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

[Michieltjuhh]

Go for weekly Savage reclears on alt if PF, join a P1S group with tanks even though the lead (my co-heal) looked very dubious in.. statistics. Nonetheless, he called it a "no damage down clean kill" party, so it's fair to assume he's better than it seems, right?

Wrong. One of the DPS messes up aethereal chains color swapping at the start already, forcing me to adjust to save an early wipe. Have to save my co-heal's sorry arse on the first Intemperment already because he somehow fails to resolve blue->purple->red without a damage down. Have to save two people during last aethereal chains since they stood in the wrong tile, just to find out my braindead co-heal was too busy Glaring to realize he had to swap with the poor melee who was trying to get his attention for a color swap since the melee had red. Co-heal's braindead response of not moving at all killed everyone in melee, including the tanks. I end up with top enmity, LB3 anyway, ask for a heal since he himself survived (despite eating a damage down from the tiles, not swapping apparently meant not moving out of that either).

Nothing. Lets me die while Glaring during his damage down. Then after tanks pick up aggro again they purge the entire group with flare.

[MiaShino]

What is wrong with tank players in FF14 land?

Pants full of fire ants? ADHD? Spin spin spin spin, what are cooldowns?

To the Miqo dressed as Thumbelina in Haukke Manor and that gunbreaker during the big coeurl fate please try new job or something. You had multiple level 90 tanks leveled and still are not getting it.

Most enjoyed their response to my asking why they are yeeting mobs all over attempting to pick up keys when you cannot pick things up while being attacked. "I was hoping to dodge xD" Had to resist getting myself goaled.. Also no they were not even opening doors with the keys because no one needed the fricken loot.

[Illmaeran]

"I was hoping to dodge xD" Had to resist getting myself goaled..

Sincere question! When is it appropriate for a tank to eat a mechanic and be healed through it than to dodge? I've been derping around with pally and war lately and am unsure when the right times to eat it or leave it are. Since I main DPS I have an ingrained need to avoid orange, so I try to move than get back into position after the tick to make sure the boss isn't moving to screw up positionals. Advice is appreciated.

[Denji]

Sincere question! When is it appropriate for a tank to eat a mechanic and be healed through it than to dodge? I've been derping around with pally and war lately and am unsure when the right times to eat it or leave it are. Since I main DPS I have an ingrained need to avoid orange, so I try to move than get back into position after the tick to make sure the boss isn't moving to screw up positionals. Advice is appreciated.

if your party is terrible, people need to stack and/or dodge or to take out adds or something and there's floor vomit everywhere you might want to consider just eating the hit. pop some damage mitigations and brace for impact.

there's also times where adds need to be taken out but the boss has various circular or cone-shaped aoes that would hit people if you were to rotate it and/or pull it toward the add that needs to be killed. sometimes it's better to just sit there and look pretty instead of potentially hitting everyone.

[Packetdancer]

What I find interesting thing here is that the pld isn't saying dps is low, which is usually the first thing that's said with some parser users in casual content. He's saying that the healer damage is higher than both dps. Small distinction but an important one. No matter how casual the content you're doing, as a dps, you should never be doing less than your healer, aside from obvious factors that would prevent you from doing more.

I don't entirely agree, though my objection is to some extent probably covered by your "obvious factors that would prevent you from doing more" exception.

If I queue into expert roulette and get, say, Smileton, and I'm in there as a sage in ~i587 gear, while you have a DNC who's in straight i540 (the minimum required for the dungeon)... especially in trash situations where we're blasting AoEs over and over, it is quite possible for me as the healer to out-DPS the DNC even if the DNC is playing well. I know this because, as a SGE main this tier, queuing into expert in i587 gear, I frequently do out-DPS various DPS where I examine their gear and it's closer to the minimum required ilevel. (Bonus points if I just finished with raid and so have like 20 minutes left on my raid food when I start roulettes, so I'm also riding the HQ Pumpkin Potage high when Expert pops... which is usually the case, because my DPS meter is generally only running in roulettes in the first place when I just came out of raid and forgot to turn ACT off again.)

But the fact that I'm out-DPS'ing them in those scenarios doesn't strike me as grounds for concern.

I mean, 47 ilevels is a bigger ilevel gap than an entire raid tier usually covers (30 ilevels) even without throwing in leftover raid-food buff on top of that. But our current level 90 dungeons are considered 'current gear tier' and thus there's no ilevel sync in there. And when dealing with level sync for older dungeons, someone at level 73 in actual ~i375 gear in Dohn Mheg is going to be outgeared by someone in i587 gear synced down, since the i587 gear will have fairly maxxed-out stats when synced down to level 74.

Moreover, even aside from gear considerations, there are plenty of other factors that can skew the results slightly: if the dancer partners the (overgeared) healer for whatever reason and gives them an extra bit of juice to those numbers, or the AST is in a party with a caster and a ranged physical DPS and keeps drawing melee cards they just give to the tank (who may be slightly overgeared anyway... or just a WAR, who are an entire light party unto themselves this expansion), etc.

The live-running DPS meter is always going to be what FFLogs refers to as aDPS, which won't be an entirely unbiased set of numbers even before allowing for the potential ilevel gap.

But beyond that...? If you have a SAM in a full set of HQ Classical gear who is being out-DPS'd by an Classical-geared AST in Smileton, yes, something has probably gone seriously sideways with the SAM's rotation/playstyle (or their network connection).

[Kolaina]

Sincere question! When is it appropriate for a tank to eat a mechanic and be healed through it than to dodge? I've been derping around with pally and war lately and am unsure when the right times to eat it or leave it are. Since I main DPS I have an ingrained need to avoid orange, so I try to move than get back into position after the tick to make sure the boss isn't moving to screw up positionals. Advice is appreciated.

