FFXIV: Rage Raid Rant
Can I rant for a short bit? You don’t mind? Okay, thanks!
I usually don’t like to write annoyed or negative posts, but this has been an ongoing thing in Alexander Normal for the past week or so. Preface: I don’t like Alexander raids. I’m only doing it because I need to upgrade my accessories and I don’t feel like grinding Esos. In hindsight, I think maybe grinding Esos would have been better for my blood pressure levels.
Prior to this, Syn was telling me all about the super smooth and fast Alex 1 runs she had. I guess that was back when everyone wanted it for relic. It seems like when I queue up for it, though, everything goes down the tube.
Now, I’m usually a pretty patient player. I can understand if someone is new and doesn’t know the mechanics (please speak up). But what is super frustrating is when people are ignoring essential mechanics, or being absolutely selfish and not supporting team members in any way.
Let me clarify something. Unless tactics have changed, in Alexander 1, two Alarums drop for each Oppressor. It’s generally the DPS’ job to grab these Alarums, drag them to the laser and kill them under it so that the falling meteor doesn’t do massive raid-wide damage.
Has something changed in the past month that I don’t know about?
Because day after day, just about every run, DPS are not doing their job. Even when the tanks are asking them to pick up adds, I’m almost the only one doing it.
Or, even better, because I pull the Alarums like I should, and they are attached to me, if I do get help from the other DPS to kill one, the DPS runs back to the boss instead of taking a few seconds more to help me kill the second Alarum.
Now, let me state something about Bard DPS. Bards are frustratingly not a burst DPS class. And I’m there to earn gear, so I obviously don’t have all the DPS output of someone in full 210. So when the other DPS abandons me to take the last Alarum by myself, this is a much slower, painful process that usually ends up in having the healer (Zeb) intervene.
Since I don’t have time to refresh my dots on the Oppressor while fighting against the Alarum, this actually results in an overall DPS drop for the raid. Just help people out, folks, and stop being so rushed and worried about dropping your damage on the boss. If we worked on this stuff together, it would be much faster in the long run.
I am getting significantly more frustrated with Bard because of this. I know that had I been playing Tai’s dragoon, this would not be an issue. And it’s a real shame.
Needless to say, I actually earned a commendation for my pain last night. As rare as that is for DPS, that says something about how badly the other DPS were playing. There was really no excuse for ignoring mechanics… not a single time did we get the “A player is new to this trial” popup… so everyone had to have done it at least once before. The tank even explained what DPS needed to do, but they still ignored him.
To make frustrations worse, I’m only running this for the accessories, but I haven’t had a bolt drop for me in 7 runs.
Ok, rant over.
On a more positive note, I managed to get all my crystals for my White Mage relic last night. I also have just half a level before I hit level 60. So I’m almost there!
Now, if only I can get healer gear to drop in Void Ark and bolts in Alex so I could gear her up… I think I’d almost rather take Alex as a healer at this point.