Trial Roulette, got Chrysalis.
New player message shows up. There was no cutscene delay, which most likely meant whoever was new had attempted it before with a failed party. Almost immediately, one of the DPS conveniently starts having connection issues and DCs from the trial, never to return again. We wait about 2 minutes for him to return. One of the tanks ask if we should continue waiting for him to come back. Considering it happened right at the start and that almost all of them are usually what I call 'fake DCs' to avoid eating penalty, I decide that we'll be fine, because if he DC'd for legitimate reasons and was trying to come back, he'd be able to immediately rejoin the fight anyway.
Might have bit off more than we could chew. 7-man Chrysalis is actually more problematic than I thought. For one, there's only 7 people to run into orbs as opposed to 8, which makes a huge difference in surviving the mechanic. Miraculously though, we barely prevent enough orbs from reaching the boss and survive with like 10% of our HP left the first time, and about half the party dying the second time (tanks and healers survived miraculously enough). We picked up everyone and proceeded to go into meteor phase.
During meteor phase, I instruct the DPS to use LB on the aetherial tear immediately. Except it turns out that because it's a 7-man party now, we only have 2 LB gauges. LB2 only does about 50% of the tear's HP. Two of the DPS seemed confused, trying to follow the tanks around to help them soak up the meteors instead of attacking the tear (and they likely couldn't find it, it does have a delay in spawning and isn't very obvious). The Dragoon who LB2'd and I do everything in our power to take down the remaining 50% before the giant meteor wipes us all, though I'm quickly forced to switch to group heal mode to keep everyone up. I head to the center to spam Medica and Cure IIs, and the massive meteor starts to cover my entire screen. It descends to what was probably an inch off the ground and a split second from wiping us, when the Dragoon succeeds in ripping through the tear and we all escape with our lives.
The best part though? Once we beat the trial, three people got the achievement for clearing. One was the co-healer and the other two were the rather confused DPS. Apparently the three of them were a small group of friends that had recently started playing. Shame on the one guy that DCed to avoid doing the trial/eating penalty because he didn't believe in them. The whole fight took about 8-10 minutes and he never even returned during that time period.