help on party raids

[Moose51482]

I am an extreme n00b and am by no means a serious player, as I am only playing through the main quest and not worrying about any extras. I'm also not focusing much on gear (which I recognize might be part of my problem). Even though I'm not that serious, I still want to be useful on the mandatory party raids, and as of right now, I'm not. I am running stance and using the provoke skill to keep my enmity high, but I keep dying and being a burden to the rest of the party.

I'm a level 56 Paladin, and on the Crystal Tower series yesterday, I repeatedly got one-shotted and had to be revived by my party to the point that they were having to restrategize for someone else to act as the tank. On the Syrcus Tower, I only died twice, but the second time (both on the final battle), the just let me lie there dead until the fight was over.

So some very basic questions here that have left me totally perplexed:

1. How do I keep getting one-shotted when no one else does? In the King Behemoth fight, I kept getting killed with 9999 HP damage out of nowhere, but this didn't seem to happen to anyone else. Is it just because I hadn't run the dungeon before and didn't know the patterns?
2. Is it generally better to wait to be revived or to start back at the start of the dungeon and rejoin the fight?
3. Why was there a big concentric square over my character while he was lying there dead?
4. At one point someone called me a "crappy RPR tank" and I have no idea what that means.

[AmiableApkallu]

I'm also not focusing much on gear (which I recognize might be part of my problem)

If you want to be the one that constantly gets smacked in the face, you'd best keep your gear up-to-date.

I am running stance and using the provoke skill to keep my enmity high

Provoke isn't for keeping your enmity high. It's for becoming the highest enmity target.

In any setting where there are multiple tanks, you'll need to learn the art of figuring out which tank is going be the "main" tank (the highest enmity target). Ideally, it'd be as simple as whichever tank has their stance on at the start, while the others have it off. Not infrequently, it becomes a game of seeing which tank can maintain being the highest enmity target without constantly using Provoke — or toggling your stance off for a bit and letting some other tank have it.

1. How do I keep getting one-shotted when no one else does? In the King Behemoth fight, I kept getting killed with 9999 HP damage out of nowhere, but this didn't seem to happen to anyone else.

By doing mechanics. This means keeping an eye on the boss's cast bar, and keeping an awareness of what's happening around the arena and of what other people are doing.

In this specific case, King Behemoth casts Ecliptic Meteor, which causes a meteor to drop into the center of the arena. Stand behind one of the rock piles to avoid the blast. (You'll likely see everyone else grouped up behind them.) Immediately after the blast, if you happen to be the main tank, remember to aim the behemoth away from everyone.

2. Is it generally better to wait to be revived or to start back at the start of the dungeon and rejoin the fight?

While combat is still ongoing, always wait to be revived. If you return to the start of the dungeon, you will not be able to rejoin the fight.

On the other hand, once combat ends, you might as well return to the start of the dungeon. You'll avoid the Weakness debuff from a healer raising you, and that's assuming the healers don't just move on immediately and assume you'll return to the start.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm also not focusing much on gear

If you just get gear purely from what the MSQ (fireball icon) quest, blue quests and random dungeon drops give you, you will have roughly the bare minimum gear for the content it asks you to do. Make sure you regularly redeem any gear coffers in your inventory and open the character window and click the Recommend Gear button to automatically find the best gear in your Armory Chest.

However, because what you are doing is extremely old (currently 10 year old content), it's easy to get gear that outpaces that. In fact, it's not very hard to get decent gear even at max level. I see that you are wearing Ironworks gear, which is purchased with Allagan Tomestones of Poetics. You get poetics just from clearing dungeons, so you will get them naturally in the background. Then you can exchange them with those blue bag NPCs near city state aetherytes for the best item level gear for your level.

Even though I'm not that serious, I still want to be useful on the mandatory party raids

The only mandatory 24-person raids are the 3 Crystal Tower ones you are doing. There are others later on in the game, but they are unlocked via optional sidequests. There are a lot of required 8-person trials, but most of them are so trivial that they won't notice if you die in them. There are challenging versions of all these trials, but they are optional and unlocked via sidequests indicated with Extreme, Minstrel's Ballad or Savage tags, so they are easy to ignore.

I am running stance and using the provoke skill to keep my enmity high, but I keep dying and being a burden to the rest of the party.

Stance is normally enough to hold enemies on its own, provided you are attacking. Provoke is useful if you die to take aggro off DPS and healers quicker, but it's main use is in (optional) high-difficulty content for tank swaps.

I repeatedly got one-shotted and had to be revived by my party to the point that they were having to restrategize for someone else to act as the tank.