When your healer is your friend and you both agree some mechanics just get eaten, for instance the lvl 80 story dungeon, I forget the name.. when my spouse was leveling id say not to worry about dodging all the aoes the mobs spawn after first boss. They don’t do much damage and there’s so many.
Otherwise, consider respecting your healer

Edit; amourant

[Denji]

had a tank that refused to use their stance, refused to use unmend/provoke and when it came time to pick up various items and use them on things (complete with blindingly obvious sparkles that i also emphasized with markers) they and the two DPS instead ran back to the start of the dungeon and ignored me pointing them out in chat so that they can learn. as the dungeon progressed it became clear that these people were all friends leveling alts and it finally culminated with them straight-up attacking and insulting me while also refusing to pull.

it was the first time i had ever reported players before (besides the gibberish names of bots). after that dungeon i queued again for trials and not only did i come out of said trial with 5 comms and thanks from people for explaining the mechs, the game notified me that my ticket had been reviewed and that "appropriate will action be taken" when their investigation is complete. out of curiosity i googled the names of the players and found through the tank's twitter that they got a 3 day vacation.

feels good man.

[Packetdancer]

Sincere question! When is it appropriate for a tank to eat a mechanic and be healed through it than to dodge? I've been derping around with pally and war lately and am unsure when the right times to eat it or leave it are. Since I main DPS I have an ingrained need to avoid orange, so I try to move than get back into position after the tick to make sure the boss isn't moving to screw up positionals. Advice is appreciated.

My general mental-checklist when tanking trash pulls is:

1. Can I move out of the orange without significantly shifting the mobs? Yes? Then shift the minimum needed (and ideally shift back afterwards).
2. Are the mobs probably going to die in the next 5-7 seconds, and I can survive this damage? Yes? Then just mitigate as best I can and eat the damage; the mobs will be finished off shortly and there's enough time to heal on the way to the next pull, and moving enough that the mobs might move out of DPS AoEs is counter-productive.
3. Does the healer seem to be really struggling for whatever reason? (Poor resource management, having had to spend all healing resources on a DPS standing in bad and eating damage like they're at a county fair pie-eating contest, lack of understanding of their healing kit, etc.) Yes? Then make it easier on them and shift out of the orange, even if it means shifting the mobs around.
4. Conversely, is the healer really good with their kit and has me as a tank feeling functionally immortal? Yes? Pop a second cooldown if applicable and hold my ground while laughing maniacally to myself. (That last bit may only apply when playing WAR or DRK.)
5. If none of the others are true, can I move a tiny bit so I only eat one orange blob instead of three overlapping ones or whatever? Yes? Then shift to take the minimum number of hits.
6. Failing all else, just move entirely out of the bad.

It's generally not so much a conscious choice to run down the checklist, that's just sort of a summary of what I know goes into the gut feeling of "should I stay or should I go now" when there's a marker proclaiming that the Bad Stuff goes right here under me in a trash pull. So far, this has generally served me well.

(Boss fights are obviously different, because generally in boss fights you're meant to move out of all the Bad Stuff.)

[MiaShino]

Sincere question! When is it appropriate for a tank to eat a mechanic and be healed through it than to dodge? I've been derping around with pally and war lately and am unsure when the right times to eat it or leave it are. Since I main DPS I have an ingrained need to avoid orange, so I try to move than get back into position after the tick to make sure the boss isn't moving to screw up positionals. Advice is appreciated.

Many others already answered but shall anyways ;P

This all depends on level and tank selected then also what status effects the bad will apply to you. Will almost never willingly stand in aoe markers that apply burns/stun/sludge/dropsy/doom unless with partner as healer or me as healer.

If on Dark Knight with Dankest Knight running and the boss tickles? I am standing in the bad for uptime.

Hollowed Ground is running nope nope I am not wasting time dodging that.

Will dodge significantly fewer aoes on Warrior (level 56+) especially during pulls because why move the mobs in circles when I can self bene every 25 seconds.

Gunbreaker I have not much of the experience with but same same applies. If Bolide or heart of corundum available I can probably stand in that and no one will even notice.

My friends/extended family are teachers most amazing with oodles of mmo experience so when they told me to move infrequently as tank I listened. Something close to; "You move when you absolutely must and only as much movement as is necessary to resolve the mechanic or not die. Never inconvenience the team with excess movement of enemies or the boss."

It helps to be leveling deeps actually, it helps lots. I know when someone is going for positionals, when they are in burst, and when I am free to turn a boss or when I should not.

Treat tanking as melee do uptime and keep that booty attached to the boss with minimal movements and you are already better tank then most I see. That doth not mean collect vuln stacks like candy but if one or two can easily be dealt with by pressing Equilibrium why risk spinning the boss or losing uptime? Especially for dungeons, Savage and some trials even early level ones (Susano) can absolutely melt tanks so be mindful of course!

I hardly even notice when partner or friends willingly stand in the bad as healer main because of how broken silly tanks can be and overpowered my healing kit is. Infinitely preferable to having to heal everyone because the tank has fancy feet and keeps vaulting about handing out tankbusters for the whole team.

[Avatre]

Last night I ended up leaving a Twinning after the first boss because the healer was purposefully opening up the tanks on the side, even after I said it's possible to complete it without opening them. The sprout in there I can understand opening one or two by accident....but the healer opening them by moving so their AoE definitely would hit it? Yeah, I'm out. Don't need to run things where people are purposely making more work.