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

[RokkuEkkusu]

Uh... middle of the room for the Bone Dragon is the norm. Kill it fast, heal through the damage, repeat. Everyone stack on central platform or the first small platform behind the boss to make sure everyone is in range of AoE heals. If your raid's healers weren't able to heal through the platinal phase, that's them being bad or the DPS being too spread out and not the fault of the tank in group B.

The old data center arguments between tanking it on the edge or the middle platform died after a couple expansions gave people more than enough hp and abilities to just force their way through that mechanic.

You're on Balmung (formerly on Aether and now on Crystal.) That usually means most parties there would take Bone Dragon to the center. (I have done LOTA runs on the Aether Date Center.)

However, on the Primal data center, most alliances usually bring the boss on the outer squares in the past. This practice still occurs in quite a bit of runs today.

[Starvi]

TIL that it's useful to check if several players in an 8 man party come from the same world/FC BEFORE initiating a vote kick against one of them for obvious leeching/being afk.

The retaliatory kick comes pretty quickly. Funny how fast that person was able to do something after not doing much for most of the run.

[Mhaeric]

You're on Balmung (formerly on Aether and now on Crystal.) That usually means most parties there would take Bone Dragon to the center. (I have done LOTA runs on the Aether Date Center.)

However, on the Primal data center, most alliances usually bring the boss on the outer squares in the past. This practice still occurs in quite a bit of runs today.

I'm well aware of the differences between tanking between the data centers which is why I brought it up. I spent roughly 2 years on Primal before moving to Aether, and "grew up" doing that fight on the edge. When I moved to Balmung, tanking it in the center was definitely something I had to get used to. That difference, however, is meaningless now because you can skip mechs. Doing it in the center has the norm regardless of data center because it is much faster (you don't have to move the boss and platinals have a shorter path to the center) and you can ignore all of the mechanics with a bit of AoE healing. Whenever I see someone pull it to the edge (This has happened twice in all my runs in the last 2 expansions) the tank had a returner or novice icon, so I chalked it up to somebody going by what they remembered or by what they read in a now outdated guide. And even if someone does bring it to the edge to tank, the group should still be ignoring the platinal mechanics entirely except healing through them. That tank in their example did nothing wrong at all.

[Flay_wind]

I'm well aware of the differences between tanking between the data centers which is why I brought it up. I spent roughly 2 years on Primal before moving to Aether, and "grew up" doing that fight on the edge. When I moved to Balmung, tanking it in the center was definitely something I had to get used to. That difference, however, is meaningless now because you can skip mechs. Doing it in the center has the norm regardless of data center because it is much faster (you don't have to move the boss and platinals have a shorter path to the center) and you can ignore all of the mechanics with a bit of AoE healing. Whenever I see someone pull it to the edge (This has happened twice in all my runs in the last 2 expansions) the tank had a returner or novice icon, so I chalked it up to somebody going by what they remembered or by what they read in a now outdated guide. And even if someone does bring it to the edge to tank, the group should still be ignoring the platinal mechanics entirely except healing through them. That tank in their example did nothing wrong at all.

Hm... That's interesting, in all my runs through LotA Bone Dragon has always been tanked at the edge. I am on Light (EU).

[Mhaeric]

The point is that it doesn't matter where it's tanked. It's just a burn, stack up and heal through fight. Doing it in the center is just faster because it eliminates extra movement for both players and mobs.

[ICountFrom0]

Hm... That's interesting, in all my runs through LotA Bone Dragon has always been tanked at the edge. I am on Light (EU).

Because, years ago, it used to matter.

Because people used to do the mechanic where the skeletons where split up and separated far enough apart to be able to kill them.

We don't do that anymore.

Now it's better to have it in the middle, where people can gather in and do more damage and positional more easily.

[Rasikko]

Yep..alliance DPS wasn't high enough back then.

[Cincierta]

Uh... middle of the room for the Bone Dragon is the norm. Kill it fast, heal through the damage, repeat. Everyone stack on central platform or the first small platform behind the boss to make sure everyone is in range of AoE heals. If your raid's healers weren't able to heal through the platinal phase, that's them being bad or the DPS being too spread out and not the fault of the tank in group B.

The old data center arguments between tanking it on the edge or the middle platform died after a couple expansions gave people more than enough hp and abilities to just force their way through that mechanic.

I know the dragon can be tanked on either the edge or center as I've seen it done, but my point of the story was that A's healers were asleep at the wheel, and I have a feeling some of B's and C's were. I've never seen one whole section of an alliance just go splat at that boss.

[LalaRu]

I know the dragon can be tanked on either the edge or center as I've seen it done

Afaik today you can tank the dragon wherever you want, only thing you need take care as tank is not face its aoe to the full alliance. And it happens. Too much often.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Just had a run of Akadaemia Anyder where one of the BLM's AoE rotation was Freeze > Fire 3 > Fire 2 > repeat. No Flare or Thunder IV in sight, although they were using Enochian so there was the occasional Foul at least.

Their single target rotation was: Thunder 3 -> Fire 3 -> 3 x Fire 4 -> Freeze -> repeat. Sometimes they would use Tranpose instead of Freeze to switch to ice stance. No Blizzard 3, Blizzard 4 or Despair in sight, although again at least they were using Enochian so there was the occasional Xenoglossy.

I tried suggesting that they use Flare instead of Fire 2 since they would do far more damage, but they either didn't see it or ignored it. The other BLM was doing average dps (everything looked good with their rotation, but they didn't have any melds) so I just facepalmed IRL and settled in for the slowest run I've ever had. I think Quetzalcoatl jumped 5 times during the final fight it was that slow. It would have been slower, but me and the tank DPS our hearts out to try and make up for it at least a little bit.

As someone unfamiliar with black mage rotations, where do you fit in the Flare? I don't see Fire 2 in the rotations above.