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

[Dornob]

Was helping a friend last night through The Burn, me as SMN and them as RDM, with an AST and WAR pug. Everything was fairly easy (other than the tank doing a wall-to-wall pull before the last boss, that ended up being a disaster) up until the last boss.

The AST we had did mention they didn't clear this yet, and that's cool since they were doing fairly well otherwise, but for some reason the WAR tank was getting hit by everything avoidable and they were starting to be ripped through even with me trying to Addle, Erase on DoTs, and Apoc as much as I could, along with the standard first-time mess ups on mechanics so there was a ton of damage. We end up wiping once to the double ice line markers and then again during the heavy fog phase.

At this point the WAR just suddenly disconnects (had not said a word the whole dungeon so I dunno if they ended up frustrated or something) and, after waiting a bit just in case, we kick them and get a new tank who was thankfully, rather helpful with the heavy fog part (my friend and the AST were not sure how it worked and I was still getting used to it). Took us a wipe again until we were able to get through the fog phase and then clear it. Commended the new tank (wish I could have given it to the AST too, sorry!) and we all left in good moods.

So yeah, a bit more of a positive story, but I figured I'd share something a bit more uplifting to the rest of the stuff, haha.

[JohnnyDevo]

background:
Suzako EX on party finder. The 4 dps are me, RED, ORANGE, and GREEN(party lead).
from the start, RED starts out calling positions as if it's Intercardinal/CW. Me and Orange both jump to a corner of the reference marker that makes sense for our class.
Then GREEN calls a position as if it's Cardinal/CW.
Positional chaos ensues as GREEN seems to fail to understand that any orientation other than Cardinals/CW exists, and ORANGE seems to fail to understand that any orientation other than Intercardinals/CW exists.



It's at this point in the conversation where I just couldn't deal with it and left.
Why do 90% of the parties have this kind of confusion? How are people so consistently obtuse? Ugh. I hate this fight so much because people learn one of 2 ways of doing this, know it by one of 4 ways of labeling the method, and have zero concept of any other possibility and are incapable of adjusting.

[Ashennae]

So this was my first time in Wiping City of Mnach, right? My router was having issues and kept kicking me off the internet, which was annoying enough, but I persisted through it. Alliance B then lost one of their healers and someone (Think it was the tank, can't remember atm) asked nicely if the rest of us could wait for them to get a new healer.

Que one of the monks from A just running ahead and ignoring the guy who asked for a healer. We managed to make it to the second boss (the one after the spider) but we like wiped three times before everyone got into an arguement. The guy who asked for a healer started yelling at the monk to stop pulling, the monk replied with "I'm sorry I thought we weren't bad." and then someone else was all "Sorry DPS = deffinetly pieces of shit" At this point, my router kicked me off a total of three times and I decided fuck this and I left. I feel bad for my alliance and that run, so if you were in a run with the RDM who kept DCing, I apologize from the bottom of my heart and hope you pulled through ;_;

[Ceridwenae]

Did The Burn today. Had a fantastic healer who I wanted to give 100 recommends to. Gave them something more than is sensible to do, yet they rose to the occasion, and the third time on Misty was the charm. If you're reading this, thank you once again, healer, for your advice, rezzes and many, many heals! I just wish I could remember your name, but I don't retain that information well.

[Aster_E]

I randomly did Normal Raids Roulette this evening just for the heck of trying it. I noticed that it was Healer in need, so I went in on Whm thinking to myself "Hey, what are the odds of getting o12 normal?" I hadn't healed it before, but I understand it's supposed to be brutal for healers. Would anyone here like to guess what I got for the roulette before reading on?

Oh yeah. *Sunglasses* This is going to rock.

Things are already off to a great start when we have two DRKs in Darkside but no Grit, and neither of them is moving toward the boss at first. Both hit Grit at the same time as I was typing my message for one of them to slam that button already, and I laughed as one of them wasted no time to turn Grit back off. Then, finally, the first go against You-Know-WhoM began.

I must say, the first phase wasn't difficult, as I was able to keep most everyone alive whilst contributing to DPS. I say most everyone, because there was THAT ONE ASSHOLE who stood in things and died, got up from rezzes, and died immediately in half of them (it was the Bard). When M swapped out for F for the first time I decided to try and put Surecast to good use to see if it would work; it did. It's rather amusing to see everyone in the party fly so far while I alone remained standing by the boss. Somehow, as it was the first go, it was also amusing to see a couple people die to that knockback, including the main tank! >=D

Then the last phase began, and that Bard I mentioned earlier proceeded to sing songs of splendor to the ground like you may or may not believe. Other people died to from being to close to something, being too far from one of my heals or the AST's, whatevs. Also, in both goes at the fight, one tank or the other went from full health (yes with protect on) to doing an impression of an ostrich burrowing for food, and my co-healer and I worked to get the tank of the moment back up while also keeping everyone up as much as possible.

