The Vent Tent - Poor PuGs and Other Terrible Tales

[Jana]

I'm not at all interested in FF as a series (in fact, I only paid for XIV after giving it three chances and it was mostly the presence of friends in the game that got me to stay). I'd say the only reason I know anything about the past titles has been just absorbing it over time that I've been playing video games in general.

 

If someone who's 12 and is playing XIV as their first MMO, I could see how they might not know anything about FF games earlier than, say, XIII.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

If someone who's 12 and is playing XIV as their first MMO, I could see how they might not know anything about FF games earlier than, say, XIII.

 

Not to mention they may simply just not be interested in the previous titles. They're not strictly needed for FFXIV to be enjoyed. And that's pretty much what the game comes down to eventually.

 

The references are there for the people who'll enjoy them. Otherwise, they're just parts of the game and can be good on their own. FFXIV has a lot of references, but knowing about the Antlion Cave in FFIV doesn't make Cutter's Cry any easier, as an example.

[Caspar]

If there was a Suikoden or Wild ARMS MMO I would be playing that instead of this. FF is maybe third tier in terms of important RPG franchises for me, but I coincidentally happen to enjoy this game. The only reason why I get references is because of obsessive wiki-diving habits. Otherwise I probably played more of Live A Live than most of the titles those references come from, as far as SNES/NES-era Square goes. That's why I can understand someone not getting earlier references. PS1-era Square brought in a lot of fans for the first time. Before the PS1 I played sidescrolling games like Megaman, and in the arcades, not RPGs. Not everyone grew up with the same gaming experience I guess.

[Aaron]

And if your knowledge on past FF titles is lacking, I will be happy to teach you!

Doing a lil bit too much there aren't you? Calm down a bit.

[Charity322]

Yes, damage affects your hate/aggro generation. Having low gear will affect that, definitely.

 

Even when gear is synced down?

 

FFXIV is my first FF game. I've never played any of the others. But I thought that the lore etc. was different for each game, so FFXIV was a stand alone. I have no time to play the previous iterations; I'm too busy playing XIV (my sims are suffering because of this).

[Gegenji]

Yes, damage affects your hate/aggro generation. Having low gear will affect that, definitely.

 

Even when gear is synced down?

 

Yeah. Because even synced down it's either as good as the best gear you could have at that level... or better. I forget which. So you're dealing with effectively "optimally" geared folks throwing out big numbers that you have to deal with in your likely hodgepodge set of leveling gear. Though, hopefully, if folks know you're a new tank they should try and keep it in their pants until you have solid aggro.

 

Emphasis on should. Since some folks like to explode right out of the gate regardless of situation. Even in an Alexander Midas 1 that I got into on Mentor roulette... we had a new-to-the-fight tank who couldn't even get the boss into the corner because two of the DPS decided going whole hog from the get go was the best plan. Even after it got them killed in every attempt they did it.

 

Needless to say, the instance was ultimately vote-abandoned and I got to enjoy waiting in the Mentor queue again.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Yes, damage affects your hate/aggro generation. Having low gear will affect that, definitely.

 

Even when gear is synced down?

 

FFXIV is my first FF game. I've never played any of the others. But I thought that the lore etc. was different for each game, so FFXIV was a stand alone. I have no time to play the previous iterations; I'm too busy playing XIV (my sims are suffering because of this).

 

Some nice blue or purple (even green and pink) icon gear is gonna sync with much nicer stats than item-level equivalent white gear or at-level white gear. Generally, a tank can kinda get away with not having super-amazing gear as long as they have a decent enough weapon (or enough armor to make up the difference) and know how to use their skills and cooldowns effectively. But let's say a fresh tank enteres their first Sastasha and is maybe a whole i10 on average and gets mixed with a bunch of end game players? Their synced gear is gonna make it rough and sneezing in the direction of an enemy could rip it off the tank who's getting started.

 

RE: Other Final Fantasy games, they share common themes, but no two numbered games have ever been the same, shared the same plot or had the same characters. (There are usually moogles, and crystals and some guy named Cid who deals with airships/transportation of some sort though!) So there story in FFXIV is not going to be seen anywhere else. Now, the MMO does pull elements from other games, but it's much more like references and callbacks. They're not directly importing another game's story or plot and rigging it into Hydaelyn. A lot of people enjoy the previous titles, which have been ported over to a variety of more modern consoles and devices. (Quite a few have mobile phone ports, but they may suffer from upscaled graphics or other modifications). If you're the sort of person who has odd pockets of free time while not around a computer, I'd recommend picking one up for your phone and seeing how it goes!

