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

[tdb]

Here's a fun one. I got Titan hard from leveling roulette on BRD. The rest of the party was WAR, SCH and another BRD. Shortly after the heart phase the SCH is a little too slow in dodging a knockback and falls down. The rest of us continue fighting, but without heals it's only a matter of time before the WAR dies. I'm next in line for tanking. I dodge every avoidable attack but Second Wind has already been used and I inevitably die to Titan's autoattacks and areawides. It's only the other BRD now. Titan's HP drops to 2%, then 1%. At around half a percent I see the rock gaol marker appearing around our last surviving member. I know from my attempts at soloing this fight unsynced that if there are no ungaoled players left it's an automatic wipe. But just as the gaol finishes and the screen starts to fade to black, Titan falls and we win the fight instead of wiping.

[SoleilAlphi]

Actually there can be some good reasons why i dont sometimes use it.

1 : the boss is some seconds ahead, and i prefer to keep a full melee combo for a proper opener;

2 : the tank is running around like mad, making it a pain to land correctly enchanted moulinet in the required range and direction;

3 : the mobs are aoeing way too much and since i am no tank i will have a really bad time trying to get in the middle of the pack;

4 : the tank is not a tank but a blue dps, the healer is not a healer but a green dps holying like mad, and the mobs hp are decreasing so fast that enchanted moulinet wouldn't make a difference (very rare but sometimes happens when you end up in the team of some top fflogs rankers).

A good example of 2 and 3 at the same time are the trashmobs before the last boss of the Burn. If the tank is running everywhere like an headless chicken and is not stunning this huge big wide aoe, i will NOT get into melee range trying to use enchanted moulinet. It would only be a dps waste and probably add an extra burden on the healer compared to keep scattering from afar.

And even if i know it is not a popular opinion, tether is actually quite useful when you need some crowd control spell in a hurry. This skill saved my life several times in Eureka.

sorry but i disagree with most of these. These are not good reasons, a boss is one, so nobody would use moulinet anyway. For case 2 and 3 you get in melee range with Corp-a-corps so no reason to not use moulinet, case 4 I agree with and eureka is such niche content that it really doesn't count

[Allegor]

sorry but i disagree with most of these. These are not good reasons, a boss is one, so nobody would use moulinet anyway. For case 2 and 3 you get in melee range with Corp-a-corps so no reason to not use moulinet, case 4 I agree with and eureka is such niche content that it really doesn't count

She was referring to save up the white/black mana to use the melee combo on the boss faster instead of starting at 0, not use EM on it, and for 2 and 3 referred to avoiding melee aoe overlap from trash mobs, which is a waste of dps if you have to run for your life and would rather stay at range with Scatter. (last pull on the Burn being the example, those damn worms and their almost room wide aoe)

[SoleilAlphi]

alright I misread that. In that case I agree. However, for case 2 and 3 going melee, doing moulinet and quickly get out of the way of aoes with a displacement is easy enough that there is still no reason not to moulinet… but I don't want to start an argument so I'll just leave it at that.

[Sapphire_Dianta]

What the heck is up with the Great Gubal Library and bad players? It feels like a consistent thing, and I've already previously shared my salt in this thread about on a mind-bogglingly incompetent party member in this exact same dungeon a couple months ago.

Full disclosure, I'm pretty new to tanking, having leveled up the three tanks to at least Lv60 via PotD and beast tribes. I never touched it before because I was always scared of screwing up and getting blamed by everyone, though I've since learned that it was a lot more straightforward than I expected. Anyway, after finishing DRK and PLD, I get back to working on WAR, I take it into leveling roulette with two of my FC buddies (a WHM and a BRD) and we end up in the aforementioned library with a sprout Dragoon.

THIS FREAKING DRAGOON.

