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

[Verrabbit]

Had a Fun Scaith run this morning... the other alliance's tank used provoke on cool-down. Which would have been fine, I guess, but they moved around in circles like a MNK trying to hit their positionals... while facing the bosses towards the alliance, cleaving everyone. So many dead bodies.They also ate an unmitigated direct crit TB after provoking during Diabolos' invuln phase, so there's that...

But why do tanks feel the urge to dance around... literally one of the perks of tanking is standing still beating on the boss for 90% of the fights!

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

The lengths people will go to defend bad healers will never cease to astound me.

Had two SCHs in Dun Scaith who:

1) didn't Esuna
2) barely if ever res'd anyone
3) constantly stood in AoEs
4) consistently got aggro on me or the other dps for using LB3 on bosses instead of saving it for them

And then a dps had the gall to yell at the bards to use their Esuna when I mentioned how, once again, the healers weren't using Esuna. Like yes, if a bard has their personal Esuna up, sure, use it - but are we really at the point where we'll yell at dps instead of at the healers not doing their actual job?

[Packetdancer]

It does get frustrating when DPS never moves out of bad stuff and eats every AOE.

Since my main is RDM/BLM

(No judgment on you; I just couldn't resist the juxtaposition of those two statements in your post.)

[Cheremia]

Lol if i'm on bard and i know there's cleansable stuff going on (TGC TB) i even tell the healers that i got the cleanse because mine isn't a pain to use

i'm glad most healers at least cleanse doom.... most

[Packetdancer]

also you claim the game does not explain itself well, from my experience it does. The game introduces you to stuff slowly as the story progresses, if you pay attention. There is also an active help guide, as well as hall of novice. You claim hall of novice can be over looked, no it cant. The current story takes you directly to it as well as the moment you hit level 15, every smith npc in the game with have a green icon above them, and on the mini map. You have to actively ignore it, and not pay attention to story dialog.

To be fair, the game does a great job of explaining things at a low level, but after a certain point expects you to figure it out yourself. Healing strategies change as the game progresses, and the game is not great at telegraphing this. Hall of the Novice more or less teaches you to keep your party topped up at all times as a healer, for instance, but later in the game if you keep doing that you will just be expending needless MP.

After a certain point, you will have abilities that scale based on damage; White Mage has "Benediction", an instant cast that heals someone to full immediately. And Astrologian has "Essential Dignity", an instant cast where the potency scales depending on how much damage someone has taken, so healing someone up with ED when they're not too injured might not get them back to 100%, while if they're more injured it might. Waiting for someone to get lower on their health so that those sort of heals will actually do more with a single cast can be the best strategy in later content; if I know the tank is about to take two 45k hits and has 130k of HP... I might as well make sure they're healed up, and then wait for both of those hits to land before using Benediction, rather than trying to heal them up between the two hits.

Or another example: people get used to 'there's a marker, I need to move!' being the logic, and so I see a lot of sprouts who get their first stack marker and run away because they think they're being a good party member and taking it away from the group.

(To clarify here, since I think you haven't reached a point in XIV where you will have a stack mechanic yet and it's been so long since I played FFXI I cannot remember if they had the same marker... if you see a yellow marker on someone with arrows pointing inwards, it means "get to this person". They're about to take a bunch of damage, but that damage will be split between everyone there. Hence, you want the party to all stack together and share the damage.)

Needless to say, if the healer doesn't Rescue them back, or if the sprout immediately runs off with the stack marker again, it doesn't end well for them. ("No! Wait, come ba—" *winces, casts Raise*)

Another example of something I've noticed is that the Hall of the Novice doesn't seem to teach tanks about the 'mosh pit' at all; I've paused a lot of low-level dungeons to ask a sprout tank if they mind some advice and explain about mosh pits to them. Thankfully most are quite willing to learn a tip, and usually promptly apply the advice to good effect.

(For any newer player reading this at some point who doesn't know what I mean by the 'mosh pit' here, if you pull a group of mobs as the tank and let them cluster around you—like people in a mosh pit—they'll all be pointing in different directions through you. This means there might not be any safe spot for melee to stand, and also makes positionals—attacks that do more damage from the rear or flank of an enemy—harder to apply. If you pull the mobs and then just keep going slightly past the last one, they'll all end up lined up on one side of you; you can turn around to fight them, and they'll be conveniently pointing away from the party. Avoiding the mosh pit that way means the melee folks can just stand behind the mobs and not worry about any cone/cleave attacks.)

