Why do people avoid getting better at the game?

[R041]

I just want to bump these posts, because they were almost completely ignored - Yet did exactly what was asked of this thread.
If anyone else wants to continue this challenge, that would be a fun watch. I'd like to see how this challenge works in ARR-HW as well.

I took this to PF and got random players to try out the challenge and see if it's possible because I was also curious to see if you can clear it with a 1 tank, 1 healer that can't heal, and 2 DPS. The goal was "Can we clear the dungeon with a healer that doesn't heal in the duty?" The answer - yes, it's possible to clear the duty with a healer that doesn't heal. It was really chaotic, but all of us had a lot of fun. We just treated the whole experience like a deep dungeon encounter and had time to try out other combinations as well.

It's possible to clear the The Dead Ends without a healer healing in bosses or in mobs with PLD/WAR/DRK. All pulls were wall to wall. I have yet to test GNB because it was super late after we did the pulls and called it a night.

The party compositions used were:
PLD/AST/BLM/SMN
WAR/SCH/DNC/RDM
DRK/SGE/BLM/RPR

Limitations were set as we went along since it wasn't mentioned in detail:
1. Healers cannot use skills that gives raw HP / shield
2. Healers cannot raise
3. WHM cannot use Assize even though it does damage (because it gives AoE healing)
4. SCH cannot use fairy
5. SGE cannot use Kardia
6. DPS (if applicable) can only raise 2 times per boss

With these limitations, healers are very gimped DPS. Since they cannot heal, AST just had card buffs and malefic/gravity spam. SCH cannot use Fey Illumination or Dissipation for Energy Drain. SGE just had phlegma balls. After we discussed and tried the healers, we came to the conclusion that out of all the healers, WHM/SCH are the strongest healers in this scenario. WHM had Holy to make mobs easier. SCH ended up being the strongest because of Expedient was allowed for being a purely mitigation skill. It acted as a replacement for a DPS slot's mitigation skill & Chain Strategem.

Funnily enough, most of us were healer mains, so when we flexed on other roles, we weren't super amazing at them. There was quite a learning curve, but it worked out.

PLD was doable, but was a bit rough. We took a lot of avoidable damage. I messed up wasting a mitigation at one point and couldn't pull the second wall-to-wall without dying on my first run through due to it. That led to some interesting sleep strategies being discussed... There was also a moment where I just screwed up on the Final Boss which prevented us from getting the clear (unsurprisingly was due to taking a lot of avoidable damage because I brain farted twice in a row lol). We had 2 wipes total. Other than those mishaps, it wasn't that bad. Including the wipes and running back, it took roughly 27~28 minutes. If you want to see a first person perspective on the PLD run, I can upload a video of how it went. Props to the Black Mage who was brave enough to participate in this challenge and was their second time running The Dead Ends (their first time being the MSQ). We played bad enough that it was pretty much a DF encounter. Surprised with much we can get away with using this party too. XD


WAR had no issues. We cleared it in 16 minutes in one go. The party composition was really strong too, to the point where we decided to see how far we can push a tank with the next party composition... I'll have to upload a video of this one later.

DRK... hoo boy. Compared to PLD & WAR, this one was so scuffed. xD So while we did clear this without a healer healing in any wall-to-wall pull and without healing during boss fights, it was a lot more strict compared to PLD/WAR since they had recovery abilities and DRK didn't. Our DRK couldn't survive without Living Dead in wall-to-wall pulls (and also because of me derping & causing wipes), BUT it is clearable without a healer, funnily enough. This party composition didn't have much sustain, if any, so we had to kill the Final Boss before the Double "Warm Glow" mechanic. It's basically a soft DPS check at that point. It probably didn't help that we also had a lot of shenanigans happening in the dungeon (I haven't touched BLM since Lv 80 in PvE as I purely leveled BLM to lv 90 through PvP, so I was basically relearning the rotation in that dungeon and dropping Enochian left and right LMAO). We had to take turns with our mitigations, and it turns out we were lacking just a bit more HP to clear it with our skill level -- but that was solved with HP potions -- yes, the items with a cooldown that you usually use when your healer is either dead or you're doing deep dungeon content. Turns out DRK really didn't need a healer to make things work. The entire run, if we include every wipe and running back + learning when to best mitigate + me messing up my BLM rotation, took around 67 minutes. If we just include the wall-to-walls + the pull where we killed the Final Boss (3 min boss fight), it took around 28 minutes.

An important thing to note, it is still doable without a healer healing and taking up a party slot. It only made me realize the effects of having a 3rd DPS more strongly here -- because a 3rd DPS could have given us more mitigation and made the "DPS check" gone by a lot smoother than what the healer that didn't heal could have done here.... which unfortunately only proves that healers are meant to raise the maximum survival threshold of the party, but the party doesn't necessarily need a healer healing to clear the dungeon - as is the case compared to ARR dungeons where you just simply can't outheal the damage due to how integral a healer is. In other words... healers really have became somewhat superfluous in terms of being necessary for a clear, at least for this dungeon.

Here you go I synced and solo'd The Burn as WAR. Even the darling of SB dungeon difficulty is a former shadow of itself.

Full disclosure I wiped 3 times:
1. A careless raw intuition mistake on a double trash mob pull
2. And 2 times to figuring out how the hell to survive the add phase during the final boss because I couldn't meet the DPS check as solo WAR. Something that wouldn't have happened if I had even one more person doing something.

What ends up happening is you end up encased in ice and the boss starts casting a TB on you. Kind of cruel.

If this is soloable I'm sure every dungeon past this is too unless there's some incredibly cheap mechanic that forces multiple people being alive.

I just wished the games core design was more fun than this. We always have to go looking for scraps of difficulty here and there. And I don't want savage or Extreme level difficulty everywhere either. Just midcore is fine. If everything was around the difficulty level of original CLL I would be happy.

I even made several mistakes too, I didn't have to be perfect. For example during the first boss I had to reply to an email so I just end up standing in AOE's by accident and in the second boss I got rolled into the firewall for not paying attention to the carts.

Here is the video of the clear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgp...Aries%27Corner

[Atelier-Bagur]

I just want to bump these posts, because they were almost completely ignored - Yet did exactly what was asked of this thread.
If anyone else wants to continue this challenge, that would be a fun watch. I'd like to see how this challenge works in ARR-HW as well.

My only issue with this is that the idea doesnt sound fun? Because it sounds like you still had a wipe or two? I guess if you've fine tune the runs then you can clear the content perfectly and in record time than parties that naturally heal then this even more proves your point.

One thing though, people already doing this just aggravates me with the current class design even more. In no way am I healer main and I'm a huge lover of tanks as I mainly play one. But the fact that you can just Rambo through content like this with your mitigations and without a healer really drives me up the wall with how bad the trinity is treated in this game. DPS is king and it shows. It should've never gotten this bad. Healers should be able to rely on their toolkits 24/7, tanks should have to maintain aggro while relying their mitigations to help the healer and not the other way around.

If we're going to pretend that we have a tank, a healer and a dps role then this game needs to strictly adhere to that design. Otherwise may as well do away with the system and do what Variant Dungeons do and just give us special abilities to fill your job's weaknesses.