Apparently I'm distracting (and not the good kind)

[Ninster]

Ran Expert today, got Pharos Sirius Hard with what I presume from character names must have been a preformed party of at least 2, possibly 3. (PLD and WHM had same last name, but BRD's was of similar unpronouncability)

After greetings are done I do things as usual with SMN: AoE the hell out of everything. After the first pull the tanks stalls for awhile, I'm presuming to complain in FC/linkshell chat. Second pull, same story, next verse. We get to the boss, I do my thing, boss goes down, no problem. Before the next set of trash, we stall some more. At this point, the ONLY thing in party chat is the hi's and hello's from the start.

After the next set of trash, before the bomb incubator, the tank finally blows up: "Stay away. PLEASE. You're causing me problems to avoid AoEs since earlier."

It takes me a moment to register that I'm the one being addressed. I apologize, although I'm really confused considering that if I haven't been eating AoEs, then HE shouldn't have.

"You don't need to use that bad AoE that does no damage[s]. You have nice skills as SMN. You have the lvl 60 skill. You have the debuff. Please use those instead of Miasma [II] and Blizz II."

Uh... okay. So for the rest of the instance, since I'm not sure what was a problem and what wasn't, I stuck to DoTs, Bane and Fester.

So this brings up some questions:

1. For multiple targets, I thought Miasma II and Blizz II were okay? Considering he was doing decent sized pulls I thought they would've been helpful.

2. Do I now need to ask tanks if I should use AoE skills?

I'm feeling really confused and hurt by this. More confused, I guess. I mean, I'm definitely flexible. You ask for single-target, I'll do it. You want to LB the last pack, I'll do it. Just say something. But waiting halfway through the dungeon to bring up this AND call into question my ability as SMN is kind of... low.

On the off-chance that one of this party visits the forums and sees this, I'm really sorry I was causing trouble, but the above statements express what I really wanted to say.

[Kabooa]

You being in melee doesn't somehow make melee AoEs target him more often.

[Ossom]

Congratulations, you met another bad player in a Dungeon. Welcome to the club, there are plenty of them. You did nothing wrong.

[AskaRay]

Man if they hate you as a DPS using Miasma II and Blizz II then they must REALLY hate me doing that as a SCH.

[Kuroyasha]

Id love to have ya in a random dungeon doing what smns actually should be doing. Don't worry about that party; Baddies gonna bad ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Jim_Berry]

My skin is thick, as people complain about everything. I never understood why people be so focused on what another person is doing. I was in a dungeon as NIN. I used a Morel Salad HQ. The DRG lol'd at me, asking why I'm not using a Truffle HQ. I never responded. Like, seriously... Do your job, and leave me alone.

[Ten-ibris]

What you were doing sounds fine. It sounds like it's the tank who can't manage properly. Forget about that guy, if he cant stand a few hits, why tank geez.

[Fernosaur]

Your response should have been "lol k." Seriously, wtf. Blaming other players for own mistakes is one the most stupid things DF people do...

[LegoTechnic]

More than likely his complaint was that he couldn't SEE the orange AoE effects underneath the Blizzard II graphic spam, not that you were causing more of them, and he was getting hit by some of them. It probably annoyed him because he wasn't used to having to spot around the massive ice cluster, and might not have been in the mood for new stuff in rank-and-file content.

Sure he could have turned off spell effects, but he shouldn't have had to. Regardless you did what you should have in this particular DF, and that's refrain while still keeping up to your best, and if nothing else at least he gave it a while before he decided he couldn't deal with it.

So no, the tank probably wasn't great, but this went down pretty decently by duty finder standards.

[Ninster]

More than likely his complaint was that he couldn't SEE the orange AoE effects underneath the Blizzard II graphic spam, not that you were causing more of them, and he was getting hit by some of them. It probably annoyed him because he wasn't used to having to spot around the massive ice cluster, and might not have been in the mood for new stuff in rank-and-file content.

Sure he could have turned off spell effects, but he shouldn't have had to. Regardless you did what you should have in this particular DF, and that's refrain while still keeping up to your best, and if nothing else at least he gave it a while before he decided he couldn't deal with it.

So no, the tank probably wasn't great, but this went down pretty decently by duty finder standards.

After giving myself the day to mull over this (I'm a fairly anxiety-and-depression prone guy, by the way), I came to the same conclusion as you did. That's part why I ditched most of my AoE abilities in favor of just finishing the run.

This leaves so many holes though:

1. As I said, regardless of Blizzard II's effect, if I had to dodge stuff, he had to as well. Not once did I see either of our HP bars dip drastically to the point where the healer had to rescue anyone.
2. You said it yourself, there's options to turn off spell effects in case there's doubts. This tank had every job leveled to 60, so to argue he shouldn't have had to is confusing. It's not like he had no idea Blizzard II existed.
3. He was tanking just fine, but assuming he went nuts with FATEs to get to where he did: did he seriously start shouting to everyone the area to stop spamming Circle of Scorn/Unleash/Flare/Holy/Ring of Thorns/etc. so he could dodge everything?
4. On a related note, how does he tank with melee DPS? Monks and Elixir Field, Dragoons, Ninjas and Ninjutsus... not to mention they have to be in his personal space constantly to do anything.
5. My biggest problem: he stalled at least 3 times prior to the complaint with no words. For a good 2-3 minutes each time. I highly doubt he was okay with it from the beginning. Each of those moments would've been PERFECT to say what he said (minus the omitted explicative; I'm not sure how well the forum mods deal with language), instead of blowing up and completely throwing me off my game for the rest of the instance. I was serious about little I was left using: I think I even idled several times in the middle of fights because I had no idea what to do.

None of this came up at the time, of course, and even if it had, I'm really shy not to mention I'm always for finishing the run rather than having little things turn into big things.

I appreciate the feedback, though my original concerns had to do with whether Miasma II and Blizzard II are "bad" or not. I'm going to admit most of my rotation comes from head-math and not guides or any expert advice.