The Vent Tent - Poor PuGs and Other Terrible Tales

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Maybe i'm cruel but when I see that as a heal I like letting them die. I usually /upset at them the first time, then stop healing them altogether, while asking gently if they can let the tank pull.

 

Sometimes you get answered "it's a low level dungeon, chill", which is the most infuriating thing ever. Low level or not, they are making your job unfun and super annoying for the sake of their little whims.

 

I hate it when people pull "for" the tank. Let the tank figure out what they can handle. ...or gently nudge them in text like "you can probably pull the whole room, your gear is good and the healer's got you" or something.

 

I make this pained sighing sound at my computer desk and then usually try to keep the derps alive if healing, or get back enmity, if tanking. ...and if I'm DPSing, I go to the kitchen and grab a snack.

[Dat Oni]

If you pull for me, I let you die.

 

It's that simple.

[Warren Castille]

If you pull for me, I let you die.

 

It's that simple.

 

That's a double-edged sword depending on the attitudes of your group comp, though. It's entirely possible that the DPS "helping" will stay up with the healer doing their job (doubly so if it's a SCH in a low dungeon).

 

So the DPS won't die, and now the group is going slower because they're down half of a DPS, and you've just shown the group they clearly don't need you to continue on. It demonstrates an excellent reason to get kicked.

 

Source: I've had this happen to me, and it was with a healer+dps pair who just dropped me. At this point I just don't run low dungeons in roulettes anymore, or if I do I just lower my expectations accordingly. If someone's helping me pull, I just tank the rest of the group and don't bother trying to pull the target off of the "helper."

[Kurt S.]

I've had it up to here with my timezone being the absolute worst to be a roleplayer. Where your prime nights just happen to be EST mornings/EU afternoons and irl circumstance denying you the chance to mess your body clock up to wake at 2 in morning daily.

 

My question is, at the expense of sounding like I'm blind as a bat and a deaf one at that.

 

Are there any other methods of rping that could possibly not rely on being in game as everyone else?  How does one go about making it work?

 

On the bright side I've at least two characters now who have at least i212 on their at least one level 60 job. At least.

 

Sorry just had ta vent.

 

On an in game note.

 

People. You kill the knots for a reason. You dont let them kill you when cant even fight back my god.

 

How? @n@ How can things, that arent even able to attack, wipe out 24 people at least 8 times before VA went from Void Ark to Vote Abandon.

[Warren Castille]

I've had it up to here with my timezone being the absolute worst to be a roleplayer. Where your prime nights just happen to be EST mornings/EU afternoons and irl circumstance denying you the chance to mess your body clock up to wake at 2 in morning daily.

 

My question is, at the expense of sounding like I'm blind as a bat and a deaf one at that.

 

Are there any other methods of rping that could possibly not rely on being in game as everyone else?  How does one go about making it work?

 

On the bright side I've at least two characters now who have at least i212 on their at least one level 60 job. At least.

 

Sorry just had ta vent.

 

Forum RP? Shoot someone you want to write with a PM, come up with a plot, and then just begin hashing it out. Some people don't mind rapid-fire posting to mimic in-game, and some people just write two sides of the same story while shifting perspectives back and forth. It's a different beast from the actual game client but it's certainly valid.

 

If you don't have anyone in specific in mind, go to the Town Square and just make a thread. Put (Open) in the title so people know they can jump in, and then describe some sort of scenario for others to get involved. Bar night? Looking for a partner for a leve? Just randomly out on the town? Your call, really!

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Are there any other methods of rping that could possibly not rely on being in game as everyone else?  How does one go about making it work?

 

Forum? Skype? Google docs (or hangouts)?

 

...apparently people RP on tumblr, but that seems like it'd get messy really fast with all the replies/reblogs and people's [sometimes] esoteric themes full of hard to read layouts, fonts, and colors.

[FreelanceWizard]

Are there any other methods of rping that could possibly not rely on being in game as everyone else?  How does one go about making it work?

 

I do a fair amount of RP in Skype and a small amount on the forums. The bulk of my RP time is in game, but sometimes I need to do a scene before I get on for the evening, or with someone whose time in game doesn't mesh with my own, so... that's where Skype can be quite handy.

 

You can also do private one-on-one chats on the RPC chat. You just need to either poke the person when they're in the chat or have them on your buddy list in the forums (which should put them on your buddy list in chat).

[Kurt S.]

Ah well that opens so many options. I'll give em a go when I dont feel like death. Danke a lot (ouo)-b

 

But seriously, after marathoning VA, no, not Vote Abandon, 10 times, a good 9 of em had one thing going wrong with the knots. 1 of em even killing us all several times because no one could be assed to stand on platforms at least if not kill the knots themselves.

 

How does it fly over people's heads? ;w;

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Ah well that opens so many options. I'll give em a go when I dont feel like death. Danke a lot (ouo)-b

 

But seriously, after marathoning VA, no, not Vote Abandon, 10 times, a good 9 of em had one thing going wrong with the knots. 1 of em even killing us all several times because no one could be assed to stand on platforms at least if not kill the knots themselves.

 

How does it fly over people's heads? ;w;

 

They're getting high off all the poison. It does funny things to the head.

 

But also feel free to hit me up for out-of-game RP alternatives. The in-game stuff had been fun the couple times our schedules aligned like the planets. Franz is still the same big, dumb, grumpy drunk as usual.

[Korin]

Until today, I wasn't aware that harassing your tank into mass pulling in low level dungeons was a thing.

 

It really depends on the dungeons themselves. It's possible and preferrable in the super-lower ones, but Halatali's a bit rougher due to AoE and TP limits on classes. Toto-Rak and Haukke are both okay due to gating, but Brayflox and Stone Vigil get rough again. Cutter's Cry gates itself off really well, too.

 

If I had a nickel for every time I was told to "pull big" and then died ten seconds after settling, I'd have probably a lot of nickels.

 

Also, being the Tank means never having to take crap from the rest of the party, in a dungeon.

 

They don't like it? Let 'em drop. You're the tank. You'll have your party rebuilt while they're sitting in the re-queue. If they insist on pulling everything and bringing it to you at their pace, not yours, let 'em die, and tell them you're doing so. If they don't like it, you got a bad party, so why tolerate it?

Yeah...Sadly in this case it was only Copperbell, so they could have easily just dropped me and carried on.

The thing is, we had a lancer and a rogue DPS anyway so it didn't actually make the dungeon go any faster. The healer just had to heal me more than usual - Kind of a waste really?

[Askier]

I'm leveling and almost about to hit 60 for the first time.

 

Today I did Bismark Hard for the first time ever.

 

Since I tank, I watched a 4 minute YouTube video of how the mechanics of the fight work. Nothing too complex.

 

I then join the group and almost all, if not all were, level 60's. We proceed to wipe twice. I then, as the newbie, had to explain the fight and organize the group and not only personally activate the shield to keep the platform.safe from the ramming.attack because no one else would do it, I had to call out for people to use the dragon killers or they wouldn't use them.

 

I now understand my fellow tanks' frustrations.

[Valence]

Today in Dusk Vigil, healer says it's the first time he heals there (but not first time in the dungeon), tank immediately drops just after.

[Aaron]

LMAO!

[Kilieit]

First time DRK tanking. First time tanking anything at all past Sastasha/Tam-Tara/Copperbell.

 

Say before we begin that it's my first time tanking; ask people to take it easy, and apologise for slowness. (I get lost several times - Haukke Manor lol - but there's a friendly SMN who helps me. I hope he got all the comms and not just mine.)

 

Healer is AST who is tangibly reluctant to cast anything on me except Essential Dignity. They don't touch their healing spells unless I'm already below 30%, no matter how fast I'm dropping.

 

I love it when people hear "I'm new, take it easy" and think that means "I love to stress about cycling my cooldowns during every pull when I'm still so early in getting a grip on my basic rotation that I'm constantly tweaking my hotbar layout mid-dungeon".

 

I mean, I didn't die, so I guess on the one hand I can't complain. (I usually heal and "well, no one died, so it's okay!" is my default response to tank apologising for messy pull.)

 

But on the other hand, it would've been nice to feel like I wasn't being expected to instantly know how to pro tank, and like I was inconveniencing the healer by wanting them to heal uh, not perfectly weaving my mitigation cooldowns during my literal first ever dungeon as my class.

