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

[Vyrerus]

Been having bad experiences with Legend players recently.

Never meet your heroes. Those titles really mean very little other than the person's character has been in the room when the fight was cleared. It's not just that people buy the title for exorbitant amounts of money, it's also that it's not like Ultimate fights are insurmountable. If you can land yourself in a dedicated static that practices the prog 4~ or so times a week for 4~5 months, you'll usually be able to clear at least one of the Ultimates. This doesn't mean they're good at tank or healer or anything outside of the job they cleared Ultimate on, honestly.

Secondly, given the nature of the raiding playerbase with 3rd party tools, it's not uncommon for at least one person in an Ultimate group to be cheating via having 3rd party that show them telegraphs that the rest of us don't have, ACT triggers to call mechanics before tells appear on screen, and all that other stuff that gets rationalized away as being necessary for fairness vs. BS mechs. If there's even one cheater in an Ultimate group and they share their 3rd party data with the rest... well you can sort of imagine why that does not exactly translate to a higher skill plateau.

But all of that aside, even the legit clearing raiders are still just people. A lot of them are teenagers and early 20s. They're bound to be wild haha

[Endeleon]

Been having bad experiences with Legend players recently. 2 specific instances came to mind, with the last one just happened today:

1. Hero's Gauntlet: PLD DNC NIN and me as AST. PLD and DNC are cat couples and both are Legends. I know this one is easy even for dungeon standard but they just wouldn't stop emoting each other throughout the run. My chat got cluttered because of the emote spam these 2 were doing. That wasn't even the worst part; PLD legit didn't pop any CDs AND decided to eat all baddies possible that he had 6 vul stacks at one point. His gears are top notch, but he melted faster than a tank with i475-480. DNC died twice, both to Berserker giant sweep, because she couldn't be bothered to duck in the crater (why tho? ranged can still DPS at the edge of the crater).

2. Mt. Gulg: PLD (Legend), SAM, RDM, and me as SCH. PLD was doing great as a tank; big pulls, proper CD management, mob placements. The thing is... enemies were dying slowly. At a closer look, I noticed that RDM was hardcasting spells like veraero and impact. So I brought it up in chat after the lion boss: "Why are you hardcasting spells?" but no response until the end of wall boss. PLD thought I was talking to him and said: "Did I hardcast spells? Didn't notice that." (honestly it didn't occur to me that PLD can cast spells too at the time of writing) so I said no, I was referring to the RDM. He then proceeded to mass pull everything after boss 2; from 4 girls all the way to the room where the giant later appeared. Normally I'd be happy to oblige, but he must've realized by now that our DPS is not the strongest. Still, we managed the pull and after the giant was dead, he said: "you're one to talk, casting succor during pulls like that. Chill, it's just a levelling dungeon". I snapped when I read that and said: "tell the lions to stop casting holy that deals aoe dmg and then we'll talk. until then, take a seat and sit down". Yes, this is levelling dungeon... the HIGHEST one we have right one. RDM plays pretty much the same from the level we unlock it and 50-79 and was I so wrong to ask why a lv 79 RDM still hardcast spells? It's not like I was expecting top notch performance or anything close to it.

I used to admire people with Legend titles. It shows dedication because I've seen how hard the battles are and I used to correlate the titles with competence. I don't feel like that anymore and it's just like mentor crown to me nowadays. No wonder Aether PF is cluttered with Ultimate services; it all starting to make sense now. At the end of the day it boils down to supply and demand.

Probably purchased. I think like 40% of legend titles nowadays are purchased.

[kelevra13]

The tale of two World of Darkness runs.
Tale 1: I (DNC) die to the adds that spawn after the garms of the first area. Tank was a sprout and did not provoke adds. I type "Tank?" (my only chat the entire raid), and our tank proceeds to berate me for running round like headless chicken and blaming them. Proceeds to berate DPS in general (just two lines of chat but was enough to get me slightly annoyed). Another player or two agreed with them. I get my sweet sweet revenge when 6 of my alliance members (including the tank and the player/s that agreed with them) die repeatedly to Angra's mechanics (I didn't die here in this run). We wipe in 5 headed dragon (my second and last death of this run). The tank and I were the last two of our alliance standing in dragon, but the tank already died once in this boss. Rest of the run goes okay. My alliance was mostly sprouts except for me and one of the healers, and I think most of the other alliances were sprouts as well, so it was understandable that not all of them knew the mechanics. I still smiled tho when our tank tanked the floor in Angra and dragon tho. I blacklist the tank. Also, this was not the tank's first time here.

