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

[SenorPatty]

How do I steer "pure healers" towards the wonderful world of green DPS without making it sound like they're playing the game wrong?

You can't. Unlike typical advice that steers a player into using a particular skill or on how to deal with a particular scenario/mech, playstyle advice has rarely worked out. Or rather, higher the content lvl, the less chance you have uprooting them from their usual habits. If a healer never learned or barely tried to dps during lull times, then chances are when they hit cap level, you're advice sounds like less like advice and more like toxic elitism. To them that is. It's like how there are healers who'll slap a regen way on a tank before they even get within mob pack vicinity (at the start of a mass pull, not inbetween): completely uneeded and all it does is makes the tank run back if he missed his aoe enmity move. Sadly, some healers have been so used to that style of play that if you told them otherwise, they would liekly take it as an affront. And this goes for pretty much any role mind you. There are just some bad habits that you'll find in players, they adopted it since the early levels and unfortunately, you will have those who will not budge even if you present them with evidence how its counterproductive to continue as they are.

Playstyle advice is much harder to receive than most advice regarding other things in game.

[MarniDawg]

I ran squad dungeons with my pld up to 33 and was bored to tears so I decided to buy a level skip potion. Practiced on the dummy for a while afterwards and queued into 50/60 roulette. ARF pops.

Gave the party fair warning that I had done this and preceded to tank. Messed up a few times and died twice, but healer said it was their bad both times.

I just wanted to say thanks for patient players with goofs like me. After that dungeon I am shaking with excitement. I really enjoyed it even though I wasnt so great. As for now I'm going to smack that dummy a ton more so I dont forget where my buttons are lol.

[Killabri]

This is from last night but only just had time to share it. Hopped into the lovely realm of Duty Finder as I was winding down a night with my 340 DRK and jumped into duty finder, thinking it would go quickly enough and I could close out the night on a good note. End up drawing Castrum Abania, no first timers, and off we go with me still thinking we will breeze through. Healer is a SCH and I notice immediately that my HP is dropping low on trash pulls but hey, if the heals wants to add DPS, fine by me... I'm comfortable with the health getting low if we do this faster. Then I have to use a cooldown on one of the forced small pulls and I begin to wonder what's going on. We get to the first boss and I think I know the problem... she has her fairy doing auto heals and she isn't doing a single heal herself. I die on the first boss as does a DPS who didn't get a heal through a dungeon wide blast and then ate another mechanic. We wipe, and then we go again. Exact same result. At this point I ask if she has the fairy on auto and get no response, so I decide I'm just going to leave, but before I can do that I see something that really bothered me and I felt compelled to point it out before I did.

If you are leaving due to incompetence that can't/won't be fixed by the offending party, just go do that instead of sending a bunch of really nasty messages to that person about how they're playing their class, because the other DPS decided to do just that. Trying to give people any advice in DF is usually incredibly poorly received anyway, so that's strike 1, but if you have that big of a problem with the way another person is playing, then just leave. Let them be someone else's problem. He sent her over a bunch of stuff telling her to uninstall the game, she's trash, etc (that's the version I can print, anyway). While I get it can be frustrating when people obviously have no idea how to play their class (and given that was her only class in the 60s, I'm certain she bought a skip potion and hopped right into DF), calling them awful and insulting them is not going to fix that problem so just move on or initiate a vote kick.

[Fresky]

I have two stories.

First, Orbonne in progress as AST. My cohealer was spamming, urr, benefic II during the Ultima transition phase. Well, Very cool I guess <.<.

Second, leveling WAR in Bardam's Mettle. Matched up with an AST, a BRD and a SAM. That run took forever (35ish minutes with no wipes). BRD was doing okay, DPS was a bit low but pretty typical for DF. AST wasn't dpsing but healed fine so I'm still okay with that. The SAM, though, had less than 20k health so I examined them. Most pieces were between ilvl 225 and 260 which is not that bad for a dps. However, he was still wielding the ilvl 115 starting SAM weapon. Yeah, it's the nq one you got from the initial quest. I would argue that the weapon isn't good enough for some late HW dungeons, let alone a level 65 dungeon. >.>.

[OrangeCrystarium]

So I queued up for my weekly clear of Alphascape V4.0 to get the crystalloid and my co-healer was one of the laziest (or ignorant, depending on your opinion) players I have ever witnessed. During the fight, he would stand around and wait for people to take damage, only ever casting Cure on them. Nobody in the group ever dipped below 90% HP outside of AOE attacks due to his determination to spam Cure - MUST ALWAYS BE AT FULL HP. Needless to say, this was grinding my gears throughout the entire fight. Not a single Stone IV or Aero/III were cast, I should add, especially during the DPS check phase where M puts up his shield. Standing around admiring the scenery I suppose. He even threw in Medica II during this time for... reasons I guess?

