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

[Meui]

Is AoE from Monks really that uncommon?

Incredibly, in my experience. I'm usually surprised when most DPS (aside SMN) actually AoE appropriately. This feels like even more of a rarity among melee DPS. Plus, back when I mained MNK (I do kinda miss it) I remember reading a lot of threads about AotD being useless and how MNKs shouldn't use it, etc. It's not our prettiest skill, but given the right conditions, it actually should be used in AoE situations.

If I were partied up with you and saw you AoE'ing like a champ on your MNK, I'd definitely comm. you!

[Lilseph]

Snip!

I always feel like quoting this kind of comments because I'm still shocked with the high amount of DPS that will never AoE.

Last night I was spamming Skalla on PLD, because I needed a couple of glamour pieces from there that I thought I had. Out of the 8 runs I did I had both NINs and MNKs that would never AoE. A weak AF RDM that was doing 3k-ish DPS on big pulls (No idea how) and 1.4k on bosses. The last 2 runs, I asked a SMN friend to come with me, feeling bad for pulling him into this DF hell -.- He was doing great. On the other hand, I had 2 BRDs that would never EVER AoE at all, or use Refresh or Tactician. We were on Discord and my friend even noticed that one of them wasn't even using regular songs. I also had the mandatory 0 DPS healer that was just standing there spamming Benefic on me, even if I was using Hallowed Grounds.

[JohnnyDevo]

I'm usually surprised when most DPS (aside SMN) actually AoE appropriately. This feels like even more of a rarity among melee DPS.

I switched to RDM when stormblood came out and recently made an alt to play WHM on, and so far every red mage I've seen while running expert on my white mage just... didn't aoe properly. It hurt my soul to see the tank gather together a big pull, then while I'm spamming holy this guy runs up and does a single target melee combo on something.

Just, ahhhhh! Use enchanted moulinet! It's a dps gain over single target melee combo at 3 or more targets!

[xkazh]

Got Rabanasty for alliance raid roulette
First bad indication: the tanks all sat at Mateus waiting for someone else to get in tank stance. After sitting there for around two minutes like lost chickens the DRK who was still in the ilvl300/290 job gear pulls. Kudos to you lil guy, even if Mateus did squash you into lalafell jam several times. Also since the tanks were playing aggro pingpong my bard's mana/tp song was constantly on CD since the PLD from C tried to tank in Sword Oath after the DRK got pancake'd.

One very chatty RDM from Alliance A said to kill the aqua bubbles in an order of "b then a then c"... I have never seen this before? I play Aether data centre and all the other times each alliance just.. kills their own bubble no issues. I main bard and I don't mind helping other alliances with their adds once mine is killed since I'm ranged and it's less running for me, but it seems odd to the melee players run from one bubble to another.

Next up was Hashbrown, Bringer of Breakfast (he's ready with your order!). The PLD in C finally decided to MT for the raid, except the Lalajam DRK who was res'd at the end of the Mateus fight (instead of just releasing) left Grit on but not Darkside. Aggro wasn't an issue this time thankfully but again there just seemed to be overall low raid DPS and a lot of people dying to very obvious mechanics e.g. towers falling on lots of people's heads, or people just really wanting to lick the giant orange floor puddle.

Rofocale was where it just got totally ridiculous. The Dark Geas (spelling?) skill, where you have to click the circles away - the raid wiped because people just ran through them. I'd maybe understand if it weren't for the fact that the circles all have text over them, i.e. you can interact with them. I'm pretty sure that's the main indicator that you can interact or click on something (since it would be easy to miss the mouse icon changing if it hovers over the circle), and also the fact that the circles don't disappear if you just run through them.
The main annoyance for me was one of the WHMs from Alliance A. One was well geared, mostly 330-340 stuff. The other? Had some 330 bits, a 300 Arhat helmet, the WHM 350 Anemos wep which was all fine to me but... they were using the Makai 235 top. And I'd just noticed in the Chimera trashpack before that they'd set their char just to run at the gate for the adds to die. I did run up and /slap them at this point and they went and ran in a circle for a bit before going back to running at the gate.
I wouldn't necessarily mind someone using garbage gear if they made an effort to fully participate in the raid. I do think the Makai top is silly considering that your 70 Job quest hands you 290 gear on a silver platter and since they had the Aymur Anemos, they had clearly DONE the 70 job quest... so I just don't understand why they were using the Makai top. It annoys me that you get handed the 290 ilvl job gear and people still go into level 70 content e.g. expert roulettes, 70 raids etc using level 60 gear. I don't want to carry someone through a raid or whatever just because they can't be bothered (?) to use the job gear until they get better stuff or even willingly handicapping themselves for ??? level 60 gear. If you're messing around in a 4man/8man with your FC or friends then fine but don't do it in a random party...

