FFXIV: Tales from the Duty Finder – The Irony is Real

This post is a part of Blaugust 2016!

I haven’t had a Tale from the Duty Finder in a while, mostly because running with full FC groups tends to calm things down a lot. But this weekend, Syn and I decided to run the Crystal Tower raid trio.

The Loud Tank

Our story begins in Labyrinth of the Ancients. One of the parties had a Paladin tank, who we will just call Raine. This individual was quite loud and overly chatty in the Alliance channel. They weren’t being crude or anything, but just a little annoying, so I didn’t pay much attention. Lab went off like most Labs do, though Syn, who was one of the tanks on this run, noted that Raine was often loosing aggro to one of the Monks.

There were actually quite a few new folks doing the Crystal Tower this weekend, to my surprise. The queues weren’t terrible for a Saturday, either. So after we finished Lab, we queue up for Syrcus Tower. That’s where our story begins.

Tank Fight

As it sometimes happens, we queued up for the second in the series of the CT raids, and immediately saw that Raine was tanking on another team for this raid, too. We groaned a little, but went into Syrcus Tower, treating it like every raid we’ve had lately.

Only… either because of the number of new folks or for some other odd reason, our DPS was really, really low. So low, in fact, we were seeing the bosses do mechanics we haven’t seen in over a year or so (Daybreak!). Newer players had never seen these mechanics, since most of the time, teams DPS down bosses and skip phases. So there was mass confusion and even a wipe on the second boss.

This worked our friendly neighborhood tank up. Alongside the fact that he was fighting for boss aggro with the other team’s tank. This fellow’s name was Nobond. Raine was quite verbal about his irritation towards Nobond, and he and Nobond continued to fight for aggro on bosses, while Syn was trying frantically trying to off-tank so squishies didn’t get nommed.

I guess Raine must have “won” the “Tank Fight” on the final boss because he proclaimed quite loudly at the end (and I’m paraphrasing this more or less because silly me forgot to take screenshots):

“Know your place, Nobond!”

And these fighting words are what caught my attention. I wondered how this was going to play out. And while both tanks got salty, at least they kept it clean.

“You can’t hold aggro worth crap,” Nobond retorted.

“Well,” Raine proclaimed with the pride of a schoolyard kid, “At least I didn’t die!”

“So?” Nobond was not impressed.

“That means I clearly had the superior healers!”

I was laughing so hard that I forgot to roll on the loot.

Revenge is Sweet

Now, this exchange wouldn’t mean anything if it wasn’t for the third run of the day, World of Darkness. At this point, I kinda wished that Syn would wait a bit before queuing, because I knew we’d get stuck in an alliance with Raine again.

And sure enough, as soon as World of Darkness popped…

Raine proclaims in Alliance chat, “Hidey Ho, neighbors!”

*Internal groaning*

We get to the first boss, and someone hit a ready check. Syn, who must have been paying more attention to names in other groups of the alliance than I do, suddenly exclaimed, “No way!”

I was like, “What?”

She informed me, “That tank from the last run, Nobond? He must have requeued as a healer this time. And he’s on the same team as Raine!”

Sure, enough, I moused over the party list for Alliance A.

Raine was the tank. Nobond was his healer.

OHHOHOHO! The irony is real!

I chortled, “What I wouldn’t give to be in that party right now!”

Needless to say, Raine died quite a bit during that raid.

Superior healers, indeed.

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