DPS Not Cooperating – Aleczan's New Diary (FFXIV: ARR)

Being way sub-par in a DF is rude

By Aleczan Knighthill | October 6, 2016 - 4:06 pm |October 6, 2016 Equipment screenshots, My Rants

Alright…. it’s not often that I would go to leveling roulette with strangers, because I find random party hard to deal with. So I usually don’t brave any DF unless I’m desperate, or in a really good and confident mood, or have a friend or two tagging along.

Yesterday I went to Leveling Roulette with Dew and Lulu. We were unlucky enough to get Qarn, the worst nightmare of 2.0 low level dungeons, pre-adjustment (Qarn used to be much harder before a patch where they made some dungeons easier.) And we were unfortunate enough to get this random ARC in our party.

He was new, but that wasn’t the problem.

He was slow in targeting the enemies, but that could be excused.

He had moderately sub-par gear:
Main hand – level 32 (NQ)
Head – level 15 (Pirate Bandana)
Body – level 30 (NQ)
Gloves – level 23 (aetherial)
Pants – level 23 (aetherial)
Boots – level 30 (NQ)
Right side he had a level 1 neck, a level 1 earring, and a level 1 ring.
Other 2 slots were empty.

(I didn’t check his gear until later, when we had TERRIBLE struggle in Golem boss room, and when we finished the dungeon, I didn’t remember exact levels of his equipment (except his bow, and the fact that he had a mix of lv 20ish gear and level 30 gear), until I compared the screenshot below to his Lodestone profile which hadn’t updated yet.)
When I first peeked at his gear and took mental note of roughly what he wore, I decided to not say anything, since I always feel guilty for secretly judging people by their equipment. Plus, I could understand that some people might come in the dungeon via roulette and get something higher/harder than they expected. So I can forgive unprepared people who’s slightly undergeared. To me 5-8 levels undergear is excusable. Also, Aetherial gear tend to be about as good as normal gear of 3-5 levels above it.

As we went on, a headgear (aetherial lv 35) and a pair of pants (aetherial lv 35) dropped, and the ARC immediately changed to those. So I decided once again that he deserves some credits and a forgiveness.

I also noted that in first boss room, when we all got Doom debuff, this ARC tried and ran to a lighted platform, but failed because the light was being a jerk and moved to the other platform instead. He didn’t follow to the new one. This is a common mistake among the newbies, so he died even though I tried to guide him there while telling him to come {This way.} I forgave that death, because at least he knew what to do and he tried. After raised, he didn’t miss a Doom cleanse again, either.

But in the last boss room, we did HORRIBLE. Adds stayed alive like forever even though Lulu was fast and switched target and/or jumped into the box very quickly. Dew swore up and down that the ARC’s max HP dropped from start. I said impossibruuuuuuuuu because he got 2 new pieces of equipment, his HP should go up, not down. But the fight was brutal. It was painful. It was even more painful than the Golem room where I ended up having 0 MP (after raising the ARC once and Lulu once) even after using an ether of some sort.

So when we won, I peeked at his gear again….

And….

What….

Do…

I…

See…?

He sneakily swapped out the level 32 bow and had been using a level 15 Aetherial bow since WHO KNOWS WHEN.

I got really mad and screamed into my Skype call with Dew. Dew cursed a few words and we both left without commending the douche. Lulu was pretty fed up with him at some point in the dungeon, too. Because he pulled a group of mobs before Dew could run in, so the mobs were scattered when Dew provoked and stuff, and Lulu slept them, but the ARC woke them up.

I was too baffled to say anything to the ARC. I was afraid I would come out extremely mean and rude if I were to say something to his face, so I just left without saying anything.

Guys, it is ok to come in unprepared and be slightly undergeared, if you put enough effort in contributing to the party, it’s forgivable. It is, however, a douche move, to come in with decent or forgivable gear but then swap to other equipment which is more than 10 levels below the dungeon. (And in this specific case, the weapon was level 15, the dungeon is level 35, so it was 20 levels below the dungeon!!!! Just WTF, man.) It is beyond rude. You’re leeching our labour and effort. I, as a healer, had to nuke the shit out of everything because you cannot make decent DPS. It is unfair to us. It is selfish.

I disapprove. :(

24-person Raids are a big headache

By Aleczan Knighthill | April 24, 2016 - 10:18 am |April 24, 2016 My Rants

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Rant warning. This shit isn’t going to make its way to my tumblr because there is enough negativity on tumblr. This personal blog of mine has less audience and is quite a secluded place, so I will let my steam off in here.

I’m not a big fan of CT, ST and WoD. One of the reasons is that the possibility to run into a jerk (or jerks) intensifies, about roughly 3 times as much as a 8-person dungeon.

