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

[LalaRu]

...what choice do I have but use the party finder then?... I have a lot of friends on Goblin including so many people in my FC

Well, maybe trying to setup a static? It is not easy, the group will be filled and stable after a lot of ins and outs but once your group is stable, you'll be rewarded by consistent clears and progression. Even when someone of the group isn't fast as you on learning, my experience is you progressing tenfold the speed you can get with a PF.
Only thinking at the 90min full learning of a fight vs the "15-20 min wait, fill, one wipe, disband, rinse and repeat" of the average PF, gives a good idea of the advantage of a static even if made of "not pro" players but willing to learn.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Well, maybe trying to setup a static? It is not easy, the group will be filled and stable after a lot of ins and outs but once your group is stable, you'll be rewarded by consistent clears and progression. Even when someone of the group isn't fast as you on learning, my experience is you progressing tenfold the speed you can get with a PF.
Only thinking at the 90min full learning of a fight vs the "15-20 min wait, fill, one wipe, disband, rinse and repeat" of the average PF, gives a good idea of the advantage of a static even if made of "not pro" players but willing to learn.

Trust me I tried to find a good static I really did,but the only one I managed to find both never learned(took them 4 months just to finish o10s) and were harassing a friend of mine who was part of said static

My other attempts in forming one were fruitless too.

Btw,I'm not what you call a pro-raider cuz honestly im an average one but I don't mind teachibg people certain fights from the beginning as long as they are receptive,willing to learn and most important of all are nice people.I'm willing to stick with a group of first timer through a dozen wipes rather than having self-proclaimed "pro-raiders" join in and leave after one pull or before we even pull

But those types are few and far between.As much as I enjoy raiding,my mental health comes first and my anxiety skyrockets whenever I find toxic players on the party finder which,from my experience,was a lot

The closest I came to finding a legit good static is the 6 friends i made during my Kefka prog who helped me with my clear back in January but they are in different timezones and busy with their own personal lives and it doesn't feel right to force them into it

So until Eden comes in 5.0 where at least the raids are worth doing unlike alphascape,im putting raiding on the side for now

[Aosha]

Alphasecape gripes

For me personally, Alphascape has been my favorite raid tier (except Midgardsorms, screw that noodle).
However, a lot of that is due to
A) Switching from Monk to Paladin. There are a lot of mechanics in there that I would NOT want to be dealing with as a DPS.
and
B) Having a stable static to learn with, with the help of voice chat. I could not imagine doing many of these fights without that stability. We may be on the slower side (only killed final Omega last Monday), but we're good friends, and can have fun with our prog.

So especially lacking B), I can definitely see why you'd not be enjoying those fights. Let's hope Eden is more favorable.

[Aosha]

On a different note, I ran Burn roulette on White Mage for a change, and got a full good group for once. Maybe my axe is just bad luck...

I do have to wonder how so many healers "don't find time" to DPS. On the first boss I used a grand total of one (1) GCD heal that's not Regen, and in trash pulls I could get out about 10 Holies before needing to cast any healing. And this was with the Warrior switching into Deliverance pretty early on, probably right after the IR Cyclone spam, where I tend to just Defiance my way through trash pulls.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

For me personally, Alphascape has been my favorite raid tier (except Midgardsorms, screw that noodle).
However, a lot of that is due to
A) Switching from Monk to Paladin. There are a lot of mechanics in there that I would NOT want to be dealing with as a DPS.
and
B) Having a stable static to learn with, with the help of voice chat. I could not imagine doing many of these fights without that stability. We may be on the slower side (only killed final Omega last Monday), but we're good friends, and can have fun with our prog.

So especially lacking B), I can definitely see why you'd not be enjoying those fights. Let's hope Eden is more favorable.

Alphascape has it easy on tanks(except midgardsormr) as most of the mechanics don't even target them compared to what DPS and healers have to deal with

I can't tank high end content cuz Tankxiety and I still need to practice tankswapping on a controller.

Doing positionals as a Dragoon/Monk main myself sucks on alphascape (midgardsormr loves making you travel a mile between his flank and rear),which led me to either A/pick monk and stick on a boss's flank while using the flank rotation and True North it when it's time to Damage burst or B/not pick melee at all and stick to BRD,SMN and RDM.

Granted I can do the bootshine rotation on chaos and to a certain extent the other omegas during downtime but it's still cumbersome

None of the fights in alphascape(minus Chaos who is easier than the SB ex-primals) feel like they were designed with melee players in mind yet it's mandatory to have melee there especially Dragoon and Ninja.And don't even get me started on dumb 1 minute mechanics u never see again for the rest of the fight like bulwark which is only there to say "HEY REMEMBER NIDHOGG,REMEMBER THAT ACTUALLY GOOD FIGHT?" or level checker where your vision is obstructed by the LC's big head model which lead to many many wipes cuz people couldn't see their Ferrofluid partner's sign which is literally the definition of artificial difficulty especially when in every other instance u see the LC his size is smaller than what he is in o11s.

[killstein]

i wish i could say im surprised by the number of tanks in leveling dungeons that don't know how to tank. you can give suggestions but they mostly go ignored and continue to get torn to shreds bc "what's a cooldown?" needless to say, leveling my alt's healer has been a painful experience so far.

