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

[Lexis]

So... I have just witnessed the most puzzling display of complete lack of situational awareness I have ever seen. To set the stage: I queued for what I thought would be a quick leveling roulette on my WHM and ended up in Malikah's well. I've never healed this one before but it didn't strike me as a particularly hard dungeon so... should be fine. The group: A fantastic Gunbreaker, a perfectly decent Red Mage and a Monk who seemingly got lost on their way to Bingo night.

We get started, the tank does a double pull, everything's going fine, except the monk is getting hit by absolutely every AoE. At first I thought they were just ignoring them to burn the pack faster which I'm fine with, I can weave some heals in between my Holy spam for maximum pewpew-ness but then I notice that the mobs are dying slower than normal. No matter, we keep going, get to the first boss and, once again, the Monk takes every mechanic straight to the face. At this point I'm quite puzzled and start paying attention to their movements, only to realize everytime a red circle pops up beneath their feat, they slowly backtrack. Not turn around and run, no no no, slow backwards walk. I'm left scratching my head as to how in the world they managed to make it this far into the game.

2nd boss comes around and, once again, dodging is not on the monk's to-do list today, or tomorrow for that matter. They take a spout to the face and die, I rez them, they kinda stand there for a while, dazed and confused, before slowly trotting back to the boss to take more mechanics right in the kisser moments later. At this point, I knew the last boss would be a 3 man job. I was not disappointed.

We get to the weird feathery last boss, engage and, at this point, I'm paying more attention to the Monk than the boss itself. It's just a fascinating display of sheer incompetence, such an absolute trainwreck, I just can't bring myself to look away. I tried to help them, I really did, spamming them with heals, rescuing them in the right spot, etc, but our brave little puncher is deadset on tanking the floor. At that point I just gave up, stopped healing them through the dodging phase and instead focused on DPS, rezzing them once the danger has passed until the next inevitable round of death. They never said anything, leaving me to wonder what was going through their mind throughout the dungeon.

Ill never forget you, brave little thing, but may we never meet again.

[Eien713]

Mentor Roulette PTSD trigger

*shudder* Malikah's Hell (a befitting name, courtesy of Rein_eon_Osborne). Say no more.

[Alxyzntlct]

Brief digression, but I would actually disagree with this; I'd far rather see the off-tank at #2 on the list than #8 when it comes to aggro. I mean, obviously it's not necessary that the off-tank be #2 on the hate list in all fights, of course, but I feel like half of the trick of off-tanking well is making sure that you stay at #2 without ripping aggro away. Whether this is by toggling stance off sometimes to let the main tank maintain lead, or by Shirking onto the main tank periodically, or whatever.

Because if the main tank goes down, I feel like things should ideally fall to the off-tank naturally, rather than the boss stomping off to eat a healer or DPS before being Provoked back. Plus, there are mechanics (albeit generally only in higher-end content like extremes or savage) where things will target the first two on the aggro table for tankbusters; if #2 on the aggro list is a DPS when you hit one of those, that's a DPS who's probably about to have a very bad day.

The off-tank being at #2 on the aggro table is a habit that isn't always necessary, but generally won't be detrimental. Whereas the off-tank being at #8 on the aggro table is a habit that can lead to some Really Unfortunate Scenarios in certain fights.

I agree with this; whenever I OT, I try to be in the #2 spot because if the MT goes down, thanks to GCD timing it could be a hot second or two before I can grab a boss, and even in that short of a time a healer or dps could have already been crunched, not to mention people panicking and running all over the place, causing the boss to run all over the place, which makes it all kinds of fun to get 'em back... I digress, I'm sure everyone gets the point, lol

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I agree with this; whenever I OT, I try to be in the #2 spot because if the MT goes down, thanks to GCD timing it could be a hot second or two before I can grab a boss, and even in that short of a time a healer or dps could have already been crunched, not to mention people panicking and running all over the place, causing the boss to run all over the place, which makes it all kinds of fun to get 'em back... I digress, I'm sure everyone gets the point, lol

Provoke exists.

I agree with trying to stay #2 on aggro regardless, but I've rarely had issues the times I didn't have my stance on. MT goes down? Provoke, slap stance on, reposition. Most damage anyone will take in that brief second is maybe a small bite of health, if anything.

[DubiousDisk]

Nah I have to rant about the run I just had.

Matoya's Relict, our DRK tank, clearly either playing the role for a quick queue or is new to tanking(I am assuming the former cause he has all tanks capped).

1) Never used any of his cooldowns except TBN and ONLY when he was about to die, never for tank busters.