None of those things are communicated/taught by the game, because after a certain point they expect you to figure out those things for yourself. Which is fine, but does mean it's quite understandable that someone new to a given tier of content might be confused by various things which become a sort of unspoken expectation there.

I definitely agree that new players need to have a willingness to learn. But I also think we should have a willingness to teach, and I worry that sometimes we as a playerbase are in such a hurry to get through things that we're not willing to do so.

People will give others coms for any reason, or no reason at all. I am sitting on 30 coms simply because i queued up as a tank or healer. I got coms for having a conversation.

This is definitely true. I main healer, but I get comms even as DPS in Anamnesis Anyder. I am convinced it's because I have a joke I always make in party chat at a certain point of the dungeon; I do it because I love seeing the variety of different replies/reactions people give, but it pretty much always gets a laugh. I like to think I'm at least a passably decent red mage, but I strongly suspect comms I get in there as RDM are motivated by "she's the one who told that joke" rather than my actual performance.

(Also, hello to another Amariyo healer main in the Primal data center.)

[Avatre]

That's exactly correct although I think it's a little bit more than just +1 these days.

The skill to use on Warrior if you're pulling at range is called Tomahawk. That might have just been a skill name confusion on their part, though. Definitely don't pull with Provoke.

Edit: Tomahawk not Lob lol. Victim of my own name confusion with Shield Lob.

No, no confusion on my end regarding using Provoke to pull sometimes.

If the mobs are slightly spread out(enough that Overpower will not hit them all), and because Provoke has longer range than Tomahawk, I might use Provoke to get them all coming at me, then Overpower when they are close enough so they all(or most of them) get hit, then as I keep running target whichever were not hit and use Tomahawk on them as I Keep moving.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Lol if i'm on bard and i know there's cleansable stuff going on (TGC TB) i even tell the healers that i got the cleanse because mine isn't a pain to use

i'm glad most healers at least cleanse doom.... most

Esuna isn't a pain to use either, and there's no excuse for healers outright ignoring cleansable Doom debuff just because a bard is in the party and/or 'it's a pain to use'.

Esuna has near instant cast time, and ignoring it can lead to a full party wipe on the first and last bosses of Dun Scaith (as happened with the group I was in. Twice. Because the healers didn't want to Esuna doom).

[Cheremia]

Esuna isn't a pain to use either, and there's no excuse for healers outright ignoring cleansable Doom debuff just because a bard is in the party and/or 'it's a pain to use'.

Esuna has near instant cast time, and ignoring it can lead to a full party wipe on the first and last bosses of Dun Scaith (as happened with the group I was in. Twice. Because the healers didn't want to Esuna doom).

Well i won't speak against that because esuna is important but the TGC TB i mentioned is KIND of a little bit of a pain to euna because it stacks first and bard can instant that away while esuna has the tiny casttime. And i also managed to cancel Esuna once or twice accidentally, too...
I don't mean that that means it's excuseable to NOT use it, it's just a pain if you have to use it a lot (rathalos as healer is absolutely not fun), thats all i meant. There's just NEVER ever an excuse to ignore it.

And there's also never ever an excuse to scream at a bard using paean. I see a lot of bards using paean on themself as part of their rotation and even if you point out what it actually does, they still use it in their rotation.
IF a Bard is willing to use Paean, i will gladly take it and thank them for it and love it because it makes me happy when people use what they have

I was actually agreeing with you anyways, sorry if it came across wrong. I just dislike that esuna isn't INSTANT(i can deal with it being on global...) and that's what i meant with pain to use, i am the healer that esunas usually.... And i am also the bard that uses paean and i can definitely say that paean feels better to use to ME.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Well i won't speak against that because esuna is important but the TGC TB i mentioned is KIND of a little bit of a pain to euna because it stacks first and bard can instant that away while esuna has the tiny casttime. And i also managed to cancel Esuna once or twice accidentally, too...
I don't mean that that means it's excuseable to NOT use it, it's just a pain if you have to use it a lot (rathalos as healer is absolutely not fun), thats all i meant. There's just NEVER ever an excuse to ignore it.

