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

[Windfire]

I have a starts bad ends well. Queued up for leveling as a healer, got Stone Vigil /w WAR tank (non sprout) and two sprout dps. WAR zooms off grabbing everything in the hall AND the stuff in the first main room, of course they die, they drop group immediately. I was just like "Why would you?".

Anyway we requeue and get a wonderful DRK who uses mit,aoes and all that jazz and for a really big bonus they went in the side rooms for the extra chests. So yeah what started groan became a REALLY nice run.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Nabrialles in trial roulette on my healer alt. Five people watching the cut scene, everyone but me, a warrior, and a dragoon. So we ask if anyone wants an explanation, a couple of people say yes.....dragoon runs in and pulls anyway. Things get a little rough, warrior and I are trying to type on the fly (not easy for me, since I play on console), but we're doing okay. Until the dragoon decides to blow the LB on the boss. With five new players and no LB, we don't make the DPS check on the tear, we wipe.

Second try. We try to explain that we need to save the LB.....dragoon pulls early again. And then blows the LB again. And we wipe again.

Third try. Apparently the warrior's had enough; they Shirk the dragoon into a tankbuster. And I "accidentally" misplace my raise. So does the other healer. We leave the dragoon on the floor for the rest of the fight and clear with no problems.

[Goji1639]

Nabrialles in trial roulette on my healer alt. Five people watching the cut scene, everyone but me, a warrior, and a dragoon. So we ask if anyone wants an explanation, a couple of people say yes.....dragoon runs in and pulls anyway. Things get a little rough, warrior and I are trying to type on the fly (not easy for me, since I play on console), but we're doing okay. Until the dragoon decides to blow the LB on the boss. With five new players and no LB, we don't make the DPS check on the tear, we wipe.

Second try. We try to explain that we need to save the LB.....dragoon pulls early again. And then blows the LB again. And we wipe again.

Third try. Apparently the warrior's had enough; they Shirk the dragoon into a tankbuster. And I "accidentally" misplace my raise. So does the other healer. We leave the dragoon on the floor for the rest of the fight and clear with no problems.

So that actually works? I thought shirk only transferred like 20% of your aggro.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Doing MSQ on my lowbie alt, finally hit Brayflox. Load in to a group of newbies - that's fine, it'll be a little slow probably but everyone's at least on an actual Job and not still rocking classes, better than I've come to expect of this level range honestly.

Yeah, slow didn't even begin to describe it.

First problem: Paladin runs ahead without tank stance on. I see them running and quickly auto-translate Iron Will. They don't turn it on at all for the first mob pack. I repeat it, and ask them to use that skill so the two dps and I aren't getting mobs eating our faces. Still nothing. He proceeds to bypass the mob pack leading up to the goblin who gives us a gate key, and diverts to the ones near said gate - the ones who cast poison. Once again, stuff is eating everyone because he'll only hit one mob and has yet to turn on tank stance. I ask him once again to turn it on, no response. A dps dies from too many poison stacks while I was trying to heal the tank - who ofc was using no cooldowns to speak of, not even basic Rampart. Soon I get whapped also and go down, then tank goes down while the BLM runs away to the entrance, trying to kill one of the last mobs.

I ask, for a THIRD TIME, for him to turn on his tank stance so we are not all eating damage. He finally does. Awkwardly runs towards the gate and spam clicks it. I start jumping near the pack they skipped, to indicate the way - unfortunately got aggro since I misjudged the LoS distance on the birds. Oh well, he comes running and smacks one - should be fine now that he's got tank stance on, right...?

Second problem: Oh good. He isn't using his AoE skills at all, not even bothering to hit each mob. I start getting eaten until the DRG starts trying to protect me. We hobble through that pull. I'm wasting so much freaking MP having to heal EVERYONE, even Lucid's not keeping up with it. I tell the PLD as we're running towards key goblin to please use his AoE skills, or we'll still have the same problem of mobs eating everyone but him. No response.

The dude's not said anything at all this entire time.