[Kage]

Mmm with ilvl30 gear in Cutter's Cry I can see why you might have had some issues. You would need to spend much more time actually making sure you get aggro and regain it.

[Valence]

If you have some Grand Company seals, I would suggest to invest them into Grand Company gear at your level. Those are really good, even better than your usual green/pink dungeon stuff since their ilevel is one or two levels higher than their base level. And they synergize together with bonuses.

[Aedan Marceaux]

So apparently Wiping City is holding true to its name, now. I feel like groups are doing worse now than they did on launch day. I haven't gotten past the second boss in about a week and a half now...

 

It's really quite depressing since I only need one more penny for my plans...

[Kage]

So apparently Wiping City is holding true to its name, now. I feel like groups are doing worse now than they did on launch day. I haven't gotten past the second boss in about a week and a half now...

 

It's really quite depressing since I only need one more penny for my plans...

It's funny because the one run I'd run on Tuesday I had had 1 wipe on arachne, 1 on Forgall because other melee in my alliance can't keep their stuns in check and people with silences don't bother, 2 on Ozma before the people who were being shitty and left, and then all we had to deal with was a tank who thought it was better to turn Calo (isn't bad until the last phase where ranged are most likely to get haircut cleaves when trying to dodge the axe/clubs etc)

[Ruran]

Yeah, I've been having Weeping City woes as well. It seems like I can't get into a group in the past few weeks who don't wipe on Forgall/Ozma/Calofisteri at least once (often 2-3 times each) due to little mistakes like not killing adds or tanking them correctly.

 

In one instance, the bickering over the alliance chat was so bad that no one was focusing on the fight. A bunch of people were being petty, insulting each other, comparing epeens. :I Eventually a Vote Abandon succeeded at Ozma, after the alliance wiped 4 times.

 

What's going onnnn

[Gegenji]

I'm wondering if it's just that whole lapse of "the higher skill players got their stuff and have all moved on." It's something that always seems to happen at one point or another - the players got their gear and dropped it so you're left with, well, "the dregs." The new, the lazy, and so on. The coins kept folks coming back for a bit longer... but you're still going to see the drop once the players have their full kit upgraded - and even the addition of weapon upgrade adds only one more week unless they're going for multiples.

 

And I'm mostly speaking from experience because that's what I did. Once I had my full healer set upgraded, I dropped running those raids because that's an hour+ of time I could better spend elsewhere. Time management and all that. Also why I always tried to knock them out on a Tuesday, on some (possibly confirmation biased) belief that the more serious players would also be trying to knock it out as soon as possible to upgrade their raid gear for that week's attempts.

[Delilah Scythewood]

I'm wondering if it's just that whole lapse of "the higher skill players got their stuff and have all moved on." It's something that always seems to happen at one point or another - the players got their gear and dropped it so you're left with, well, "the dregs." The new, the lazy, and so on.

Can totes agree with this. While I no longer run the raids, I have a few friends still getting glamour pieces and it's all they're running into. In the last two or three weeks I've heard nothing but stories about the incompetence of those in Wiping City of Salt.

[Kage]

Pretty sure most of gotten their alts geared and have stopped while it's always just rushed on Tuesdays.

 

Even then, on tuesdays you will find some derps.

[Delilah Scythewood]

RP related, but holy assbutts Batman.

 

When someone who doesn't know me (like, at all, we just met a few weeks ago with very little OOC conversations) has the audacity to make the OOC comment to me during RP that my fiance seems 'submissive and needy' when I had to ninja afk to chat with him about groceries? Their response: 'that's just based on my experiences. Then again, I can be an arrogant asshole'.

 

Uhhh.

 

Yeah. Arrogant asshole. We'll go with that, brosef. I've blocked and deleted people for lesser comments regarding my personal life then that who actually know me. You're lucky I even took the time to tell you to get a cactus shoved up your mangina. 

 

It's even worse when they started the whole thing with "No offense" and then seemed a bit cross that I got eye twitchy, like "No offense" automatically forgives someone for making audacious comments like that. Nah bro, gtfo.

 

Here, my kiddo and I use this to describe our distaste of people like you. It's a lovely shade, isn't it?