We have had to put up, or deal with, people who don’t cooperate. Tanks who do not like to be a team player. Tanks who do not do their job properly and let enemies eat a healer. Tanks who intentionally try to compete enmity and steal the boss from other tank instead of being cooperative. Tanks who kept darting ahead to secure enmity on a boss regardless of other people’s readiness. Tanks who insist on tanking even when they can’t handle the boss and keep dying. People who do not dodge AoE or who do not try to learn the mechanics even in real practice. People who pull bosses early when the alliance isn’t ready. People who pull boss and shut out a few or many members outside of the boss room (the most epic shut-out I’ve witnessed was like 8 people from 3 parties, where we, or course, wiped due to failing a DPS check phase). The list goes on and on.

And with people being overgeared nowadays, the new headache adds to the list: people deliberately ignoring mechanics and just focusing on brute force.

4 out of 5 times, in CT (The Labyrinth of the Ancients), people do not deal with skeleton adds in first boss room anymore. Worse yet, they (on Chaos Data center) prefer to tank the dragon on one edge of the room, as opposed to the center. This had been my woe since forever. I used to sneak into Masamune and they tanked in the center, allowing melee jobs to chase the skeletons and help killing them without having to run through like 10 yalms of deadly water, which could kill my monk in 5 seconds.

Just yesterday, in our CT run, Dew tried to tank it in the center. And it went well until the first wave of skeletons popped. People immediately killed them where they popped, which was center. I screamed into the voice call, and Dew ran the shit away, dragging the dying dragon with her to one edge of the room. Then, someone killed 2 skeletons too close together, and yes they ran so fast, through deadly water, to the dragon and exploded.

The skeleton exploding fiesta continued in 2nd round of adds. And in 3rd round of adds, all the ahrimans chased me for forever without any sub tank picking them up and I had to use Benediction on myself to survive.

The headache continued in King Behemoth room. At least 2 person out of the whole alliance died to Meteor each round. This, I can forgive, because super fast DPS on Behemoth could mess up the phase and make him pop meteor much faster than people’s expectation.

Meanwhile, in both Behemoth room and last boss room, I saw Dew trying to tank, and the WAR from other party competed with her to get aggro. So I told her to slack off and let him tank.

Then, we continued to ST, where things weren’t as brutal to my mental health. People still died to stuff like Curtain Calls, as usual, but otherwise there’s not much to complain about.

The World of Darkness, however, was when I snapped. My irritation was too much pent up and grew out of control. You see, in Angra room (Eye boss), people stood there and waited. Dew hesitated for a bit, and after seeing that the other tanks didn’t go in, she went in to tank. However, a WAR competed aggro and took it ( immediately resulting in a beam hitting a healer to death because of bad positioning). I told Dew to let him tank. In the middle of the battle, Dew was bound with level 150 spell or something, and people didn’t leave the circle properly, so she died at the same time with our other healer, and someone else in our party. I Swiftcast raised Dew (should have raised the healer, but at that very moment I failed to notice that our healer was among the casualties). Dew hit the wrong button and went homepoint, and ran back to the door.

Towards the end of the fight, this WAR tank moved to the door and tanked it on the edge of the room, messing up the position of Double Vision (red and white flood on the floor). So it was very hard to run to get to one of the colours, resulting in many people dying to 2 or 3 stacks. This was where I got really mad, but still refrained. I only told Dew that she should tank the next boss because this WAR tank is a pain in the ass.

At the Hydra boss, of course Dew went in. And while she was waiting for it to finish a cone AoE (before moving it into a proper tanking position) I saw with my own eyes that the WAR tank ran around the back of the boss and then darted ahead, doing something that pulled aggro, making me and many other people get hit by the boss’ swipe or breath attack (or whatever it was, which didn’t have AoE indicator). Dew took back the aggro, and the WAR did that shit again, and yes I got hit by something, due to the bad positioning of the WAR while trying to compete enmity.

I started typing “Don’t point the boss to other people, <t>” but then I saw that Dew completely gave up and stood on the side of the boss, so I deleted it. The fight went on and we won without much trouble.

Then, in Cerberus room, we stood there idly for so damn long. Dew didn’t want to tank because she knew that the WAR would steal hate again, instead of engaging right on to declare that they wanted to main tank. While Dew was asking me on voice chat whether we should go into the belly (we were team B), out BLM stepped ahead and started casting spell, and canceled it. The BLM repeated this many times. And I said to Dew, just go in quickly and secure hate. She did, and of course the WAR from team A competed and stole Cerberus.

I’ve lost it right there and typed in the alliance, “If you want to tank, just engage and tank instead of letting our PLD go in first and then compete to pull hate like a jerk.” To which no one said anything, except Corn in FC chat. He wanted no drama and told me to calm the hell down.

