FFXIV: Tales from the Duty Finder – The Magical Teleporting Tank
This post is a part of Blaugust 2016!
This is the story of a Dark Knight we met in Sohr Khai with an unfortunate, bad Internet connection. Somehow, this magically taught him how to teleport.
I’m serious.
One moment, we would see him lagging out, standing next to us with the disconnect symbol beside his name. The next moment, he had teleported ahead of us to the next group of mobs and already pulled before we realized it. This was crazy for Zeb as a healer, and the DPS could never anticipate when a pull was coming.
This was a constant stop-go-stop-go thing through the whole run, not just an occasional bit of lag. The tank often lost connection while tanking the trash, which led to scattered aggro all over the place. Our second DPS, a pretty competent Dragoon who never spoke once, must have gotten fed up with it because he dropped the group before the first boss.
The thing is, I don’t consider Sohr Khai a dungeon you can fool around in. I’ve died there too many times, and the a tank dropping connection on Hraesvelgr would be devastating. The Dragoon was probably considering this too, and cut his losses by dropping the group.
Now, the tank seemed like a nice guy, and he was apologetic for the situation. But rather than bowing out politely so we could re-queue or find a new tank (Note: We could have left without penalty after the Dragoon left), he decided to keep going.
The guy hadn’t really done anything wrong and I’m sure he’s normally a good tank, so Zeb and I (being the softies we are) grumbled a bit and didn’t have high hopes for the run, but didn’t drop group. Eventually, we got a second Bard to replace the dropped DPS, and continued teleportingly through the dungeon.
Considering the situation, we didn’t do too terribly. There were few fatalities along the way, despite how easily the tank lost aggro due to lagging out. But the true test was facing the final boss. None of us, not even the tank, were particularly stoked for it.
We… actually got through this fight on the first try. It was a bit hectic, and the tank did fall to his death (as expected) due to the pillar destruction, but thankfully, not until we got Hraesvelgr down to 3%. I was able to pop a last-second limit break and we downed the fight!
And in the end, he was super polite about it.
But I still wouldn’t want to try that again! Whew!
(And no commendations for this Bard. Bummer. 🙁 )