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

[VillainQueen]

I know black mages love their leylines but until today I have not witnessed one willing to die for it. Second boss of ghimlyt dark uses freezing missle and begins the second dive. Black mage had his leylines in the dead center of the arena. After the boss dashes across, no hesitation whatsoever, teleports into his leylines in the lane of fiery goodness. instantly dies in 3 ticks.

It was amusing.

I once had a Black Mage that refused to leave his leylines in Xelphatol. You know with the fight where the arena has spikes all around. Yep.. died because he was standing in spikes and refused to leave them... At first I healed him up but I eventually let him die. After raising him he finally got that standing in something sharp was not healthy. Who would have thought lol

[Yuiipuru]

I recently unlocked menor roulette and for the first few runs, it was totally normal; nothing like the horror stories I had read and just kind of felt like dungeon grinding. (Other than a Garuda ex I got, but that wasn't so bad save for the one mentor that was cursing at sprouts for not getting the mechanics right)

But hooboy that changed today when I got an in progress Aurum Vale.
Got in expecting to be at the second boss or something, but they hadn't even cleared the first room. It started out kind of normal until I realized the other mentor, a mch, was pulling the entire first room. The nin started complaining about why we were clearing the first room, and I just kind of felt bad for the sprout tank who couldn't seem to pull bc the mch was doing it for them.

But no complaints from the tank though so I just decided to heal both the mch and the tank. The nin seemed OK at first other than just kind of occasionally complaining, but then they went around on the first boss eating EVERY. FRUIT.
My regen and mana barely keeping us afloat and at one point I had 5 stacks until a fruit finally spawned again.

I thought maybe the tank was shy and worried about pulling so I tried to reassure them they could pull as they liked and I'd keep them alive. They responded that this was their second time in this dungeon.
And so the entire dungeon was the mch pulling for the tank, and nin randomly spacing out and idling for an occasional pull, and clearing every mob in the dang place.

It just felt kind of awful because I feel like the tank is gonna get eaten alive in later content if they didn't learn to pull mobs by level 50 and healing it was justhe awful too. But they didn't seem keen to change how they were pulling so I just didn't say anything else. Left feeling a little astounded because I'd never seen such a bizzare dungeon run.

Makes me a little wary of mentor roulette now. I don't mind wiping but seeing someone learn to tank like that just didn't feel very great ><

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Few roullette runs from early march


I queue for expert roullette as DRK and get Ghymlit Dark.Run was smooth and nothing bad happens


Then I queue for mentor roullette and I get Ghymlit dark again(same dungeon a second time in a row) and I get a BLM,WHM and MCH

Things seem to go well at first until we reach the last boss.Almost on every pull it's Annia that goes first rather than Julia like most of my runs.

Everytime Annia casts Airborne Strike to blow up the gas containers...the WHM always died to it and this continued for four wipes in a row.

They apologized so I didn't mind and kept going at first until we got to the fourth wipe where the WHM silently left with the machinest following shortly after a disgruntled comment.

Me and the BLM set waiting for a solid 3 minutes before we got the replacements.And the funny thing is,our replacement healer died twice to the same stuff there too but eventually after another two wipes we finally finish it

To the BLM that was with me that day, you were a legit bro and I wish I didn't forget to add u to my friendlist

[Aosha]

I know black mages love their leylines but until today I have not witnessed one willing to die for it. Second boss of ghimlyt dark uses freezing missle and begins the second dive. Black mage had his leylines in the dead center of the arena. After the boss dashes across, no hesitation whatsoever, teleports into his leylines in the lane of fiery goodness. instantly dies in 3 ticks.

It was amusing.

To be fair, there are not that many aoes that linger damage like that. They might just have expected it to be safe after the boss went past. I did the same on my first run... xD

During the first two weeks of that dungeon I saw literally ONE healer NOT run into the fire to die. Sure am glad my Warrior can solo the whole boss if need be. :P
The first time through I also ran into the fire, but got out after a tick or two of damage, going "oh that lingers? unusual." Thanks, tank privilege.

BTW, the boss doesn't actually dash through the arena in that move, even though the animation sure looks like it should be something like that. It just fires a big ol' fire beam from inside a wall. What part of the machine does the beam come from? I'm not sure.

[Coltvoyance]

Probably the worst DF run I've ever had. And probably the most guilty I've ever felt towards other players.

It wasn't long ago that I decided to level Dragoon to 70, so I was running dungeons (I don't believe in using PotD or HoH to level) and I was currently on my last run of Doma Castle before I'd hit 69 and do the next dungeon.

