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

[SixtyLove]

Just finished doing Amdapor Keep - Hard, tanked/aggro'ed every group just fine. Get to the first boss and when asked if everyone knows the mechanic, the common reply of "Oh yeah ez" is spewed...right then I knew I was in for a bad time. Not only did the healer ignore the massive debuff, but he went out of his way not to hide behind the statues. I ask why, and he becomes a Cawnt with me, and anytime an add slips or I have to re-grab aggro, he complains...literally keeps hitting me with regen after every fight and asks why the mobs attack him first...It was basically facepalm city.

You got subtly trolled my friend, that guy was a douche of the "this is old content who cares" variety.

My own recent experience? Yesterday in Skalla we had a PLD in Sword Oath for the whole run and yes he did big pulls... I have no idea how I managed to keep my MP in abundance but I did and we cleared with no wipes.

[Paladin776]

...We had one wipe on the first boss but one shot everything else..

A couple of guilds in other games I've played, we had a thing where if we didn't wipe at least once on the first boss, it wasn't a good run.

[Ametrine]

You got subtly trolled my friend, that guy was a douche of the "this is old content who cares" variety.

My own recent experience? Yesterday in Skalla we had a PLD in Sword Oath for the whole run and yes he did big pulls... I have no idea how I managed to keep my MP in abundance but I did and we cleared with no wipes.

I just started leveling PLD again after dropping it in early HW, and every guide I've picked up includes "stay in sword oath as much as you possibly can."

The fact most healers at high level are good enough to keep sword oathers up despite the cost to their sanity isn't really helping anyone... I've actually been sticking to sheild since I'm still working out cooldown management, but yeesh.

[SixtyLove]

I just started leveling PLD again after dropping it in early HW, and every guide I've picked up includes "stay in sword oath as much as you possibly can."

The fact most healers at high level are good enough to keep sword oathers up despite the cost to their sanity isn't really helping anyone... I've actually been sticking to sheild since I'm still working out cooldown management, but yeesh.

I agree I'm sure there is some reasoning behind it.

I think in the duty finder we are so accustomed to Shield Oathers that anyone in Sword Oath seems to be "doing it wrong". I'm not saying that he WAS doing anything wrong either just that it felt really hard to keep him up and get some dps DoT's & Gravity going on the excessive trash in there. I posted a while ago that I really hate when I seem to do nothing but become a Cure II or Benefic II spammer because cooldowns are all over the place, incorrect/no tank stance/undergered etc... it's boring and I enjoy trying to push the dps if I can. We can get out of there a little faster if I can help out.

It could very well have been that he felt that a good test of his cooldown management was trying a level 70 dungeon for good measure so props to him... but it got a bit scary that's for sure. All in all it was a good test of my own healing skill since I've only been back for a month and I'm still rusty imo... guess I proved to myself that it's easier to get back into the swing of things than I thought.

[Ametrine]

Snip.

It's 101% a DPS thing. The difference in personal output between the Oaths is huge, but Shield Oath also makes enmity generation far easier. My choice to stick to Shield for now is just from me still being a bit scrubby and lacking in the muscle memory I do for other jobs. It's a safety net, I think.

But, my personal experience in recent stuff on the other end is DPS focussed tanking is sort of a jerk move upon your healer. I obviously need to do decent damage to function, but I'm a tank, I also kinda need to live, and that's my healer's main job, too. If my big D DPS is making my healer sweat, am I being a good tank anymore?

So it's nice that you making it through that builds your confidence, but I dunno how to feel about that whole scenario.

[Lilseph]

It's 101% a DPS thing. The difference in personal output between the Oaths is huge, but Shield Oath also makes enmity generation far easier. My choice to stick to Shield for now is just from me still being a bit scrubby and lacking in the muscle memory I do for other jobs. It's a safety net, I think.

But, my personal experience in recent stuff on the other end is DPS focussed tanking is sort of a jerk move upon your healer. I obviously need to do decent damage to function, but I'm a tank, I also kinda need to live, and that's my healer's main job, too. If my big D DPS is making my healer sweat, am I being a good tank anymore?

So it's nice that you making it through that builds your confidence, but I dunno how to feel about that whole scenario.

Ideally, you want to use your tank stance for trash pulls and your DPS stance for bosses. The later are predictable, and they really don't deal much damage.

[SixtyLove]

I hate the post count....

It's 101% a DPS thing. The difference in personal output between the Oaths is huge, but Shield Oath also makes enmity generation far easier. My choice to stick to Shield for now is just from me still being a bit scrubby and lacking in the muscle memory I do for other jobs. It's a safety net, I think.