[Klynzahr]

 

 

Healer is AST who is tangibly reluctant to cast anything on me except Essential Dignity. They don't touch their healing spells unless I'm already below 30%, no matter how fast I'm dropping.

 

 

Astrologian is a very strange healing class below level 30. In that range we have exactly three possible heals; Benific that costs "meh" and heals for "meh", Benific II that heals for "kay" and cost "yikes" or ED that costs nothing and becomes extremely overpowered the closer that the tank gets to death!

 

ED is also instant cast, which means that you can literally snooze in cleric stance until the tank hits 15% health then jam stance swap + ED (both instant cast and off the GCD) and heal them fully for free.

 

I understand that it looks super scary but you are actually much safer than you would be with a conjuror, who needs to weave long cast time heals into their dps.

 

Edit: Also in those rare cases where tank health drops faster than ED's cooldown, AST just needs to use Lightspeed+ BenificII+ BenificII to achieve the same amount of healing with three instant spells and an MP hit. So there is very little danger even if a tank were to never touch their cooldowns, which has happened to me on more than one occasion at that level. >.<

[Valence]

If a conjurer can't handle a tank dropping too fast, an AST probably can't either.

[Klynzahr]

I wasn't saying that one can handle it more than the other. Just pointing out that optimal healing looks quite different between the two classes. When I run conjuror, I try to keep the tank around 60%-75% for safety. When I run astralogian, I allow them to nosedive and bounce them back up every thirty seconds, without breaking a sweat. It just comes down to the different class styles.

[Valence]

Yeah!

[lunoc]

It's such a drag doing Absolute Beginning Of The Game duties with inexperienced tanks who haven't even learned how The Video Game works yet.

 

I'm talking like level synced GLA in that one combined helmet/chest armor popping Sprint at every possible opportunity, circling every target in the dungeon like a buzzing gnat, and I mean EVERY SINGLE MOB IN THE DUNGEON, so my poor MNK ass can't get a decent positional attack off. I won't even start on expecting them to hold enmity because let's be honest if you think you're supposed to use Sprint and actually avoid attacks manually there's no hope for this run.

 

I'm not even mad at the newbies, they're probably just kids who're trying to have a good time but it just goes against everything I've learned about how to play this game smoothly. It's so weird to go from ilvl160+ content to bouncing my forehead off of clams on a completely different class I've decided to start leveling. It takes forever and it Sucks. And I can't even get mad because what kind of jerk would get mad at

 

it feels bad and i'll be happy when I get every job to 30 so I never have to willingly decide to go into sastasha/copperbell/tam-tara, etc. ever again.

 

ALSO another weird thing that happened to me was in haukke manor with a NIN, they dropped a limit break on that one trash group just before you head into the cellars, then said "Don't LB on trash folks" or something like that.

 

I asked if was having a stroke and one of the other people in that group said "lol u mean like ur stroking ur wiener" like ok thanks cool bye

 

it's one of the only times i've ever willingly left a duty it was so surreal and weird. In hindsight it was probably kinda shitty of me to do but I was having a weird head day I guess

 

anyway this has been my general summary of weird shit that put me off in ffxiv thx for reading bye im sorry :cactuar:

[Roelle Riviere]

It's such a drag doing Absolute Beginning Of The Game duties with inexperienced tanks who haven't even learned how The Video Game works yet.

 

Just the other day I was getting started on Lancer in Sastasha and knew before the first pull it was gonna be New'tank McGee escorting us. You can spot them a mile away. Male midlander, full bronze armor, helmet still turned on. It's like those guys get stamped out in a factory or something.

 

Sure enough, he couldn't hold aggro over anything. But I didn't mind, really. I mean, it's Sastasha, right? Just do the thing!

 

What did bother me was how the healer and bard started being all condescending to him, telling him to go do the training ground and how he should do this and do that and just really making a commotion out of shaming the guy as if he didn't know he was new. I don't mind new players, and I don't mind bad players, but damn I cannot abide soft-fisted bullying.

 

So I stopped to type out, "Just flash 4-5 times and regen your mana at the end with riot combo, it'll be fine." I don't personally do it that way anymore unless there's a good Black Mage or Scholar in the group going ham, but it's a simple tactic that a brand new Paladin can use to do a decent job for any group makeup without feeling like a rube, and he wasn't waiting around for us nerds to stop nerding before he pulled the next group anyway.