Made the first pull, 3 mobs. Seemed a little slow, but okay. Second pull, it's like 10 spider mobs or whatever. Going reaaaaally slow now, DPS is definitely low. I end up pulling aggro on a few spiders; tank doesnt even seem to notice. But we get through, bit of a rocky start, but okay...

I think nothing of it, 3rd pull. Iron Giant. Still slow. I stop focusing on my rotation enough to notice the SAM doesn't know their class very well, kind of slashing randomly (mained SAM for a little bit when it came out), leading to some pretty mediocre DPS...

Then we get to the 4th pull and things start to come off the rails. I hadn't noticed before, but the Tank is really struggling. Hes dropping like a stone, not using any cooldowns and I notice the healer is repeatedly casting Cure 3... He runs out of MP and the party wipes. This happens again. Then the tank DC's halfway through the third attempt and I manage to finish off the last of the mobs for the 4th pull.

At this point I'm rubbing my temples and feeling kind of frustrated. We're sitting waiting for the Tank to reappear. I'm looking at the WHM, the SAM, and the offline tank and realize that all three of my party members are relatively new or inexperienced... in a lvl 67 dungeon. Like, I'd bank on it that they spent all their time in PotD or HoH to level (or even more likely, jump potions), never really learned their class or got decent gear and were carried in every other story dungeon.

So much of me wanted to help correct them. Then I started thinking about the logistics of it. To confront both the tank and the healer, and potentially the SAM and then sit down for 20-30 minutes trying to explain to each of them how to play their classes, at high level, and what skills to use... It just couldn't be done. I didn't have that kind of time, nor that level of patience to teach 3 people how to play.

So I waited until the Tank got back in and I wrote "All three of you need to take some time and read up on how to play your class. This is kind of playing is inexcusable for people who are almost max level." And I left. I'm not proud of it. I wanted to help. But it was too much. One person? Sure, I'll take the time to teach, but I was alone with three people who didn't seem to think it was a problem to wipe 3 times in a row to a single pull of trash mobs.

[linay]

Earlier today, I had a nice run of Aurum Vale where the great party decided to clean house (one pull at a time, of course, most of the time) without even having to say anything about it and even waited for most of the eggs to hatch. There was so much yummy exp goodness for my bard. And other than the fact that I ended up soloing the second boss during the last 20% or so of its HP, which was pretty nerve wrecking but satisfying in the end, the run went really great in my opinion. I mostly have fun experiences in Aurum Vale.

[VillainQueen]

So I waited until the Tank got back in and I wrote "All three of you need to take some time and read up on how to play your class. This is kind of playing is inexcusable for people who are almost max level." And I left. I'm not proud of it. I wanted to help. But it was too much. One person? Sure, I'll take the time to teach, but I was alone with three people who didn't seem to think it was a problem to wipe 3 times in a row to a single pull of trash mobs.

Not trying to be rude here but to them you probably seemed like a huge d*ck. I mean I understand that you don't have the time to teach them but dropping a "learn how to play" and leave is not really constructive and I bet from their side you looked pretty toxic. I get your frustration, I really do but I think it's better to just leave without saying anything, or saying something and take the time to help them. This way no one ends up feeling hurt. Again I don't mean to offend you or anything.

[Bluegamer]

So I have three stories, I've been leveling my whm lately so I've been doing dungeons and stuff again

Castrum: Did main scenario roulette because the xp was pretty good and I had the time to spare. Pretty shortly into it my cohealer had an rl emergency to attend to and asked to be kicked. I didn't mind this so I attempted to do so, but I wasn't paying attention and accidentally misclicked, tried to kick the tank right above the healer in the party list. This unfortunately went through and I felt so terrible! I just kicked a person for no reason, it was an accident but it felt so rude. If you end up reading this dark knight I am so sorry!

Sohm Al (NM): So at this point I just started running the highest available dungeon since I was through all my roulettes, when I got in I noticed the tank was a little... difficult... to heal. After the first couple of mob packs I checked their gear and found that most of their left side was i90 stuff from their class quest and one of the their rings was the lvl 1 weathered ring. I gently mentioned this like, 'tank, you know you're wearing a lvl 1 ring right?' and they didn't respond. After the second boss fight I mentioned that ishgard sells i115 gear and would be a pretty good improvement. They had an ironworks shield and several 70's so I assumed they knew about gear but just didn't bother. At this point the tank started responding, thankfully they were pretty nice and understanding. They had been leveling and forgot to update their gear, and at the end of the dungeon mentioned needing to make a trip to ishgard, so happy ending! Yay! Overall healing them wasn't too difficult (thanks whm ^^) but it feels so weird focusing so much on healing instead of casting holy or something else, especially after lots of 70 content on my astro. Overall tank turned out to be a cool dude so that made the run better.

