So you may know that I’ve been struggling my way through Stormblood on my Zuri alt with varying degrees of success. Generally, I make progress on her before other FC folks get online and want to do other things. This means that I’m usually in a PUG group for the dungeons, which I already am less than enthusiastic about playing.

Last night, I got to The Burn. This dungeon has a pretty tough final boss for an at-level party in general, not to mention a PUG with new folks in it. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, but seeing I only had two dungeons left until I’m free of this struggle, I pushed forward.

Things seemed okay at the start. The healer (and I believe the tank) was new. That’s fine, though it might mark trouble for the last fight.

I noticed on the first and second boss fight that our healer wasn’t responding well to mechanics. Standing in the red, not knowing where to go, not following the party when we were obviously moving to a location for a specific reason, etc. I also noticed she had a love of AOE healing – I’m not sure if she did single heals – and I don’t recall her doing any DPS.

But she did heal… even if that’s all she did. And DPS was fine, so that didn’t bother me.

When the trouble began was at the last boss – Mist Dragon. Without the extra healer DPS, there were some close calls on the DPS checks. But then things really got troublesome.

About halfway through the fight, I got encased in ice and died from the debuff. So I sat and waited for a rez.

And sat. And waited.

And sat. And waited.

I watched her standing over there throwing out an occasional heal on the remaining two members, while I was dead on the ground. She was not pressed for time or even needing to heal super hard – no major mechanics were happening. She simply didn’t even attempt to rez me.

I asked for a rez in party chat. I got none. Just her over there throwing heals.

All I could do was sit and watch. I noticed we had full limit break bars, and suggested a DPS limit break. But the dragoon went down before that could happen – we were something like 10% at that point on the boss.

And she didn’t rez him either. At that point I was like… what the heck – seriously? A healer who appears not to know how to rez in a level 70 dungeon?

I started to get a little frustrated at that point (I’m so done with Stormblood, seriously). While I tried not to be mean, I did make my displeasure known as we all wiped to something that was totally avoidable… if the healer had only brought the DPS back to life…. you know… like healers are supposed to do.

Then the first thing she said in the whole run was something about someone using a limit break. The tank thought a 2 bar limit break was going to bright the party back to life. And I explained that only a 3 bar healer limit break could do that (8 man party).

By that time, I already had a FC unsynced run in my pocket if I needed, but decided to give it another chance. I don’t know why.

So, we waited as the healer…. ran all the way back through the dungeon to the last boss without using the shortcut to quick-warp to the end. At this point, I fully realized we were dealing with someone who knew absolutely nothing about what they were doing and should not be in a level 70 dungeon.

We proceeded to wipe again as she died first this time to mechanics. At this point, I was ready to drop group as politely as I could. No one was giving grief or being nasty towards her – this time I didn’t even say anything.

She rezzed back to start and promptly dropped the dungeon of her own will after we were all dead. We got a healer replacement immediately and went on to beat the boss just fine afterwards.

For all my frustration, I got a commendation. Go figure?

I then went to look up this healer on Lodestone, and sure enough… everything about her character looked of a purchased level-jumped and story-jumped individual. So she bought a level 70 character (that had both healer and DPS options), and chose to go into a level 70 dungeon as a healer without knowing how to play that job, aside from the fact that she needed to heal.

Please… please… If you’re a new player, get some experience with your job under your belt and learn what your job’s responsibilities are before you level skip and try to take on level 70 content. Especially if you’re a healer or a tank. This content can sometimes be tough for people who already have game experience!

This is why Stormblood needs Trusts. Period. I have a couple more characters that eventually need to get through this content. I’m debating whether to just give up on it or hope and pray Trusts come to Stormblood.

Or pick up a really good sale on story jumps sometime in the future… but it’s a shame I feel like I need to skip content just to enjoy the game.