I’m not sure what it is about roulettes lately, but they’ve been a constant source of blog posts. Since it’s mostly been the three of us running (Zeb, Amoon, myself), we’ve been picking up a random to fill in the blank. That’s usually a tank for Expert roulette.
Tanks seem to come in one of two flavors lately: A bit strange, but gentle with the pulls… or insane and wall-to-wall.
Now, I get that some tanks want to pull big to get the dungeon done more quickly. But last night, the tank chided me for using a limit break on a boss…. instead of the massive trash pull he planned to make later on.
Okay, so first, this Dark Knight tank zones in to Ala Mhigo wearing the Moonfire Faire speedos as a glamour. Ugh. This looks ok on female characters but on males… I’m not a fan. It’s about as impressive as tanks who glamour underwear.
Syn examines him and notes that his gear isn’t all that great. I’m not a healer, so I don’t really know what to look for. I just know that the guy constantly pulled big and that she could hardly do any DPS for fear that he would die if she wasn’t spamming heals.
So, despite crazy big pulls, we’re doing just fine. I know Ala Mhigo pretty well as it’s a common dungeon we roll on Expert. I’d finally upgraded all my gear like a good DPS, so I was feeling out my damage output, and pretty pleased with my AOEs.
Then we get to the second boss, and I limit break as I normally would. The tank pauses, and then:
What?
Did the tank just snark at me for using a limit break on the boss… instead of a trash pull? Who uses a limit break on a trash pull?
Well, apparently, I wasn’t reading his mind… because I discovered exactly which pull he’d expected me to LB down… because suddenly, he exclaims:
And he does this HUGE pull of just about everything from point A to B… three or four big groups. Only problem? He sprinted ahead of us, and the rest of the party got left behind, dodging an AOE… because we had no idea what “going to the gate” actually meant. In all the runs of this dungeon, I’ve never had a tank who did this.
Well, he died pretty quickly, followed by the rest of us.
This earned a “…” from me. Which is me showing disapproval without actually saying everything I really wanted to say to him about this mess. Syn and Amoon tried to explain:
What does the tank do? Proceed to insult the party.
This indicated that he would have to *sigh* pull slower for the noobs who didn’t know how to play with the big-boys… like you had to do back in July when the dungeon was still new. When he was the one who caused the wipe to start with.
At that point, I was really annoyed, and decided that he wasn’t getting a single AOE skill out of me for the rest of the dungeon, since he was in such a rush (we were close to the end anyhow). Syn had better ideas. After we easily cleared the first few individual pulls, this was how the conversation went:
By then, we were on the last boss, and he proclaimed:
Yeah, buddy. If that’s true, try acting your age.
Anyhow, not much else was said after that. Not sure if he got the point that not everyone can read his mind and that we aren’t all there for crazy speed runs. If you’re with your FC where you can communicate tactics like that, that’s fine. But in a roulette with randoms, don’t chide your DPS for doing what’s normally done, and run off without your healer expecting to stay alive. Just don’t.
These people don’t know how silly they come off. Or that they’re going to get blogged about. >:)
After the run talk:
Oh yeah. That’s right. The RPing tank. We’ll have to do that one tomorrow! 🙂
This one was funny. Thumbs up for Zeb for the best response ever to an insult. 🙂
Now I am really curious about this RPing tank. Looking forward to tomorrow’s post! 🙂
I tend to get easily frustrated with randoms, while Syn (Zeb) tends to find a way to gently make fun of them instead. I take things too personally, I know. But I’m still getting used to running things in a group environment. That’s what you get for force-grouping a solo player like me! XD
The RPing tank is actually a happier Duty Finder Tale. I try to capture those as well as the frustrating ones. It wasn’t a total “Forsooth!” type of RP, but it was… different.
I am the same way. Final Fantasy XIV helped me get over a lot of my issues with doing group content with random people and I had a lot of runs with good people. But I still get frustrated when we get some bad player that just blames everyone else when things go wrong. Even if I know I won’t have to see that person ever again after the dungeon is over.
