Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent. 2.0

[Cincierta]

Just a quick reminder that something being easy for you, does not mean that it's easy for everyone.

I for one struggle with normal trials and raids, as the sheer volume of visual clutter, counterintuitive mechanics, and unillegible boss emotes simply overwhelms me. I usually can do the first half of a fight without problems, but as soon as the boss starts firing 17 different AEs all at the same time, I start dying.

If it helps out, you can turn off a lot of the visual clutter in options. I've adjusted this since Delebrum Reginae was current content, and can't really live without it as dodging became much, MUCH easier. On the flip side, this has made dragging people kicking and screaming over the finish line for me the norm.

If you are having trouble with mechanics, you are more than welcome to ask about them. More than likely someone else who is more familiar with the fight will mark themselves as the Danger Dorito and move to the safe spots for you to follow. Couple this with removing the visual clutter from the Options and you can make a lot of the fights that much easier to do. Speaking up and asking about mechanics is VERY MUCH ENCOURAGED and the rest of us will be far more understanding for it.

Mechanics are not hard. However throwing yourself like the RDM I had was doing in the fights because they decided laying on the floor and timing out my raises for two whole minutes each in their tantrum was a much better option makes things MUCH harder for the rest of the group, like the damage-heavy stacks and dps checks.

If it comes down to it, stop dpsing and do the mechanic. It is much easier for a healer like myself to patch up raidwide damage over dumping another 2400 mp on scraping someone off the ground.

[Tort_1996]

Did alliance roulette as warrior and got Labyrinth of the Ancients. First pull another tank grabs all aggro, even from other tanks. So I'm like ok and turn off stance so I don't case problems with spinning enemies, as soon as I do that our parties Dancer starts rudely telling me I need to my tank stance on, I tell why I don't and they are like what ever. Proceed though the raid without issues until we get to behemoth, draw knight away from group for first meteor and survive. Second meteor start coming down and didn't catch that boulder was slightly touching the boss hit box and I die, dancer immediately start calling be out saying I idiot for dying and explaining how the ring around the boss work. Told them that I'm not idiot and know how it works, just that miss it because I was focusing on finishing the knight. Dancer was like whatever you say man and we finally finished the final boss without issues, Immediately after the dancer say "hope you have better day, since need it" and left. I'm like "wtf"?.

[Bibine_Bine]

... and at least 5 times the RDM in our party let my raises time out. Yes. They let the Raise I dropped on them time out.

Reminder that this is reportable, as it's against the rules. It would fall under "Aiding the enemy / Uncooperative behavior / Lethargic behavior." Basically intentionally being uncooperative or making content harder for others is against the rules, and you can get warned or even banned for it.

[Mesarthim]

I genuinely cannot tell why some tanks get so far into the game but don't understand what provoke is.

I shouldn't be tanking the final boss of dumbwalk as a dps for half of the fight. Or tsukuyomi for that matter (with two non provoking tanks even).

[Doomed_Raven]

I did Pharos Sirius hard once as a summoner, and it ended up taking close to 2 hours to complete due to a lot of mishaps. I turned out being likely the most experienced player in the group of sprouts, which is rare given I've played it for 5 months and am usually paired with people who've played it for a decade.

The healer bless them had probably just gotten their level 50 job gear and hadn't healed player's before (the tank kept dying) but the healer died more.

The DPS dragoon didn't realize adds in boss fights needed to be targeted.

I think I raised the healer about 8 times as summoner throughout the dungeon and at the final boss was raising both them and the DPS dragoon whilst frequently trying to keep the tank alive with a weak heal that's only good in the lv16 dungeon. (I didn't sign up to be healer!)

I was very patient and friendly because I know exactly how it is having to learn stuff in this game - and what it's like trying to learn when there's a d**k in the group. But I was glad to finish that dungeon. Got no commendations as memory serves but it doesn't matter, people probably just wanted to leave quick.

(I then ran that dungeon about 50 times unsynced to my despair for some gear, because RNGesus hated me)



One time on Tam Tara Deepcroft hard. I said hi, the group ignored me. The tank slapped me (?) then tried to pull the whole dungeon and caused a quick wipe. They then proceeded to pull the whole dungeon twice more under the illusion they're invincible. The healer couldn't have healed faster if she'd tried, and quickly got fed up and left, the DPS following suit. I told them they're pulling too much - the healer can't keep up, and left also. I think they're still in that dungeon.


Another Tam Tara Deepcroft hard one morning, had the biggest A hole of a healer I'd come across. They kept whinging at the group in a arrogant fashion and the other DPS bard (who may not have known the mechanics) was taking most the flack. The healer said "respect the strats!" and i said "they're not strats, they're mechanics, and you've explained them to the person poorly". In the end they said "this bard is a dumbass, you are stupid bro" to the bard. I wanted to have a go at them but they quickly left. I also tried to tell the bard to ignore them but they left. The tank was like "uh..gg..ty everyone" lol. I don't know why I tried to become a referee. Like why are you so angry at 6am dude? go back to sleep, don't play this game.

Honorable mentions:

Hullbreakers Isle. Twice when I've done that as DPS there was a wipe at the very start haha. Don't underestimate the mobs at the start of that one.

And Aurum Vale makes me laugh. Doesn't matter how long people have played this game. That dungeon tends to mess everyone up.

