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

[Lium]

Actually failed Steps of Faith last night on my NIN for the first time in the history of me playing FFXIV. Just stared at the screen in disbelief as the cutscene played and my character looked on angrily.

Now, I am no pro player. Far from it. In fact, I'm a filthy casual. But Steps of Faith is one of the easiest trials in the game, in my opinion. Here's where I think it went wrong. Before the fight started, the tank says we should man the cannons and round up all the adds in the middle. Again, I'm no pro but I thought that was odd. Every single time I've run this trial, EVERYONE focuses the big dragon and ignores everything else. In fact, I remember one of the first times I did it I ran to the cannons and someone said in party chat "Just focus the dragon". It's basically just a DPS race to burn the thing down as fast as possible.

For long stretches of the fight last night, I found I was the only one on the dragon. Everyone else was dealing with adds, on cannons, running around...it was so weird to me, but I didn't say anything. The dragon just kept strolling along like a pimp walking down the street, not losing nearly enough HP, and I kept thinking, "I don't think this is right." I zoomed my camera out and saw the end of the path coming up and then thought, "Holy Sh!# I think we're actually gonna fail this!"

Anyway, I could be wrong about everything I typed above. Maybe the correct way to do this trial is to fire the cannons or whatever. But every time I've done it in the past we just focus fired the boss and dropped him as quickly as possible.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Generally, the idea is to gather the adds under Vishap, so that the cannon fire will hit him as well as all of the adds and burn everything down at once. It helps if people remember to use the snares and dragonkillers correctly, as well. Usually he doesn't even make it to the third gate.

With gear inflation, burning him down rapidly is doable, if everyone's paying attention (and Duty Finder is often akin to herding cats....through a minefield....during a thunderstorm). It's just not the intended strategy.

[Dreamsoap]

Prior to me quitting, mechanics had to be observed on steps of faith and I've never once ran it without a group failing a couple times before succeeding even then. You could tell people to use snares/ killers and delegate specific people to do it and explained how it all worked, but despite confirmations before it started it was still like no one listened. Sometimes people would outright quit duty and hope for a better party. I hope steps of faith isn't as much of a headache now with burning the dragon possible.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Did Alliance roulette last night and got Dun Scaith. Both healers didn't have Esuna. One even was aware and mentioned it in chat yet neither bothered to equip it for the entirety of the raid as far as I could tell. Certainly not for that fight. I understand that most high-end content doesn't need it. But Alliance often does. Why would you not prepare knowing the available duty list and ESPECIALLY for that battle? :\

[Kakiko]

Did Alliance roulette last night and got Dun Scaith. Both healers didn't have Esuna. One even was aware and mentioned it in chat yet neither bothered to equip it for the entirety of the raid as far as I could tell. Certainly not for that fight. I understand that most high-end content doesn't need it. But Alliance often does. Why would you not prepare knowing the available duty list and ESPECIALLY for that battle? :\

This is my gripe with healers in general. I heal, it's my second "main", and I almost always have esuna equipped unless I know 100% for sure that there isn't any part of a fight that I'll need it ever.

I was leveling my BRD up last night with my friend on his WAR and we did a levelling roulette where we got Cutter's Cry. Our healer was a guy who had all healers at lvl 70, was wearing Diamond gear, etc. The RDM with us had multiple lvl 70s as well. We get to the worm boss and the RDM gets hit with Sludge and I watch the healer frantically keep casting Cure on the guy over and over. I get hit with Sludge and the healer does the same thing over and over, but it's not enough and I die. I type out "Sludge can be cleansed with Esuna" to get the reply back "sorry don't have it." Esuna is a lvl 20 skill, Cutter's Cry is a lvl 38-40 dungeon. I figured, okay maybe he'll equip it. We get to the final boss and notice that the healer get's an accomplishment for mapping Cutter's Cry (it's not an MSQ duty so that's fine). WAR explains the mechanics. RDM goes "Good sir, you should know, I am level 70" and then promptly gets hit with paralysis which the healer does not Esuna off because they chose not to slot it at all after the worm boss. WHM ends up dying because they didn't follow the mechanic and then I ended up mistiming my jumpback on bard and got killed (this was when the boss was at like.. 20%, though the RDM got paralysis almost immediately and the healer died a little over 10 seconds after that). WAR ended up soloing it all the way down. Walked out with 0 comms from the healer and RDM who were on the same server and in the same FC (I got neither comm).

[Rowde]

Did Alliance roulette last night and got Dun Scaith. Both healers didn't have Esuna. One even was aware and mentioned it in chat yet neither bothered to equip it for the entirety of the raid as far as I could tell. Certainly not for that fight. I understand that most high-end content doesn't need it. But Alliance often does. Why would you not prepare knowing the available duty list and ESPECIALLY for that battle? :\

We are 2 to 3 weeks from this not being a thing anymore...

[Rymm]

We are 2 to 3 weeks from this not being a thing anymore...

From healers who don't run with it, sure. From healers who don't bother to use it.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Skivvy]

We are 2 to 3 weeks from this not being a thing anymore...

I've been out of the loop for a month or so....are they changing the role abilities? O.o

[Apoptomon]

I've been out of the loop for a month or so....are they changing the role abilities? O.o

As with the cross-class skill system before it, Jobs can only 'equip' half the number of role skills that Classes can. They're changing this in 4.4 so that Jobs can equip the same amount as Classes.

[Pells]

Actually failed Steps of Faith last night on my NIN for the first time in the history of me playing FFXIV. Just stared at the screen in disbelief as the cutscene played and my character looked on angrily.

Now, I am no pro player. Far from it. In fact, I'm a filthy casual. But Steps of Faith is one of the easiest trials in the game, in my opinion. Here's where I think it went wrong. Before the fight started, the tank says we should man the cannons and round up all the adds in the middle. Again, I'm no pro but I thought that was odd. Every single time I've run this trial, EVERYONE focuses the big dragon and ignores everything else. In fact, I remember one of the first times I did it I ran to the cannons and someone said in party chat "Just focus the dragon". It's basically just a DPS race to burn the thing down as fast as possible.

For long stretches of the fight last night, I found I was the only one on the dragon. Everyone else was dealing with adds, on cannons, running around...it was so weird to me, but I didn't say anything. The dragon just kept strolling along like a pimp walking down the street, not losing nearly enough HP, and I kept thinking, "I don't think this is right." I zoomed my camera out and saw the end of the path coming up and then thought, "Holy Sh!# I think we're actually gonna fail this!"

Anyway, I could be wrong about everything I typed above. Maybe the correct way to do this trial is to fire the cannons or whatever. But every time I've done it in the past we just focus fired the boss and dropped him as quickly as possible.

The strategy is to burn the dragon down, yes.

You do this with the cannons because even with twenty levels of gear bloat, they still do more damage than any player can. They also do this damage in an area. Nobody should be touching the adds besides the cannons. Ideally, they'll swarm a healer who has a regen running and is standing in front of the dragon. The healer takes minimal damage because the cannons will shred the adds. Less ideally, a tank stops attacking long enough to gather adds together where the cannons can shred them.

(Keep in mind that 'ideally' and 'pug' are something of a miracle to experience together.)

The turtle's big ae should be stun-interrupted by one of the tanks.

At this point in the game (everyone in ilvl 350+) he should be dead before the first dragonkiller, though if it's close one player should run up and use it. It is still a dps gain for the party, the same as the cannons.

Two people on cannons leaves six people hitting the dragon full time. What happened to your group is exactly the opposite of what your tank suggested.