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

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

That's short and to the point, and people shouldn't get offended over tone.

Speaking of tone though, for better or worse, it does play its part. People are far more likely to tune you out if they feel you're going on the attack for no reason. Not saying you need to have a long heart-to-heart in the middle of an alliance raid, but it's not too tricky to change up phrasing so that instructions are clear and easier to digest.

"Change to the opposite of debuff" is also pretty short and to the point too, to be fair.

I get what you're saying, but honestly - if someone would rather blatantly ignore advice or instructions about a mechanic simply because it isn't delivered in some specific sugar-coated way that they find acceptable, they have some problems to work out. The information is what should matter, not the way someone is choosing to type it out in the middle of a fight.

That said, I've explained mechanics or asked for people to use specific skills they aren't using in as many ways as you can think of - including ultra-nice smiley face emoji ways that absolutely no one could possibly take as offensive - and have still had people ignore it outright or throw a fit for being given information or someone daring to ask them to do something. It legitimately does not matter how you give advice or explanations, someone is always going to find a way to get upset over it.

Which is why I tend to just be short and to the point during the midst of combat, and a little more verbose about stuff out of combat. It just isn't worth the effort nor makes any difference to type stuff out with smiles, or try and figure out what phrasing is 'nice' and 'non-offensive' enough.

Edit: Lmao Rinhi beat me to it with far less words than I used. xD

Sure some people will have already been on edge from something else and so go off in reaction to anything. But most people will react well to being treated well.

Some people yes, there is honestly no helping them.

But there are a sizable chunk of decent people who appreciate advice, and most of them would rather get it from someone being neutral or non-aggressive.

The mechanic was explained neutrally. The person claimed there had been no explanation, and when I said reading chat would help, they decided the way I explained the mechanic was '***hole-y' because they didn't like my tone, and got into an argument about it. Someone even pointed out the mechanic explanation wasn't stated in a poor way, but people in this game will immediately lose their minds at you if you don't use babytalk with them.

And again - if someone is going to fail to take advice or perform a mechanic properly just because they dislike how the information was given to them, they need to work out some personal problems.

I'm a fairly blunt and to-the-point person, it's just in my nature and especially when I'm trying to communicate in the middle of a boss fight. People need to stop having skin made of paper if something as simple as a blunt-but-neutral manner of typing is going to send them into such childish hysterics.

[Makeda]

Speaking of tone though, for better or worse, it does play its part. People are far more likely to tune you out if they feel you're going on the attack for no reason. Not saying you need to have a long heart-to-heart in the middle of an alliance raid, but it's not too tricky to change up phrasing so that instructions are clear and easier to digest.

This is true. Despite what some folks think, you can convey better tone online and even in text.

Sure some people will have already been on edge from something else and so go off in reaction to anything. But most people will react well to being treated well.

[Shibi]

disagree, people will feel attacked regardless of tone

Some people yes, there is honestly no helping them.

But there are a sizable chunk of decent people who appreciate advice, and most of them would rather get it from someone being neutral or non-aggressive.

A traveler came upon an old farmer hoeing in his field beside the road. Eager to rest his feet, the wanderer hailed the countryman, who seemed happy enough to straighten his back and talk for a moment.

"What sort of people live in the next town?" asked the stranger.

"What were the people like where you've come from?" replied the farmer, answering the question with another question.

"They were a bad lot. Troublemakers all, and lazy too. The most selfish people in the world, and not a one of them to be trusted. I'm happy to be leaving the scoundrels."

"Is that so?" replied the old farmer. "Well, I'm afraid that you'll find the same sort in the next town.

Disappointed, the traveler trudged on his way, and the farmer returned to his work.

Some time later another stranger, coming from the same direction, hailed the farmer, and they stopped to talk. "What sort of people live in the next town?" he asked.

"What were the people like where you've come from?" replied the farmer once again.

"They were the best people in the world. Hard working, honest, and friendly. I'm sorry to be leaving them."

"Fear not," said the farmer. "You'll find the same sort in the next town."

[Makeda]

A few years ago I played a priest in WoW & would heal & dps as needed (if I wasnt healing I was dpsing basically)

To add more context of the situation:
Everyone I've spoken to who knows about her doing this shrugs & goes "it's a WoW thing" I don't want to casually chalk it up to that simple statement as the others do who know her- because I've met some really awesome players who came from WoW into XIV-

Regarding the "it's a WoW thing";
Yeah... it's just not.

Look at warcraftlogs for the modern raids, and look through healer DPS.

I left at the end of the 9.0 raid. So I will link from that. Here we see the 'top 50% percentile' of the normal raid. As in the low-medium skill casuals that raid, and not even going to hardcore players. Among them even the least DPS oriented healer, the resto-shaman, is logging some DPS:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...s&difficulty=3
- It's shockingly low... which actually was why we didn't run one normally in our raid... but it is there. The higher up the ranking you go, the more DPS healers will be doing.

In WoW I was basically one of those 50%-tile players. I'm an older player so... not exactly top of my game anymore.

Here's my own character from the heroic version of that same raid:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...=26&metric=dps
- Ranked by her DPS, and not her healing. That's a healer BTW.

I did Paladin as well, but wasn't as good at it:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...=26&metric=dps
(in fact my healing parse was sometimes even grey because our raid was too spread out and Holy Paladin healing potency decreases with range to target, plus I was messing up a lot...)

