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

[Ilenya]

I had a BLM in an Alex farm party who was at 70 with an i210 weapon, unaugmented Shire left side and NQ 255 crafted right side. Their rotation consisted of spamming Fire until they ran out of MP, transposing and spamming Blizzard III until their mp was full and then transposing again. I had to ask them to use Enochian and their IV spells and even then they had to repeatedly reuse Enochian because they couldn't keep it up.

I was baffled. I'm not mad or anything, I'm just seriously confused as to how someone gets to 70 without understanding the basics of the job.

At least it was spamming Fire and not Fire III?

[HyoMinPark]

Farming Tsuku Ex—join a group and we zone in...and there’s a bonus. Well, I know where this is going. The person who was the bonus was supposedly an “alt”, so we pull. Well, we wiped twice, and I asked how many people who had actually cleared because so many people were dying to meteors, fans, and swords. Everyone said they had, though I was skeptical because there were just so many mechanic mess ups, and the damage was incredibly subpar—Tsuku was at 85% when she phased to adds, Suffering was at 90 by the time Zenos died, and second moon phased ended with Tsuku still above 50% health. The first pull she still had 17% at 11 minutes 20 seconds when we finally wiped.

I didn’t have the patience for it, so after the second wipe, I said I was out and left because I want to farm. The SAM in the party speaks up and says “That’s fine, you sucked anyways”.....I was dead on the floor for a full minute and was still double his damage. The first pull I was double his damage even with deaths. It’s really moments like this where I wish I could actually say something to people like this. And he wasn’t even in bad gear either—360/370 with the Tsuku weapon, melded and everything. But his numbers were lower than my numbers in HW. Good lord, I can’t stand people this freaking arrogant, because according to another person who stayed longer than I did, they were still trash talking me and bragging about how good they were while wiping to moon phase. Right. Get a life.

[Frizze]

So im not going to bother writing up the whole run in detail, but saturday night i had an... "interesting" Ridorana run. I wound up in alliance c with a healer new to the raid(the other didnt say). Between all 3 alliances, the only other person who could(but rarely did) res was a single SMN. First boss? Fight was slow, but not ultimately too hard. Second boss? Fight was slow, but not ultimately too hard. I dont know if it was bad DPS, or dead DPS that was the problem(both seemed to be present). Healers were a bit slow on resing, but there were SO many dead at certain points that it was kinda hard to blame them. Then came Math Blaster. Slow but not too hard? We can do that 3 bosses in a row right?

Fight starts... ok. Math phase 1 - i get 100%! Im so happy to carry a damage buff through the rest of the fight(first time in i failed these, as i hadnt noticed that standing in the number circles changed my hp value). We get to the Tarterus phase. One alliance easily finishes, the other 2 beat their guys at the last second and most of both alliances die trying to run out(including me, i was in the freaking portal when time ran out and thought i escaped but it counted as dead and after the shift i was on the ground). By the time math phase 2 happens, almost no one is left standing(and those who were would die to unavoidable damage soon enough - bye bye buffs). On several occasions the group would be down to just 1 tank, 1 healer(it seemed to rotate who) and maybe a couple DPS plugging away. But the robot never could finish us. The fight just kept going. I saw 5 or 6 healer LB3s. At one point i was dead on the ground for more then 10 consecutive minutes(i survived a roomwide with less then 1k health using manaward, but the next roomwide killed me as i never got a heal in between - the fatal attack being a lithobreak attack i was on an edge and not in a convenient place to res). Toward the end we were purposefully not stacking for the one attack so only a single person would have to die. This single fight went OVER the 35 min mark. When the fight ended, one of the healers from group A(who was complaining that the healers who were up should have been doing a better job getting other healers going - im not saying they were wrong, just that they whined a lot) immediately left. It was... kinda intense. Final boss? Half the group didnt understand the mechanic explanation, quick wipe to the add phase. That followed by a fairly clean kill. It went a little slow, but it wasnt overly difficult. Still havent seen any of the pieces i actually want drop, still havent rolled above a 70 on any of the alliance wide items. Fun times!

As for the 35 min fight, it being so survivable isnt a bad thing. But i do wonder if the people on the ground were watching how to survive each mechanic and learning, or if a 5-10 min wipe and start over would have been better. Im someone who can watch the mechanics in real time while taking a little dirt nap and recognize patterns/learn what to do next time im back up(id rather not admit how many fights ive learned this way - die horribly, dont get resed, figure it out by watching, then be able to do it right next pull/explain to new people), but i know a lot of people learn better by doing then seeing(and a few of those DPS must have spent close to 30 mins dead). Unrelated note: Having swift/triple/procs up and continuing to do decent damage while circling behind his rotating death laser spam feels pretty great as a BLM. I know that isnt as big a deal for some classes, but it meant something to me.

[Vidu]

My very casual static is slooowly progressing in O8S now so we threw in two extra hours of practise yesterday. However two of our members couldnt make it, so we had to pug some people.

A samurai joins. He gets some "Hellos" but doesnt respond. Okay, fair enough. We're not happy about it because we'd rather have a more nice and chatty person, but whatever. We ask how far they've been in the fight. No response. Thats a bit annoying now - but as our BLM points out: He has only german flagged as language so chances are he doesnt even understand. Neither me nor the BLM (we're both german) want to bother repeating the question though. He joined a group with an english description, if he wanted to only speak german he should have looked for such a group.
At this points the second slot fills - with a RDM who turns out to be really nice!
We offer discord details and while the RDM joins, the SAM doesnt respond again. Cool. We're not expecting it anymore at this point.

