Teamwork is important!

Yet another rant post. :'(

I got bold (or more like desperate for Tomes of Esoterics) and joined an Expert Roulette alone. And of course, unfortunate event befell. I got into a party where the tank neglected minor details and made the run very rough for me.

Once again it emphasizes to me that gear and stats aren’t helping much if the wearer doesn’t  work hard enough to bring out its best potential.

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As you see, this tank has at least a body piece of iLV 240, while other gear are at least 200, 210, or 230, as I didn’t look at every piece and I can’t tell from just the picture. Maximum HP was over 24k. When I see tank with above-average HP, of course I feel a little bit at ease.

But you know what? I could hardly switch to Cleric Stance to help nuke during this run.

I know I’m finicky and I’m a spoiled healer, but I don’t just randomly complain or get ticked at other people’s play style or player skill. But this one just….made me grunt so many times. I don’t know precisely what went wrong that made the tank less efficient than average. All I could notice were minor details where this tank failed or neglected to exercise.

A few examples:

– Not rounding up the mobs properly, sometimes letting one or two stray mobs hit tank from behind (this makes your shield blocks and weapon parries become useless, because you can’t block or parry attacks coming from behind you)

– In Hullbreaker Hard, not bringing the enemy (or enemies) away from the ground buffs (ATK up and Haste, if I remember correctly) making the enemies hit very fast and hard as a truck. I switched to cast Aero III just for 3 seconds and the tank was dying, making me use Benediction near the start of the dungeon.

– Not bringing melee enemies towards ranged attack enemy, so the mobs aren’t grouped properly and sometimes an enemy would try to kill me, because tank’s Flash couldn’t reach it and I kept gaining enmity from Cure and Medica II and Regen.

– Not watching the healer, letting an enemy beat on the healer without protecting (Provoke or Cover) the healer. I don’t expect a tank to move from battle spot to grab a mob off me, because that WILL ruin the battle flow and mobs placement, which can cause trouble or hassle to the DPS and the tank. I usually run to the tank when something attacks me and I know that the tank is too busy. But this one just made no attempt to provoke or cover at all. Made me frown so much.

Tanking isn’t just wielding the sword and the shield (or the axe) into the battle and being the meat shield. It requires A LOT. You need player skills, teamwork, adjustment to the party, quick reaction to the circumstances, and sound judgment of the situation. You have to support and protect your party. You have to cooperate with your team members and work with them, execute decent strategy. You don’t need to be precise and be perfect in every move and every action. You just have to read the whole situation and adapt or improvise when things go wrong.

Enemies not following you to the spot you want because they are ranged attackers? Move yourself and melee enemies to the ranged enemies, or go out of their range (or hide from their sight) to force them to move to where you want. An enemy is hitting a DPS or a healer and you can’t take back enmity and already spent your Provoke? Cover that person (if you are PLD) or change target to that enemy and do enmity combo on it. Or if you are a PLD, you can Clemency that party member to keep them from dying.

Too many enemies at once and the healer seems to struggle in topping you off? Use stun on one or a few of them, or pop your defensive buff(s), or you can also spend your offensive buff and rush one enemy so that it dies fast, relieving the damage load. You can also put a mark on an enemy or request your party to defeat that one first. Usually people aim to kill the weakest one first, or the one that hits the hardest, or the one with very bad AoE move, or the one that can cause bad debuff on tank or the party. It depends on party setting and the situation.

DPS choosing wrong enemy or different enemy from you, causing a trouble in mob control or enmity control? Put a number(s) on the enemies so they know which one to focus first. DPS using AoE attack and stealing enemies from you because you didn’t focus or combo on them? Use Flash a lot. You can also try to switch target to gain enmity on the 2nd or 3rd enemies, if you have already secured enmity on the 1st one.

There are myriad of things to do as a tank, and it’s overwhelming. I am not a very good tank and I’m just a learner. I don’t main on any tank job. All of the comments above were what I observed through DPSing and healing. But I can say tank is a tough job to learn, especially if tanking isn’t in your blood. I know I can’t play a good tank in high-end content. I think I am fine as a PLD in level 34 dungeon, but that’s it. If you throw me in a level 50 or 60 dungeon, I will probably kill my whole party and fail the run. I only know the basics, and I say these from a healer’s perspective.

HP and stats aren’t the only thing you need to be a good tank. I’ve seen so many lousy tanks who are terrible despite uber gear. I’ve seen lowbies tanks who still struggled to learn the job, and yet had wonderful performance. I’ve seen averagely geared tanks in high-end content who tanked like a pro and were surprisingly easy to heal for me. I’ve seen overgeared tanks who were overly confident and overestimated themselves who splatted under my care, or took bigger bite than they could chew.

