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

[Lauront]

Yes, Nabriales aged (much) better by MSQ trial standards. I suspect SoS, for as long as it retains its group wipe button mash mechanic, will remain a DF dissolver, but I'm sure they will eventually change that. Ironically, it's the first time that mechanic has been worth a damn. I'd have liked to see them use it on Hades in that way, but there's a lot of mechanics I felt they could've added to that that would be more fitting of an avatar of death of his level of power.

Thordan was probably the worst I've seen any of the post-ARR fights age.

Everytime I do Shinryu, the group wipes at least once. If you don't know what you're doing, you -will- get knocked off the platform, so in that sense, I wouldn't categorize that fight as a joke, especially compared to Thordan (I don't think I've ever seen anyone die... heck, I barely even threw a heal when I did it on my WHM, it's kind of underwhelming). Granted you can still finish Shinryu with half the group dead because of how over-geared the DPS is but it still requires you to pay some degree of attention at least.

I've only done Hades once so can't really comment on that one.

It has lots of potential snags, particularly in p2, but it'll succumb to the same ageing process. Not as bad as Thordan, by sheer virtue of its mechanics - probably similar to Nidhogg or Shinryu.

[Caurcas]

I love disrespecting those fights and utterly destroying them while Jimmy Sprout runs away with the marker and wipes have the party.

[Lauront]

Good on Jimmy.

[Lexis]

So... I just had an 'interesting' Brayflox run while doing my leveling roulette. Our healer was a sprout WHM who had a repertoire of 3 spells: Cure, Cure II and Lucid Dreaming. His favorite? Cure II. It doesn't matter if you're missing 10% or 90% of your HP, cure II is what you're getting. Every once in a while he'd throw in a random Cure to get fancy and I saw him use Lucid Dreaming once as he was almost out of MP (Yes, you read that correctly, no, we were not doing big pulls). He didn't do a single damage spell throughout the entire run and would just stand there, doing absolutely nothing, start spamming Cure II like his digits are on fire, regardless of how much healing is actually needed, then go back to staring blankly ahead.

At this point, I'm thinking I've encountered my first bot, but I was wrong. As we all jumped off the ledge right before the second boss, he went the other way and managed to somehow get lost. He ran up and down that ledge, back over the bridge, the back up the ledge... all the while the tank is standing right there at the fork to guide him the right way, only to have the WHM run right past him. After a lot of back and forth, The healer -Finally- notices the tank desperately trying to guide him towards us and explains: 'Not tall enough' before following our brave impromptu guide. I'm guessing it was a reference to the fact they were a Lalafell (the healer that is) but the tank was one of the taller races and quite easy to see, so I'm still scratching that head at that one.

And then we make it to the last boss. Everything seems to be going fine at first, but our brave little healer only has 3 spells in his repertoire and, as previously established, Esuna isn't one of them. The stacks accumulate on the tank, which the WHM handles by spamming Cure II like there's no tomorrow, until the tank gets hit by the dragon's linear breath and ends up at around 25% HP. He re-positions the boss to get him out of a green puddle, thus getting out of the healer's range, and his health slowly ticks down all the way to 0 before our WHM realizes what's happening. Tank is dead, boss is now munching on the monk who proceeds to furiously spin him in circles while the healer rezzes our fallen comrade and I'm screaming internally. The boss eventually grows bored of the monk and decides this catboy looks far tastier so I turn the boss away from the healer and tank, who is now rezzed and waiting for a heal while the WHM... stares blankly into the void. The healer's brain eventually reboots and the cure II spam begins anew, the tank taking back the dragon to finish this absolute mess of a fight.

The healer apologized for letting the tank die (Hey, they recognized their mistake, I respect that) while I quietly comm'd the tank and got out of there to nurse my brand new headache.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Brayflop Run

I’m crying hard reading this, thank you for writing this for us lmao.

I got one story to share myself btw! It’s Snowcloak via 50/60/70 roulette.

Rolled as a SCH, paired with a GNB, BRD, and a DRG. A few pull before the first gate the GNB mentions complimented my book glam, Hyperconductive Tetrabiblos. Asked which relic is that and soon enough the tiny bits of information exchange was happening. I encourage them to give a try by saying ”It’s pretty early for this one, like, the first glowy phase.” which garnered their positive response.

Continuing on through the run, the DRG then commented how I rarely use Ruin I and only uses AoW & Ruin II while keep jumping around. I just told them that I’m ‘high’ and want to jump higher than the DRG. (Fun fact, at this lv range our book slap is actually quite strong. Gotta smack them with all those knowledge lmao)

They were a fun group. I got all their comm in the end. Not necessarily needed but I just thought that left a good taste, certainly.

[RobynDaBank]

It's quite the difference to be a healer main playing caster DD for a change. Shift+F on healer in case I position unintentionally in Narnia, over-careful in dodging - and dying of embarrassment when glass-cannon me gets hit and explaining in panic that I'm sorry. When I heal I can never tell if it was me or the others who went wrong, so when I'm on the other side of the fence I just quickly admit it was my fault.

I wonder if one day all of Chaos will know that I'm an over-anxious mess because of this.

[Wolfsbane706]

Another leveling roulette story from me, this time as WAR. Roulette threw me into Cutter's Cry, where the healer died twice before the first boss, though not through any fault of mine. Their first death came in the second room. I was confused at first because I had aggro on all the mobs and they weren't getting hit by them. Turns out they hadn't been paying attention to where they were standing and had been standing on top of those sand spouts that occasionally deal damage. Apparently they can kill you if you stand on them too long. Second death came before the first boss arena. Once again, I had aggro on all the mobs, but this time the healer strayed a little too close to a Self-Destruct and got blown up for their trouble. The rest of the dungeon went rather smoothly and we all had a good laugh over the healer's inattentiveness, including the healer.

[RinaB]

Did a trial roulette and got the dragon on the ishgard bridge. Tanks were not picking up adds so I called them worthless. They called me a dumb bitch and I was laughing so hard I could barely play

[TheMightyMollusk]

I have been asked to never again refer to the final boss of Puppet's Bunker as a fight with Yoko Taro's gooey balls.

[Zeich]

What is with bards lately? Twice in two days, Qitana Ravel/Malikah's Well, two different bards, and both do the same thing. Single-target with spamming Burst Shot and applying Dots, but no AoEs on packs, no songs, no Battle Voice, no Refulgnant/Empyreal Arrow, manually reapplying DoTs instead of using Iron Jaws... What is going on lately? x.x