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

[Khorchi]

Just got kicked out of PF after one clear of a Seiryu Farm.

My Mentor jumped into one party and asked me to join him for it. Unfortunately it filled up before I could get in with him, so I joined another party with almost a full bunch of people from Jenova. The comment read something like "Doggo farm. No Salt. Have fun <3"
Party consists of me (WHM), WAR, PLD, SCH (the leader), BRD, MCH, DRG, RDM.
I pop in and I announce to the party that "This is my first party without my mentor or my usual group. I hope that I don't let you down and I'll do my best <3"
Ready check goes up, we go into the fight.
Now I know every mechanic of the fight as the fight is pretty easy, but without my mentor/friends there I still felt a bit isolated and anxious about it all.
First phase goes by without a hitch.
The second phase is though is where I drop the ball.

I COMPLETELY FORGOT to stack up for the first split stack. It was my fault. I was just on my own and didn't think of the mechanic until it was too late.
I own up to my mistake and say in the chat "I keep forgetting about that spot! I'm sorry ". Nothing else was said in chat for the entire run apart from my comment.
I die again to the Big Boi Blue because I went into a bit of a trance healing everyone and died to his Big Sweaty Hand coming down on me. That again, is my fault.

Apart from one person dying (twice) to the In/Out circles and a few people dying to an AoE before the 2nd double tankbuster while I was being rezzed, the run was pretty smooth. Seiryu was cleared just after the 2nd set meteors, well before enrage.
We get out and I start to check on my retainers before we pop back in. One of the tanks bids farewell as it was getting late.
Then I get the message of "You have left XXXXXX@Jenova's party".
I think to myself "oh the party was disbanded. That's ok. It was a good clear." My mentor then tells me that there is a spot open in his party if I want to join it.
I go and check on the PF... and I see XXXXXX@Jenova is waiting on two people to fill up. A tank and a healer.

I can now see that I've been kicked. First time I've ever been kicked out of a party.

Now I can understand them wanting to kick me because I died twice. But if that was the case, the bard AND the gunner should have been kicked since they died 3 and 2 times respectively. But since they were all from Jenova and most likely all in the same guild, they probably saw me as collateral.
It wasn't because of my gear (iLvl 383 - Mostly Eureka armour and 390 Genesis Acc) and it certainly wasn't because of my skills as a WHM.
Considering WE DIDN'T WIPE AT ALL and never even came close... I'm just upset that I was kicked and no one else was.
I sent the SCH leader a message saying "Thank you for the kick <3". I know that is pretty petty but I'm not going to take being kicked when the run was just like a normal run.

I guess this is why I only like to run content with my mentor...

[LalaRu]

Queued in the "Leap of Faith" GATE Duty Finder at the Gold Saucer just for some few extra mgp. What I didn't realize was the sheer amount of people in the gate. I appreciate having more people participating, but getting the cactaur stuff can be much tougher than usual. It took me nearly the entire 10-minute duration to get all the trophies. Oh well, I'm getting the rhythm down.

Afaik if you set a party before enter you get a private instance.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Apart from one person dying (twice) to the In/Out circles and a few people dying to an AoE before the 2nd double tankbuster while I was being rezzed, the run was pretty smooth. Seiryu was cleared just after the 2nd set meteors, well before enrage.
We get out and I start to check on my retainers before we pop back in. One of the tanks bids farewell as it was getting late.
Then I get the message of "You have left XXXXXX@Jenova's party".
I think to myself "oh the party was disbanded. That's ok. It was a good clear." My mentor then tells me that there is a spot open in his party if I want to join it.
I go and check on the PF... and I see XXXXXX@Jenova is waiting on two people to fill up. A tank and a healer.

I can now see that I've been kicked. First time I've ever been kicked out of a party.

Now I can understand them wanting to kick me because I died twice. But if that was the case, the bard AND the gunner should have been kicked since they died 3 and 2 times respectively. But since they were all from Jenova and most likely all in the same guild, they probably saw me as collateral.
It wasn't because of my gear (iLvl 383 - Mostly Eureka armour and 390 Genesis Acc) and it certainly wasn't because of my skills as a WHM.
Considering WE DIDN'T WIPE AT ALL and never even came close... I'm just upset that I was kicked and no one else was.
I sent the SCH leader a message saying "Thank you for the kick <3". I know that is pretty petty but I'm not going to take being kicked when the run was just like a normal run.

