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

[MiaShino]

Sooooo umm, something I found to be most unusual occurred with two of my friends. They seem to have most unusual luck with the duty finder, I swear.

They were finishing post arr and were excited to finally be free of it and into Heavensward, this means Steps of Faith. I was not there for the pre-nerfed version of this one but I am aware it hath been nerfed into oblivion. They enjoy experiencing fights without spoilers so they can learn as they play so I gave only one tip. This fight is ignore mechanics o'clock, just smack smack the bosses booty and kill the pesky ads until the big dargon falls. Two bright eyed yet weary dragoons step into the fray, their second time playing as level 50 dragoon ready to slay a dragon.

Nay! Said our tank with all level 80 jobs leveled up; "We need people on cannons. More people on cannons please. The guide you watched was wrong then." The guide was me.. so I felt kinda bad and begun doubting my advice. Did I mislead them? They actually almost wiped because the party of what I assume was mostly sprouts were attempting to do cannons and dragon slayers and not killing the boss. My friend chose to believe me.. she did three times the damage of anyone present and out deepsed the cannons by a factor of 100 times. She saved that run as a fresh new sprout by trusting her instincts. I am most proud!

Because they were curious her partner decided to join me with her level 50 dragoon in nothing but iron works to see how much damage alone she would do to the boss. By herself she almost killed it, I stayed in the back keeping the ads distracted while she poke poke poked away. Alone.. one level 50 dragoon in ilvl 130 gear can bring Vishap to roughly one third hp before he reaches the final gate with no cannons or dragon slayers used. I am sticking with what I knew to be true, it was nerfed into oblivion just mash your buttons for victory. If you enter this fight and chose to confuse new players or ruin their experience because you are a timelord, I suppose? Or you believe it is still 2015 please, please stop.

Both of them were sad leaving that. It was not the entrance into heavenward they disserved. I stand by my feelings, I may take break from this game. There is something wrong very very wrong with this community. It is nice on surface but catty and passive aggressive and worse when you dig deeper. Many thanks for reading my wall of words and letters, the whole thing made me upset because I told them the game was fun and got them playing.

[Mesarthim]

Had a leech of a samurai in breach today (second run since my friends wife asked me to go, we healed together).

Red Flag 1: Everyone is bunched up for the first boss' lunge, except him. I had to rescue.
Red Flag 2: Often stands around, rarely ever seeing skills.

Eventually I turned this into a game. I made a bet with my cohealer on voice basically saying "Alright, place your bets! Will he get hit by the first mechanic or will he live?"

<Second building comes up through the ground on the final boss, I see his health lower slightly as he gets yeeted off of the arena.

I then respond on voice with "And there he goes. It's almost like I have a reference for this or something." I'm happy to heal people but if you want me to use resources on you, maybe try playing the game. It's not a tall ask.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Depressed Reginae shenanigans

Apparently there had been some sort of trending practice where people leaving the raid prematurely if the first boss takes too long to kill. Leaving doesn’t slap you with penalty so they can requeue immediately after to pray for a faster raid. Those players who bailed in your story after the first boss were most likely doing just that. People going in essenceless are being semi deadweight. They’re not going to do any more dps than a player with essence eating the Brink of Death debuff.

That being said, I’m genuinely surprised that I still haven’t found any sort of such funny individuals like in your story despite already clearing several hundreds of DRns at this point. Few bad apples now and then but nothing as terrible as yours. Honestly, people should stop expecting a traditional role trifecta setup in these kind of contents. If they want that, they could just set up a PF.

”But nobody should expect me to use essences. too! I’m not on PF!”
> The answer: bail out after first boss. They don’t like the pugs they’re paired with, so they bailed. Fair, isn’t it?

[Ayuhra]

Both of them were sad leaving that. It was not the entrance into heavenward they disserved. I stand by my feelings, I may take break from this game. There is something wrong very very wrong with this community. It is nice on surface but catty and passive aggressive and worse when you dig deeper. Many thanks for reading my wall of words and letters, the whole thing made me upset because I told them the game was fun and got them playing.

You didn't do anything wrong. I've seen some vets still insist on mechanics for Vishap, but it's rare.

I started playing a bit before Heavensward came out, I remember the pre-nerf version. I was usually on the cannons, sometimes on the towers.... If you were around for that and haven't had to do Steps too many times since you can find that the mechanics are deeply ingrained. It took a bit before I just left cannons alone and stabbed the dragon lol.

[Cubsbane]

Leveling my tanks for the first time, and while I already knew this (after leveling healers), man, a lot of alliance raid tanks put their stance on and then stand around twiddling their thumbs.

But that's better than when a tank who doesn't know where to put the boss grabs enmity from me (on purpose). Dude, if you want to be main tank, at least stand where I'm standing first.

(The weirdest breed of tanks are those who aren't main tanking yet still insist on standing in front, eating all the cleaves. Far less annoying when I'm not healing, at least.)

[Cincierta]

Apparently there had been some sort of trending practice where people leaving the raid prematurely if the first boss takes too long to kill. Leaving doesn’t slap you with penalty so they can requeue immediately after to pray for a faster raid. Those players who bailed in your story after the first boss were most likely doing just that. People going in essenceless are being semi deadweight. They’re not going to do any more dps than a player with essence eating the Brink of Death debuff.

That being said, I’m genuinely surprised that I still haven’t found any sort of such funny individuals like in your story despite already clearing several hundreds of DRns at this point. Few bad apples now and then but nothing as terrible as yours. Honestly, people should stop expecting a traditional role trifecta setup in these kind of contents. If they want that, they could just set up a PF.

”But nobody should expect me to use essences. too! I’m not on PF!”
> The answer: bail out after first boss. They don’t like the pugs they’re paired with, so they bailed. Fair, isn’t it?

Honestly, you probably have much better luck than I do. I haven't done DR since it first came out, but when I finally got to that point in the Bozjan story, I was frustrated at first with the mechanics until I realized there was a pattern. Some practice later and I actually like DR. I've been looking for ways to make runs go faster (if I queue as tank or dps, a healer will never be in my party, which is why I usually go as healer) plus some of the essences that can only be used in DR give out some insane buffs or put out absurd dps. Some of them cause bosses to melt so fast it's actually funny.

DR is set up in a way that anything goes, which is a refreshing change of pace. If the raid has only a single tank, a few good healers and the rest dps, you can expect mobs to melt faster than butter in the frying pan.

[Liam_Harper]

More and more often when I step into PF for EX and Savage lately I regret it. It's a thankless, soulless activity. If you do well, no one cares or notices. If you make one mistake someone who's been eating aoes and PvP'ing you with mechanics the last 5 pulls asks if you know how to play. Some parties start with good mood, but it only takes a few wipes and suddenly tension springs in and half the group get grumpy. I still love raiding with friends, static and FC but I'm pretty much burnt out on PF this tier which is a shame.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Rabanastre yesterday with only a few new people (three of whom were in my party), and apparently a whole lot of leechers or "I play how I want" types.

Bubbles weren't popped on Mateus at all, so we had a bunch of ice slaves running around bopping people. No one stood in the water spouts, so we had TWO blizzards pop up and half the raid spent time getting repeatedly caught in snowman traps because no one was killing the blizzards. She got as far as summoning her snake adds, we managed to down those - barely - then she finally went down. But good gods.

Hashbrown was even worse. People not moving out of the line of the towers, not moving to the safe side for his charge attack, standing behind the tank and getting TB'd by Rock Cutter. When Control Tower spawned and the sand orbs came up, no one tried to kill them except my group. So, of course, they exploded and wiped all but a couple tanks. People acted like they had no idea what happened - and honestly, with how braindead Rabanastre is usually, I'm not surprised no one knows how to actually do mechanics in there anymore.

I tell people our dps is not high enough to skip mechanics, so they should be paying attention and doing them. A poor WoWfugee sprout apologized for being new, and man... trust me, the newbies weren't the problem whatsoever. He died a few times until he learned mechanics, but picked them up quick. I even told him, it's almost never the newbies who make the raids take forever.

Ofc someone had to go "sorry some of us are perpetually bad". Idk bud, you ever tried not being bad and wasting other people's time? It's a hard concept to actually perform to any modicum of mediocrity in a team-based game, I know.

Hashbrown goes all the way through to his tri-tower drop and second wave of sand orbs. We down them, thankfully, and finally kill the boss after golem adds nearly killed everyone because tanks weren't bothering to do their jobs.

Last two bosses were mostly painless, at least. Maybe people figured out we'd be here all night if they didn't wake up and stop getting carried by what few good players got dragged into this mess.

I need a drink.

[Meillquei]

In my AST leveling adventures, I keep getting grouped with other ASTs in Alliance Roulette and it's making me want to rip my hair out. This one I was grouped with just now in Syrcus Tower wasn't even using cards. Switched to Diurnal Sect when I was already using it. Died to Curtain Call. Died to Xande's quake attack twice. And of course no Divination since he wasn't using cards. And no he wasn't new.

[Dreamsoap]

In my AST leveling adventures, I keep getting grouped with other ASTs in Alliance Roulette and it's making me want to rip my hair out. This one I was grouped with just now in Syrcus Tower wasn't even using cards. Switched to Diurnal Sect when I was already using it. Died to Curtain Call. Died to Xande's quake attack twice. And of course no Divination since he wasn't using cards. And no he wasn't new.

Running two diurnals in a level 50 alliance raid is hardly an issue, both of you aren't really going to heal that much, and shields are hardly necessary.