Frustrating

I decided to go back to FFXIV today, for many reasons. 1) I can progress further in the game without needing to interact with people so much due to the party finder and 2) Patch day, yay!

In particular, I was most excited for the Novice Hall. As some of you may know, I attempted tanking in FFXIV precisely once. In fact, that was the first time I ever tried tanking in any game ever. It went horribly, because I had not a clue what I was doing.

Well, I studied in the Novice Hall for a few hours today! Read some guides online, and then kept redoing the Novice Hall missions over and over until I could reliably keep enmity. So I went into my first dungeon (Sastasha)  as a newbie Gladiator, expecting it to go fine.

And, on my end at least, I think it did! I was holding onto enmity fine; a couple mishaps here and there, which was to be expected since it was my first time. I did a Shield Lob > 2 Flashes > and then started comboing. Marked targets. Initiated ready checks before bosses. The whole deal.

It got a little stressful at the last boss there with the adds since no one bothered to block the bubbles, so we got ALL THE ADDS. Which I was not prepared for, and I don't know how to tank yet, so that was difficult, and I admit that I resorted to Flash spam at one point when about 5 Baleen Guards spawned all at once and were after the healer. Didn't ultimately matter though, for reasons I'll explain.

But, the most frustrating part of all of this? I was dead 50% of the time. Why, you ask?
The healer only used Medica. Yup, just Medica. I don't know if this is typical in dungeons or not; I main a healer and therefore have never had to see a healer in a dungeon before besides myself (plus the couple of raids I've done, but the healers there were spectacular!). Oh, and they were also in Cleric's Stance the whole time.

It did not feel good to die on nearly every pull. The pulls were otherwise going well. I used all my cooldowns as much as I could to try and live, and I'd pop potions whenever they were available too, but I don't think I ever saw my health above 30%. And these were on just normal trash pulls. I found myself needing to use Foresight and Rampart whenever they were available, Fight or Flight + Bloodbath whenever they were available, and I'd pop Convalescence every now and again in hopes of living, but it was to no avail.

I guess I should have been a little more suspicious when I was placed in an in-progress party, but I just assumed that the tank had been bad or had left for other reasons. I try to assume the best of my party.

It was literally, I'd pull, get enmity on all mobs, combo combo combo to keep enmity, see my health rapidly dropping, pop anything I could that was available, and boom, dead. And then the party would proceed to somehow finish off the enemies without me, which made me feel quite bad about myself.

If any new healers are reading this, please, please, please, do not just spam Medica. I know they give it to you later, and it's AoE, so you'd assume it's more powerful / useful, but please realize that it is situational. Please know that Cure does more healing than Medica does, and that Medica has less range. Also, please note that Medica costs waaay more MP and wastes your MP. And please, please, please, do not be in Cleric Stance when healing. If my HP is fine then you're free to enter Cleric Stance and DPS, but if my HP is low you should be out of Cleric Stance and healing me. Cleric Stance reduces the potency of your healing spells by a considerable amount, so that on top of only using Medica makes for not very much healing.

But, regardless, after wipes every other pull and at least 5 wipes on the final boss, we did finally clear it. Well, everyone but me, basically. I was dead on the floor. I lasted about half the final boss's HP though...! I successfully held onto the enmity for the Baleen Guards and the DPS hit the bubbles. I died halfway through due to lack of healing, but the DPS somehow miraculously kited the boss around and killed it. So, yay...?

Thank you c: