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.