After we won, someone said something like “kek BLM pulled first. No tears.” and the WAR said “BLM pulled first.” All the time in my head I screamed “EXCUSES” because I didn’t see that the BLM spell went off.

In Atomos rooms where we had to split into 3 groups, our party only had 4 people in our little room. Before I could start typing to ask where the other 4 went, some asshole pulled. Again I was like “No….my party!” (had to cut my typing short because I had to start fighting and healing people). Again Corn was like, “chill, dude” and fought like it’s nothing, while in my head I kept having this echo of “OH SHIT WE WILL WIPE” all the time. The fight was quite tough because we didn’t have enough killpower to keep the giant off me or remove it fast enough. I ended up dying before the 3 of them killed off the last Atomos that popped.

Then, in last boss room, I got so pissed and told Dew to just /sit and don’t go in, no matter what happens. I /sit with her ans just stared at the damn BLM, from team B (our own party =_=) did that casting/canceling over and over again. Then, the spell went off, either accidentally or deliberately, and I saw with my own eyes that the BLM did pull first, at least in last boss room. He or she took 2 hits and died, and immediately homepoint so I wasted my Swiftcast for nothing.

Now the same person said “kek B BLM pulled first.” to which I replied “Yes gonna report him later.” and the BLM said “sorry misclicked ^^” (referring to Hompointing, I guess).

Corn got upset (or just annoyed) and said in FC chat “Can we just tank and heal and DPS and get it done and leave?” So I swallowed all my anger and just did my job, saving GM call on the BLM for after exiting.

Dew and I later discussed about the WAR tank using our BLM as an excuse to compete enmity. It’s just irrational and pointless to keep competing hate when the one who had hate was a PLD. Even if BLM pulling was truly why WAR decided to step in to grab aggro, there was no reason, at all, to keep competing when it is obvious that Dew, a PLD, had secured aggro. So we call it bullshit that the WAR and other person blamed it entirely on the disruptive BLM for enmity competition.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been through such a painful turbulence of epic failure of teamwork in 24-person raids. It’s making me hate CT, ST and WoD very much. People just won’t play nice and that drives a troublesome content even more insane and painful. Really, these raids are the main reason why I would hate FFXIV players and avoid interactions. It ruins the fun and makes the game stressful as opposed to enjoyable. I know it’s MMO, and freaks like that who like to bully or ruin the day of other people are in every corner of a data center. It can’t be helped. But I can’t stop wishing for a smooth run and friendlier environment. It is unfair that people who want to enjoy their game peacefully can’t do that because dozens of douchebags are out there ambushing everyone in every opportunity they see. /sigh /double sigh

Summoner in Ifrit Hard last night

By Aleczan Knighthill | December 15, 2015 - 2:33 pm |December 19, 2015 Chat Screenshots, FFXIV Players, My Rants

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[Self note: short link to this entry is http://wp.me/p3QlNa-nh]

To the Summoner person using Ifrit in Ifrit (Hard),
(Time of incident = December 15, 2015, 4:35 AM on UTC+7, which equals December 14, 1:35 PM on PST.)
As my friend was unable to construct an English response to you when you belittled the tanks in Ifrit (Hard), I am now trying to reach out to you in her stead.

Please note that I wrote this entry for 2 reasons:
– My friend was extremely frustrated because she was unable to convey her feelings or to explain herself and the situation to you.
– I’m hoping that upon hearing us out, you will now understand the basic reasons for 1) why the party should let the tanks pull first, not the DPS and 2) why people (and their pet/summon) should not stand in front of the enemy except when they are the tanks.

I did not write this to upset you, or anyone. It is simply to express the feelings and reasons from a tank’s (my friend) and a healer’s (me) point of view as well as to correct any misconception you might have had about pulling and aggro.

Short version:

1) You asked “Why my ifrit was tanking?”

Answer: Because you pulled first, before the tank.

2) You asked “Tanks can’t even hold the aggro?”

Answer: No, the tanks gained back the aggro and was holding it (they were competing each other for aggro, in order to put situation back to normal). Your Ifrit-Egi died because it stayed in front of Ifrit and took damage from frontal AoE attacks.

Full version:

I will write with so much detail here, because you might not have meant to be rude, but only lack the knowledge on how the battle really works. In this entry, I offer you the explanation of the situation in question.

1) You asked “Why my ifrit was tanking?”

Answer: It is simple, because you ordered your Ifrit-Egi to attack before tanks did any action on the enemy. As everyone knows, the first person or NPC who lands the attack on an enemy (or uses any action when detected by an enemy, or uses any action/spell on the person who is detected by the enemy) will always receive the initial enmity (first aggro) and sometimes also receive the first one or first two attacks. It is common for a DPS to receive damage from the enemy’s first blow, if the DPS did not allow time for tanks to be the one to start the battle.