And there's also never ever an excuse to scream at a bard using paean. I see a lot of bards using paean on themself as part of their rotation and even if you point out what it actually does, they still use it in their rotation.
IF a Bard is willing to use Paean, i will gladly take it and thank them for it and love it because it makes me happy when people use what they have

I was actually agreeing with you anyways, sorry if it came across wrong. I just dislike that esuna isn't INSTANT(i can deal with it being on global...) and that's what i meant with pain to use, i am the healer that esunas usually.... And i am also the bard that uses paean and i can definitely say that paean feels better to use to ME.

That's fair - I took it wrong then, though I was just coming out of that absolutely awful run and was already a bit on edge from people trying to defend how absolutely terrible our two SCHs were. My apologies.

Personally for me, I've never felt Esuna's difficult to use or too slow - certainly nowhere near as tricky as Benediction (Bene is just a troll of a skill in that department). I do admit it not being insta-cast (though it's dang near close to it) and being attached to the GCD makes it a little more irritating in comparison to a Paean, which I recall using quite liberally when I mained Bard back HW.

Still definitely not an excuse to just outright not use it like the SCHs were doing. Heck, they didn't even use it on themselves! Which is part of why we wiped. Because take two brainless SCHs and two other groups with healers who don't know how to res other parties, and you have a recipe for disaster. ; v;

I appreciated that the bards were at least trying, but it irritated me seeing our MCH yelling at the bards to use their Esunas when we all complained about the SCHs not doing so at all for anyone. Two of the bards had already used theirs to begin with to try saving the healers. If I was coming off as if I was saying "bards should never use their Esuna, only healers should ever Esuna and take sole responsibility for it", I'm sorry! I absolutely adore when classes that have helpful support skills actually utilize their support skills when necessary.

I don't think they should feel forced to because healers are ignoring their primary role (or are just plain Terrible), though. @.@ Seeing the MCH and SAM trying to defend those two crappy SCHs just blew my mind.

[Cheremia]

That's fair - I took it wrong then, though I was just coming out of that absolutely awful run and was already a bit on edge from people trying to defend how absolutely terrible our two SCHs were. My apologies.

Personally for me, I've never felt Esuna's difficult to use or too slow - certainly nowhere near as tricky as Benediction (Bene is just a troll of a skill in that department). I do admit it not being insta-cast (though it's dang near close to it) and being attached to the GCD makes it a little more irritating in comparison to a Paean, which I recall using quite liberally when I mained Bard back HW.

Still definitely not an excuse to just outright not use it like the SCHs were doing. Heck, they didn't even use it on themselves! Which is part of why we wiped. Because take two brainless SCHs and two other groups with healers who don't know how to res other parties, and you have a recipe for disaster. ; v;

I appreciated that the bards were at least trying, but it irritated me seeing our MCH yelling at the bards to use their Esunas when we all complained about the SCHs not doing so at all for anyone. Two of the bards had already used theirs to begin with to try saving the healers. If I was coming off as if I was saying "bards should never use their Esuna, only healers should ever Esuna and take sole responsibility for it", I'm sorry! I absolutely adore when classes that have helpful support skills actually utilize their support skills when necessary.

I don't think they should feel forced to because healers are ignoring their primary role (or are just plain Terrible), though. @.@ Seeing the MCH and SAM trying to defend those two crappy SCHs just blew my mind.

It's fine, i noticed you may misunderstand me a little and i probably could have worded it better, too. My bad!

Healers should definitely use Esuna, i really just wish it was instant. Being on global is a bit meh but it doesn't matter to much.
Also i don't trust Bene, i trust Tetra a lot more than i ever trusted Bene.

And bitching at bards using something that is in their toolkit is almost as if you're screaming that they used troubadour or natures minnet. Not a lot of bards(or mch/dnc) use them but it's nice to have.

You know whats just as bad as protecting healer that are absolute garbage?
DPS dying to instant deaths and it somehow being the healers fault....

Fact is, if a healer does nothing and people die because they do nothing, it is VERY obvious, i don't know why anybody would try to defend that. Almost as if people call you toxic hardcore raider because you asked people to pay attention(was a while ago when orbonne was still relevant) and it sucks.
Don't let it get to you!