But, my personal experience in recent stuff on the other end is DPS focussed tanking is sort of a jerk move upon your healer. I obviously need to do decent damage to function, but I'm a tank, I also kinda need to live, and that's my healer's main job, too. If my big D DPS is making my healer sweat, am I being a good tank anymore?

So it's nice that you making it through that builds your confidence, but I dunno how to feel about that whole scenario.

I think it's kind of like this for me to be honest; am I capable or not? If we can't get through this then why do I have i360 gear and wtf am I doing?.

It was certainly a different experience than I am used to so I take a positive from that because we actually rocked that dungeon. As I said there were no wipes and I managed to not run out of mp on any of the trash pulls even though I felt like I was spamming cure abilities. I think because the first trash mob was an indicator of how the rest of the dungeon was likely to play out I was able to adjust my playstyle to suit and I prioritised healing for that situation. The tank did use CD and GCD abilities too so he wasn't 'derping' the run; I honestly would have thought it was a dick move if he had just gone through his emnity rotation and left it at that. I guess it wasn't as "easy" as I am used to, it def kept me on my toes!

I think the bigger issue is that this tank didnt care if the healer he was matched with in the df gave a crap if he was being a good tank or not, he wanted to dps and get out of there... but maybe it would have been quicker for him to be in Shield Oath and let ME dps instead. (IMO it would have)

Ideally, you want to use your tank stance for trash pulls and your DPS stance for bosses. The later are predictable, and they really don't deal much damage.

I thought this was more along the lines of it, I was just unsure of whether the stances are more of a personal preference. I haven't touched PLD myself so I'm not going to tell anyone how they should play it, and I was a bit concerned that since Stormblood there have been changes aplenty so I didn't want to be the "you should be doing THIS" person when actually, I have no idea wtf I'm talking about. It's all good.

Both of your posts have been very insightful for me, many thanks ^^

[SenorPatty]

I feel like its one of those perception vs what's on paper thing.

Perception wise, mass pulling with dps stance seems hella risky. It's definitely not something I would do with strangers.

But as for what's on paper? That would require total trust and fore-knowledge of how your other party members operate.

In any case, good job Sixty-Love on keeping the run alive with no wipes. That's no small feat in a DF with strangers setting so kudos.

[Erim-Nelhah]

Yesterday, I did Baelsar's Wall on WAR (on my old Malboro toon) and didn't realize until the last pull before the first boss that I was still in Deliverance. I, personally, had zero issues with hate, tho I don't know how my Healer fared with me doing that. (and yes, I was doing big pulls because BLM+NIN). After doing an initial unchained pull on the boss, I hopped back to Deliverance for the boss, then it was back to Defiance for trash.

In any case, while it was probably faster with big pulls than single pulls would have been, the whole run was slow overall, likely mostly due to the BLM using a 2.5x rotation (I never once saw any of Ley Lines, Enochian, Fire 4, or Blizzard 4). After the run, I suggested that he talk to a BLM Main about his rotation (he wasn't an ice mage, but for all the damage he seemed to be doing he might as well have been).

--Erim Nelhah

[Otaru]

This is less of a horror story than I usually have to deal with, but it's still a horror story for me.

So I decided to test and see if I could attempt some streaming via the YouTubes and hopped onto a Behemoth alt. After a wipe during a solo PotD, I decided to do leveling roulette to get some exp on AST and queue put me right into Sunken Temple normal mode. I was immediately regretting this because I've had some horrible Qarn runs, but I still stuck it out because shiny bonus! Gate drops and I do all the healer bit of Protect and sect and cards, and me and the DPS move ahead a bit. Tank is just standing around, so we wait.
A few seconds pass and he finally moves, so we move again. Then he stops, so we stop. I then notice he changes his pants, which is fine. Sometimes you forget to swap out gear. So he moves again, but then immediately stops, and changes his pants again. Then changes his shirt, then changes it again. And alarms rang as I noticed the shirt was straight up a crafter's top (the model that the Hildy set uses). Then they rang even louder as the tank decided to remove his pants for some reason. And then he finally moved to start pulling mobs, but without an oath and not really getting all the aggro, nor trying to grab aggro back as mobs were hitting everyone.

First boss started out decently fine, but then tank kept dying to Doom despite the rest of us showing where to go. After the third or so death, I focused more on keeping the now tanking BLM alive, but I ended up dying (either to Doom or a Final Sting, I'm not sure). But thankfully it was near the end of the fight so not too much of an issue there. Surprisingly, aside from aggro being all over the place even after the tank put an oath on, the rest of the run went decently fine despite the fact that he was still wearing the crafter top and no pants.

Morning Leveling Roulette scares me sometimes. That's all I can say. I also wish I could comm more than one person, because both of the DPS deserved it.