We unlock gate, go into boss arena. He doesn't grab any of the smaller adds, and proceeds to spin the big one like a beyblade while also running around the arena, as if somehow he could dodge the attacks by doing that. This means, of course, we're getting eaten YET AGAIN, and! getting hit by poison breaths on top of it! I am frantically trying to heal all of us while typing to the PLD to please use his AoE skills (I unfortunately forgot what Paladin's is called, or I'd have slapped auto-translate since that's a heck of a lot faster). He doesn't, I go down from healing him and one of the DPS who were getting eaten, he goes down, the dps soon follow. Res back at start, I ask YET AGAIN for him to PLEASE use his AoEs. Admit to him I don't know what the name of it is on PLD, but that the tooltip should say it hits multiple targets, and that he NEEDS to use it to maintain aggro so we don't all take damage.

We proceed to have the same song and dance at the first. freaking. boss. TWICE more. With me begging this actual idiot to use the bare minimum basics of his job. You've had 35 levels to learn how to play your class and learn your role as a tank. Please god actually look like you payed even an iota of attention during that time. How this fool made it to Brayflox to begin with astounds me, because he had to go through other dungeons before this and likely with a full party of actual legit sprouts and sprout healers who'd struggle way more than I did, being new to their class.

Still hasn't said anything by this point, of course. Just goes to wait outside the boss arena again. I initiate a vote kick and it thankfully goes through after some moment of waiting - I guess the dps weren't sure what it was at first.

We proceed to get a vet player who, while still obviously learning WAR, knew the basics of tanking enough so it was a fairly painless (yet still slow, on account of sprout dps) run after.

I try to be patient with new players and offer advice as best I can to them, especially when they're struggling or are endangering the party. But man, it gets to a point where it's clear someone's legitimately just an idiot who isn't even trying or cares, and I lose my patience with them at that point, sprout or no.

I can understand not wanting to spam the same button over and over. When fighting groups, I have a very static rotation of Arms of Destruction>Twin Snakes>either Demolish (for the DoT) or Rockbreaker (usually rockbreaker). And having one single rotation you always cycle through is kind of boring in the long run. I try to mix things up now and then by throwing in a True Strike instead of Twin Snakes, but that's only a minor variation.

By refusing to use AoE on 3+ mob packs, you are being an active detriment to your party and making the job of the healer and tank harder than it needs to be. The faster things die, the less healing that needs to be done, the less MP used, the less mitigation wasted. I get that AoE spam at low levels is boring, but not doing it when necessary is as good as griefing tbh.

[Rinhi]

By refusing to use AoE on 3+ mob packs, you are being an active detriment to your party and making the job of the healer and tank harder than it needs to be. The faster things die, the less healing that needs to be done, the less MP used, the less mitigation wasted. I get that AoE spam at low levels is boring, but not doing it when necessary is as good as griefing tbh.

demolish is a dps increase over rockbreaker when it's 3 (4?) or less targets but that's min-maxxing

[SnowVix]

demolish is a dps increase over rockbreaker when it's 3 (4?) or less targets but that's min-maxxing

Demolishing each target in turn is a DPS increase on 3, if the targets will last the whole duration of the demolish. Thanks to monk's stances they have in place of a combo, they can mix-and-match. Arm of Destruction is a gain over DK/Bootshine on 3+, Four-point Fury beats Twin Snakes at 2, True Strike at 3, and Rockbreaker is a pure gain over Demolish on 4+, and is even with Snap Punch on 2, a gain on 3+. This is presuming you're hitting positionals as well. If you miss the positional on True, Rockbreaker would be a gain at 2 (270 vs 140*2)

[Titania40]

*snip*
By refusing to use AoE on 3+ mob packs, you are being an active detriment to your party and making the job of the healer and tank harder than it needs to be. The faster things die, the less healing that needs to be done, the less MP used, the less mitigation wasted. I get that AoE spam at low levels is boring, but not doing it when necessary is as good as griefing tbh.

First of all, yea gods that sounds like a horrible tank.

Second of all, I do use my aoe if there's more then 1 or 2 enemies. Not sure if you played a pugilist/monk before. But up to level 42 so far (haven't hit 45 yet) I have two types of attack chains. Single Target which is Boot Shine Combo>True Strike/Twin Snakes>Snap Punch, and an AoE combo which is Arms of Destruction>True Strike/Twin Snakes>Rockbreaker. I use Demolish on the main target on occasionally instead of Rockbreaker to apply a DoT effect. I use Twin Snakes for the middle attack to get the damage buff, and True Strike while the damage buff is up since that does more damage.