I guess this is why I only like to run content with my mentor...

Had a similar run to this but was on Chaos(Savage) before I cleared it last week.

It was one of those "clear for one"+2 chests PFs and he didn't put a (Duty complete) restriction,by that point I made it to enrage and seen the entire fight before this pf so I get in,tell him my stance,he says ok and we proceed.

Party keeps constantly screwing up Tsunami and Blaze and after.....3 wipes iirc,they leave the instance and I get kicked for no reason as I literally did every mechanic right while 2 of the DPS in the party kept being greedy for their uptime and kept killing us on Tsunami and Blaze.

I cleared O9S/Chaos shortly after with a different party and ended up getting my chests for both last week and this week so it's not a big loss but.....it just goes to show how double faced the raiding community can be sometimes and as someone who struggle with anxiety myself I try my best to do raids and EX stuff with either FC friends or friends I made during pugs

[InkstainedGwyn]

Afaik if you set a party before enter you get a private instance.

You don't. I've gone in plenty with 2/3 people in a a party; sometimes we get an empty instance, more often we get thrown in with the crowds. It's just random.

[Endeleon]

You don't. I've gone in plenty with 2/3 people in a a party; sometimes we get an empty instance, more often we get thrown in with the crowds. It's just random.

Seconding this. I got in with a party of people with like 20 other people there. And then another time I got in with an obvious group of people who didn't want me there because they kept emoting at me and jumping on top of me until I left.

[AxHell]

So a weird one with a WHM mentor in Castrum Abania. I was trying to get my SAM to 70 with two friends. When the Duty started we said hello but no answers from them. And they never once spoke.

First thing my friends and I noticed is that they never did any DPS and would just stand there not doing anything except sometimes throwing some Cure 2.

Then what do they do after the second boss where they didn't do any of the mechanics? They left. Just like that without saying anything.

If you are just gonna queue, do almost nothing and just leave like that without saying anything, then why are you wasting people's time?

Maybe something came up you might say, but still, it's very rude.

[Avatre]

Well at least it wasn't at Thunder God Cidulfus

Literally 90% of wipes I witness on Orbonne is on Thunder God,I've been in parties that wiped around 5 times on TG but somehow aces Ultima in one try

Granted Thunder God is harder than Ultima mechanic-wise but still....I made it a habit to keep a TG wipe count on the side everytime I do Orbonne.

I won't hold it against all people I met there since some were new and this raid is recent and tbh I didn't mind the wipes too much cuz I love this raid and would go and teach mechs when people ask,but it's weird to see no "new player" notification on screen and yet Thunder God wipe us on Duskblade,adds or worse....overlapping the "Byakko EX bubbles"(I call them that cuz it's the same mechanic literally xD)

I love the raid too. Just got out of it(second time this week since I didn't get my loot yesterday), and we actually had no wipes. Watched both the other tanks die on TG from tethers...one alliance had to use healed LB3 on that same fight. We had probably less than 10 deaths - I wasn't really watching the party list - in my alliance through the whole thing. The worst part of it, since I was MT(PLD) the whole way through, was on the second boss when I ended up getting sucked into the portal, neither of the other tanks(DRK and PLD) took the agro. And if they did it wasn't for very long. Only one death I noticed during that part(a SAM in alliance B), and a RDM was tanking when we got back out. Definitely could have been better there...but we didn't wipe, so I don't mind too much.

[Dreggit]

I recently got scholar to 50... and in doing so I did several Aurum Vale runs, willingly. I qued for them because the Vale has always been a good benchmark for a self skillcheck. What I found out though, is that I'm currently very inconsistent with Sch, on the first and third runs I did great and on the second and fourth runs I did terribly.

I do not blame the players at all, in fact, most of the problems were due to my own mistakes. On the second run, I kept accidentally dismissing/guarding Eos due to the fact that I use cross grid and those two actions happen to fill the same spot as the basic heal and Ruin 2 on a separate crossbar. This tends to be a problem I create for myself on several jobs that I don't main, but try to correct when I realize this. I set up most of my bars from right to left, with combat right side with combo actions/ascending in rank. (So Ruin 1 and Ruin 2 are next to each other) And with support on left side, with usual combos close to themselves (So in example, Swiftcast and Resurrection are next to each other and so is AOE heal/shield). So on my manually set pet crossbar, I have abilities on the left and commands on the right, so hopefully that can paint a picture of a self made problem.