Yeah, honestly, most of the random people I’ve run with have been just fine. But every now and then, you get a story like this.
Blogging about it helps me put it into perspective and shake off the frustration. I always wait until the next day to write about it, because I don’t like to write while still in a frustrated mood… that risks me getting ranty (which I try not to do). I also try to spin these Tales with some hint of humor and laugh about it after it’s over with.
I tend to be the tank in Experts so I don’t have a long queue, so all of my stories tend to be about bad dps instead…
Ala Mhigo is an odd duck due to the ilvl cap on it, so even someone without “great gear” can be capped out easily enough. TBH, it’s why I prefer Kugane Castle — no cap there so you can do a run in 15 minutes without even feeling like you did massive pulls or anything. And it doesn’t have the annoying bosses like Rhalgr’s Fist does.
That tank really pulled both Avenger groups plus all the doggies in-between the 1st and 2nd bosses in Ala Mhigo? That’s insane. I have never ever seen that done and can’t imagine trying. Doing it as 2 pulls (Avenger groups 1st, doggies later) is standard, and I have seen plenty gear-capped healers struggle to keep me up (also gear capped, and yes I use my CD’s — I use Hallowed Ground on the dogs every time to boot). Sure, a DRK can do some self-healing with the DA/Abyssal Drain combo, but it’s not THAT much healing.
Yeah.. that’s a crap tank who’s bought in to the “gogogogogogogogogogogo!!!!!!” mentality. Yikes!
Yeah, he did the huge doggie pull there, and we actually did alright with that. But then he pulled everything after the first Laserfield gate (the one you have to destroy the gate to proceed) to the second gate.
I had to look up a video to see what all he pulled by name. So basically, he pulled the big group of Legion Slashers to the Legion Hexadrone (which is what I usually see, and is shown in the video), but kept pulling — through the soldiers up to the next Laserfield gate. I’ve never seen that done, so I had no clue that DPS was intended to hold the limit break until that pull. Makes no sense to me because taken normally, as individual pulls, they go down pretty fast.
https://youtu.be/DZfDfvguz2I?t=16m24s
With this guy… I miiight have been able to keep him up. Except for the fact, there was a point where he had stood in a fair amt of AOE’s during the second boss. There was a point where he had stood in so many AOE’s that his HP dropped to about 1K in the middle of the fight. I had already used tetra for another AOE so… there went my benediction. He also didn’t living dead, so we were toast. The only quick heal I had up was tetra. So maybe he was the July 1, 2015 tank. 😉 I can usually keep up, even with my bad joints, but at that point it was toast.
I think he was waiting for salt. But instead, he got high fructose corn syrup. 😉
That July 1st comment was handled expertly, much nicer than I would have done!
I can’t wait to hear about your RP tank. My favorite RP incident was the person we got in one of the Alliance raids last expansion who was named “Lord Harchefaunt” and RPing as such. The whole raid got involved. Weird runs make for the best blog fodder!
That sounds like a fun time! We have a Harchefaunt RPer on my server, but I’ve never been in a raid with one!
That was a fun read. It’s always fun to see morons on the internet that think everyone should predict their every action.
All you can do is laugh it off. 🙂
And write blog posts about them, too, of course.
Clearly I need to get back on and level WAR. 😀
Yes, please! 😀
Just let me finish buying a house and then I might have time with my shorter commute to work. 😀
If you’re willing to run level 32 or lower content, I’ll happily tank for you three. 🙂
It’s been fun reading your stories. I’m usually super-nervous about DF random people, but I’ve had a bunch of really okay dungeon runs that way recently. Makes me feel better!
Still… I’ve had one or two…
If you ever need a leveling roulette, we could always use a tank for that! Just shout if we’re on and we’d be happy to group! 🙂
That is because you are an awesome healer, Athie. But this guy… he wasn’t exactly geared to be pulling from the first boss to the last. : / I don’t know that anyone could have healed through the scenario.
Zeb, I don’t doubt it one bit! Sounds like an impossible maniac.