2) During AOE, only used Stalwart Soul, yes you heard me, not Unmend->Stalwart, JUST STALWART

3) Kept spinning around like a beyblade, luring cone AOEs towards everyone else.

Eventually I got fed up and asked him to at the very least use some cooldowns, and he said:

" u say shit last sec, and my job is to hold mobs"

Keep in mind, this is after he had died 3 times so far, and we had asked him to stop big pulling and he didn't respond.

I just don't understand why people do this, like I get it, you want them quick queue times so you queue tank/healer, but PLEASE gain a basic understand of the job before you enter content so you don't end up creating unnecessary chaos in a run. And please, if someones gives you advice, don't get randomly hostile for no reason.

[MilkieTea]

Wiped at 5% to the last boss of Labyrinth of the Ancients.

feelsbadman.

[Medrid]

Mentor in trials roulette was wearing level 50 armor in Lakshmi, mostly Ironworks, but also an i90 AF hat. Right side was mostly level 60 gear, but...please They died to every AoE.

I think my soul exited my body.

Edit: At what point is it acceptable to mail someone a bill for the MP they made you use?

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Nice evening of T2 spam via BLU suicide bombers, but we scuffed what was supposed to be the final run of the night because one guy had bad RNG on the second node and got killed because everyone was a little tired and didn't hit it hard enough/no one used White Wind.

Rather than just respawn and run back to us (he would've caught up), dude decided to just lay there the whole time instead. Which meant we didn't have enough Final Sting power to kill ADS, and without Clemency access I didn't manage to stay up long enough to finish up the last little bite of HP it had even with Hallowed. Rather than make a second attempt (this was literally our last run for the night anyway), dude just up and leaves the duty entirely after complaining people didn't Missile hard enough or something (I don't play BLU so half of what they talked about over the course of the hour and a half runtime went over my head).

Buddy if you'd just raised at the start we wouldn't have even failed on ADS, but whatever I guess?

[_Pigzig]

I think this happened in that Heavensward library dungeon.
I was unsynced with like level 50 gear from literally expansions ago. I had queued roulette without the gear needed if I landed on a current level dungeon. Healer was doing it for MSQ, also unsynced, watching cutscenes etc. Other DPS, I don't even know what he was doing, he disconnected a bunch of times and eventually got replaced after he gave up due to all the wipes.
I apologised for my gear at one point, but every time I died the DPS went from slow to straight up non-existent, so I don't know if I even should've. On one boss I died at like 5% and the tank and other DPS were still alive. Fight ends in a wipe after like a minute of the boss bar barely moving.

But the real problem wasn't any of this, this was just the icing. The real kicker was the tank. Maybe this tank bought the MSQ completion boost and only had experience in wall to walling level 80 dungeons mindlessly, I don't know. But the guy just ran into packs Leeroy Jenkins style, even after a wipe or healer watching cutscenes he didn't wait for anything and just threw himself back into mobs like the definition of insanity. At one point, healer is god knows where and he sprints through mobs to the next wall with just me and him(other DPS had dc'd again or something). He complains "its only two packs left" after dying. Runs back, does the SAME THING AGAIN after. Gotta go fast. A few times the healer or other dps catches up just in time to see him go down, so close yet so far.

Somehow we actually completed this dungeon, making slow progress on clearing trash through wipes. And toxicity was basically non existent, just a bit of frustration. Tank was fine on bosses, I doubt he played optimally but who cares, tank stance was on. The trash was the true boss of this run. It was kind of like playing a trust, if I died it was basically an auto wipe. No one else seemed to do any damage to anything. So we just progressed very very slowly. It got slightly better after the other disconnecting dps got replaced. Worst group I've seen in this game. Maybe I got what I deserved in this case. I will never expect carrys as DPS again.

[Frizze]

Plus I'm not familiar with BLM spells or abilities. I am still learning all the aspects of this game

So BLM tends to be an easy class to see if someone is playing correctly(this doesnt mean they are playing well, just that they know the right types of buttons to hit). Ill not bore you with the in-depth version, but heres what to look for at a glance. Its normal for a BLM to spam spells, but they need to spam the right ones. Fire spells do by far the most damage, Ice and Thunder are for used other reasons(ice is part of our regen phase, our thunder spells are just DoTs to be refreshed every 20ish seconds). On a boss the BLM should be spamming Fire(up to level 59) or Fire 4(60+). AoE is a bit more complex, but if you dont see Flare(s) at 50+ they are doing it wrong. So a BLM spamming something else is almost certainly doing something wrong(the key is spamming, casting a couple spells is normal in an ice phase but the mage doing it right gets back into fire as soon as possible).