I’ve even met tanks who thought their through-the-roof iLV could save them from everything and anything. So they don’t dodge shit and just ate AoE and/or debuff, thinking the healer can always carry the additional weight of responsibility. That puts extra, unnecessary workload on the healer. I despite that kind of tank. I would forgive if it’s inevitable or the tank has a reason to fail in dodging (like, lag, or if they lost focus for just a second, or you were dealing with other enemy and didn’t see the AoE, or your Stun happened to fail you), but if you CAN dodge it, yet selected to stand in the AoE, then you’re a burden. If there’s a strategy or a tactic what can be executed to mitigate the damage, like dodging, interacting with the mechanics, or tank swapping, then please do it. Don’t just go “Oh the healers can heal through, so I’ll be lazy and don’t deal with mechanics.” No, please just no. Because that, in my eyes, makes you a lousy tank who doesn’t do the job role correctly.

Also, sometimes very high-geared tanks thought they were gods or were invincible, and pull big or play through the dungeon as they please without taking the strength of the whole party into consideration. You can’t cycle your buffs forever, and the healer cannot keep curing forever, if the DPS is too weak or lack the jobs/skills/tools to quickly kill a large horde of enemies, then it is perhaps a bad idea to pull big.

The other day I met a WAR tank who kept pulling 2-3 groups of mobs in Tam-Tara (level 16 dungeon) when the 2 DPS persons were LNG and DRG, without any AoE attack due to level cap. The only person who could AoE was the tank…. And what? After a pull, the tank ran out of TP, yet continued on to pull 2 or 3 next groups. The tank could only use Overpower like once or twice before running out of TP again. Then what? Tank just stood there with the axe drawn, relying on auto-attack and the slow regeneration of TP. I was like *roll eyes and face palm*. It’s just so useless. The mobs enmity was everywhere because the tank ran out of TP and couldn’t attack. And the kills were so damn slow because I and the LNC could only stab one enemy at a time.

That, also, was not a good way to play tank. Of course we won and the healer didn’t have trouble keeping us alive. But while having no TP, the tank lost the efficiency and couldn’t inflict as much damage on the enemies. So I feel it was so useless thing to do (pulling big groups without having TP). The tank wasn’t exactly a dead weight  to the party, but did not maximize the job skills and abilities as he should. To me it felt like, by neglecting the basic strategy/mechanic, the tank was leeching on my hard labour.

Tanking is difficult. There are so many things you have to consider. You have to adjust your strategy to suit the situation and party setting. It’s not that a very very strong tank can do everything by himself. You still need a teamwork. So, support your team. You’re not playing solo, do not use brute force. Don’t ignore mechanics.

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 3rd 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.

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A douchebag WAR in CT

A douchebag  WAR in CT

//full rant mode: on

I haven’t been this mad in ages.

Today we, as a party of 3, went to Duty Finder for Labyrinth of the Ancients and met an Athena, a WAR tank whose HP was over 12k but was so bad. He or she happened to be in Team B with us and pulled early in almost every room without waiting for the whole alliance. Oh, don’t mind the alliance, I and the other WHM weren’t even done buffing our party. I decided I hated this WAR since the 2nd room because s/he just darted into the fight before we could even start casting Stoneskin II.

Then, someone else pulled early in Atomos room but that’s another story.

Then, at Behemoth, this damn tank assumed the main tank duty, yet stood there to eat meteor. One Behemoth’s whack later and s/he died. I raised and then realized that the WHM died too. So I raised WHM. The WAR died from what the hell ever and started yelling “healer, stop being afk.” So I snapped and said “you died from comet, don’t blame healers.” ( <– supposed to be Meteor, not comet, but I was too angry to think straight)

This person argued and said:
“no sory”
“comette 9999 degats”
“i have 13000 hp so comet dont kill me” <– This was said into the alliance chat, so it ignited a lot of angry comments from other teams.

Anyway, that lousy reply pissed me off greatly. Just WTF!? You can’t go ignoring the battle’s mechanics only because you have so much HP and it can’t kill you in one blow. Play with some brain, and be a team player, please. Me and my friends were screaming in LS chat that we wanted to leave already. It was so horribly unhealthy to be in there with this kind of person.

At last boss room, this WAR deliberately ran to out platform but stood outside of the barrier to eat the Ancient Flare. Of course he or she didn’t die but that was yet another douchebaggery. I was so mad. I would have spammed Holy on that WAR to kill him/her over and over if I could. It’s just UGHHHHHHH!!!!!! Can’t tolerate this kind of player.

Anyway, I looked the person up and found out it’s from Lich, not Rangarok. So at least I won’t run into that WAR again on my own server.