 

[Chidori]

So I decided to do A8 a few times for gears for 240 wep. Easy stuff yea? First time I went in as a bard for fun, haven't barded in a bit. Went fine. Decided to go healer after that. So first bit went smooth, til the tank just afks right at the add phase. Shit happens, I assumed something popped up irl. We wait a few, end up kicking him and more on. 3rd one went fine. Then we got the AFK tank for the last one again. Now I am SURE this dude is trolling. We start. Right before ads pop. He stops moving for like half a minute, then is like "DPS is low, I am leaving". Then goes "I can't leave in combat" So he halfway does his job. DPS keep standing in all the things and dying. I keep bringing them back up, but with some of them the weakness is so bad, they can't stack. We wipe lack to dps. He starts to berate everyone

 

Me and Rog were like >.> since we had him before. And it was very clear he didn't know what a cooldown is. I heal Rog all the time as a pally, so admittedly I am spoiled by him. But I have had my fair experience healing bad tanks as well. And this was one of the worst.

[Cecily Jisi]

Alright, I got a doozy...

So last night a friend asked me and our FC leader to join him for a Weep raid. It was going fine at first, I was dying though but that was because I was experiencing lag (there were like three separate Netflixs going on at once), frame rate was slowing down with all the confusion every now and then cuz my computer is four years old, and I was a bit rusty on raids as a whole (it was only my second time in Weeping City). I was being hounded by this guy ( don't know if I should give a name or not) because of my performance issues. But did he care? Noooooo. When we got to Ozma, I died because in all the confusion, I didn't see the Singularity thingy target me. Nobody wanted to raise me. So after like two minutes, I'm just like "Whelp, guess all I can do now is just watch", and that cockbiting fucktard was STILL on my ass about it. It was then when I got kicked from the duty. I don't think I had ever been kicked from a duty before until last night. I was honestly a little hurt by how much people take raids so seriously that they'd kick me for being a little rusty. But let me ask you again; Do. They. Care? No. Moments after I realized what happened, our CF leader appeared next to me, back in front of our house. I don't know if she was also kicked or left out of disgust by the mental condition of the cockbite, but we just sat, I was being comforted by how I was being treated unfairly. After a while, our friend who was still in there told us that Ozma swept them a total of three times but killed the last boss in their first try. Which is odd because I remember in my first run of Weeping City, the Ozma fight went rather smoothly.

 

So long story short, I have a terrible taste in my mouth towards raids now because of a piece of filth that got me kicked.

[Dat Oni]

Who's ready for another horror story from good ol' Catboy Hideo Kojima? I thought so.

 

Today I had a SMN in Sohr Kai and a DRG as my DPS. DRG is new, no problem, and SMN has an i240 relic. "Okay", I says to myself, "Gotta teach DRG, best go slow with the pulls, and we'll have no problems."

 

Not 5 seconds into the second pull, we have a problem. For some reason, the aggro is being ripped off me. I think, "Maybe i'm just bad at the gameMaybe it's just SMN parsing really well. I have an i230 PLD sword and shield, but meh, i'll compensate with more Flashes."

 

By the last pull before the first boss, it becomes obvious this is not working, and it's at this point I realize HE'S USING TITAN EGI.

 

FUCKING TITAN EGI.

 

So, I tell him not to use Titan Egi. His response is "dude just play ur classs [sic]". 

 

I inform him that I cannot because he's ripping aggro off me. I tell him to use Ifrit Egi for Bosses, and Garuda Egi for mobs. He rolls his eyes and politely tells me "yea ok tell me how to use smn master [sic]".

 

My response is that my alt is a level 60 SMN, which seems to shut him up.

 

We go to the boss, he summons Garuda Egi. "UGH", I think to myself, but I go ahead with the boss battle, and I learn how it's possible for a BiS SMN to parse less than a PLD. We go to the next set of pulls, and he summons Ifrit Egi to deal with them, which you'll notice is the exact opposite of what I asked him. He even throws out Titan Egi AGAIN during one of my pulls just to fuck with me.

 

By the next boss, I understand what this fucker is doing when he summons Garuda Egi again to deal with a boss: he's intentionally doing the exact opposite of what I'm asking him. We kill the boss without too much of a hitch despite his best attempts to fuck with me, and I call up a votekick for harassment. He's gone in seconds. Glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought this was bullshit.

[Valence]

Last roulette in Hullbreaker for a change, it was me that turned kind of into a douche. Okay, not intentionally, pretty mild, but well.

 

Tank had sometimes difficulties to hold aggro. I'm BLM-ing with a good MNK that was parsing similarly to myself, and a very good WhM that was not that far behind either with holyspamm.

 

It went pretty smooth though, even if we took a few hits at times or just died a few, until we reached that pack of 3 mobs with the rogue dude that poisons you. Tank misses to aggro everything, and since we DPS well enough all hell gets loose. Healer gets twoshot by the rogue and the rest, and the tank dies just after. 

