Battle Screenshots – Page 2 – Aleczan's New Diary (FFXIV: ARR)

Terrible Void Ark Run

By Aleczan Knighthill | March 4, 2016 - 12:24 am |March 6, 2016 Battle Screenshots, My Rants, Screenshots

I was just in a terrible Void Ark run.

But it was somewhat tolerable, mainly because no one yelled or threw insults at others.

Our own party seemed to have 2 persons who don’t know how to dodge. 3rd person in our party kept dying because they wouldn’t stand in Medica range and kept missing the Medica effect. And I had a hard time running around to find them and get in Esuna/Regen range. And many people in party B seemed to be either slow in dodging as well, or they didn’t know the mechanics too.

First boss, at the second time where the boss chases and bombards a target, my party suddenly half-wiped in a blink. T_T The other party had so many dead people too. I barely managed to stay alive after getting jump surprise with a drop of water bomb….all because I couldn’t see who got marked. I guess others died because of that, too. Or the marked person ran the wrong way, I have no idea which.

We had noticeably low DPS and killing speed, in comparison with average Void Ark runs I’ve been in.

Cuchulainn was especially bad. First attempt we had so many deaths due to people not dodging the slamming tentacle, the green vomit from hell, and two of my own party members kept dying to the Bile from Under or something (can’t remember name).

I didn’t have enough time to try to communicate because our tank was the main tank. I think I might have to start making short macro lines to explain the key attacks that need to be dodge… So if someone keeps dying to the boss mechanics, I can just hit the macro button. T__T

Then our BLM died and accidentally, I believe, home pointed. So we were 1 DPS short. Then I saw an attack I’ve never seen before. I believe we were too slow in killing, so the boss raged. Like, the tank got bitch slapped to death, somehow, which happened while everyone else got stunned in the middle of jumping up to hide on the platform from the whole room Bile. Can’t really tell whether it instantly killed the tank and froze us, or if the tank died because all healers were frozen. The status was “Bind” and “Out of action.” The tank home pointed, perhaps accidentally, or perhaps decided to home point because boss rages and people were already dead. So I tried to raise party B’s tank, while trying to survive and healing the rest of my party.

Then I saw that the boss had 5% HP left, while the LB gauge was 3 bars full! I waited and waited for someone to LB while running around like a headless chicken looking for party members to save from death. Then, I realize I was the only person alive, and decided to use healer’s LB. I raised 5 people in my party and thought they would be able to finish it alongside other parties’ survivors.

But nope, everyone got severely attacked and we died. I truly believe that the boss was raging. :(

It was very exhausting. But at least on 2nd attempt, we managed to win.

Last boss wasn’t too painful, to say the least.

Now, I’m the type to stick around until the bitter end or until we succeed, if I see even the slightest ray of hope in it. When people fail and die, and keep dying, even after I said “Please dodge the tentacle” and when you would expect a person to already learn how to dodge from all the past deaths…. but there is no toxic attitude or comment or insult being thrown around in the party OR in the alliance, it is much, much more tolerable.

Like, if people don’t throw a tantrum and stay civil, I would have almost zero stress dealing with the situation, even after 2 or 3, or even 5 wipes. On the contrary, if we wipe once or twice, or even if we only half wipe and could recover, but people become salty and rude about it, yelling at each other, blaming other people without being constructive, my stress level rises dramatically, and all I want is to get out of that hell hole.

This alliance was bad in performance, but people stayed civil, and friendly. And we managed to win. No insult, no kicking and screaming, no spewing bad attitude. This is enough to make me willing to stay and try more attempts with them. I don’t mind failures as much as I mind bad manners and rudeness.

P.S. I think I’ve raised (not counting LB) people at least 20 times in just one run.

T5-T8 down, T9 underway

By Aleczan Knighthill | November 2, 2015 - 6:11 pm |November 2, 2015 Battle Screenshots, Cutscene Screenshots, Screenshots

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During the past weekend, my FC had a rare occurrence where 5 members were on at the same time and had the same plan: Ponies farm for Kirin and slowly progressing through our CoB content.

On Saturday we went for a round against the Primals and got a pony from Shiva, we decided to tackle T5, Twintania, again. This was like our 5th or 6th session in T5, as it was hard to gather enough people to try to practice against the Death Knights and Twister. We kept going at it for about 5 times this session, and finally fell Twintania and earned our long-awaited cutscenes.

On the last attempt where we won, I died from a Death Knight while Twintania was at 18%, but the rest ofthe party was able to finish it due to Corn’s epic timing in using Hallowed Ground and spamming Clemency on himself. I couldn’t believe my eyes lol. I was in shock, in awe, and in a daze I only got 1 bad screenshot of that scene ; ; So sad!

Then, we continued to the Second Coil of Bahamut and started T6.

T6 was quite straightforward and we won against Rafflesia without a wipe (I didn’t even know how we won. I can’t remember, I was in zombie mode in that fight because it became Sunday’s 3 a.m. and I had donated my blood on Saturday morning. I got very sleepy during the run.) It was quite a healing-intensive fight, and although I had watched the video guide (by MrHappy, of course) I couldn’t remember shit and was just running around, into the thorns, following the tank and keeping everyone alive, oh and also spamming Assize.

Then, we continued to T7 and kind of just winged it. We learned by practice after a quick read-up on mechanics. However, it was very late at night and had to disband after several wipes.