(As a seperate example, when it comes to PLD my main, I have all combat on 1 cross bar set up and all defensive buffs on a different crossbar set up)

I think I have found a crossbar set up that feels more natural and doesn't overlap in situational skills over core skills.... so in theory, after playing around some more, I should start to feel more comfortable in the job.

Since I kept hitting guard I wasn't realizing that Eos wasn't healing people, and I was too tunneled into dpsing. Which again, is my fault. But yeah, that was the main problem in that particular run.

The other run that didn't go so great was when I started experimenting with stay/place commands for eos. (So, in example, in boss 1, I place eos next to the tank and then forget to reposition eos for when the tank eats fruit between manual healing dps where needed. But that run wasn't that bad, but I was certainly not in my greatest moment. That is for sure.

_____________________________________________

A big part of the game, for players, is self discovery in how they play their jobs and how they utilize their skills withen said jobs. That said, when I realize that I'm not performing as I should, I can fortunately self evaluate myself and know that I am not a perfect player. Noone ever will be, and even longtime mentors are still always learning. But I can sit down and workout what went wrong and try to improve the issue observed.

I personally don't do raid content/high end content with anything I don't main, nor do I farm things in fights I don't particularly understand, as in both cases, it is unfair to your team. Which, is an important note to point out. FFXIV is as every much a solo experience (if you so chose it to be) and a team experience, and while what you do alone is fine if that works for you, when in duty or with others, how you perform really does affect the team as a whole.

In a way, it is really unfortunate that the 1-50 world is so incredibly easy to mow through. That includes dungeons and trials as well. It's, in my opinion, very difficult to fail to pass any pre 50 duty no matter how bad the party makeup is. That is not to say though that it doesn't happen, this thread is more than a testimate to that fact. But there's unfortunately not much in a way of a legitimate test of skill that shows that you, the player, are failing to meet expectation until it's already too late in post 50 content, in which you have already started to develop habits that may, or may not, be good for your performance in the long run.

I guess what I'm saying is that every player, regardless of what you que for, has a responsibility to their team. This is a "no-duh" statement. Just because I'm a mentor, who helps PLD sprouts and triple triad enthusiasts, I am not immune to failing my team, and have needs to practice too. (because I'll be honest, absolutely nothing about either the sch or sum sides of the quests were difficult in any way shape or form)

There are of course tools that can be used, but I don't personally find it to be a useful benchmark for improvement when you are specifically learning the job itsself in its beginnings that translate well in party scenarios. The only useful tool in game I've found to help Sprout Monks, is a testing dummy over 4 different patches of colored gravel in my old house to exlain positionals. But, now I'm digressing and this is already too longwinded.

I'm couldn't really sleep tonight and, frankly, I'm just trying to reflect on my mistakes today. Agree or not, everyone in my duties todee, were great sports, and understanding, which, is always nice.

• I can only hope that this has something more than a rambling meaningless observation because once I do sleep I'm not even going to remember I wrote this, nor do I think I'll even check it

There will always be a way to better yourself so long as you can be honest with yourself

[Firago]

Tanks can you PLEASE turn on your tank stance if your healers are struggling? Just had a war in alphascape 4 who didn’t seem to have enough hp outside tank stance to survive “optimized blade dance” and would never use cds for it.

I raise the war, two dps die from obvious aoes, both healers have about 10% mp, war continues to rock their dps stance and dies from blade dance again. War continues to ignore me asking for tank stance. Good times.

Dps stance is fine if all is well, there are appropriate times for it. But if you see all hell breaking loose it wouldn’t hurt to go tank mode for a minute.

[HyoMinPark]

Tanks can you PLEASE turn on your tank stance if your healers are struggling? Just had a war in alphascape 4 who didn’t seem to have enough hp outside tank stance to survive “optimized blade dance” and would never use cds for it.

I raise the war, two dps die from obvious aoes, both healers have about 10% mp, war continues to rock their dps stance and dies from blade dance again. War continues to ignore me asking for tank stance. Good times.

Dps stance is fine if all is well, there are appropriate times for it. But if you see all hell breaking loose it wouldn’t hurt to go tank mode for a minute.

Even in Defiance, the WAR wouldn't have lived Optimized Battle Dance if he doesn't mitigate it with a cooldown.