We get to the second phase where we now fight M and F simultaneously and this guy is still spamming Cure on people, even when AOE damage is going out! No Assize, Asylum, or Medica. I'm there as another WHM trying to get out as much damage as possible in between heals and he's having a great time standing in the centre. *SIGH* Anyway we cleared it without any wipes but my god, how do these types of people make it all the way to the end of the current tier playing like this? Is it really too much to ask of healers to DPS during downtime? I think it's rather easy to manage.

[TenraiNagi]

Yesterday during an Orbonne run, the WHM would spam heal us with nothing other than medica II or cure III (when people arent stacked)... and I mean spam like 4 medica II’s in a row xD. She would occasionally dps when she’s got the mp for it which was very rare...
When she was told that spamming those isn’t efficient healing nor good for mp management, her reply was “don’t worry! I got this, I know healing!”... ... yea?... no.. please stop... /facepalm

[Sabora_Makingai]

Dog woke me up so I decided to do some PF before work. Went into a Suzaku EX party (I still need the dog btw) and the PF said that they had cleared but are working on cleaning up mechanics. Cool I thought, we will wipe a few times but for the most part, we should be good. OH BUDDY WAS I WRONG. This thing was a wipefest. Everyone was doing OK except for this WHM who I swear to the twelve played like he picked up the game last week. His co-healer was a SCH who basically had to solo heal the entire thing case the WHM was dead the whole time. Mind you this WHM was in full augmented 400 gear and NEVER. USED. REGEN. ON. THE. TANKS. So while the SCH was focused on healing the party with AOE heals, I was responsible for keeping the DRK up with clemency (yeah completely forget my rotation). I only used offensive abilities when I was MT and when I was off tank it would basically clemency every 4 GCDs. This is the issue with being part of a good static...you get too used to people knowing what they are doing...........

[Aramina]

Yesterday during an Orbonne run, the WHM would spam heal us with nothing other than medica II or cure III (when people arent stacked)... and I mean spam like 4 medica II’s in a row xD. She would occasionally dps when she’s got the mp for it which was very rare...
When she was told that spamming those isn’t efficient healing nor good for mp management, her reply was “don’t worry! I got this, I know healing!”... ... yea?... no.. please stop... /facepalm

It's always the ones who know the least that think they know the most. At least that has been my experience.

[Aosha]

Finally finished up ARF for my alt. After 40 minutes in queue, got a party consisting of

A samurai who otherwise did a fine job, but didn't manage enmity.

A warrior who tried tanking 70% of the dungeon in Deliverance (this includes pulling things), and was way into rushing through.

A white mage who didn't cast a single. offensive. spell. the. entire. dungeon. When he wasn't healing, this guy looked like he was barefoot on hot asphalt. Constantly twitching left and right. Would go dozens of seconds at a time just shuffling back and forth. I kinda wish I'd told him "if you're bored enough to just twitch around between heals, you could cast some offensive spells." But you know, you never figure out the things to say when it is time to say them. Also, it took him into the first boss to find his Protect, randomly Rescued the tank, and never found his Esuna. /sigh

And of course no comms for me even after raising both the SAM and WHM who died to the same AoE on the last boss.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Finally finished up ARF for my alt. After 40 minutes in queue, got a party consisting of

A samurai who otherwise did a fine job, but didn't manage enmity.

A warrior who tried tanking 70% of the dungeon in Deliverance (this includes pulling things), and was way into rushing through.

A white mage who didn't cast a single. offensive. spell. the. entire. dungeon. When he wasn't healing, this guy looked like he was barefoot on hot asphalt. Constantly twitching left and right. Would go dozens of seconds at a time just shuffling back and forth. I kinda wish I'd told him "if you're bored enough to just twitch around between heals, you could cast some offensive spells." But you know, you never figure out the things to say when it is time to say them. Also, it took him into the first boss to find his Protect, randomly Rescued the tank, and never found his Esuna. /sigh

And of course no comms for me even after raising both the SAM and WHM who died to the same AoE on the last boss.

Welcome to what it's like to be an RDM(well your story gives me the impression you were playing an RDM..or maybe a summoner) where people don't even throw a simple ty appreviation of thank you even if you were the one keeping the 4 dungeon party members or 8 people on the raid alive