Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent. 2.0

[Nana_Bear]

I did Pharos Sirius hard once as a summoner, and it ended up taking close to 2 hours to complete due to a lot of mishaps. I turned out being likely the most experienced player in the group of sprouts, which is rare given I've played it for 5 months and am usually paired with people who've played it for a decade.

Snipped your descrip. for char. limit, but yegads. Patience and kindness, best kind of person to run with! Yay you!

Got no commendations as memory serves but it doesn't matter, people probably just wanted to leave quick.

Or they might not yet have *noticed* the commendation bar off to the side or realized what it is. Took me a while to get that, but was delighted when I found out what it was for and started using it whenever I could. (Also even now I'm not very good at reading chat in dungeons, but I do try. Sound alerts for vital messages help, even if they can be a tad annoying at times. I have trouble multitasking my focus to include chat as well as everything else I'm supposed to be watching on the screen.)

...because RNGesus hated me...

I am totally stealing that label, love it! (And have endured the RNGesus hate, too. Ask me about the gajillion solo unsynched runs on WHM for "Lost City of Amdapor" to try to get the music scroll.)

I don't know why I tried to become a referee.

Because clearly you're a nice person. TY!

Honorable mentions:

And Aurum Vale makes me laugh. Doesn't matter how long people have played this game. That dungeon tends to mess everyone up.

I cannot think of Aurum Vale without seeing in my head the meme of a Snickers bar bitten into, with the Aurum Vale opening image inside it---meme talking about "Demonic doctored Halloween candy, watch out for your kids!" I still laugh at that one. And yeah, I will never ever pull wall-to-wall for AV, because it totally sucks for that. I sneak past as much trash as I can, and try to get party to do likewise.

One time as sprouts we had a family party going through AV, with it being 1st time for 2 of us. All of us but the (first-timer) Archer/Bard died, and they were in last room with all the baby morbols. We were hauling butt to try to get back TO them, and THEY were hauling butt to get back to US... and when they reached us we all burst out laughing, because they had a literal TRAIN of baby morbols chasing them. We laughed till we cried! Choo-choo! (Being on a voice chat and hearing each other laughing made it even better.)

[Nana_Bear]

Okay, so not a dungeon, but still a funny story:

We were running gemstone Fates in Lakeland. There's one that's a two-parter, with the 2nd part being a giant... chameleon?

I'm tanking, and the other 2 in our party were a dancer and a red mage. So we're fighting... and the dang chameleon is spinning like a top, keeps spinning in a circle. FAST. Like "washing machine spin cycle" fast.

We're in a voice chat, and cracking up: "WTH is it DOING? OMG!" It looked SO funny.

Finally my daughter (who was the dancer) goes, "MOM! TURN ON YOUR TANK STANCE!"

I'd forgotten that when the new Fate in the two-parter kicks off, if you're high enough level it removes your tank stance when it starts the 2nd Fate... and so the dang chameleon had agro'd onto HER, and was spinning because she was doing that dancer thing of running circles around it.

Voila: spin-cycle Chameleon.

[Nana_Bear]

Did alliance roulette as warrior and got Labyrinth of the Ancients. First pull another tank grabs all aggro, even from other tanks. So I'm like ok and turn off stance so I don't case problems with spinning enemies, as soon as I do that our parties Dancer starts rudely telling me I need to my tank stance on, I tell why I don't and they are like what ever. Proceed though the raid without issues until we get to behemoth, draw knight away from group for first meteor and survive. Second meteor start coming down and didn't catch that boulder was slightly touching the boss hit box and I die, dancer immediately start calling be out saying I idiot for dying and explaining how the ring around the boss work. Told them that I'm not idiot and know how it works, just that miss it because I was focusing on finishing the knight. Dancer was like whatever you say man and we finally finished the final boss without issues, Immediately after the dancer say "hope you have better day, since need it" and left. I'm like "wtf"?.

Sadly there are some people who seem to want to play just to harass others; that person sounds like one of those. I try to ignore as much as I can, and if they get relentless with it I *will* usually report them for harassment.

It's one thing to offer help in chat to someone you think may need help, but another thing to throw insults like that dancer threw at you through the whole dungeon and at the end.

I know it's upsetting when someone acts that way, but also, THEY are the ones showing THEIR butt not just to you but to the whole team... and if you feel it warrants it, to any GM reading the chat if you've reported them. They *think* they can get away with it, but often find out no they can't: the GMs in this game, from my experience, are good about chasing that stuff down, whether you actually find out they did or not.

It's been rare that I hit the level of "Okay, I'm reporting this," and usually I don't hear anything else about it (because that's how most reports work), but a couple times I've had a GM contact me for more info, so yes they DO check out reports on harassing and worse behaviors in this game. And that's refreshing, because in many games it seems they just don't care. In FFXIV, the GMs DO care.

[Nana_Bear]

Just a quick reminder that something being easy for you, does not mean that it's easy for everyone.

I for one struggle with normal trials and raids, as the sheer volume of visual clutter, counterintuitive mechanics, and unillegible boss emotes simply overwhelms me. I usually can do the first half of a fight without problems, but as soon as the boss starts firing 17 different AEs all at the same time, I start dying.

That being said, I always try to do my best - avoid dying as far as possible, help the healers with damage reduction shields or rezzes, and so on. And of course I would never mouth off to others in the group - being a carry myself, I'm surely not in the position to tell others how to play

This.