I died roughly the same time as F did. I didn't quite make it out of M's circle aoe before it went off. I got up and popped everything I could, but we died to M's soft enrage. I took that moment to mention that it's easier on all of us if the pair die as close together as we can manage. The AST cracked that NOW I said something. I responded that I was busy healing, as they did in turn. The Bard remarked that they died so many times, and also that we just wiped, so where were the heals? Someone else called them an idiot, and affirmed that the soft enrage was what killed us. I didn't feel like explaining to the Bard that they stood in so much shit the first go either.

Round 2: Went even smoother than the first. The Bard only died a third as many times, and the opposite tank to the first one was the one to become as lively as Ul'dah during maintenance. F died when M was around 10%, which was better than the first go, but half our party was dead or dying. I popped that healer LB3 faster than you could say "Omega's got bewbs." I ran to the group once my animation lock was over, hit Medica, and... it was all over when Medica had 0.17 seconds left of cast time.

Grats to the quarter of my party on their first clears. It was my second one, and I think, ironically, that I like healing o12 more than the other Alphascapes, as well as more than DPSing it. I also rolled a 95 on the minion and won, as well got one of the comms. I wasn't sure who to give my own comm to.

[Vrankyl]

So the buffs to RDM has provided some rather interesting experiences, especially in Alphascape. Honestly part of the problem is truly the DPS tank mentality that has become way too over bearing, it's like tanks are allergic to tank stance. Helping a friend get their O12 drops and in two difference groups watched DPS tanks just foul it up.

First go around, tank does the countdown pulls and almost immediately I'm pulling right off of him. Whatever pop Lucid Dreaming, still have threat issues so then I pop Diversion as well. No problem, can't possibly run into more problems than that right? Wrong. Cue the split, pause a moment to let tanks get their target and for the debuffs to go out. All of a sudden one of the healers is face tanking, which proceeds into the SAM and myself face tanking to try and keep the healer from dying. Of course tank doesn't even seem to be awake and all three of us die, looked and sure enough Sword Oath was on instead of Shield Oath.

Second go around, same thing at the pull. By this time I'm just used to RDMs pulling even more asinine levels of threat than prior to the patch. Didn't think anything of it other than noticing that the tanks could probably use to adjust their openers slightly for the recent DPS buffs. Then it gets worse. The split happens, pause a moment to let tanks grab and debuffs to settle then start to unload. Two spells in I have aggro, freaking out I hit lucid only to have aggro with the very next spell, hit Diversion and just continued to tank with my face until I died. It wasn't of course until after I was dead that the tank decided that maybe tank stance was a good idea.

I could probably keep going as this has been a reoccuring theme of no matter how many threat reduction CDs I use I end up tanking with my face cause the tanks don't secure enough threat before swapping to DPS stance. I feel even worse for the healers cause they are the ones who have to clean up the mess and then take a huge brunt of the blame when they don't, or even worse when they are too oom to heal because they've had to scrape people up because tanks are developing a phobia about using tank stance.

[ChiefDork]

For 4 years the only loot I ever win is ninja pants

[AmemeAmeklin]

Ran Alliance Raids roulette the other day as RDM, got a diva tank in my group (who wanted to be carried, I guess...) that I called out a few times.

I first noticed the distinct absence of tank-like behavior in Mateus when the Azure sky worms popped up and DPS was tanking ours (primarily me). It's easy to get confused in the shuffle so I didn't pay much attention to where the tank was. Hashmal is Hashmal, so I didn't care who was tanking the sand spheres, though I once again noticed no actual tank was getting aggro.

When we got to the bit with the chimeras and the demon, we once again appeared to be sans tank, although he had been initiating ready checks and countdowns quite actively. This time I swung the camera around and spotted said tank dancing at the starting spot. Once the fight was over...

Me (party chat): [Tank], what precisely are you doing? Because it's not tanking.
Tank: Oh, someone canceled my countdown.
Groupmate: Um it was a 30 second countdown. Do something shorter next time.