We load in and the first thing I do is check the SAMs gear. Now, I'm not sure what ilvl our partyleader set for the PF but this SAM must have reached it based on accessories alone. Left side is a mix of mostly dungeon gear (so around 330, 340), maybe one 360 piece. The real treat is the weapon though. Susano. Hes using a Susano Katana. Ilvl 320.
I point that put to my static, get some comments about how useful my judgemental stalking nature turned out to be and we leave to kick that samurai.

A monk joins shortly after and we end up getting 2 hours of decent practise, even though some lag and DCs are plaguing us.

I'm still a bit baffled about that samurai - more than I should be, granted.
I was already annoyed by the extreme amount of people with 300 or 310 weapons in Swallos Compass during the last days, but I could muster some understanding for that ("Okay, they're playing through story right now, maybe just started a few weeks ago, its just a dungeon..."). Joining any sort of Savage content though with a weapon that would have barely been okay during the previous raid-cycle? Why? Why would you (in this case: try to) waste other peoples time like that? Its so goddamn easy to get a 360 weapon thanks to the new augmented crafted stuff... or at least a 340, if you cant afford to buy some of the crafted gear. Or the 355 from Eureka or Byakko.

[ChameleonMS]

So, got Byakko story mode for the trial roulette last night. I playing PLD and was MT for this particular run. There was a new player notice at the start and SCH was watching the cutscene, hence, the new player.
We reach the tiger add phase and the DPS seems low (using PS4 so no ACT for me), the tiger jumped and we started the air phase at 54% of tiger, I notice that both BLMs in the party have weakness markers. I think ok, that explains things.
During the Byakko air phase, both BLMs and BRD do not even try to do the mechanic and die to the first circular swipe. I immediately put in the chat "Kick both BLMs". To which I get a response "No ****ing way!"
The good thing was both BLMs appear to have gotten the hint that they actually needed to play, and stayed upright and casting for the rest of the trial. The DPS though, was still pitiful, as the encounter took 16 minutes to kill and it was a one-shot.

[Sylvina]

Ah the proverbial ice mage?

[Karl0217]

So I unlocked Machinist yesterday and decided to level it via dungeon spam and doing levequests and fates while waiting on the duty finder. Got up to level 39, qued up for Cutter's Cry. Run starts easily enough but shortly before the worm boss my dog jumps into my lap and wants attention. So while trying to do two things at once I don't quite dodge the boss's sand attack, get no healing and get ko'd from that bleed effect. No raise from the healer and than the dragoon straddles my character's body, looking down at them, not saying anything and not attacking the boss for over a minute. I only get a raise after the boss is dead. Make it to the chimera no problem, despite getting distracted on and off in real life. And again during the last boss I don't manage to dodge a couple of attacks, get no healing and get ko'd. Again, no raise.

So anyway, I apologize in chat saying my dog is distracting me in real life. Mr. Creepy Dragoon with the barely legal name than makes the comment "I can't believe you died twice, probably making excuses for being a piss-poor player." So to recap distracted in real life, get no healing, no raises and told I suck despite only messing up twice on dodging an attack.

[Ghishlain]

I ran Ridorana Lighthouse on Sunday on WHM. Ended up in Alliance B. Twas actually a good run, we one shotted every boss with some trouble.

The Good - My party ended up having 6/8 party members getting and maintaining 4x damage up buffs for the entire fight on Construct 7. WOO
The Bad - I'm pretty certain the two healers in Alliance C were dead for about 30-40% of the time in each boss encounter. Arghy

I will say this, Ridorana Lighthouse is definitely a lot of fun from a healer perspective. It's not often I get to use every tool in my WHM kit to triage a fight but this 24-man is certainly making me do that. I know it's just the first week for the content but it's been a blast to actually feel like a real healer and use every tool at my disposal to keep people alive / resuscitate the raid.

[RokkuEkkusu]

This is more of a party finder thing. Two days earlier, I beat the latest EX primal using my Rokku Sigma character from Excalibur using the Warrior role. I wanted to see if I could clear that trial using my Ekkusu Volnutt character from Gilgamesh. An hour and a half before the 5/29/18 maintenance, I joined a clear party of the latest EX trial as Paladin. The second tank that came in was also a Paladin. As a result, I changed to Dark Knight to prevent duplicates for LB and weapon loot reasons.

I noticed most of the other party members have either the 370 or 375 weapons. I felt comfortable Main Tanking the fight a bit more because of the experienced players I was grouped with. When all was said and done, our clear party beat the new EX Primal in one attempt. 4 people got the first-time clear achievement.

[Nestama]

To the tanks who face the new EX Primal to the north in the crescent moon, kudos to you. This makes it much easier for me (MNK) to handle positionals and the moon mechanic. To those who don't... please face her north and not east/west. That leaves most of her body in the 'bad zone,' which means I have to duck into the 'safe zone' for a moment to prevent Bleed/Doom/Death.

I use True North for when I can't do positionals (during massive AoE's from rocks + orbs).