An attack or two on a DPS could easily kill a DPS, or at least cause some trouble. Therefore, in usual circumstance, it is a widely accepted practice for the DPS players to wait patiently until any of the tanks attacks or uses a skill first. This is to ensure that no one else gets whacked in the face before tank could secure the aggro. Moreover, as you may already know, Ifrit-Egi is a melee type, so the range between Ifrit-Egi and the Ifrit was very close, therefore the tank didn’t have a chance to divert the aggro before your Ifrit-Egi received damage.

Let me elaborate further, usually, as a WHM myself, I would stand a distance away from the tank AND the enemies. If, under unfortunate circumstance, I ever draw enough enmity for the monster to target me, while the monster is running from the battle front line to me (in the back line), the tank would have about a second to spend Provoke, for example, on the monster to call it back to front line.

In your case, as Ifrit-Egi is a close-range attacker, and because you ordered your Ifrit-Egi to stand in the tank spot instead of moving away, it is inevitable that the Ifrit-Egi would receive a blow (or many) from Ifrit.

2) You asked “Tanks can’t even hold the aggro?”

Answer: To elaborate from the point 1) above, for the sake of team work, most DPS prefer to let a tank attack first instead of rushing in to steal enmity and complaining about it later when they get their face kicked by the enemy. Enmity (aggro) control is easier when the party allows tank to land the first attack/skill on the enemy.

Also, as you might not realize it, even after the tanks win back the aggro, if you or your Ifrit-Egi keep standing in the tank’s spot, of course all of the frontal AoE will also inflict damage on you or your Ifrit-Egi.

Ifrit has a front swipe (claw) attack that hits EVERYONE in a cone area in front of it. There is also a flame breath attack, called Incinerate, which will damage everyone in front of Ifrit. Therefore, although your Ifrit-Egi didn’t have the aggro, and the monster was already attacking the tanks because they gained back the aggro, your Ifrit-Egi still took damage, and died.

3) The other person commented “too much deeps” and “so stronk [sic]”

Answer: Incorrect. Gaining initial aggro because you jumped your attack button doesn’t indicate that you have too much DPS and are too strong for the tanks to handle. Just because your summon died from that AND also from staying in the wrong spot doesn’t mean your summon had the aggro all the time. Please look at the Target Bar more carefully and read whom the enemy was attacking, because I’m so sure that the two tanks were competing aggro against each other and wouldn’t let the aggro stay on your Ifrit-Egi for too long.

Moreover, from what my friend told me, Ifrit-Egi died when the enmity was on my friend, meaning she had the red aggro indicator, not your Ifrit-Egi. This is also why I concluded that your Ifrit-Egi died from eating AoE from Ifrit, not by holding aggro.

——————————————–

Also, I’d like to tell you that it is very unkind and is NOT OK to ignore the party role and mess things up, and then be mean about it, mocking the tank. It is a disruptive behavior and seems rude to me. It is also selfishly discouraging to talk down other person, especially when the problem was caused by the fact that you did things that a DPS shouldn’t do, and then let your summon die by leaving it in the tank’s spot. You blamed the tanks for your errors in using preemptive pull and then letting Ifrit-Egi stay in the wrong and dangerous spot. (DPS should avoid standing in the tank’s spot, because many enemies, especially Primals, have frontal Area attacks that don’t even have AoE indicator on the floor to notify you.)

The hidden paragraphs below (in white text) are quite judgmental on my part and may contain assumption about you, your action and your statement. What I said in the next 2 paragraphs could be a little offensive to you, so please feel free to skip it if you do not wish to see the message.

(Hidden text begins)

I felt like you did it on purpose, because for a summoner who’s already level 60, it seems impossible to me for someone to not understand the concept of aggro and first aggro, as well as frontal AoE attacks. If you really intentionally did that, please, I beg you to stop. It if not nice to others. It is also bad for the learning and practicing for the tank, because pulling by tank’s surprise messes up the battle rhythm and the team work. When a DPS pulls before a tank does, it takes experienced or quick-reacting tanks to correct the situation and put things back in control. It is fine if someone accidentally pulled before a tanks and then allowed the tank to take control of the situation without insulting the tank. It is NOT OK to do it intentionally only to mock the tanks or brag about your almighty DPS rate or strength.

Please be a team player and stop bullying the tanks. Tanks are rare nowadays and it is so difficult to get into a Duty Finder party because we don’t have enough tanks to fill up the DF. Playing tank is hard and stressful enough, they don’t need more discouragement, poor treatments, mockery and insults from you or anyone. Please be kind and be considerate. Other players behind the characters you see in the game are actual people, are real flesh, and they have feelings. They aren’t just pixels on your screen.

(Hidden text ends)