FFXIV: Tales from the Duty Finder: Dog Days
See that picture above? That is the image of the Cerberus boss in the World of Darkness raid enraging and devouring the entire alliance. This happens when the alliance does not do mechanics.
So, from this very first paragraph, you can probably tell, this is going to be a fun story.
We pop a normal Alliance Roulette and get World of Darkness. There’s no new player bonus, just for future reference. I noted on the trash pull that our DPS was on the low side, but no problem. This is older content and we’ll make it through, right?
Oh man.
Dragon Days
The entire raid had this complete tunnel vision mentality where the only thing worth attacking was apparently the bosses. Sadly, World of Darkness cannot be cleared this way. There are some mechanics that can’t be ignored.
We manage to get through the eye boss and to the dragon before the fun really started. We had a tank named John- something that didn’t know to pull the boss back to give DPS room to move around, and he was completely ignoring Alliance chat.
This caused Syn to put up a marker at the back of the room to indicate where the tank should pull the boss. Only, this was ignored, too. So the Alliance began showering the back of the room with markers to stress the point.
When this didn’t work, our healer attempted to appeal on a first name basis.
Finally, the tank in our group decided to take control of the fight, and things went fine after that.
However, this led to the problem of a healer and bard in our group deciding no one knew what they were doing and it was time to direct the raid with their Expert Commentary™.
Doggone
When we got to Cerberus, the Expert Commentary™ was demanding that only team B go inside the dog for the stomach wall mechanic. Which… is really not the way it’s been done in years. Usually, DPS just goes inside, burns down the stomach walls, while tanks and heals take care of the adds and chains outside.
However, since Expert Commentary™ threw out instructions on how to do it, and this raid was so focused on boss tunnel vision, only three DPS – myself included – went inside — none of which was from Team B, I might note.
Naturally, three DPS alone can’t do the mechanics and stay alive inside the boss.
We died.
No one else came in to do the mechanics.
Boss enraged, just like the boss does when no one does mechanics.
Raid wiped.
Frustration abounded and I actually typed something in Alliance chat for once in a blue moon.
Expert Commentary™ began to rage and demand all the more that it be done a certain way. Myself and two of the DPS in our party completely ignored their demands because last time, if we hadn’t gone inside, no one would have.
This caused Expert Commentary™ to rage all the more at us DPS for not doing it the way they wanted us to. To which, I had enough of their mouth, and let them know — the more DPS that go inside, logically, the faster this fight goes.
We got through it this time, but boy did I want Expert Commentary™ to shut up after that.
The funny thing was during the Cloud of Darkness battle, one of Expert Commentary™ got slaughtered by the lightning marker that you have to keep running from. That might have been the highlight of the run.
And, I ended up with a commendation when it was all done with. 🙂