first set of trash, I'm noticing things are just dying incredibly slow. I look around and think, "Surely half the raid must suffer from narcolepsy and fallen asleep," but no, everyone appears to be going through the motions. Stuff dies...eventually... and we make our way to Scylla. Now, as is true for most Syrcus Tower runs, you can just steamroll through and ignore the mechanics. The battle starts and people are, in fact, ignoring mechanics in favor of maximizing damage output... or so I thought. Lightning balls are exploding, no one sees fit to stand in puddles for Ancient Flare, which basically obliterated an entire alliance that must have left its healers back at the inn. And then I see something I haven't seen in forever: Daybreak. Which of course goes off, because there aren't enough people alive to activate the barrier, so I'm just over here like:



The rest of us carry on and manage to pull off a win. I'm a little shaken and scared at the thought of what's to come. Our struggle bus of a raid cruises along through the next set of trash, dying only slightly quicker than the first set. We reach Glasya Labolas and I'm thinking, "Surely Scylla was just a wake-up call for everyone and this one will go much better!" Battle begins, we're chugging along, and I'm not giving things a second thought until he starts charging up Deathstream... for the second time and we completely wipe.



Like what year is it again? How are we failing this badly when they removed a tank from each alliance and added in another DPS? How is damage this low? Bueller? Anyone? We seize victory the second time around and the rest of the run proceeds relatively okay, with of course a handful of people dying to Curtain Call on the third boss and someone with the black-aoe-platform running away to get themselves killed on the final boss. I was a bit frazzled after that run and had to log off.

[SavageCipher]

Was doing ARF, and it was all going good (my dps was on point as a Summoner, was perfectly hitting my rotations). Finally get to Ascian Prime; tank stands on every bit of the fire, then proceeds to blame it on the DPS..."Get all the shire gear you can"...I guess he didn't check mine or the other dps's equipment (we were glamoured up), so the facepalm was real.

Apparently he was fine with us burning down groups in under 20 secs, but we somehow, as dps, have to kill a boss in under a minute, while ignoring the fact that the tank thinks he can faceroll every attack. Good times.

[SavageCipher]

Why do astros not give out balances to a dps who is proforming everything they are posed to do? It seriously makes me wanna stop aoeing, stop doing my rotation and everything I was told to do as a good dps. It grinds my gears that much.

As a Scholar with a pocket Astro, I'd have to say; it depends on the type of dps. I take turns on which of the dps get it in dungeons. I don't parse, so I don't care who's doing the most dmg, but if you're an Astro I can see why you would. The balance card really doesn't come out as much as you'd like to, so you rather buff on the side of statistics, and give it out to what is statistically the strongest dps in the game. So you might've had a min/maxer who used that school of thought.

Either way, you shouldn't be mad if you're mastering your rotation. As a Summoner, I sometimes get balanced by an Astro...other times completely ignored. Are they bad Astro's or am I being greedy? A little bit of both.

[SavageCipher]

Holy toledo! About two hours ago...

Some people simply don't understand how tanking or aggro/enmity work. Coming from the old days of WoW, I've never had a problem tanking in any MMO that came after. Do dps, use your taunt mechanic(s) and keep smacking things. These days tanking is so easy, I love telling people about the old days of single target sunder armor and 20 second cleaving. And or the era of Paladin's heal tanking. If you're healing in Stormblood, you don't have much to worry about. Next time just ignore and keep tanking, they tend to follow suit after a while.

[Dualblade]

Two stories for this post, as Red Mage!

Ala Mhigo: Doing my lvl 70 rol for RDM tomestone gear yesterday (for some reason I got Sigma healer pants instead of the caster, so another two weeks waiting there). We got a new player (bonus!) who is the PLD. Shouldn't be too bad, might have to hold back a little due to gear...turns out we all have to hold back a bit even using our aggro reductions because the PLD hadn't even done their lvl 70 quest. Now normally this wouldn't annoy me, happens all the time in lower levels to, and unlike 50-60 only the 70 quest actually gives something beyond exp and gil. So after looking at the PLD's gear I let them know it would be a good idea to do their quest because it gives gear...which they proceed to say they already are aware it does and will do it after. Just...why didn't you ALREADY do it then? Its like all the people who didn't do their 70 quest before doing Shinryu at the start of the xpac. Regardless the run isn't really all that bad, just some aggro issues but we manage to keep the mobs on the tank for the most part.

Rabanastre: For todays news I go for the Alliance rol, get an immediate in-prog at 21 min. Happy about that cause its almost always Rab and usually its just someone who can't stand even one wipe so it should be fine. It was...kinda a wierd one though. The tanks seemed to have less enemity then usual as I was riding up without my reducers quite a few times even near the end of the fights, which I have not seen any other time as a RDM in Rab, BUT they still kept said aggro usually outside a slip-up at the start of Hashmal. The second wierd thing was that, despite the fact that they apparently wiped once at Hashmal before I came in all three boss fights were the fastest wins I have ever seen. Every other Hashmal for example will end up with us having to kill the second adds for example, but this time we never even came close to having to worry about them. Rofacle was already under 20% by the time we got to his add phase, and even the final boss went by very quickly. The only hiccup on my end was dashing in to start my melee burst right on top of two of Rofacle's AoEs that some melees had stacked, killing me early on. Otherwise there were very few deaths at all throughout.

There was also another Touhou in the raid! Always nice to see another one in-game.

[SaitoHikari]

Why do astros not give out balances to a dps who is proforming everything they are posed to do? It seriously makes me wanna stop aoeing, stop doing my rotation and everything I was told to do as a good dps. It grinds my gears that much.

In my experience as a Bard, I pretty much never get cards unless the other DPS is either obviously under-performing or the Astrologian in general is obviously running a parser. Although some Astro probably fit somewhere in between, they know enough about how Bards work that they just chuck spears and ewers at me like there's no tomorrow.

Class perception and meta has a lot to do with it, and Monk has a stigma dating all the way back to the Heavensward days that they haven't quite shaken off yet (even though Monks are now one of the highest DPS in the game).

[Ametrine]

When I AST, I try to set up AOEs or just rotate between the two DPS (in 8-mans I tend to fight for AoEs more).

It's usually only dictated by the cards I get. For example, if I'm pulling arrows all day, I hesitate to give them to a Monk from my own experience with TP melting under all that extra speed unless the Monk in question has some refreshing CDs. If the other is a BLM, though, I'll toss it their way.

[Cheremia]

3 Lalas and me, a lizalfos. I was bard, we had an Ast who had incredible luckw ith balances.

I was making fun of how i'm the black sheep int his Lala party , or fun and giggles. Was pretty good atmosphere, at least it hought so.

Until the AST started asking who wants the balances, I answered with "i would like them then" if i get asked, i say so, why not. In addition with an "OwO" a bit later for giggles because the greed for balances is strong. I got a heart from the ast.
But then i got called cancer and horrendous and whatnot by the tank(a drk) and he demanded all balances afterwards and got them for the rest of the run.

I wasn't even mad(so i didn't screen it) but found it pretty hilarious how something like a a smiley for fun because we were makign alot would warrant calling me cancerous. I think that smiley is cute, too and funny to use when you justw ant to show your interest ins omething your eally want. Like... overdramatic int he fun way. Might just be me tho.

I also didn't know that Mch/brd LB is used ont he sword in the zenos fight... is that worth it? Because they get destroyed super fast every time i was in that dungeon and never came close to failing. Might just be blind or something.

Also excuse my typos, I'm at work and don't have time to correct everything.