I just left a dungeon for the first time in my life

I don't want to call it a "ragequit" because I didn't yell at anyone or anything. I just knew that I could. not. do that. And so left before the inevitable yelling began.

That was awful. Absolutely, completely, and totally awful.

I had just a sliver of exp remaining before I would be level 53, so I decided to do another random leveling roulette. I had just done three today, and they'd all gone smoothly, and I am confident in my healing abilities.

The roulette places me in Brayflox normal. Tank asks if anyone is new. We have one newbie DPS. Alright, totally fine. I could run Brayflox in my sleep at this point. Nocturnal Stance. Protection. Get my food exp buff.

First pull goes very rough. Tank takes a LOT of damage very quickly, but I get him back up. No problem. Rough start, but very rarely does this dungeon go bad until the end. Next pull, same thing, except this time the tank doesn't hold aggro so great.

We get to the first boss. At this point I am skeptical about this tank. Enter combat. The tank pull the boss, but doesn't bother to aggro the little ones. I wait until his HP gets down to a fairly dangerous level before healing him, in hopes that he'd pick up the adds in the meantime. Nope. All the adds go after me. Adds switch between me and the DPS, the tank uses seemingly no cooldowns, and barely even their enmity combo because they're taking immense amounts of damage and the boss starts chasing me. Luminiferous Aether in a vain attempt at getting these monsters off of me. First DPS goes down. Swiftcast + Ascend and they're. Conveniently in time for Swiftcast to be available again, the tank goes down. Swiftcast + Ascend, all set. I'm still tanking the boss. Running low on MP and the boss still has half a health bar. BLM is trying to help me heal. I feel like I'm grabbing too much enmity from my healing, but I also know that if I stop spamming Bene / Bene II then we're all dead. I run out of MP and die. Group wipes.

Experienced DPS attempts to dissect what happened, and starts talking to the tank about aggro management. Turns out this Dark Knight is a brand-new tank. Never tanked before, let alone on Dark Knight, and something possessed them to enter Brayflox as their first dungeon. Tank doesn't wait around for the DPS to explain how to tank, and rushes into the boss again.

Again, I try to wait until his HP is low for him to pick up adds, but no luck. I'm too slow on healing this time (do I have to mention again that the tank was using zero cooldowns?) and he goes down immediately. Boss goes for the experienced DPS while I'm raising the tank, and the DPS goes down. Don't have Swiftcast up, and now the boss is after me, so I don't have time to long-cast Ascend. The DPS warps back to the entrance, so they're out of the fight completely, and cheering us on from the outside.

Same thing as the first attempt happened. I ended up tanking everything, the tank didn't use Unleash at all. I still feel bad about spamming Bene II but again, it's the only possible way for us to stay alive at this point. Strategic uses of Luminiferous Aether to try to keep my MP up. A lucky Ewer gets my MP up more. Tank finally gets a hold of the boss and things are looking up, except that I still have three waves of adds still after me that the tank isn't even bothering with, so I die.

I warp back to the entrance and immediately leave the group. No, I am not staying in that group. That is my limit. I am not one to leave a group when things are going badly. I always stick it out until the end, no matter how bad the group is. I pride myself on being patient and helpful and generally a good healer. Not this time though. No no no no no no!

The tank seemingly had no idea that he was doing anything wrong, nor did he seem to have any inclination to attempt to do the fight differently, and I am not going to bash my head against the wall over and over for the same result. I also don't want to be yelled at for something that was not my fault, and my intuition tells me that was coming. I'll happily take the 30 minute penalty over staying in that situation.

Also, why on earth would a brand new Dark Knight that has never ever tanked before, start with Brayflox? If you have DRK unlocked at all, then that means you've done Brayflox before, so surely you know it is a spike in difficulty? Why why why would you not start with a lower level dungeon to learn how to tank first? And why not pick up Provoke first?  I mean, not knowing how to AoE or use defensive CDs in Brayflox is kind of inexcusable.

I feel really, really awful about leaving. I really do. I feel sick to my stomach because I feel bad about it. I never want to seem like the healer that leaves as soon as something isn't going well, but I don't know. I think that situation was awful. All those times I've complained about Toto-Rak have nothing on this. Healing Titan Hard was easier than this. Healing Garuda normal for the first time on my original character was waaay easier than this. I'll have to do Ravana hard at some point tomorrow, and I know it'll be easier than this Brayflox attempt was.

I'm sad now :(

Success

I've successfully just completed Dusk Vigil, meaning that I have just completed my first Heavensward dungeon! Yay!

I also got my Astrologian to 50 yesterday, so I'm using AST for Heavensward!

