FFXIV: Tales from the Duty Finder: A Tank and Their Chicken Cannot be Parted
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these posts… mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve had a party bad enough to write about. And while I used a Leeroy Jenkins reference as a picture above, really, we had the exact opposite issue in our run yesterday.
This weekend was kinda crazy in terms of the amount of content our FC was running in FFXIV. But, overall, I got a lot done on both of my characters. One of my final goals was to cap Genesis Tomes for the week, which would give me enough to buy a chest piece on Amon.
I was 30 Tomes shy, and though the others weren’t on at the time, Syn and I decided to hop in a quick Expert run to get it done. This was apparently a mistake.
This is going to be a long post….
We get Arboretum Hard, which is last patch’s dungeon, but still a part of the Expert run. There’s a new person, and this is fine. We get a tank and a bard who make it clear pretty early on they came in together.
Aside from a bit of LOLing at the beginning due to the bard’s Mario quote and the tank’s Thundercats macro attached to a tank stance… Yes, I’m serious…
…We didn’t really have any warning about how rough this run was about to get until we got to the first boss.
Strike One: What’s a Stack Marker?
Nullchu has a few major mechanics including dropping puddles of poison, a stack marker and a HUGE roomwide AOE that’s super-super obvious. After the first time you see him Devour, you should get the idea that it’s a bad idea to stand in the red.
But let’s talk about the stack marker.
By the time you get to this dungeon (it’s EXPERT roulette), you’ve seen the stack marker to split damage among party members… many, many times. It’s a normal, repeating mechanic.
The first time I got the stack marker, I bring it to the party like I should. Only Syn stacks on me. Neither the tank nor the bard moved an inch.
Well, maybe they just didn’t see it. Alright.
Then, they proceed to stand in the HUGE spewing roomwide AOE and poison puddles over and over again. The bard especially not moving. On top of that, the bard was hardly doing damage — certainly didn’t know to play songs (or what their songs did).
Then the second stack marker drops on me. Syn is pinned on the other side of the room by poison circles and can’t reach me. I take it to the party and… neither of them move to stack.
I die.
I was only a few steps from both of them, and neither of them attempted to do mechanics. I probably should have stacked on one of them, but I didn’t even think that it would happen a second time.
By now, I was a little annoyed. We managed to make it through the fight, and we dropped them a couple pointers (which they probably ignored).
Strike 2: The Chicken Episode
So we get through the boss fight and start moving through trash pulls.
There were several fights where I would accidentally get aggro off the tank and they just didn’t bother to try to pull the mob off me. These were large packs, and seeing that the other bard’s DPS was so low, if Syn and I weren’t doing damage, things weren’t dying.
Then, of course, they both get hit by the rolly polly debuff and the bard bounces around pointlessly in what I took to be glee… while we killed things for them.
That’s when the chicken episode began.
The tank asked us to stop for a second. So we did.
When they got back, they made it clear they were in the middle of cooking food. Then they spent time chatting with their bard friend about whether it was burned or not.
Okay, well…
From then on, it was stop and go and stop and go as the tank decided to eat their dinner during the run and chat about it with the bard. Because apparently they hadn’t eaten in days.
Okay, look. I get stopping to grab something off the burner real fast. That’s one thing. But, dude, if you’re that hungry, how about cook yourself something to eat, have dinner, THEN run a dungeon when you’re done? Imagine the concept!
Nope, instead he kept us standing here at the boss line while he munched and chatted about it with the bard.
At this point, Syn was ready to drop party. We probably should have, but I said… let’s give them one more boss fight.
When we finally did pull, this boss was a train wreck.
Strike 3: Oh, Were There Mechanics?
This boss has several mechanics that stack in a row. If you fail, you pretty much die. It’s that simple. These are mechanics that we’ve all seen before — especially the red eye on the boss, which means you need to turn away from it.
Guess who never made a single attempt to turn away?
I think the tank managed to do it right once. But the bard got feared over and over and over and died time after time. I was doing my best to do mechanics and make up for the loss in DPS… and slowly watched the aggro icon turn more and more red as the tank couldn’t hold the boss. But if I stopped doing DPS, the fight was going to take that much longer.
It was pretty clear by this time that we were carrying this group and that the final boss was going to be a nightmare. IF we could even get them through the last boss – that fight can still kill a party who knows how to follow through mechanics.
Strike 4: Now for Water!
After we take down the boss, the tank stops after the fight to eat dinner again. Oh, and to get a drink of water.
We dropped a hint that we were losing patience. Neither of them were even attempting to be team players and making us wait around on top of it was pretty rude. They kinda “…” it off and kept chatting.
That was pretty much the last warning we were going to give. And Syn decided it was time to drop. So she ate the penalty and left the group… right as the tank finally decided to get moving and pull huge. The tank didn’t even realize she was gone until he was dead.
I then watched the pack of mobs chase down and obliterate the bard. Because I was stuck in battle, I couldn’t drop group until I died, but I did manage to catch the astounded and clueless commentary as they raged. They really didn’t get it.
So I bluntly told them, making the rest of your party wait over and over while expecting to get carried through every fight was unacceptable. Then I took my leave.
I usually don’t get so snarky with folks. And I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve dropped a group like this. I’m not someone who rushes dungeons, nor am I not understanding when things IRL come up. If someone is new and needs help, I’m happy to teach mechanics.
But when you don’t even try to respect your party members’ time and effort, I’m not going to carry you to a clear. I don’t know if they managed to finish this run, but I feel a little sorry for the healer and DPS who had to pick them up after we left.