In our first kill of the final boss of the heroic tier we had a Holy Priest. Here's their DPS:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
If you look at our raid overall you see one healer had super low DPS. That was a carry player, and a resto Druid. But even they put in effort to do some DPS.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...t&type=summary

If folks try to excuse a bad healer by saying "it's just the MMO they came from" - chances are that's no more than an excuse. I'm not aware of any current MMO where healers don't DPS. In many of them, they do so even more than here or WoW. It's more common for most healers to work like Sage or Discipline Priest - where their healing happens as a result of their attacks. Sadly healers like WoW's Holy Paladin and Fistweaving Monk - where it happens as a result of your melee attacks - are unique to WoW. It's the ONLY THING I miss from that game.

If I had logs of my gameplay in Elder Scrolls Online you'd be shocked at how much DPS my healers do. Or even Guild Wars 2 (which has the trinity in raids) - healers mostly DPS.

The day we got our second kill of the final boss of the heroic tier - so that I'd gotten on both of my healers, I unsubbed.

[Cubsbane]

The problem is that oftentimes you need to be quick and to the point while typing, because either you're in battle or are about to be, but that leaves your tone very open to interpretation. And people are going to interpret it based on their own insecurities and anxiety.

And honestly? There's not always a lot you can do about that. If you say something very basic, and someone starts freaking out at you, that is on them. Some of the people defending those freakouts might be trying to be nice and understanding, but they fail to realize they're just throwing an innocent person under the bus.

(Another thing I hate: someone is weird or rude to you, you reply to them in an even tone, and a third person goes "omg you two stop fightingggg".)

[Michieltjuhh]

We have a WHM in our static from WoW- she doesn't ever DPS, never tops anyone off & claims she knows exactly what she's doing & when you offer advice or criticism, she will call you out for minor things following up
She's friends with some of the ppl in our static & in our FC

During the 1st savage fight from the new raids- she just doesn't move- she turns her character away from the boss & just stands there still as if she were afk until a person needs healing
We saw enrage 4 times 1st it was 10% then 2-6% & one of our folks just asked her "are you even dpsing??" her Dpsing at this point was only her dot - well she actually started using Glare & we cleared just as enrage started
Today- same deal in the 2nd raid- she just stood there & only would cast medica 2 but THIS time she had zero mana to do anything else.
Our other healer politely informed her to use lucid dreaming & to which the whm did not until she had hardly any mana left as people needed to be topped off for the aoe blasts
She's from WoW & I guess when you play a priest, you just stand there & play your class like it had a lobotomy because that's how she plays WHM.

I'm sitting back to see it unfold

Trust me, someone that's bad at healer in FF14 isn't even going to scratch the surface of playing one in WoW, so in WoW she's likely never actually raided equivalent content. WoW healers are significantly more complex, not only in terms of healing but also dps (at least since the cast time nerf to Glare, Broil and the base version of Dosis to 1.5 seconds).

[magtuired]

The idiot in the Duty Finder was me.

Today I decided to start leveling white mage, which I haven't really touched since the stat squish and I had found a lot of the lower level stuff had hit a bit harder when Tanking so I expected that healing would be a bit more challenging until I got a few roulettes under my belt in that role as well, which is no big deal.

A little nervous I'll get a Endwalker dungeon, I instead queue into Mt. Gulg and breath a sigh of relief. This is a dungeon I've healed a bunch and am very intimately familiar with so a good one to wet my feet with.

Only I'm finding that stat squish is affecting me way more than it should; I'm really struggling to keep the tank up and he dies in the first double pull. I check his gear and he's perfectly fine, decked in a mix of leveling and crafted gear above 75, I keel an eye on the cooldowns and he's rotating them just fine so the issue is clearly me.

"Must be rustier than I thought" I think and I struggle a bit but no one drops dead and I get into the rhythm again. Even get a commend so I feel pretty confident I'm not going to make the same mistake and underestimate the amount of healing needed next time.

Then I go to check my own gear and realise I was missing both rings.

To the poor tank I was with...I am so sorry...

[van_arn]

The idiot in the Duty Finder was me.

Today I decided to start leveling white mage, which I haven't really touched since the stat squish and I had found a lot of the lower level stuff had hit a bit harder when Tanking so I expected that healing would be a bit more challenging until I got a few roulettes under my belt in that role as well, which is no big deal.

A little nervous I'll get a Endwalker dungeon, I instead queue into Mt. Gulg and breath a sigh of relief. This is a dungeon I've healed a bunch and am very intimately familiar with so a good one to wet my feet with.

Only I'm finding that stat squish is affecting me way more than it should; I'm really struggling to keep the tank up and he dies in the first double pull. I check his gear and he's perfectly fine, decked in a mix of leveling and crafted gear above 75, I keel an eye on the cooldowns and he's rotating them just fine so the issue is clearly me.

"Must be rustier than I thought" I think and I struggle a bit but no one drops dead and I get into the rhythm again. Even get a commend so I feel pretty confident I'm not going to make the same mistake and underestimate the amount of healing needed next time.

Then I go to check my own gear and realise I was missing both rings.

To the poor tank I was with...I am so sorry...

I will never not like a post that begins "the idiot in the Duty Finder was me." I feel that.

[SturmChurro]

This tank "I'll just pull slower" after we wipe on a pull. Yeah, nah. I left. If I have to start spamming cure 2 to keep you up on a dungeon pull, that's not on me. lol.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Level 87 dungeon on dancer, had a monk as the other DPS. And they never used a single AoE or chakra skill the entire time. Guess how long things took to die. It's pretty bad when the later pulls started going so much faster just because I hit 89 on the second boss and got to put on my artifact gear (and finally replace the Augmented Cryptlurker weapons). They also ignored multiple calls to LB the final boss until I did just to get it over with.