An interesting experience yesterday

[DawgPilez]

I was running WAR in the lvl 59 HW dungeon (library). The light party had 2 SUMs and a WHM. I have limited knowledge of SUMs other than they were an AoE/dot role.

The dungeon run was pretty uninspired as all the enemies would be knocking me senseless until at some point literally all of them die at the same time. I was trying to explain the dungeon mechanics for the bosses.


No one ever responded until we had our first wipe which was on the 1st boss. The healer and a SUM died on the first book turn. The other one died shortly after. I just /harvest danced until it died. Only thing that was said was that they were slowed and could respond (but if you know the mechanics, you would have been well prepared for it).

2nd boss went worse. Mind you, I hadn't done the dungeon before but watched the guide. The dungeon is easy and I liked the mechanics in it. In any event, people that had long since cleared the dungeon were next to clueless how to complete it again. Yes, I know old content memory can be dusty, but seriously, a 3 minute video guide and you are all set unless you listen to someone explaining the need-2-know mechanics per your role. In any event, the phase where the behemoth is invincible was a nightmare. No one was focusing the statue mobs and I ended up killing one faster than everyone else (I just happened to see that everyone was spread out and I was already in deeps mode and burned my Fell Cleaves). This wasn't a problem until the 2nd time he goes invincible. I knew to clear the green air wisps, but again, no one focused killing the statues. I realized I couldn't clear wisps and drag the orb and when ended up dying (the healer... idk what they were doing). I didn't bother rezzing as I knew it would take time to explain the mechanics (more thoroughly) and I would die shortly after.

Eventually the new player speaks up and says they will help. The other 2 are silent and resume afk-braining their roles. We kill the boss and proceed to the final boss.

If you can see where I'm going, I knew almost immediately that there was little to no coordination between players and everyone just wanted to tank and spank with the slowest group dps almost of all time. Literally, one SUM never moved, the healer... IDK what they were doing other than healing me and I'm running around doing 65% of the mechanics alone while the other SUM did the rest. Needless to say we wiped twice and I /voteabandoned.

What really bothered me, and has bothered me so much, is the lack of communication and teamplay encouraged in this game. It's not everyone for sure (I'll take silence over rude people). You just don't get this kind of behavior in games that really test each individual's ability to do their role effectively. Yes I know this is less prevalent in the tougher content, but you would think that people would at least know the basics to succeed a given task before they jump into it and assume less than the bare minimum play + being carried = win. This is a different game, but in Everquest and FFXI, noticeably bad play got you removed from the party. The bad play that gets you removed if your refusal to learn/be teachable. I wanted to commend the new player that at least adapted. The other SUM didn't change his behavior at all (might have not understood English) while the healer only adapted after I said I would leave if we didn't work together on the last boss.

It makes me loathe tanking, but I do it anyway because "...it's sterile and I like the taste." I'm not any type of expert. I know enough to get by. That dungeon run was a slow and painful death but consuming multiple Frisbees.

...and yet, I tank on.

[ManuelBravo]

You have to understand something about this game, for some weird phenomenon most people think they know everything about their job and don't need help. Most mage types still don't understand that survival is more important than letting a spell go off, and lastly blame the tank even though some mobs ignore enmity when doing certain skills. As a tank I give them the 3rd strike I am out. Also keep in mind ignorance is a bliss and until the tank threatens to leave they will listen -.-; Just do the best you can, some runs are just not worth it specially if they don't listen. Think of it this way they need you more than you need them specially during queue wait times. Now if deaths are your fault for over pulling or healer can keep up that is a completely different story.

[Rongway]

At any point, did you place any waymarks or signs?

The second boss, for example, is easily explained with ignore1 on boss, ignore2 on one add, attack1 on the other add, and a waymark behind the boss. The last boss can make use of signs dividing the party into pairs, and waymarks when people need to agree on a direction.

And when people need a brighter grail shaped beacon,

/micon a waymark
/waymark 0
/waymark a <me>
/waymark b <me>
/waymark c <me>
/waymark d <me>

[DawgPilez]

I did it all but play for em. All the help in the world can't beat lazy. I ran the dungeon again yesterday with vastly better players. It was a breeze.

[Kabooa]

Yeah man, I had this tank that stood in every vuln-stacking AoE. I feel you.

[Kurando]

You know I had a similar experience in the same dungeon, of course I wasn't the one in your party but it sure felt like it otherwise. We had a nice first timer tank, super friendly, me as a DPS and my friend was AST, the remaining player was a Summoner. Pretty much most of the mobs the SMN really had no clue of what to do, literally spamming Ruin II and dots barely used at all, most things were taking a while at least. At one point the tank pulled a bit too much than they could handle and died, then me shortly after. The SMN goes on to swiftcast Titan, marks it to attack, but literally keeps it on Obey whilst they run off away from the healer who is trying to keep them both alive.

In the end they both died, but I suggested to the SMN that if they swiftcast rezzed the Tank, we could of salvaged the pull much more efficiently. I didn't comment on the other things they were doing because just wanted to get the dungeon over but their seemed to have no clue on their skill set. The SMN then freaked out and said they didn't want my advice, they knew what they were doing and it was the healers fault. I asked if they were sure about that (in the least sarcastic way I could), only to get called a bitch and they left the duty immediately after.

I mean no one was pointing fingers but these days you try to offer advice to someone and suddenly you are some pariah, no one plays the game to become the target of abuse though.

[F_Maximillian]

The strangest thing I've noticed about the community on this game is that so many people fight so incredibly hard against any improvement like it's some kind of sinful aim. People are beyond fine with being clueless or playing their job very poorly, if you dare to speak up to offer advice or explain things the best you can hope for is to be ignored half the time, if not covered in a bunch of names (elitist etc; ). Just something you have to put up with.

[Awful]

You're not the only one I don't know how many times I get into groups and there's no AoE damage going out and they want me to pull big and then we die because only 1 mob has died and the healer is spamming Cure II without Lucid Dreaming or anything. If I say anything then i'm "bullying" someone even though we're doing lvl 70 content and they should have known how to AoE 50-60 levels ago but here we are in Fractal HM and people can't preform their jobs at all and it's puzzling to me as I try to give advice and throw way markers, mark people etc, but I don't mean it in a malicious way.

At the end of the day you can do your role as a tank and that's it really, you can mitigate perfectly, do extra DPS, and do big pulls, but if your group can't do simple AoE rotations or use their CDs and OGCDs then there's not much else you can do after you've told them "hey Blm if you use Fire II and Flare it's great AoE damage!" you'll usually get silence, least that's what it's like for me anyways.

[Canadane]

For the record the abbreviation you're looking for is SMN, not SUM.
Less you were paired with some kinda Sun Mage or something.

[Shouko]

The strangest thing I've noticed about the community on this game is that so many people fight so incredibly hard against any improvement like it's some kind of sinful aim. People are beyond fine with being clueless or playing their job very poorly, if you dare to speak up to offer advice or explain things the best you can hope for is to be ignored half the time, if not covered in a bunch of names (elitist etc; ). Just something you have to put up with.

Who's to say the advice someone is giving is an improvement? Anyone can claim anything, I can go read 20 different guides on a job and they each will tell you something different. Just because a player has said job unlocked or even has raided with it in the past at some point doesn't mean they're any better than anyone else. How do you judge if a player is giving you good info and not some idiot that has no clue what they're talking about or purposely trolling for the sake of "fun"?