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

[KaivaC]

Was hesitant to share this because I share a good portion of the blame in my Aery run earlier. At this point, I’m starting to get comfortable dropping into DPS stance for boss battles – not too keen on dropping it for normal mobs just yet. Probably won’t ever be that comfortable. Anyhow, popped into the Aery largely to pick up gear and because I had just reached that level on my PLD – unfortunately, a huge chunk of my right side was still ilvl90…thought it might’ve been fine since Sohr Khai wasn’t that bad. Man was I wrong…

Or was I?

Spawn in and the party is myself, a WHM, and two SAMs. All three from Mateus. So I automatically feel like I’m on the spot.
First pull, grab all 5 enemies leading up to the first wall, in tank stance, and I’m holding off on popping rampart until I finally grab the last couple of enemies at the end. Immediately pop Rampart, start hitting the combo I’m getting used to – Flash, Rage of Halone, Flash, FoF, Total Ec…

Oh wait, I’m dead.

Their auto-attacks shred me apart. It was odd because I’ve healed tanks in worst gear than what I had as an AST in the same dungeon…while I was still learning AST. So I make a comment in chat – ‘I guess no big pulls here’
The SAM who was in the same FC as the WHM told me that big pulls are fine, but what’s not fine is sprinting out of the healer’s range.

Fair enough, except I didn’t sprint at all. I just ran and grabbed mobs, and even stopped at the first set just to apply a Flash before moving. I will defend myself if I think It’s necessary, so I told him that I didn’t even sprint. And then nothing but silence. Pull the first set of mobs, and I’m getting shredded even with rotating cooldowns, and throwing convalescence on with those. I’m too busy watching the AOEs around me to pay attention to what the healer is doing. But the time we went back to the next group of enemies, I had to pop a Hallowed Ground (at less than 500HP, after having used most of my usual CDs and even Bulwark).

I don’t do anymore large pulls after that. Get to the first boss, and after a couple of enmity combos, I switch into Sword Oath, pop a convalescence + Anticipation (since that was what I had at the time), and I notice that I’m not getting healed. It was maybe 30 seconds into the fight and I’ve been avoiding the AOEs – just as the timer for Anticipation was about to wear off and I was about to throw on Sentinel, boom…I had my second death.

At this point, I decide no more stance dancing, just stay in Shield Oath for the rest of the dungeon. Of course, I’m wondering what’s going on with the healer, but I’m also thinking to myself, ‘Damn, I’m a horrible tank…this is why I quit tanking in the first place because I will not ever be good enough.’

Even with me staying in Shield Oath, I died a 3rd time. THIRD TIME?! What happened, you may ask? Well, you know that pull when you’re picking up the tiny dragons, while another dragon periodically spits fireballs on the path? Yeah, well, while we made our way through the final set of those tiny dragons, one of the SAMs intentionally pulled one of those sleeping dragons. Not by getting close to him, oh no…the SAM hit it with a damn Enpi. You know, the ranged attack? So I had to pick that up, in addition to the tiny dragons there.

What happened? Not even Hallowed Ground could save me. That was my third death. I honestly was hoping they would kick me after this. I don’t rage quit in a dungeon, but after that run, I sure as hell wanted to quit tanking permanently. Not even joking. It would be one thing to point this at the WHM, but yea, I share some of the blame too. Ilvl90 in The Aery…I lost my damn mind.

Oh, and yea, literally nothing was said in chat after the very first wipe. Not a single word. We killed the boss, I got my shield, and we all went about our merry way.

[Frizze]

Anyhow, popped into the Aery largely to pick up gear and because I had just reached that level on my PLD – unfortunately, a huge chunk of my right side was still ilvl90…thought it might’ve been fine since Sohr Khai wasn’t that bad. Man was I wrong…

Or was I?

Im tempted to put most of the blame on your healer here. Let me start with a disclaimer though: It is always a good idea to have up to date gear. Ok, now that thats out of the way, lets look at your case. So going by what you said, im working under the assumption that your left side gear(armor) was closer in level to the dungeon and that your problem pieces were primarily jewelry. If that isnt the case, then take all this with a grain of salt(a thought exercise). A quick pop over to the database tells me that an i90 tank necklace(allagan, heros, direwolf or HQ crafted - in other words, any type you would likely have) has 15 Vit on it. The best version available at your level(the actual aery drop, the dreadwyrm or the augmented ironworks) have 27 Vit. Looking at the bracelet stats, its identical - 15 Vit at 90 and 27 as highest available(i didnt bother to check any other pieces, as im sure ill see the same). So your lacking jewelry probly lowered your Vit pool roughly 50-60 points(the change in secondary stats is negligible). I dont know the translation of Vit to HP off the top of my head, but if we figure 25 points per(my instinct says its probly less - maybe even half that) that means your max HP was 1500ish points less then it could have been. How many extra hits would that be the aery? Like 2? And since jewelry doesnt affect your defense rating i dont think we can assign much more value to what you lacked in gear.