So, I main Dragoon, and I use it in my static for raiding, so I can generally tell when someone else is goofing up, and this guy was goofing up hard. Now, I don't mind newbies. I became a mentor not for the crown, but because I like helping people out. One of my favourite things to do is go around the low-level areas of the game and toss out rezzes and randomly feed sprouts Gil to help them on their way. But when you're Lv58 and still making rookie mistakes... well, I lose a lot of patience quickly. Anyway, let's get to it.

So, the first thing I notice about this little sprout Dragoon is that he doesn't use Blood of the Dragon, Battle Litany, or any of his little buffs like Blood for Blood or Life Surge. More alarmingly, though, he was only using Full Thrust and Chaos Thrust. And I mean the abilities by themselves, not the combos that lead up into them, so he's only doing a tiny fraction of the damage he could be doing. Okay, that's fine. At least I won't have to worry about him taking aggro from me on pulls, right? WRONG. As soon as I start my first big pull (I trust my healer and she trusts me to use cooldowns), the Dragoon immediately Dragonfire Dives ahead, grabs a couple mobs, pops Sprint, and charges ahead deeper into the dungeon. Okay...? Didn't expect that, but all right. I pop Sprint in panic and try and chase the guy down, pulling everything else along the way, but the healer can't get to him in time and he dies, resetting the horde of mobs he pulled. The remaining three of us finish the mobs off by ourselves while he lies dead on the floor. Good stuff.

We make it to the first boss (and he pulls it, of course), which is when I notice his interesting take on the Dragoon 'rotation' that I mentioned above. Nothing else particularly interesting about the fight, aside from the fact that he died to both Disclosures. I told him how to avoid it after the first one, but I guess he didn't care because I got no response and he ate the second one too. The pull to the next boss, the fight itself, and the pull to the final boss were more or less routine. I had hoped that the Dragoon had learned his lesson about pulling things, and I can only thank Hydaelyn that he wasn't given any tethers on the second boss. I'm certain that it wouldn't have ended well.

Anyway, final boss time. As you all know, this one can be spicy with sprouts. My Bard buddy asks the Dragoon in chat if he wanted an explanation of the boss mechanics. Almost immediately, as if in response, THE GUY USES DRAGONFIRE DIVE ON THE BOSS AND PULLS IT AGAIN. At this point, the three of us just let him die. I add "Please don't pull the boss unless you intend to tank it." As with every other prompt we sent him, we get no response. Finally we start the fight properly, fully aware that the guy had no clue what to do. It showed, too; he got hit by every other AoE, he dropped an orb on our Bard and almost killed them, and he completely ignored the button platforms. We did manage to clear it without any wipes (aside from the Dragoon's ill-advised first pull), so at least there was that. Instance ends, he immediately leaves.

Why the heck do people do this? How do they even make it this far without getting stuck? I can only apologize to people in future dungeons who end up with him. Since this Dragoon was able to complete it, that means he can progress the story and get into even higher-leveled content and plague the players there, too.

[Limonia]

I was just doing a leveling roulette as DRG and got The Aery. I'm not so good at playing DPS, especially not with jobs that I play only rarely. But this group... well, they seemed to be quite new.

First, I notice that the AST is undergeared, with still some ilvl 90 pieces (he had two lvl 70 classes though...). The DRK did a double pull and died in like 10 seconds. Ok, happens.

We respawn and make it to the boss, which takes ages to defeat. As I said, I'm not the best DRG, but I don't suck completely at it. I know the basics of what to press and while I'm not perfectly efficient at it, I'm surely not the sole reason it took so long. At any rate, the BRD didn't use any songs, the healer almost exclusively used Benefic and Benefic II and was completely out of MP after the boss, and the tank used almost no defensive cooldowns.

During all the pulls, when there was nothing to heal, the healer would run and jump around. He was also only using cards very sparingly.

We managed until the last boss, because the mechanics aren't really hard up until him. But then... we needed multiple tries for Nidhogg.