I vary my rotations a bit, in part to avoid boredom. But also to maximize my effectiveness. Get a DoT out, then go back to strait damage. Get a damage buff in, then go back to strait damage. Toss a shoulder charge in if I need to reposition, or toss a leg sweep into the mix on occasion for the stun and so I am not just mindlessly hitting the same 3 keys all the time. And that's besides the positioning dance of moving between flank and rear depending on what attacks I'm doing.

That said, I did a couple Brayflox runs and The Navel this afternoon. Before attempting either one, I first checked a couple guides to see what sort of mechanics I'd need to watch out for. Good thing I did, too. In the first Brayflox run (my first time running it) it was a pretty solid team overall. Well, our tank was a marauder, not a warrior. He wasn't using his job soulstone for some reason, said he didn't need an icon change and that the soulstone only changed the icon. O.o Still, he was doing a decent job tanking, we had no issues... right up until the final boss. For whatever reason, the stupid dragon kept targeting the tank with the poison spit. And Mr "I-don't-need-my-job-change" would just move so he is no longer standing in the poison. I kept telling him to pull the dragon out of the poison. I told him "Green glow BAD", "green glow heals boss", and other variations. Eventually the others chimed in, and we finally convinced the tank to pull that stupid dragon out of the poison spit. Only for him to continue the "circle dance", until there was almost no place in the arena that wasn't covered in poison spit. Eventually we won, but it was far harder then it needed to be.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Second of all, I do use my aoe if there's more then 1 or 2 enemies. Not sure if you played a pugilist/monk before.

Not outside of PotD, probably my least favorite melee, so all I'm really familiar with is their AoE skills vs single target skills. Few classes I've played at length rely on or benefit from weaving in single target skills during large trash packs, thus my response - but hey, if Monk is one of the outliers that benefit from doing so, go for it!

Think it was more the comment of "spamming the same button over and over again is boring" that made me assume it was a case of rotating single target attacks through enemies on the list or focusing on one, rather than just hitting all of them with AoE.

First of all, yea gods that sounds like a horrible tank.

Also yes, I feel like that was honestly one of the worst tanks I've had the displeasure to play with. And boy have I met a lot of crappy tanks. Only thing that would have made this one worse was if he actually had the same toxic primadonna attitude that those types at higher level have. >>

[Titania40]

Not outside of PotD, probably my least favorite melee, so all I'm really familiar with is their AoE skills vs single target skills. Few classes I've played at length rely on or benefit from weaving in single target skills during large trash packs, thus my response - but hey, if Monk is one of the outliers that benefit from doing so, go for it!

Think it was more the comment of "spamming the same button over and over again is boring" that made me assume it was a case of rotating single target attacks through enemies on the list or focusing on one, rather than just hitting all of them with AoE.


Also yes, I feel like that was honestly one of the worst tanks I've had the displeasure to play with. And boy have I met a lot of crappy tanks. Only thing that would have made this one worse was if he actually had the same toxic primadonna attitude that those types at higher level have. >>

Unless you plan to just spam Arms of Destruction whenever it's off cooldown, you need to weave in single target attacks. Boot Shine Combo and Arms of Destruction put you in Raptor form, which is required to use True Strike or Twin Snakes. True Strike and Twin Snakes puts you in coeurl form, which is required to use Snap Shot, Demolish, or Rockbreaker. Using one of those three (or waiting too long) puts you back in your default form, thus limiting you to Boot Shine Combo or Arms of Destruction once more. You have 2 aoe, and one of them requires using a single target to be able to access.

Different attacks have different damage ratings. Snap Shot is stronger then Demolish or Rockbreaker, but Demolish applies an 18 second duration DoT and Rockbreaker is an aoe. True Strike hits harder then Twin Snakes, but Twin Snakes gives you a 10% damage buff for 15 seconds. And of course they all do bonus damage if you attack from a specific position. It wont be until level 45 that I can have an all aoe rotation setup, but even then weaving in single target attacks would boost my damage.

EDIT: Hell, if the dungeon syncs you below level 25 (I think) then you don't even have an aoe because Arms of Destruction was the level 25 class quest unlock..

[nebby00]

snip

Oh dear god... I hope you don't get anymore tanks as bad as that. That alone just is extremely painful to deal with. At the very least at level 32, tanks should be able to know what their skills do, especially with groups of mobs. And to wipe on the first boss in Brayflox is just pure agony. Hopefully that tank learns quickly, or else they'll be having a pretty rough time if they continue to do so poorly in future dungeons.

Best of luck in getting good groups from now on though!