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

[Aster_E]

It's the "Ridorana Wipehouse" according to my FC!

I've heard this one as well.

For me the only differing monikers for Dun Scaith is Done Spoopy and Ridorana is Ridorana Sadhouse.

Edit: At this point, we might as well hold a contest for the best Benedict Cumberbatch naming conventions for the 24man raids

I have not seen or heard these ones, but yeah... We all know the noise so well it seems. I guess, pre-4.5, we'll race to name the third part of Ivalice.

Rabanasty and Dunce Cave ares two more that ive heard. And i remember when Void Ark was new some groups struggling with Chuchu. If you passed him, you won the raid.

Have heard the former, not the latter. My FC leader likes using "Rabanasty," for one, though I'm fairly certain I've caught her using my moniker for it once or twice on random occasion. xD

Lest we forget the Circus Tower, a pain for all ages! Bring your friends and family! Be amazed as Scylla freezes you and everyone tethered to fireballs forgets you exist! Stand in awe as Amon incinerates half the entire group who forget to stand behind frozen players! Witness the thrill of the myriad players who forget to stand in the Float circles to avoid being shaken to a pulp by Xande's earthquake!!

Uh huh... I mean that one just writes itself. lol

[Kuukyo]

One annoying thing when playing as healer (I main as SCH, learning AST): Tank pulling trash mobs wall to wall without getting aggro from all of them; rush faster than anyone, healer doesn't have regen and cannot stand still to heal a portion, or if they can, some mobs without proper aggro will be drawn to healer. Even times during the clear some mobs lost aggro to tank and moved toward healer, yet DPS and tank still ignores and results as the healer dies.

If you are going to pull a bunch of mobs, least let me put on nullify barrier/regen and make sure you draw all trashes' aggro. That simple.

[Aosha]

snip

Aurum Vale really isn't that bad on its own. People just make it worse than it is by being careless. I'd argue that the worst part about it is people leaving the moment they enter. If you aren't willing to do what the roulette gives you, don't do the roulette...

Snip

I'll just point out here that pre-pull Regens can cause some issues even for good tanks. Because server ticks are the best invention ever, having one with bad timing can cause mobs that a tank has enmity on to still run off after the healer, which means they won't be present for a hit or two of enmity generation. And if the tank is going to die during the pull without a regen - well they were pulling more than they could handle anyways.
(But yes, tanks definitely should make sure to take enmity on everything ASAP. Facepulling is a horrible idea...)

[rswfire]

Yesterday got Arum Vale for leveling while on drk. I try to pull carefully in there any time i get it and i'm on tank. I should have known something was wrong with the whm on my 2nd pull when I grabbed the mushrooms on the left and the jellies and almost died. That pull was how almost every pull was. Was told someone was new so on the 1st boss I gave the eat fruit after 2 stacks info and about half way into the fight I noticed the whm was struggling. Ended up wiping so I looked at their gear and saw at least 2 lv 5 pieces on the right and 2 lv24 on the left side. I asked them why they didn't have any upgrades and poked them. Got no response. Last boss we ended up wiping again mostly due to the whm never aoe healing. The melee dps said healer lb post wipe n I chimed in with a hint that medica n medica II could help. It baffles me when people have better gear on from a reward but don't chose to have the rest of the gear be close to that. Or how whms at least rarely use regen or in this example not aoe heal at all. I used to run into healers that would ONLY aoe heal, but now the all play the how low can you go game.
I did have some fault at the end of my own as I tended to eat a few bad breaths, but in my defense i was experiencing a bit of lag that would show at least on my end I'd be out of it mid cast and nowhere near the hit box and still get hit by it. Yet the lack of aoe heals, no largease, presence of mind or lucid dreaming use to me was farworse. As a healer main I tend to have a habbit of looking at the party list so yes I noticed them not popping up. They did however have esuna and used it which was a surprise.

I recently started recruiting for my fc maybe six weeks ago and have discovered to my horror that many new players don't upgrade their gear, like at all. I've seen the right side gear all lv1 on a dozen people over lv40 or so. (I'm now stocking our company chest with gear and pointing people to it.)

[Ceridwenae]

SNIP!

No first timer bonus just means they've been in the dungeon before, it doesn't mean they've run that particular job through - your tank may have had a previous life as a BRD, for example. Although, if that was the case, the polite and smart thing to do is for a player to actually say this. Potentially poor DRG, though: if it's just on the level 39 for Cutter's, it doesn't have AoE (Doom Spike comes at 40, but it's feasible they get it during the run and can use it). Also, it can really destroy TP, so it's not something that can be done all the time (although, if the tank was as slow as you say, I very much doubt TP regen would be a huge issue), and it's possible to ask your party to hold a second if you need to pop in personal regen. Also, DS is a line based thing, so it maybe the DRG though it would not be optimal, maybe they were concerned with the basic single target rotation ("Must! Keep! Heavy! Thrust! Up! Must Disembowel everything!"), who knows? If I were you, I would've considered saying something, if only to stop your own teeth gnashing. Maybe they just thought you were the party's AoE that run and they didn't have to do it.

No Esuna for the worm's crap is just sad. Perhaps the healer didn't know?

As for the DRG's chimera performance, I will posit the floor tanking as being part of the rotation. I've been known to just "play dead" on DRG and tell passers-by I'm in training. Don't do it in dungeons, mind, if I can help it. Can't speak for the healer. I'm wondering if they were zeroed in on healing the tank and not paying attention to anything else (considering the second boss issues).