We moved on to the next fight, Rofocale, and now I'm keeping a close eye on our tank because of the above. Once again, he is not tanking...so of course I take it to alliance chat to very blandly note that our tank was not tanking (after the boss did some ping-ponging). His response this time, for everyone to see:

Tank: That was an early pull. I don't tank early pulls.
Alliance member 1: who doesn't tank early pulls lol
Alliance member 2: That's okay, we have a tank who will.
Me: Our tank does not appear to tank anything.
Tank: I tank everything lol I'm just being a dick
Tank 2: Sorry
Tank: Oh no, [Tank 2], you're doing fine.

Our tank finally starts tanking. For a while I was worried he'd just be dancing at the beginning the whole time, but he ran into the add area and started playing properly. When we got to Argath, what happened? Our beautiful special snowflake diva initiates a ready check, then when another tank started a countdown, he pulls the boss.

Me: I thought you didn't tank early pulls.
Tank: My bad, I pulled before I saw the countdown start.

No one else said anything for the rest of the raid. Fortunately everyone was competent so we didn't wipe at all and got out in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm sure snowflake tank has something else going on in his life but the hypocrisy and juvenile responses to tiny things were just aggravating as hell.

[WaterShield]

So the buffs to RDM has provided some rather interesting experiences, especially in Alphascape. Honestly part of the problem is truly the DPS tank mentality that has become way too over bearing, it's like tanks are allergic to tank stance. Helping a friend get their O12 drops and in two difference groups watched DPS tanks just foul it up.

First go around, tank does the countdown pulls and almost immediately I'm pulling right off of him. Whatever pop Lucid Dreaming, still have threat issues so then I pop Diversion as well. No problem, can't possibly run into more problems than that right? Wrong. Cue the split, pause a moment to let tanks get their target and for the debuffs to go out. All of a sudden one of the healers is face tanking, which proceeds into the SAM and myself face tanking to try and keep the healer from dying. Of course tank doesn't even seem to be awake and all three of us die, looked and sure enough Sword Oath was on instead of Shield Oath.

Second go around, same thing at the pull. By this time I'm just used to RDMs pulling even more asinine levels of threat than prior to the patch. Didn't think anything of it other than noticing that the tanks could probably use to adjust their openers slightly for the recent DPS buffs. Then it gets worse. The split happens, pause a moment to let tanks grab and debuffs to settle then start to unload. Two spells in I have aggro, freaking out I hit lucid only to have aggro with the very next spell, hit Diversion and just continued to tank with my face until I died. It wasn't of course until after I was dead that the tank decided that maybe tank stance was a good idea.

I could probably keep going as this has been a reoccuring theme of no matter how many threat reduction CDs I use I end up tanking with my face cause the tanks don't secure enough threat before swapping to DPS stance. I feel even worse for the healers cause they are the ones who have to clean up the mess and then take a huge brunt of the blame when they don't, or even worse when they are too oom to heal because they've had to scrape people up because tanks are developing a phobia about using tank stance.

I just wanted to let you know that due to RDM being heavily front loaded damage wise, it's probably best to use diversion in your opener before any damage dealing spells are cast. My typical opener is Swiftcast + Acceleration at 9 seconds till pull, with Diversion being pressed 1 second before pull starts. Once pull starts the first damage dealing spell out is Veraero or Verthunder for the guaranteed proc. The reasoning behind this is that Diversion only helps you to not generate hate, not to remove hate you already have (unlike Lucid Dreaming). Due to the way it functions there is no downside to using Diversion during your opener. Not blaming you for the situation though, as it sounds like the tank you experienced may have lost hate anyway. However it certainly will reduce instances of pulling hate during RDM opener.

[Vrankyl]

I just wanted to let you know that due to RDM being heavily front loaded damage wise, it's probably best to use diversion in your opener before any damage dealing spells are cast. My typical opener is Swiftcast + Acceleration at 9 seconds till pull, with Diversion being pressed 1 second before pull starts. The reasoning behind this is that Diversion only helps you to not generate hate, not to remove hate you already have (unlike Lucid Dreaming). Due to the way it functions there is no downside to using Diversion during your opener. Not blaming you for the situation though, as it sounds like the tank you experienced may have lost hate anyway. However it certainly will reduce instances of pulling hate during RDM opener.

I'll give that a shot. I didn't have too much trouble with pulling hate before the patch, but with the new crafted gear along with the buffs to Verthunder and Veraero it seems ridiculously high in aggro generation now. I just wish Diversion had a shorter CD for tanks like this.