Don’t automatically blame Cleric Stance for your death

Alright, it took me 2 days to cool down enough to sit down and write about this. I need to be heard. And yes I’ll admit that I’m still butthurt from the incident. I’m now still upset enough to try to hunt down the person and shove the screenshots in his or her face to prove that I DID NOT use Cleric Stance before he or she died. Too bad this person isn’t on my server, else I would personally search for them and send a tell with the screenshot link.

To avoid name-shaming, I crossed out parts of people’s names. But if you are the person’s friend, I am quite sure you will be able to guess who it is. This person is from Zodiark server and has the initials of Y. G. If you know him or her, please forward my screenshots, because when I explained myself, this person didn’t seem convinced.

The day before yesterday, I joined my friend’s party to queue for High Roulette and we got placed into a Pharos Sirius duty. First pull, the tank went to the first corner to get 5 mobs in one pull. It’s nothing we can’t manage, right? So things seemed fine at first.

Mind you, though, that I usually evaluate the party’s tank before I choose my play style. If the tank seems sturdy enough and has sufficient survivability to let me Holy while letting Regen and Medica II work in my stead, I Cleric Stance and Holy a few times. However, if I see that the tank takes too much damage and I’m not confident that they can stay alive while I Holy twice or thrice, I refrain from that and continuously Cure tank instead.

This time I saw that the tank took too much damage and I couldn’t afford the time to cast Holy, so I decided to stick to healing mode. I also noticed that the tank stood in the middle of the group of enemies instead of rounding them up and face them all with the shield. But things escalated very quickly and I didn’t have enough time to comment on that. With this positioning, the tank also pointed one of the mob at me, putting me in a cone AoE attacks. Again, things was crazy and I had to try to keep people alive and didn’t have time to comment on that.

What happened was that the Elbst managed to land an AoE move (I googled later and found that it is Acid Shower, which should be stunned) that put people under the debuff effect “Vulnerability Up” thus increasing damage taken. 3 persons received that debuff, including me and my friend, MCH. I Esuna the tank first. The Esuna cleansed Poison instead, because, guess what, either an enemy has insta-cast poison attack or built-in poison in a physical attack, or the tank ate a poison AoE. I cured and Esuna again, which erased the tank’s Vulnerability Up, but it was too late, the tank went down already.

Note that some milliseconds before that, my friend died, too. And I did not even have time to Esuna myself. The BLM started running to the entrance, trying to kill the rest of the mobs while regrouping with the tank and my friend who respawned. I turned on my Cleric Stance and used Swift Cast Holy to try to stop the mobs in their track and buy us more time to regroup and for me to cure up the BLM after spending my Fluid Aura and Aero to chip at the enemies’ HP and turning off my Cleric Stance.

The first thing the tank said when he or she rejoined us was “Why cleric stance dude?”

At the moment, I didn’t have enough time to read it and just assumed that it was the BLM being mad at me for letting the tank died. So I replied referring to the tank as 3^rd person: “Not my fault, the tank ate debuff that increases damage.” “I cleric after he died.”  (I didn’t realize that the tank died before I managed to land a cure BECAUSE the tank stood there and ate yet another AoE attack which induced “Dropsy” status effect, otherwise I would have also added that to my answer.)

The tank replied “Sure” and after a while, I realized that I was talking to the tank, not the BLM. So I added “You have to dodge AoE” referring to the Acid Shower which induced Vulnerability Up debuff.

Along the way, my friend tried to make light of the situation to help us relax and said “It is normal that tank die here” to which I replied “No it’s not normal.” And he said something along the line of “well it’s normal with debuff, that debuff kills people.” Yes of course, with increased damage taken, getting beaten up by 4-5 enemies at once is brutal. Then my friend went on to speculated whether the AoE which gave the debuff was instant or not. I said I don’t know because our tank friend never got it. Probably because he stunned it or the Elbst died fast and didn’t get to use this debuff move.

In front of the door to first boss room, the tank, again, tanked in the middle of the mobs. So I commented on that. Yet, there was no reaction, and further up the tower, this tank kept tanking with some enemies behind his or her back. I didn’t want to bother, so I didn’t say anything else.

Anyway, what I’m mad about is the fact that the tank did not stun stuff (also no stun on the pudding’s Divide and no silence on Banish III from the elemental), ate debuff, ate AoE, yet had the nerves to point the finger at me and my Cleric Stance (which, in fact, wasn’t active until after the tank died) for dying.

In this case, I admit that I had slow reaction and did not use my Benediction fast enough to save the tank. I underestimated the enemies and thought a few cures would get the tank back in shape. However, the tank unexpectedly ate an AoE for 1380 damage before my cure could land, so I totally failed at situation assessment. If anyone or everyone in the party would blame me for not using my Benediction, I would regrettably take the blame. But for the tank to immediately blame my Cleric Stance, that’s unacceptable.

To sum it up:
Tank tanking with back toward an enemy : not my fault.
Tank not stunning AoE : not my fault.
Tank eating Vulnerability Up debuff : not my fault.
Tank eating Poison debuff so first Esuna failed to cleanse Vulnerability Up : not my fault.
Tank eating yet another AoE and died : not my fault.
Cure interrupted from getting splash damage : my fault.
Not using Benediction : my fault.
Tank not using Hallowed Ground : not my fault.
Using Cleric Stance after tank died : not my fault.