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

[Elkhar]

So, today I queued up for a nice and peaceful trial roulette as tank (paladin, it will be important later, believe me). I always have 'Party in Progress' checked, to help parties who lose their tank, for whatever reason. And for the first time in a pretty long while, my trial roulette queue pops as a 12 minutes in progress trial. I load in and I immediately see Ravana. Frowning, I ask the chat what happened and the only answer that I get is 'mechs happened'. Two of the dps leave while that is being said, so we wait for two new dps. Finally, I pull, as MT. The OT was also a paladin and he had Sword Oath on when I loaded in, so I assumed I was going to be MT. First thing I noticed as soon as the fight starts is that the OT is doing absolutely... nothing. Not even kidding. His character was even turned away from Ravana, and he wasn't attacking, moving, anything. Then aoes appear on the floor and he barely moves and takes the hit. A minute later, he types in chat "shield", during a slaugther cast from Ravana. I ignore it, not knowing what he means. A good 30 seconds+ goes by and he types in chat "oath". So I type "hm...what?". Silence.

Another full minute goes by and he types again 'shield oath' in chat. So this time I say 'Can you make a full sentence, please?'. I had shield oath on, I didn't understand what he could mean. Then I see him switch to Shield Oath himself and I kind of get the hint that he wants to be MT? I think? But I've been watching him! I knows he barely attacked the boss and has been getting hit in the face by every single mechanic. So, I don't feel like letting him be the MT! But I was wrong. Because next thing I see in chat from him is : 'shield oath, turn it on'. ?????? And I promise you my Shield Oath was on the whole time. It had been on since I first loaded into the instance. So I couldn't help but say 'It is on, you weirdo'. Then I finally didn't hear from him again.

Until his mechanic comes around. The one that focuses on OT and deals a good share of damage and the OT has to stand away from the party to not cleave everyone? Yeah. Somehow he managed to be the OT, by just enough hits on Shield Oath, and he stands where everyone is stacked, cleaving everyone. Until I yell in chat to get away from the party and he runs to one of the barriers of the arena and we just hide behind Ravana again. We end up killing him just fine and I got all comms at the end.

It wasn't really awful or anything, but it was... so weird. I don't understand what happened or what he was trying to do, to be honest. Oh well *shrugs*

[Kakiko]

Darkside isn't a stance and, with the removal of the mp drain in SB, the only reason not to have it on outside of a few very specific situations is to be synced below level 30. As for grit, they definitely should have been using that, especially considering their gear level.

Yeah, I meant more that they weren't in Grit at all. I worded it really wrong, my bad lol I'll fix it. Thank you!

[Otaru]

Healer says tank do not need his heals, can sustain himself only with bloodbath.

But tanks can't use Bloodbath anymore. I'm so confused.

[Ilenya]

But tanks can't use Bloodbath anymore. I'm so confused.

I assume someone hasn't run a tank since Stormblood...Or you know, anytime before. Bloodbath was nice, but for anything not a Warrior, it really wasn't enough on it's own, and for Warrior only for a little while.

[Mesarthim]

I had a rather unfortunate death on the monoeye NM in Eureka. So you know how the game handles area of effect skills right when it hits each respective player?

Well I was standing medium far away from the boss when he did his draw in effect so I started to walk out of his gigantic 10000 tonze swing range... only to be drawn back in right before it finishes. Assuming you can find anything left of my body I think I died.

[SenorPatty]

Just came out of a really good Hell's Lid run. Two SMNs, One AST and me tanking. The SMNs melted everything. EVERYTHING lol. The ast made me feel safe and threw some dps on the side. It was beautiful. It made me miss playing SMN (haven't played it in over 2months now).

[AmemeAmeklin]

This is a good story!

PotD floors 91-100

Those groups are always a crapshoot on class mixes. This time it was 2 astrologians, a lancer, and a ninja. (I am one of the astrologians, total newbie healer who has somehow kept the groups alive so far.) On one of the early floors, the other astro dies to...something...I use Ascend, we move on. Abruptly, the astro leaves. We lurk on the next floor's entry point, avoiding the various roamers, hoping for someone to come fill the spot. No one does. We start doing all the floors as a group of three.