[Averax]

Did a leveling roulette and got the steel vigil.

Our healer was a white mage who was very...interesting....

She was level 52. Her gear was broken, and she didn't know why, or what she could do about it. She was also wearing daystar armor and i'm not even sure how you can still get that set. She also didn't really seem to know what her abilities were or how they worked.

We resolved the broken gear issue and killed the first boss, although it was rough going through the rest of it. She would also randomly cast holy nowhere near any mobs.

[VeyaAkemi]

She was also wearing daystar armor and i'm not even sure how you can still get that set.

Oh it's easy, you get it from the hunt guy in each Grand Company, but more realistically for a new player, the 2.4 patch quests will hand out iLvl 110 gear every few quests, the way the rewards are spread out, you always pick between a piece of Noct, Astrum or Gloam gear, and between a piece of Auroral, Daystar, or Evenstar gear.

If you are asking how they can get the base version of the item over the Augmented version, it's because they can't, iLvl 110 tome gear didn't use the "Augmented" prefix for the improved version, it used a "Weathered" prefix for the base version, like this.

[VeyaAkemi]

So today I had the most goddamn beautiful thing happen, Alliance Raid Roulette, LotA, you know the drill, everything is pretty normal at first...

We hit Thanatos... and Thanatos dies with over 10 seconds on the first ghost buff...

We hit Behemoth... and no deaths, everyone handles the entire meteor segment flawlessly...

And we finally hit Phleg... no deaths on the first A. Flare, Phleg walks back to his spot at just about 30% HP, I am still burning him the best I can expecting him to turn tail any moment for the second one, and... and... nothing, he just dies, that man didn't even get to think about casting Ancient Flare, to see LotA handled so flawlessly brings a tear to my eye...

And yes, you can go "Oh it's just LotA, of course it was easy...", and to that I say, my god you don't understand, I've had wiped in every single boss of that raid, I had wipes on Bone Dragon, some as early as this year, the degree to which the average player sucks is unreal, so to see even the most simple content be handled with such finesse is heartwarming to me.

[Nana_Bear]

I was actually going to respond to a post there from Denji because I wanted to second it.

if you're a new tank or you paid for boosts please please PLEASE keep in mind that once you stop your pull, you've stopped until everything's dead. you're wasting cooldowns, you're wasting combos and ley lines and ruining people's positionals and your impatience is actually making things take longer.

please, continue to make big pulls. but once you stop, you -stop-. casters especially don't like it when they have a few seconds to pop off a proc and you've already moved out of their range, nor do healers like it when you move out of their heal/shield aoes.

if you stop. just. fricking. stop. please.

This is especially bad when I'm on AST and the tank moves everything out of my Earthly Star.

This. When I was a new sprout playing WHM this drove me absolutely crazy: Tank would grab a trash group, I'd be working my heals and area effects... and then just as I'd be firing them off, tank would run on to "grab more enemies." Either stop, or keep running until you've grabbed wall-to-wall, and THEN stop, please. Really. (Even worse when the tank ended up dying because THEY ran out of my healing range, multiple times, and then yelled at ME for it.)

It got to the point where I switched to WAR myself, and found it much simpler to play, mostly. And yeah, if I'm new to a dungeon or haven't done it in a long time, I may take trash pulls one at a time... but I don't run off on my healers, and try to keep DPS directionals in mind, and if I have to dodge I try NOT to run to the BLM's layline "house," heh. (I will dodge an attack then go right back to my spot from before, if I can.)

And if someone stands in my tankbuster, I *try* to move a little to get them out of the effect if I can.

Also, impatient DPS, *please* let the tank get agro *first*. It's what we're there for: we're made to be the damage super-soaker sponges.

I' know I'm not the best tank out there, but I try to keep teamwork in mind: we ARE a team. (And I try to strategically use my couple of "heal/help others" actions to bolster my healer(s) when I can.)

PS: going in on big fights I first watch video guides to try to learn the mechanics; I fight better that way, heh.

[Nana_Bear]

Did a leveling roulette and got the steel vigil.

Our healer was a white mage who was very...interesting....

She was level 52. Her gear was broken, and she didn't know why, or what she could do about it. She was also wearing daystar armor and i'm not even sure how you can still get that set. She also didn't really seem to know what her abilities were or how they worked.

We resolved the broken gear issue and killed the first boss, although it was rough going through the rest of it. She would also randomly cast holy nowhere near any mobs.

Ouch. Reminds me of when I was a lower-level WHM and running Prae and kept dying to Gaius (after I'd had little problem on previous runs). My daughter goes, "Mom, what gear are you using, and do you have materia on it?" D'oh. I was several levels underpowered in the gear department: forgot to update it. Once I did, it went MUCH better.

There's a learning curve in this game, and if a newer player doesn't have friends who can point out "Hey, here's the problem and what you can do to fix it" issues... some people just can't seem to figure out what the problem IS. Often it's people who've never played an MMO before, or done much fight-game playing *period*. My daughter's a hella good teacher and coach, as are several others in our circle of friends. Helps a LOT. We share with each other things we learn.

Glad you were able to help that WHM get at least some of her problems straightened out.

It also sounds like maybe she did a first level buy-up, and then didn't bother with Hall of the Novice? Ouch.