Tale 2:I get adds on me again (ugh, I need to work on my depth perception for the dances to avoid this). Tank immediately voke them off me (yay). Glass smooth run (as one of the other alliance members put it). Gates were killed asap. No wipes. Only one or two deaths in another alliance for Angra and Cerberus. The only reminder was how to get rid of Doom in Angra and markers for Cloud of Darkness. 19min WoD (the fastest I've ever been a part of so far).

[Mhaeric]

The tale of two World of Darkness runs.
Tale 1: I (DNC) die to the adds that spawn after the garms of the first area. Tank was a sprout and did not provoke adds..

Story of my life. I always run as Scholar or Red Mage and ever since it became a requirement for the MSQ I've been tanking all the adds in CT trash sections even as a Scholar. I know where they spawn so to avoid having single mobs everywhere I grab enmity on them and run them over to stack with the main targets and then proceed to keep hate until either they die or in the case of RDM I die because I can't heal myself and healers don't heal. I guess I should blame myself for making the assumption that people would do bare minimum stuff like use AoE damage/enmity moves.

[LaughingBanana]

Trying Astrologian for the first time.

It's wicked fun. The satisfaction of pulling off perfect 3 seals Divination on your entire team is *french kiss*. I really like buffing random players too during bouts of healing, dps-ing, and moving, especially in boss fights where you are required to move frantically. It's "busy" and "chaotic" in a good way.

Man.............

Also, I've encountered a disturbing amount of Tanks that don't bother to use mitigation skills at all--or only use it during boss fights--recently... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[kelevra13]

I guess I should blame myself for making the assumption that people would do bare minimum stuff like use AoE damage/enmity moves.

Made that assumption too. Waited for the tank to take aggro off me since I was told to do that when I used a tank here before. I only "ran like a chicken" when my health reached 1k-ish.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Made that assumption too. Waited for the tank to take aggro off me since I was told to do that when I used a tank here before. I only "ran like a chicken" when my health reached 1k-ish.

This is why I used to take SMN to Alliance all the time, back when Titan was the tank pet. I had someone comment on it once like, "Ew, Why Titan?" and my reply was "Because OT's don't get ads." There was no more snarky comments after that lol.

But yeah, rule of thumb is to take whatever's on you to the nearest tank or just wait a few beats after they spawn and whale on them after they attach to a healer. XD

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

Oh, almost forgot. I had a game-first moment recently. We wiped in Void Ark at Echidna because apparently its a dps check every time she splits and our tanks didn't realize that tethers=bad. Keep apart. So even though we killed them, we took so long that the game was like 'nah.'

Learn something new everyday. X(

[Shurrikhan]

The satisfaction of pulling off perfect 3 seals Divination on your entire team is *french kiss*.

I gotta admit, I was expecting "*chef's", but you're right nonetheless.

It makes me miss the old Sleeve Draw all the more, though, as before you could even have 3 Lords/Ladies, 3-seal Divination, and another card out all at once during your group's peak ppgcd periods. Now that was definitely french.

[Frizze]

Trying Astrologian for the first time.

This reminded me of a run i had last week. I was gonna write it up at the time, but i got tired and went to bed instead. I forgot enough of the details/enough time had passed that i wasnt going to bother. You have jogged my memory a little. What i remember. Expert Roulette run of Heroes Gauntlet on BLM, other DPS was a SAM and i think tank was DRK - our healer of course was an Astro(otherwise, why would your post have reminded me?). I seem to remember them complaining about DPS being low early in the run. I dont run a parse, so i couldnt tell you the numbers. I do know that the SAM was at the bottom of the aggro list consistantly, but i dont know SAM well enough to pretend to know if they were doing a good job. I also know that the healer announced while the tank was pulling the 2nd boss that they needed a 30 sec afk. It was too late to abort pull, and we eventually wiped(including the healer outside the arena). When they came back almost 3 mins later they blamed the tank because of the warning(which, again, came as the tank was running in and attacking - maybe say something during the pull before?), berated him for dying("just play better, you dont even need a healer for this dungeon"), but they got suddenly quiet when it was pointed out how much longer then 30 seconds they took. Like, at 30 seconds the fight might still have been winnable(i think theres a doom spell she casts early on - its what killed the healer - and i dont remember the timing on that death). Rest of the dungeon was quiet, final boss was uneventful. They typed "human garbage" into chat and immediately left.

Now what does any of that have to do with "Trying Astro for the first time"? They were in the most recent dungeon, they were equiped well enough. It couldnt have been their first time. I saw them give out a total of 3 cards in the entire dungeon, not counting the ones that they put on themselves(started trying to pay attention when they complained about trash pull DPS while i hadnt seen a card yet). That three cards is with me counting the one melee card they put on my BLM rather then the tank or SAM. Even counting the cards they put on themselves, they were only using a card every 2 or 3 minutes. Their heals seemed spotty too, but we only had the one afk wipe so i wont add anything to that. So... kinda a mess.