[MoroMurasaki]

hashbrowns - bringer of breakfast

I could read rants from you all day, that made me literally lol - he's ready with your order! of salty death

Anyways- also Rabanastre. Multiple times now things have... been fine? What?!

Seriously - I'm going in several times a week so I have a stockpile of coins for upgrades in 4.3 and I keep getting groups that know what they're doing, don't have (egregious) dps deficiencies and don't let me die to unavoudable damage.

In this last run I had literally nothing to complain about. The biggest mistake made was me - I didn't pop Diversion and took a Crippling Blow as a RDM leaving me with 28 hp but the tank yanked the boss off of me and healers topped me back up before I could say Vercure.

If this is the trend in 24man raids... yes please, let's keep this train rolling.

[xkazh]

Rabanastre

I really truly wish I had raid groups this nice. About the only time I get something that goes smoothly is if Void Ark comes up in raid roulette - not crystal tower since I'm still getting raids who wipe to Behemoth/Phlegethon/Amon/Cerberus.
I haven't done Rabanastre in a while, so I don't know if I truly noticed a decrease in player quality or if my memories of running it for the Lost allagan coin upgrades are just rose tinted. They probably are since at the time I was mostly running them with my boyfriend and other FC members whereas now I'm often just pugging them. I get that not having things like voice chat means PUG groups will never be as smooth though. Did have a tank actually yesterday in WCoM who wanted to do that fancy schmancy "turn Calofisteri so the raid doesn't get cl-" [entire raid gets cleaved] and this continued throughout the fight and the tank messed up every time. Hoo boy.

:shrug: I try not to let things like raid drama or wipes get to me too much.

There is one I have just remembered which I thought I had shared but I guess not.



Context: World of Darkness. Raid wiped on the first group of trash. Literally right of the gate, wipe. Our tank had been overeager and after the wipe, proceeded to blame my FC mates who were on WHM/SCH for not healing her. The blue text is alliance and green is my party chat since I changed the default colours. White is me, Red is FC RDM, Green is the SCH. The PLD had no oath and yes, as you can see, was wearing level 29 ornaments and some NPC 40-50 gear. They had the Ironworks helm at least but again... the 45 and 50 job is like free candy, why wouldn't you just wear it?
I never use that Shield Oath macro, partly because I don't believe in using obnoxious macros outside of FC groups where we're all in voice chat and therefore not reading Party chat, but also I messed up the formatting and I'm too lazy to fix it.
They got kicked after we all revived and everyone had a good laugh about it since they were being obnoxious in alliance chat instead of just sticking to party chat, but idk, this one really just sticks out to me.

[Karl0217]

Is AoE from Monks really that uncommon?

Melee dps that use AoE in your average duty finder party are somewhat rare. Though I think part of the problem is that many classes don't get their AoE attacks until around level 30 or later; some like Dragoon don't get it to 40 or later. By that time your average player could have easily have sunk thirty or forty hours into the game. When your first experience with the game is single target dps for dozens of hours on end it can create a mindset that might be hard to break. In fact, Bard and Black Mage are the only dps classes that I can think of off the top of my head that get an AoE attack below level 20.

[YayazeYaze]

I wanted to have a perfect challenge log week just once - had some time this week so why not now, right? Everything went fine - until I started queueing for Astragalos...

Why? Just why did I have to unlock that?^^
I tried, really - queued for several hours several times...it's...just...impossible...giving up now... XD^^

Astragalos queue ruined it...

Still feels good to have all non-pvp completed though, so I'm only half as sad as I used to be by now

Nevertheless I hope that Astragalos gets more popular again some time - I haven't even seen it once up to now...

P.S.: Edited that several times - sorry about that, it's my first post, i hope the link to the screenshot is working^^

[kidalutz]

How do you deal with something like that?

Just remember the simple rule.. if ranged pulls ranged tanks what they pull.

[Mhaeric]

In fact, Bard and Black Mage are the only dps classes that I can think of off the top of my head that get an AoE attack below level 20.

RDM, BLM, MCH, BRD, and SAM all have AoE at level 18 which is early enough to use in all content. BLM even get it as early as 12 with their second one coming in at 18. And even though SMN doesn't get proper AoE until 30, it still does okay AoE early on even with just hardcasting DoTs on each mob. MNK gets it much earlier than people tend to think at 26, and DRG have to wait until 40. Meanwhile poor NIN has to wait until 42.

The one thing I always think of when the topic of AoE comes up is that poor ASTs don't even get their one AoE ability until 52 making it not able to be used in any 2.0 content at all. I really wish they would adjust that somehow, since I always feel super useless as an AST in 50 capped content.