When I'm going through a fight for the first time (MSQ, required raid, trials), I try to watch a good video guide first---several times---to try to learn the mechanics. Sometimes they're typicals, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they require a "not usual" action---eg. the Tank LB3 being required in the Elidibus fight, and you have to get the timing just right on it.

For me it's like advanced math: I learn as much as I can, usually get through it okay... but unless I do a bunch of repeats, I tend to forget that fight's special mechanics, so back to the guides for me, if I need to run it again. My memory just doesn't retain a lot of stuff very well.

Also, I sometimes struggle with trying to do multi-focus on umpteen different things going on, which is why I mostly stopped playing WHM, because a healer *needs* to be good at tracking all the teammates as well as doing her own fighting/healing/dodging things. WAR mostly isn't as intense with that, IMO.

And at times I do turn down effects, because they can be not just distracting but actually HIDE things until it's too late to see and react to them. Depends on the fight.

But like you I do my best, and try to help the team as much as I can. But it's also why I *don't* do roulettes: getting dropped cold into some fight I can't remember jack about, means I may be a real drag on a team. And I've gone through a LOT of fights just to progress, but did them only once or twice. So, yeah: no roulettes for me. If they gave us an option to choose which ones to block out, and which ones to fave, that would help a lot, but they don't. Sigh.

Also, sometimes people's connection issues can seriously interfere with their reaction/response time; I've seen that happen. It's not a thing they can help, especially if their ISP is kind of crappy but all that's available to them, and/or if they can't afford to buy a much more powerful computer etc.

[NanaWiloh]

I just want too ask anyone else lately getting tanks who eat Vun stacks like pan cakes at I-hop in the DF??

[Alice_Rivers]

I just want too ask anyone else lately getting tanks who eat Vun stacks like pan cakes at I-hop in the DF??

I've had a few, the only time it's been consequential though was in Keeper of the Lake where a DRK got six on the last boss and the tankbuster did it's job for once which was kinda funny.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Titan normal for leveling roulette, Titan Hard for trial roulette, Eden Titan for raid roulette.

Okay, so let's try an alt, it's a slow day anyway.

Garuda normal for leveling, Ifrit Hard for trial, Eden Garuda and Ifrit for raid.

This is a rather repetitive day.

[Doomed_Raven]

Snipped your descrip. for char. limit, but yegads. Patience and kindness, best kind of person to run with! Yay you!

This was a nice response to come across (: (I only checked back on this thread by chance)

I agree, it's always a better experience when people are patient and chilled, especially for newer players.

Or they might not yet have *noticed* the commendation bar off to the side or realized what it is. Took me a while to get that, but was delighted when I found out what it was for and started using it whenever I could. (Also even now I'm not very good at reading chat in dungeons, but I do try. Sound alerts for vital messages help, even if they can be a tad annoying at times. I have trouble multitasking my focus to include chat as well as everything else I'm supposed to be watching on the screen.)

To be honest, I didn't get commendations at first either so could be that (on PS5 you have to press the touch bar to cycle through HUD elements) after a while it gets easy to go onto it before people leave.

I am totally stealing that label, love it! (And have endured the RNGesus hate, too. Ask me about the gajillion solo unsynched runs on WHM for "Lost City of Amdapor" to try to get the music scroll.)

Funny enough as WHM yesterday I was trying to do Lost city of Amdapor solo for the ARR relic, RNGesus played a role there too haha (in whether to gourmand boss would eat me or not) there's a small chance you wouldn't die when it spits you out.

One time as sprouts we had a family party going through AV, with it being 1st time for 2 of us. All of us but the (first-timer) Archer/Bard died, and they were in last room with all the baby morbols. We were hauling butt to try to get back TO them, and THEY were hauling butt to get back to US... and when they reached us we all burst out laughing, because they had a literal TRAIN of baby morbols chasing them. We laughed till we cried! Choo-choo! (Being on a voice chat and hearing each other laughing made it even better.)

A choo choo train of baby morbols sounds pretty funny to witness! I think Aurum Vale's the kinda dungeon where when things go pear shaped, it's more funny than frustrating, and more so if playing with friends/family. Also your post below about a washing machine chameleon sounds hilarious

[MicahZerrshia]

Queued up for MSQ Roulette on my alt out of boredom and I noticed the first pack in Prae going down a lil slow. Looked closer at the party and yep, a no job stone thm in a mix of lvl 37 and glam gear. Checked them and they had multiple lvl 60+ jobs so I just dipped after the first pull. I am not going to humor someone who wants to intentionally do this sort of thing.

How can you even get into these dungeons so hidiously undergeared? Sorry SE, you may want to pander to the minimal effort crowd, but you can't make me heal them.

[TheDustyOne]

Well this was silly;

Go to do levelling roulette on DRK, get Sunken Temple of Qarn in progress. Group is about 13 minutes in at the second boss. Last tank apparently left because he didn't like that the healer used Rescue on him.

Thought that was a silly reason to leave; what the healer left out is that Rescue was used in the middle of doing standard pulls because he didn't want to keep pace with the tank. Last tank likely just got frustrated when the healer should've been more honest and said "hey, can we do smaller pulls" rather than yanking a tank mid-pull. Ended up learning how this healer operated finishing up this dungeon when I get yanked trying to get to the last couple of mobs in a pull.

It's Qarn, the mobs barely tickle outside the bees at the start. If you want small pulls just say "small pulls please" instead of abusing Rescue like that; it's very annoying.