On Sunday, we went back to T7 again to try to defeat the Lamia. After practicing while adapting the normal strategy to our unorthodox party for a while, we finally won.

Then, T8 was so bad due to my sudden lag spikes. (resmon showed my FFXIV ping to be 2900 – 3400) that it was impossible to play. So I hopped the line and stole dad’s wifi signal instead. It then became playable. But I was a spoiled healer. I got very upset at the number of the mechanics to learn and memorize, so I decided to ask my party if I could just stand there lime dumb and heal bomb people, not dealing with the towers. I just couldn’t remember shit, especially since I was unwilling to spend 10-20 minutes watching any guide, so PZ gave brief to everyone, and me, while I was having lags issue and trying like hell to get to the boss room after we used wrong pads and jumped all over the place in random directions. I couldn’t concentrate on reading his brief, though. I was too busy trying to stay alive through ping 3400 while fumbling around to find my party and yelling at PZ for telling me to stop running. Worse yet, all the chatlog was wiped when I relogged to change internet connection, so I couldn’t scroll up to read anything.

I left all the tower management burden on my teammates. You guys got my extreme gratitude. I really couldn’t split my attention to anything else and was so overwhelmed it was frustrating. By getting to just stand there like dumb and doing nothing but my healing duty really was a big help.

Then, although it was like 4 a.m., we went to T9, partly for the cutscene. We are still learning the mechanics here but it was hard to watch video and adapt, as the phases went so fast because of the high DPS from the party being unsynced. (Actually, phases went abnormally fast in every of the Turns we passed, but somehow this one was so brutal when phases were sped up.)

Although we haven’t won yet, it was a good training run. It took a lot to learn and memorize, because this boss has a shit load of crazy mechanics. For now, I know how and where to drop the comets and when to share damage or when to split up. We will eventually get this. :D

Don’t automatically blame Cleric Stance for your death

By Aleczan Knighthill | July 29, 2015 - 3:34 pm |July 6, 2017 Battle Screenshots, Chat Screenshots, My Rants

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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.

Monk’s Battle Effects

By Aleczan Knighthill | May 23, 2015 - 2:59 pm |May 23, 2015 Battle Screenshots, Screenshots, Self Screenshots

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The other day, my desktop computer decided to mess with me and suddenly played FFXIV on slow motion. (Can watch here if you’re curious how it looked like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWSvfbKAIm0 ) So I saw it as an opportunity to play around with Weaponskills and take some screenshots which would be tough to take in normal circumstances.

The light effects are stunningly beautiful (a bit too bright, though, sometimes I can’t see anything lol, just blinding blotches of light).

I try to name them the best I could, but it’s from memory and doing the attacks again can’t really reproduce what happened in these screenshots (as my PC is now acting normal, no more slow motion) so forgive me if the Weaponskill names are wrong in any of these pics.

Dragon Kick

Demolish

ffxiv_Monk_Demolish1

Howling Fist

I didn’t get any good pic for Howling Fist on that day so here’s a new one to show the light effect.

One Ilm Punch

I really love One Ilm Punch. It’s handsome. :)

Rockbreaker

Snap Punch

Steel Peak

Touch of Death

True Strike

Twin Snake

First pic was taken from bad angle and distance, but this pic has the black snake-like shadow trace from my fist so I want to show it.

Twin Snakes impact!

Arm of the Destroyer

Bootshine

:D 21 pics, that’s it for today.

Tank who doesn’t Flash

By Aleczan Knighthill | April 30, 2014 - 5:44 pm |July 6, 2017 Battle Screenshots, My Rants

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I don’t play tank so I’m not sure if this is wrong, but I thought tank (GLA or PLD) is supposed to use Flash at start for initiative mob control or use it frequently while tanking multiple enemies at the same time. Today I went to Tam-Tara from Duty Roulette, and was in a party where THM was constantly reminding GLA to use Flash. I thought he or she was just being fussy, but after a while I noticed that the GLA never used Flash at all.

Of course the extra monsters (which we wasn’t targeting) would run everywhere. THM made heavy use of Sleep spell so that saved us a wreck. I would have failed at keeping people alive if THM didn’t use Sleep! I tried saying in /say (in case the tank person didn’t see /party chat) Flash will help a lot when there are more than 1 enemies. Please use it. (“Flash” and “Please use it.” was from auto-translation, just in case.) However, the GLA never used it at all.

Then, the THM said that the tank was using wrong spell, because the GLA used something that recovers MP instead of creating enmity. Since I have no knowledge in that, I didn’t say anything. ><;; Maybe the tank set wrong skill button or just didn’t understand how those skills work. Still, it is a headache to see that some people don’t play their role in the party properly and don’t pay attention to advice.

Roulette Tam-Tara party

At the boss room, at one point I was tanking 4 adds at the same time while GLA and PGL were busy trying to kill the Imps. THM? Of course THM was busy tanking the mindflayer boss on the other side of the room. LOL. PGL seems to have quick reaction when things start to beat up any of the mages and was the first one to come to me to kick those skeletons asses on all 3 rounds of adds summoning while THM ran around the room trying to stay alive, hahaha.

Was fun, though. I never knew that those adds were this weak. They were beating on me for a long time before rescue arrived, and I dodged most of the attacks and didn’t get too much damage. I should have tried to kill them off instead of spamming cure.