[Aosha]

[-] None of the fights in alphascape(minus Chaos who is easier than the SB ex-primals) feel like they were designed with melee players in mind yet it's mandatory to have melee there especially Dragoon and Ninja.
[-] or level checker where your vision is obstructed by the LC's big head model which lead to many many wipes cuz people couldn't see their Ferrofluid partner's sign which is literally the definition of artificial difficulty especially when in every other instance u see the LC his size is smaller than what he is in o11s.

I will not allow you to tarnish Susano's title as the ultimate faceroll ex-trial! Chaos is still at least harder than he is. :P
But yeah, the fights definitely aren't melee-friendly. Melee aren't really mandatory (just ridiculously good to have), but mandatory or not, the fights really should be made in a way that accommodates for all roles. Maybe have some parts in fights that are annoying for ranged, some annoying for melee, etc, but not an entire raid tier that's made of "haha screw your positionals!" Our Monk and Ninja have made it work, but it's taken more effort than usual. As I said, my role swap really helped my subjective enjoyment of the tier.
As for the level checker, yeah, it's way too big. My group's never had a situation where we couldn't see what markers others have due to it being in the way (only having trouble due to standing too close to each other), but we've had to adjust our cameras for that and positioned ourselves in such a way where we can see, even though it makes moving to the right spots harder. Obscuring information from players like that just isn't a good move. :/

But now that that's out of the way, it's probably time to resume with the usual program for this thread.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

I will not allow you to tarnish Susano's title as the ultimate faceroll ex-trial! Chaos is still at least harder than he is. :P
But yeah, the fights definitely aren't melee-friendly. Melee aren't really mandatory (just ridiculously good to have), but mandatory or not, the fights really should be made in a way that accommodates for all roles. Maybe have some parts in fights that are annoying for ranged, some annoying for melee, etc, but not an entire raid tier that's made of "haha screw your positionals!" Our Monk and Ninja have made it work, but it's taken more effort than usual. As I said, my role swap really helped my subjective enjoyment of the tier.
As for the level checker, yeah, it's way too big. My group's never had a situation where we couldn't see what markers others have due to it being in the way (only having trouble due to standing too close to each other), but we've had to adjust our cameras for that and positioned ourselves in such a way where we can see, even though it makes moving to the right spots harder. Obscuring information from players like that just isn't a good move. :/

But now that that's out of the way, it's probably time to resume with the usual program for this thread.

For delta and sigma yeah melee isn't required,heck one of my kefka reclears was with 4 casters and we did it just fine.

And while I found a way as a monk it's still more trouble than it's worth while handling wacky boss mechanics like numbers on o12s where if u get an odd number that's a loss on your uptime no matter what.o11s in particular requires a specific party make up for DPS where at least 1 or two ranged DPS(one being bard the other being summoner) should be there and if you're a caster main almost all PFs demand a summoner heck I'm sure u saw many "S M N floats first" with a PF spot specifically reserved for summoner since well...they can spam ruin during level checker and pantokrator 2

But yeah I'll stop my alphascape rant here,sorry things derailed a little

[Heliantheae]

Speaking of Chaos, kind of a silly story. It was Raid roulette and just normal Chaos. Everything was going fine until the Tsunami phase. Both healers ran to the same edge, then they both ran out, and then one ran back. The entire strip was orange. Everyone panicked. I popped Sentinel and stood my ground. Everyone but me, a healer, and a SMN were dead. I almost jumped, but we were really close to LB3. So I said screw it, and popped on Shield Oath. The healer was picking up the other healer and the SMN died trying to pick up the other tank. I popped Hallowed. And kept topping myself off with Clemency. Just got to hold on for like a minute. Then it happened, the all too familiar ding followed by the woosh. They got the stack markers. I covered the one LBing and hit all the buttons. The other healer ran away. I survived with like 3000 HPs. I was in the 4 digits. The healers got the stacks again. Everyone was still in the animation of getting up. Didn't know if that counted or not and I didn't know whether I should stack with one in hopes they survived. I just kind of stood there dumbfounded. And they both died. I had Chaos' aggro, so it stopped it from running around, is what I told myself. That SMN picked up the healer and the rest of the fight went smooth. And I learned he'll just repeat phases after that. He went straight into Blaze and Cyclone. I've never seen him last longer than two phases before.

[Sudenmarja]

Not exactly a funny story or a frustrating one. A feeling good story maybe?

I've been leveling up paladin, my first tank ever (which I was sure I'd never do ), and I have usually ran DF with my friends. But today I felt brave and went to the 50/60 roulette on my own. And got myself The Keeper of the Lake which is a kind of a scary dungeon for me. I've been there as a healer before pretty much always and it either goes really well or really badly, 50/50.

But I was lucky I got some amazing people to run with! They were really nice and supportive when I told them that I hadn't tanked the dungeon before and told me to pull at my on pace. The run went really smoothly (barring my still occasional crowd control issues ) and I just had a really good feeling at the end of it.

Good enough feeling that I felt I wanted to share