That chimera, though. I'm not sure I've ever had a clean run where no one mentioned its mechanics first (and even then..!). I think it's always good asking if everyone's on board, and doing a quick refresh of dragon/purple: in, ram/blue: out, reticule: run away from the party and drop it at the edge of the pit. Me and Hubby had a run the other day where the other DPS took the sphere over to Hubby as he was tanking and that was... interesting, to say the least.

At least you got two comms. It doesn't make up for the meh, but still.

[Iscah]

Also, DS is a line based thing, so it maybe the DRG though it would not be optimal, maybe they were concerned with the basic single target rotation ("Must! Keep! Heavy! Thrust! Up! Must Disembowel everything!"), who knows?

Is Doom Spike still more efficient at 3 targets like most DPS AoE skills? If you're not keeping up your buffs/debuffs because you're spamming that instead.

Dragoon just feels like it's built to focus on single targets, whether it's supposed to be the case or not.

And I've never felt really clear on how to aim Doom Spike either. Does it hit things around your target? Between you and it? Behind it?

[Rymm]

Aurum Vale really isn't that bad on its own. People just make it worse than it is by being careless.

So much this. AV is awful but the hardest part of it is by far is getting three other people from DF with a couple of braincells to rub together. Last time I got it in roulette the first thing I said on zone in (after 'Oh, not AV!') was to caution the tank against over pulling the 1st room.

First pull went okay, sprout DRG stood in puddles a few times but I managed to keep him and the tank both up and he moved when I warned him in chat. Problems arose when the tank then aggroed the whole dang area between where we were and the boss door for his second pull and only bothered to actually pick up about half the mobs. I went down to healing aggro in seconds and the rest of the group immediately after. I again suggested smaller pulls and the tank insisted it was a "small" pull. We get back in there and he does the exact same thing again with the exact same results. The SMN in the group piped up and asked for smaller pulls as well and the tank ragequit over it.

We managed to replace him surprisingly fast and the run went fairly smooth after that. Sprout DRG died on second boss a couple of times but improved over the course of the fight. Other than that, there few other problems, and minor ones at that.

[Ceridwenae]

Is Doom Spike still more efficient at 3 targets like most DPS AoE skills? If you're not keeping up your buffs/debuffs because you're spamming that instead.

Dragoon just feels like it's built to focus on single targets, whether it's supposed to be the case or not.

And I've never felt really clear on how to aim Doom Spike either. Does it hit things around your target? Between you and it? Behind it?

For DS, the info I found is you want four to five targets, but that info could be outdated. You still want to keep HT up regardless. It (DS) works in a straight line from you, so you need to target the mob furthest away from you in the group (I work it as being like a ranged DPS LB). So positioning is a thing, and depending on where you are and what the tank's doing, it may not be the right move to make.

What I've done in Cutter's Cry (because I wasn't confident DS was doing all that much the few times I used it!), was starting with HT, then using Impulse Drive-Disembowel to effectively dot all the enemies, then back to usual rotations depending on how long things look like they're going to live. There's likely someone who's a pro-DRG who can tell us exactly what's the most awesome thing to do in Cutter's Cry though, and hopefully they'll be along in a minute! *

I do know it eats through TP, so it's something to keep an eye on.

[SannaR]

I recently started recruiting for my fc maybe six weeks ago and have discovered to my horror that many new players don't upgrade their gear, like at all. I've seen the right side gear all lv1 on a dozen people over lv40 or so. (I'm now stocking our company chest with gear and pointing people to it.)

That reminds me of getting a group where the tank had a 115 weapon and I think 115 right side but the ilv90 crafted stuff for his left. A ninja that had better gear than the other dps but must have been a story pot user as we were doing an msq tied dungeon that had no missable side parts so when we got to the end they got the map achivement. The other dps had 115 for everything but their weapon where they were using an ilv 60. Course it doesn't help when some of the min ilvs for the older stuff is so low that SE doesn't take into account that such a low ilv makes almost anything feel like non nerfed pharos.

[Aosha]

For DS, the info I found is you want four to five targets, but that info could be outdated. You still want to keep HT up regardless. It (DS) works in a straight line from you, so you need to target the mob furthest away from you in the group (I work it as being like a ranged DPS LB). So positioning is a thing, and depending on where you are and what the tank's doing, it may not be the right move to make.

I'm probably not the pro DRG you were hoping for, but here's at least the math:
Full Thrust combo does 810 potency over 3 GCDs, Doom Spike has 420 (140*3) in the same time, per enemy. Thus, you only need 2 enemies to do more damage with DS spam (840). However, as DRG has other things it can do with its GCDs, and the TP cost is kinda heavy, it may not be the best choice to go straight AoE ham on 2 enemies. I'd wait to at least 3 (1260 pot). But that's one question where an actual DRG expert might come in handy.
(Also, the Chaos Thrust combo, gotten at 50, has a full potency of 1070 with the DoT included + has Disembowel, so at that point it's definitely worth it to Chaos Thrust enemy pairs, if they're going to live for that full 30 seconds. Probably trios as well.)
Don't knock Dragoon AoE, it's real strong, if not very sustainable.

And as far as I've been able to tell, Doom Spike should hit in a 10 yalm by 10 yalm "square" starting from you, in the direction of the enemy you are targeting. So no need to target the furthest one.