On the other hand, the story you share doesnt make it sound like the healer was really overwhelmed by how much damage you were taking(2 or 3 extra hits worth of hp doesnt sound like it would have saved any of those deaths). It sounds more like they were just not healing you(or if they were being overwhelmed, it was the type of overwhelmed caused by DPS being slow to kill things and resources eventually running out). Were they distracted by something(FC chat or RL maybe)? Was their gear substandard(or possibly broken)? Were they new at healing and didnt want to admit it(leveling potion and/or some understanding friends can get you a long way before you have to actually know what youre doing - on any class really)? Did they start DPSing and forget that they needed to heal sometimes? Were these bored people who decided to troll some poor tank? Only those 3(and potentially even only that healer) know this answer, as you yourself said you were too busy with everything to have paid attention to what they were or werent doing.

So in summation, id say that maybe 5-10% of that trouble was on you. Lesson learned about low gear(vault is typically the gut-check dungeon in that range, so try to get some upgrades on the way). As a non-tank, i cant offer advice or useful critique on rotating cooldowns. But it sounds pretty clear that youre trying to improve(and indeed, you describe changing your approach to meet what that group was bringing) and thats all i ever ask when im teamed with someone new to the game or someone working on a class they havent mastered yet. So... probly dont give up tanking quite yet. Just be careful who you tank for.

[KaivaC]

snip

Oh my god...I mistyped again. I meant left side. Damn me typing this up at 2am my time. I'm not sure what gear the other 3 had - I only know that the WHM and one of the SAMS (the one that said something to me) were in the same FC. I do question the healer though because there were some parts where they healed me just fine, even on an accidental big pull. But just to cover my bases, I'll probably grind out Sohr Khai before I move on to the next dungeon - I'm mostly just trying to hit 70 so I can get my Omega gear over to this job.

[ChameleonMS]

Oh my god...I mistyped again. I meant left side. Damn me typing this up at 2am my time.

Left side is very impactful for tanks when considering damage mitigation. That where your DEF rating comes from. DEF forms the basis of your base mitigation.
You should have a reasonable number of Poetics at this point, go to Mor Dhona buy some i120 ironworks gear, that will carry you to lv56. Then you need to replace this with i139 crafted / vendor gear or i133 dungeon gear. Due the RNG nature of gear drops grinding Sohm Al is a very inefficient choice. You have already out levelled that dungeon and it will only get worse long before you get a set of gear.

[Tridus]

Left side is very impactful for tanks when considering damage mitigation. That where your DEF rating comes from. DEF forms the basis of your base mitigation.
You should have a reasonable number of Poetics at this point, go to Mor Dhona buy some i120 ironworks gear, that will carry you to lv56. Then you need to replace this with i139 crafted / vendor gear or i133 dungeon gear. Due the RNG nature of gear drops grinding Sohm Al is a very inefficient choice. You have already out levelled that dungeon and it will only get worse long before you get a set of gear.

You're guaranteed at least one item you don't have from Sohm Al, since it's a HW levelling dungeon. You get one automatically at the end of the run. Plus so much stop drops between bosses and chests that you'd have to be very unlucky to walk away with nothing two runs in a row.

For tanks and healers, levelling exclusively on the highest tier dungeon you have access to works out pretty well. You'll have the entire set of gear for that dungeon (except maybe a weapon, since that's just RNG) by time it's time to do the next one in the list.

[Avatre]

Oh my god...I mistyped again. I meant left side. Damn me typing this up at 2am my time. I'm not sure what gear the other 3 had - I only know that the WHM and one of the SAMS (the one that said something to me) were in the same FC. I do question the healer though because there were some parts where they healed me just fine, even on an accidental big pull. But just to cover my bases, I'll probably grind out Sohr Khai before I move on to the next dungeon - I'm mostly just trying to hit 70 so I can get my Omega gear over to this job.

If you have spare Poetics, I recommend going to Mor Dhona and grabbing the Ironworks gear. Even not augmented it's i120(i130 when augmented). Plus, using the augmented versions can carry any class to 60(my RNG sucks, so I've leveled every class practically - like 90% of my gear being - in Augmented Ironworks from 50-60).