So at some point I end up dying to an angry coffin-wielding zombie hellbent on smashing my face in (after a series of other zombies tried to murder me). The DPS manage to live and go on a quest to activate the Cairn of Return, which was rough since one of them had the accursed pox from a mimic ambush two floors ago. They activate it and revive me and we move on.

Floor 99, we all vaguely know what the boss does. In our 3-man misadventures, we obtained 2 pomanders of resolution. We put together a really half-baked plan wherein I just heal everyone, the lancer uses Lust, and the ninja uses the resolution pomanders to deal with adds. Floor 100, Ninja ends up chaining the pomanders (probably not too great of a tactic - something to remember for next time!). Of course we run out of pomanders, leaving the adds 'alive' for the rest of the fight. The adds think my brains look extra juicy. By the end of the fight, I'm out of MP and running circles around the boss and the lancer who is MTing, casting aspected benefic on whoever seems like they need it since it's instacast and I'm on the run. Ninja is chasing me trying to murder the adds while I'm avoiding being hit. Crazy music plays the whole time.

I didn't think we were gonna make it but suddenly...! DUTY COMPLETE appears on the screen and the boss is a pile of rags and no more zombies are trying to eat my brains! We lived! Party chat instantly filled with 'holy crap that was crazy' and 'good job everyone'. I informed the two DPS that they both got comms in my heart (curse the 'you can only commend one' part of commendations), commended the ninja for surviving with the pox and no healer earlier (the lancer deserved one too!!!!), got one commendation myself, and I sure hope the lancer got one from the ninja.

Sadly my accursed hoard reward was some underwear and demimateria. Oh well. I got the boss's theme orchestrion roll to remember the experience by.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Second story!

Also from Hell's Lid. I go in on BLM with a member of my FC on his WAR. We get an astrologian healer and another black mage with some 370 gear. Other BLM dies on first boss (oopsie) then healer dies on first boss. We manage to get the first boss down. Healer dies on next trash pack. Healer dies on second boss because they weren't standing in the right place, we manage to stay alive. I for some reason have Drain on my hotbar. No idea when or why I added it but there it was and it actually worked enough to keep me out of dangerously low HP levels. Everything else uneventful; healer figures it's their VPN giving them a faster connection than usual (??) but it's really no big deal. We're making good time regardless.

Get to the final boss aaand healer dies with the boss at like 20%. Then other BLM dies (didn't see how). I'm 100% expecting a wipe but again for some reason I have Drain slotted on my hotbar. I figure - it can't hurt but I wasn't expecting a miracle. Tank goes ham on DPSing, I pop Manaward(wall?) and because I'm sitting at only about 20% health, I spam Drain and... hot damn it works. I get up to 80% health and the boss now is at about 15% or so. Between the two of us - we power through it and finish it off.

No comms.

Great story! Too bad you didn't get any comms. It sounds you really deserved a few.

Drain has saved my Black Mage's butt more than once, also. It's not a spell I'd have in my rotation; but, there are times where survival is more important than damage.

I guess we have yet another topic to chat about in Limsa Lominsa. /laugh

[Sesera]

Great story! Too bad you didn't get any comms. It sounds you really deserved a few.

Drain has saved my Black Mage's butt more than once, also. It's not a spell I'd have in my rotation; but, there are times where survival is more important than damage.

I guess we have yet another topic to chat about in Limsa Lominsa. /laugh

This is why I wish you could gave comms to more than 1 person.
Seems like both tank and Kakiko did a great job here. If I was one of the two other I wished I could gave comm to both.

[Kacho_Nacho]

This is why I wish you could gave comms to more than 1 person.
Seems like both tank and Kakiko did a great job here. If I was one of the two other I wished I could gave comm to both.

You and me both, Sesera. I'd love to see a system where we could choose to commend a character or not for every individual in the party. It would be a fairer system of feedback than the one we have in place now.