 

All the mobs turn on me as I'm in astral burst phase with AoE spells... Notice that I forgot to pop quelling strikes. Pop it out of habit even if I'm going into umbral. Pop up manawalls to survive a few seconds longer, teleport to the poor monk in a panic... And transfer him all aggro since quelling strikes + umbral no dps mode.

 

Monk dies and I kill the last remaining mobs. 

 

Felt like a huge douchebag BLM after.

[Charity322]

So, I tell him not to use Titan Egi. His response is "dude just play ur classs [sic]". 

 

I inform him that I cannot because he's ripping aggro off me. I tell him to use Ifrit Egi for Bosses, and Garuda Egi for mobs. He rolls his eyes and politely tells me "yea ok tell me how to use smn master [sic]".

 

 

I remember doing a dungeon with a tank who, a short way in, politely asked me if I could please switch to Emerald Carbuncle as Topaz was competing with him for aggro. I said, oh really, I didn't know that. I'll switch now.

 

No need to get butthurt about being asked to fix a problem. They just explained what the problem was and I took their advice to fix it. I don't get why people get shitty about stuff like that.

[Aedan Marceaux]

Last roulette in Hullbreaker for a change, it was me that turned kind of into a douche. Okay, not intentionally, pretty mild, but well.

 

Tank had sometimes difficulties to hold aggro. I'm BLM-ing with a good MNK that was parsing similarly to myself, and a very good WhM that was not that far behind either with holyspamm.

 

It went pretty smooth though, even if we took a few hits at times or just died a few, until we reached that pack of 3 mobs with the rogue dude that poisons you. Tank misses to aggro everything, and since we DPS well enough all hell gets loose. Healer gets twoshot by the rogue and the rest, and the tank dies just after. 

 

All the mobs turn on me as I'm in astral burst phase with AoE spells... Notice that I forgot to pop quelling strikes. Pop it out of habit even if I'm going into umbral. Pop up manawalls to survive a few seconds longer, teleport to the poor monk in a panic... And transfer him all aggro since quelling strikes + umbral no dps mode.

 

Monk dies and I kill the last remaining mobs. 

 

Felt like a huge douchebag BLM after.

To be fair, that pull is rather annoying as a tank... in terms of "mechanics". The rogue doesn't move until he's done doing his stealth crap... and the mob on the far right (caster? archer? never paid enough attention to what he's doing exactly) doesn't move either. The only mob that moves is the one in the center... and the other two are spread too far apart to hit with -insert aoe threat move here-.

 

So, depending on the decisions of the DPS (and possibly healer) in the group, that pull can get out of hand pretty quickly. 

 

Personally, what has seemed to work best for me thus far as a DRK, is unmend the rogue, then quick tab target to the middle and lunge, then drag the middle to the right and unleash. Eventually, assuming the DPS didn't go apeshit on it, the rogue joins the rest of the group and I'll unleash once or twice again and it's smooth sailing from there.

 

Not calling you out by any means, but it really is simply a small matter of patience on that pull as everything is spread out so much that it's a bitch to get snap aggro on everything as a tank.

[Gegenji]

To be fair, that pull is rather annoying as a tank... in terms of "mechanics". The rogue doesn't move until he's done doing his stealth crap... and the mob on the far right (caster? archer? never paid enough attention to what he's doing exactly) doesn't move either. The only mob that moves is the one in the center... and the other two are spread too far apart to hit with -insert aoe threat move here-.

That's usually why I usually throw my tomahawk/shield at the left one and then move for the right one. That way I can aggro it and the actual moving one to me and - if the one on the left has latched onto someone else - throw another ranged attack and/or Provoke to bring it over to the other two.

 

Anyway, I griped about this in-game yesterday, but I continue to have the most "wonderful" luck with getting EX Primals for my Mentor roulette. Getting them by themselves wouldn't be a problem - albeit they require a lot more effort than I'm usually willing to put into a roulette - but the issue is I always seem to get them with some manner of nitwit or flat-out jerk. And they usually end up with a vote abandon, so I end up wasting a lot of time for nothing. I've only had one successful one and that was, oddly enough, a Titan EX where we barely scraped by on the fourth or fifth attempt.

 

So, bearing all that in mind - and perhaps remembering my last rant about my Shiva EX with the badmouthing lazy Mentor - you can probably guess I was skeptical when I got Ramuh EX for my roulette. However, I still figured I'd give it a shot since I kinda remembered the mechanics from when I did it unsynced as a tank for pony farming months back.

 

The issue was - again - the other players. Well, one in particular this time - the other tank. Basically everyone was new to it, so I tried to explain what folks had to do. A lot of the others were making the usual mistakes - forgetting to drop a thunderbolt on the terrored folks, stacking too many, and so on. That was fine, they were at least trying to figure it out and keep going.