 

Then the healer starts laying into me instead, telling me I'm an idiot, and flash isn't strong enough to hold aggro on its own, and you only need to flash 1-2 times tops, and all he'll do is run out of mana and lose aggro, and it's impossible to flash that much and regen all your mana without losing aggro, blah blah blah.

 

I'm just sitting there like, mothertrucker I've played Paladin before, probably more than you, and it works different when you're at minimum dungeon level and don't even have Rage of Halone! But all I said was, "If you're holding aggro with 1 flash, your dps is bad," because I was too busy stabbing to expound thoroughly upon the finer intricacies of level 15 Paladin skills, the probability of pug DPS target synchronization, mana management, and the regen potential of the between-the-pulls jog.

 

And the healer replies, "Maybe you're just so bad you have to flash that much ;)"

 

condescending winky face oh shit! wolfing out! bitch moon rising!

 

Typed out half a paragraph of tank-otaku-sperging, then I remembered I'm a grown-ass woman, deleted it, and just said "Whatever man, your penis is huge, I give up," and let it drop so I could focus on spamming Impulse Drive. So the healer spent the rest of the instance being passive-aggressively insulting to me and not healing when I inevitably pulled aggro.

 

Funnily enough, the Paladin never said a word and seemed to be ignoring chat entirely, thereby winning the encounter.

 

That event made me want to load up my little level 26 Paladin gear and go do a dungeon the right way.

 

When what to my wondering eyes did appear, but that very same Bard in her artifact gear!

 

So I went and did exactly what I'd told that new tank to do, spamming the hell out of flash on every pull way more than I needed to, just to show it could be done without losing aggro and that I could begin every pull on near full mana without any standing around required. In the end, the bard made nice and agreed that the smarmy healer was probably full of it. I'm not such a good person that I didn't feel just a little pumped over getting to put my money where my mouth was and come out on top on such a petty issue.

 

Sometimes you get lucky.

[Kellach Woods]

So you roulette in Sephirot NM, and it's your first time. Congratulations, you hit the whammy!

 

You are a tank. What do you do?

 

a) You look at the other tank that's got 10k+ HP on you, is already in his tank stance, and knows what he's doing, figure he'll main tank it, switch to Sword Oath/Deliverance and try to follow the herd/wait for someone to explain the fight as much as possible.

 

b) Run in like a maniac, forsake any sort of pretension that you know what you're doing as far as general tanking goes, almost get killed by a tankbuster because your HP is so damn low, get sniped by a Yesod, get revived, try to wave your epeen around by taking Sephirot, die again, wipe the party then abandon duty because you couldn't sit and fucking listen.

 

* * *

 

This happened to me, I did A. We got 1 wipe and a clear.

 

This happened to another tank I was paired with. They did B, abandon after 1 wipe.

[Aaron]

I think it's because a lot of times dps and healer just expect the tank to be a perfect bot and not make mistakes.

 

Granted sounds like the other tank was faulty and you need to get the return with the receipt but yeah.

[Kellach Woods]

we had a new DPS, sure enough they died to a Yesod.

[lunoc]

is it ok to vent in the vent tent about Your Own Damn Self? 

 

I feel like I'm kind of a newbie despite the fact that I've got a Monk at level 60 and fully caught up on MSQ. Because it's like. The Only Class I even have past 50. My next highest is Paladin at 42. I have no real experience except with That One Weird Outlier DPS Class.

 

I almost never tank or heal unless I'm with friends that I know and it's been a long time since we've been able to get together in-game.

 

I find it so intimidating because the whole run basically depends on the tank and the healer having their shit together, like, Mentally? And I just feel like I don't have that most of the time.

 

How do yall get over that and just. Tank/Heal anyway? I know the rules for tanking, more or less, but even the most basic healing meta still kind of escapes me and I can never figure out how to even begin to arrange my hotbars for it. It also probably doesn't help that I've been a diehard controller user since day one despite being a PC player.

 

 

also i still don't have an active account right now why am i doing this to myself it just makes me want to play more

 

 

edit: im trying to make my posts less like horrible walls of text, im so sorry.

[Aaron]

Tanking and healing require a specific mindset plus spacial awareness (both of which can be learned mind you)

 

However some people just can't deal with the cost of failure so they don't do it.