That seems strange. I checked your gear on the lodestone and it looks decent. Half of it is the best gear available at level 50 (ironworks). Check that you have repaired your gear (via a Mender; it has a hammer icon on the map).

It might have been specific mechanics that one-shot you, such as all the packs of enemies at the start of Labyrinth. They hurt a lot, so using your damage-reduction abilities can help such as Rampart, Sentinel, Reprisal or Hallowed Ground (best not to combine anything with Hallowed Ground because it makes you invincible). There are also parts of the floor acid that may have hurt you, not hiding behind the rocks against the Behemoth, or not running to the edge during the Ancient Flare cast of the last boss. Usually it doesn't matter if a tank makes these errors because there are 3 tanks.

On the Syrcus Tower, I only died twice, but the second time (both on the final battle), the just let me lie there dead until the fight was over.

For the last boss, stand on the wind area to elevate yourself from the AoE. You will know, because everyone else is doing it after the stack markers. Once they disappear, orange circles appear under people, which need avoiding.

1. How do I keep getting one-shotted when no one else does? In the King Behemoth fight, I kept getting killed with 9999 HP damage out of nowhere, but this didn't seem to happen to anyone else.

You didn't hide behind the rock when it cast Ecliptic Meteor. This is a mechanic of most Behemoths. You must be fully behind the rock, not inside it. You should also choose a rock far from the hitbox if possible.

2. Is it generally better to wait to be revived or to start back at the start of the dungeon and rejoin the fight?

It will not let you re-enter the fight if you return to the beginning, so you'll need to accept a resurrection. However, if the fight is over, you may as well return to the beginning to avoid having a Damage Down penalty, which you get if you are resurrected. Click any Shortcut/teleporter/crystal to catch up to the party quicker.

4. At one point someone called me a "crappy RPR tank" and I have no idea what that means.

Usually people aren't rude like that, but if they are you can generally report them:

1. Type /supportdesk and click the "Contact Us" tab.
2. Click "Report Harassment" (or you can choose Report Verbal Abuse in Information > GM Services Main Menu).
3. Explain what happened and its emotional effect on you.
4. Include their full name and Homeworld (this is shown in /contactlist).
5. Include the duty name it took place in, and also paste the offending lines if possible and the time/day it occurred (may want to include your timezone so they know).

If they need more information, they will usually contact you and ask for it. They won't tell you what, if any action they took, but we know that they routinely punish people for something as simple as swearing or being demanding in a dungeon, so they probably would.

It's normal that people make all the mistakes you made when they are new. You can queue for these raids 100 times and most of those times you will see a first timer, who is new to the game, that makes those very same mistakes you made. So if someone is rude about it, the problem is with said rude person.

[Moose51482]

Thanks to both of you for the comments. It sounds like my problem is just not knowing what to do during specific fights. Fights are so chaotic that I can never tell what’s going on, let alone keep track of what the boss is gearing up to do. I tried watching the boss’s cast bar, like AmiableAkpallu suggested, but without knowing what those icons mean, I didn’t find that to really help. Guess I need more practice!

[Jeeqbit]

It sounds like my problem is just not knowing what to do during specific fights. Fights are so chaotic that I can never tell what’s going on, let alone keep track of what the boss is gearing up to do.

Story fights used to not be obvious. They were designed that the party was meant to wipe, stand behind the purple line and discuss strategy. Usually this would involve making observations, and analyzing buffs and debuffs on the target bar.

But 99% of new players just never figured these mechanics out, and simply died to them, while the veteran players burned through them. So the developers began developing story fights with common indicators to make it more obvious what the mechanic is, and left the "figuring out" to the optional hard versions.

It took a lot of years, but they eventually applied these common indicators to old fights as well. However, they did not revisit Crystal Tower yet (or not much), so that's why it's not as intuitive as a lot of other fights.

I tried watching the boss’s cast bar, like AmiableAkpallu suggested, but without knowing what those icons mean, I didn’t find that to really help. Guess I need more practice!

Cast bar is good to watch because it allows you to recognize mechanics and sometimes says things like "left strike" implying you need to move right. Unfortunately, the default location of this is attached to the target bar at the top of the screen. It can help a lot to edit the /hudlayout and move the target bar near the hotbars if you look down there more often. It's useful to have status effects down there as well.

You will find that certain icons and indicators appear in a lot of fights and mean the same thing. There is actually a tutorial explaining what most of them are. It is called Hall of the Novice and can be accessed via the Duty menu. Click "Display All Exercises". You can learn things pertaining to your role (tank, healer or DPS) or general mechanics (the crossed swords tab). Select the one you want to try, then click View Exercise, then the big yellow Undertake button.

There is also a "Combat Guide" button that just explains a lot of the markers and indicators.