The Aery: Ugh... This one wasn't very fun. Thankfully this time the tank was adequately geared. There was no first time bonus so I didn't think to explain any mechanics like prey and needing to move to the statue during the first boss. One of the dps completely ignored it even as they were tethered. The other was pretty good about handling everything thankfully. Also at some point the drk tank must have turned grit off because they forgot to turn it back on for several pulls after. I gently mentioned it after they were struggling a lot with aggro against the other dps's. They turned it back on about a min or so later. Eventually we get to the final boss, good ol Niddy. The tank at several points kept spinning the boss around, nailing estinien a bit with his cleaves (I think he had cleaves) and aoe's (Which can't be helped but it resulted in a very weak estinien during add phase that I didn't notice until I had to start spamming heals on him). The first time we wiped the dps who knew stuff got caught in the scarlet price and the other dps must not have noticed because I tried to do what I could but I just couldn't free him alone and he ended up dying, quickly followed by the other dps. Then the tank spun the boss around and I guess nailed estinien again because he promptly did a one shot against us. The second attempt we took too long during the add phase, which I didn't even know was possible. The third attempt though thankfully went a lot better since everyone knew what they were doing at this point. Incredibly smooth, until we were saying goodbyes and 'thanks for the party' and was told, 'shut up healer' right as I was leaving by the dps who let the other die and messing up mechanics. Fun times.

I should have been better at explaining mechanics but the one dps explained them so I didn't think too. Overall, bleh.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Not trying to be rude here but to them you probably seemed like a huge d*ck. I mean I understand that you don't have the time to teach them but dropping a "learn how to play" and leave is not really constructive and I bet from their side you looked pretty toxic. I get your frustration, I really do but I think it's better to just leave without saying anything, or saying something and take the time to help them. This way no one ends up feeling hurt. Again I don't mean to offend you or anything.

I agree on this one

leaving with silence would've been the better option here rather than dropping a remark that,while not rude in intention,still can easily be misunderstood as toxic elitism even if it wasn't.

I hope I'm not offend you either @Coltvoyance/Athaleiya cuz I did have a similar situation before on The Burn a while back where the Dark Knight tank used no cool downs and our dps was so low and I was running out of time irl with some responsibilites so I silently left without saying anything as my mood was a bit down at the time.tbh you should've just exited the instance without that remark if only to save yourself the bother of dealing with a possible GM messaging about potential reports u can get from it

[Cincierta]

I agree on this one

leaving with silence would've been the better option here rather than dropping a remark that,while not rude in intention,still can easily be misunderstood as toxic elitism even if it wasn't.

I hope I'm not offend you either @Coltvoyance/Athaleiya cuz I did have a similar situation before on The Burn a while back where the Dark Knight tank used no cool downs and our dps was so low and I was running out of time irl with some responsibilites so I silently left without saying anything as my mood was a bit down at the time.tbh you should've just existed the instance without that remark if only to save yourself the bother of dealing with a possible GM messaging about potential reports u can get from it

There will be people who will report for anything, no matter how tiny or stupid it truly is, just because they can, and waste the GM's time.

As for that party, I'll play a bit of devil's advocate and say it probably was best for them to speak up, as the rest of the party genuinely should have a solid understanding of their jobs at that point in the game. If they don't, they're pretty much as good as dead in future content. I highly doubt you'd wish to meet the same people, even after explaining everything about their job (which they obviously should know at this point), in an endgame or high-level content area that constantly keep screwing things up and straining your patience until it breaks. After ARR, 14 pretty much demands a basic understanding of game mechanics, jobs, and limits. Sure, it may hit the fan, but if you learn from your mistakes, 14 is happy with you. If you don't, well...this is why we have this thread to vent.

The way they spoke up may have been blunt, but it was honest, and it's better to be honest than just sugar-coat things, as some people will just repeat the same things over and over until you finally have to forcefully hammer it through that thick noggin when it comes to Party Basics 101.

However the problem remains: 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it.' Even if those people actually took the time to look up a guide on their jobs, are they willing to actually use said knowledge? Or will you be that unlucky sod that runs into the same people who still don't know their job in high-level content and have to teach them everything? And then still watch them mess up?

Because trust me, I can only carry so much weight on my back, and I can't always carry a terrible party.