Some of the reasons: Both the AST and the BRD didn't dodge the Crimson Price orbs at all and of course the healer died. No one attacked the Sable Price when I was trapped in it and of course I die, even though I marked it and wrote in chat to attack it. One time we hit enrage because of that and other deaths. AST not standing in Estinien's barrier. Next time BRD not standing it it. And so on.

I'm so bad at explaining, but I tried to tell them what to do as their jobs.
The tank said he WAS using defense buffs when I called him out on it. I just saw him use one Rampart and two Living Dead. He probably used some more, but every time I tried to watch his buffs I didn't see any.
I told the BRD about his songs (he at least used them then, that is I saw the song buff on us once).
I also told the healer about Helios, Lightspeed, Lucid Dreaming and so on, as he was only using Benefic to heal. He ignored it, but at least he used Lightspeed once.

During the last try the BRD even attacked the Sable Price when I was trapped in it and we cleared the dungeon somehow...

Oh, and none of them did the dungeon for the first time.

At first I didn't want to give advice because I'm so bad at it and most people just complain when someone tries to or doesn't react to it at all. So I hope they at least remember what I said and follow the advice.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

What I do on AST is I throw a shield on them in Noct then i'll switch Dinural afterwards that way they have a shield up when we pull and I can get some AoE and spells out while they take 0 damage from my shields, then I just spam Gravity and throw a HoT on and that's bout it. Ast has a lot of flexibility so it's nice to experiment so you can get the best of both worlds, on bigger pulls you can put your HoT on, Collective Unconcious, Light Speed, then extend everything and have crazy Regen ticking on the tank while you Gravity everything into oblivion.

Edit: I'll Noct after pulls to and then switch back, for bosses I'm in Dinural.

That's pretty much how I'm going with AST nowadays,I save Diurnal for bosses

[HyoMinPark]

That's pretty much how I'm going with AST nowadays,I save Diurnal for bosses

Honestly, while the presheilds are nice, you have to hope the tank doesn't pull before you can swap your stance and leave you trapped in Noct. Diurnal is far more useful for the regens because they can offset autos AND it's far more MP efficient thanks to the regens; you cast them less than Noct A.Benefic, which will drain your MP faster than you probably realize (at level 70, A.Benefic is 1440 MP, which is the same as a regular Helios).

I'd recommending Largessing as many Di A. Benefits as you can - you should be able to squeeze in 2 per Largesse, and you can do this every 60 seconds. Don't forget you can also use CU for HoTs, and CU is more potent than A Benefic or A Helios.

[Kuroka]

Why the heck do people do this? How do they even make it this far without getting stuck? I can only apologize to people in future dungeons who end up with him. Since this Dragoon was able to complete it, that means he can progress the story and get into even higher-leveled content and plague the players there, too.

Honestly id kicked him on that last boss... I hate such ppl so much and chances are its just a twink and he was trolling.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Honestly, while the presheilds are nice, you have to hope the tank doesn't pull before you can swap your stance and leave you trapped in Noct. Diurnal is far more useful for the regens because they can offset autos AND it's far more MP efficient thanks to the regens; you cast them less than Noct A.Benefic, which will drain your MP faster than you probably realize (at level 70, A.Benefic is 1440 MP, which is the same as a regular Helios).

I'd recommending Largessing as many Di A. Benefits as you can - you should be able to squeeze in 2 per Largesse, and you can do this every 60 seconds. Don't forget you can also use CU for HoTs, and CU is more potent than A Benefic or A Helios.

I got into the habit of using Noct for trash pulls because A) regen effect. Not all tanks are prepared for it. B) healing during a chain pull in Noct is less likely to pull aggro off the tank--its usually only a tiny aggro lead between sprints and C) shields are extemely useful for trash aoe.

In fact, aoe heavy instances is really where Noct shines but you have better be laying down Earthly Star or bring Lucid or your mp will be gone before you know it and you dont have all those handy drain skills like SCH.