 

The problem child was the other tank. First pull I tell him he needs to grab orbs to survive the tankbuster hit. He ignores me and dies. This ends up being the theme for him. Refusing to take the orbs, repeatedly trying to steal aggro off me when in the brief moments I run off to grab orbs myself, standing on TOP of me so that he dies when I get hit by the tankbuster...

 

I basically tell him three different times that he needs to grab the orbs if he wants to tank Ramuh. Every time he ignores me, sits in tank stance, and basically wastes the healers' time and MP by getting himself blown up. And the furthest we as a group ever get is to the first adds phase.

 

So... I bailed and ate the thirty minute cooldown timer. Probably not the coolest thing for me to do, but I wasn't going to sit there and bang my head against Ramuh EX with a co-tank that wasn't going to listen. Oh, and we had another mentor in the group whose only contribution was to say "Classic" when the group wiped from stacking too many lightning bolts on the terrored players. So yeah, I figured retreating was the better part of valor.

 

Ended up getting a Satasha NM run with two low-level DPS and a SCH and crushing the hell out of it once I queued up again. Followed by a Hullbreaker for my Expert where we also just straight-up steamrolled our way through. So... bad story with a happy ending, I suppose.

[Valence]

Last roulette in Hullbreaker for a change, it was me that turned kind of into a douche. Okay, not intentionally, pretty mild, but well.

 

Tank had sometimes difficulties to hold aggro. I'm BLM-ing with a good MNK that was parsing similarly to myself, and a very good WhM that was not that far behind either with holyspamm.

 

It went pretty smooth though, even if we took a few hits at times or just died a few, until we reached that pack of 3 mobs with the rogue dude that poisons you. Tank misses to aggro everything, and since we DPS well enough all hell gets loose. Healer gets twoshot by the rogue and the rest, and the tank dies just after. 

 

All the mobs turn on me as I'm in astral burst phase with AoE spells... Notice that I forgot to pop quelling strikes. Pop it out of habit even if I'm going into umbral. Pop up manawalls to survive a few seconds longer, teleport to the poor monk in a panic... And transfer him all aggro since quelling strikes + umbral no dps mode.

 

Monk dies and I kill the last remaining mobs. 

 

Felt like a huge douchebag BLM after.

To be fair, that pull is rather annoying as a tank... in terms of "mechanics". The rogue doesn't move until he's done doing his stealth crap... and the mob on the far right (caster? archer? never paid enough attention to what he's doing exactly) doesn't move either. The only mob that moves is the one in the center... and the other two are spread too far apart to hit with -insert aoe threat move here-.

 

So, depending on the decisions of the DPS (and possibly healer) in the group, that pull can get out of hand pretty quickly. 

 

Personally, what has seemed to work best for me thus far as a DRK, is unmend the rogue, then quick tab target to the middle and lunge, then drag the middle to the right and unleash. Eventually, assuming the DPS didn't go apeshit on it, the rogue joins the rest of the group and I'll unleash once or twice again and it's smooth sailing from there.

 

Not calling you out by any means, but it really is simply a small matter of patience on that pull as everything is spread out so much that it's a bitch to get snap aggro on everything as a tank.

 

Oh I know, I have seen enough of that run to be well aware of what tanks face. As a most gentlemanly DPS I always wait a bit that tanks get their aggro correctly before attacking myself. The others here seemed more or less to do it too.

 

Just that tank was... not totally sure of themselves or just slacking since it's not in all runs that you get 2 good DPS and a really good heal pulling out a good amount of damage as well.

 

He lost aggro with some other packs as well, the same way, and was totally panicked in the first boss. He wasn't terrible really. Just that his little mistakes costs us our lives a few times, and I played like a dick at the end.

[Aaron]

To those here who Feast PvP.

 

You ever get that one healer who can't heal for shit and it can clearly be seen at the end when the score sheet pops up and you see the enemy healer has healed twice as much WHILE moving around avoiding attacks.

 

Or that one DPS that grabs every medal drop before the tank (which us usually me) gets it, or when you have to grab medals before they disappear because nobody gets it, then deal with bitching of jumping from 4 to 10 stacks and going "If you'd you know, walked over the medals like a smart person we wouldn't be in this mess."

 

No tank is going to survive the remaining 5 minutes with 10 stacks. That's like a 200% vulnerability up increase. You can get dpsed to 0 by a fucking PLD (I've seen one do it when I was a NIN!)

 

PvP is fun.