I feel like my healing was really low in Dusk Vigil, and I don't know why. I don't think I was doing anything wrong, really; it's just that normal Benefic was doing practically nothing, Benefic II was doing barely any better, Essential Dignity wasn't being too effective either. I was in Diurnal for the regens too. Most of my equips are Ironworks with the exception of accessories and my gloves, which are from the patch MSQ quests.

Ultimately, no one died but me though. I died on the first boss when it focused on me for its attack things that it does, and while I was paralyzed from the attack it then hit me with an extra AoE. I would have been fine otherwise! Luckily, we had a SMN in the party who got me up quickly.

Everything else went flawlessly, despite my low healing and bad luck with cards :)

Neat idea

Do you know what would be really neat to have in FFXIV?

A training hall area with training dummies, and the area puts you at level 50 with all abilities (up to level 50), so you can try out a class before you level it.

I want to try Ninja to see if my computer can handle the Mudras (or if I even like doing them!), but it seems like it would be a waste to level Rogue / Ninja that far if it doesn't end up working out. I want to level something I enjoy since I just tortured myself leveling Dragoon to 34 for Blood for Blood (I HATE Lnc/Drg), but I don't know what DPS class I enjoy!

Monk seems okay right now, so I'm working on that. I don't like Machinist right now (level 30), but maybe I would later?

I just wish there was some way to try out classes. Kind of like how in GW2 you can try out your class at max level by going to the Heart of the Mists.

I don't know what the lore excuse for this could be, but it would still be nice, I think.

Well, that's a new one.

Ah, Maws of Toto-Rak, you never cease to disappoint me.

Today I got a tank who, to be fair, did not walk face-first into the Fleshy Pods. No, no. Instead, he would try to use his ranged attack to kill them, but he stood too close to them and got poisoned anyway. This is understandable once or twice while you figure out what's going on, but not a bunch of times.

I also ran into a couple tanks today who appear to subscribe to the idea of "you get enmity, you tank it."
Even when the person that grabs enmity is the healer, and they grab enmity from an enemy that you didn't bother to try and tank and instead just assumed that the healer wouldn't grab enmity on even though you pulled it and aren't tanking it, and the healer is just trying to keep you alive. Sorry for the run-on sentence there.
I hate, hate, hate healing the tank when they haven't grabbed enmity on enemies. Like, when the enemy names show up as orange on my screen rather than whatever-color-they-usually are (but I know orange means I'll pull it if I heal!). I try to hold off healing for as long as I can, but when the tank, say, has two stacks of poison from running into Fleshy Pods and is losing health fast, sometimes you need to throw out a heal. And then, if I do get enmity, I pop Luminiferous Aether if available, and run to the tank. Who then proceeds to ignore me. Which leads me to end up having to heal myself to stay alive. Which then solidifies my enmity.
I've even had tanks then continue to ignore the enemy attacking me after they kill the ones they were working on, and just go on to the next set of mobs while I'm still dying.

Fun.

If I were a more bold and assertive person I would have stopped healing myself and just let myself die to make a point. I'm too afraid of being yelled at to do that though ^^;



I do not like The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, in case that isn't clear by now.

That said, it is significantly less painful as an Astrologian, purely because of Luminiferous Aether, and also Lightspeed for the second boss fight (insta-cleanse Slow off of self!). No fun on Scholar because no Leeches, and no fun on White Mage because that second boss is rough because of Slow.


Oh, and I changed back to Au Ra. Remind me never to try and recustomize my character ever again.

I'm going to be so surprised in the morning.

50% certain that when I wake up I'm not going to remember that I just Fantasia'd Yomi into an Elezen.

That'll surprise me in the morning.

To be fair though, Elezen-Yomi is gorgeous. Unlike Dragon-Yomi who only looked good with a few hairstyles, Elezen-Yomi looks good in the majority of hair styles. I'll post a picture tomorrow of the comparison.

I was inspired by some lovely glamours I saw where the glamour-ers were female Elezen, and they were gorgeous. And, also I was really sick of Yomi's horns clipping through her gear. I'm sure my new Elezen ears will also clip through gear, but maybe it'll be lessened since they're more to the side rather than forward.

EDIT: Surprised, no. Really quite sad and disappointed, yes.

I miss my Au Ra :(

Not that my Elezen doesn't look great but...she's just...not Yomi.

Yes!

Officially in Heavensward content!

Or, I will be as soon as I'm done writing this and actually go accept the first Heavensward quest.

Keeper of Lake went fine. We wiped once on the second boss due to everything going wrong with the fire puddles, and also one of our DPS got disconnected, but we cleared it easily after they came back and we figured out better fire puddle positioning.

The Chrysalis went well as well. Again, we wiped once, and it was in the meteor phase, which was perfectly reasonable, honestly. We lost a lot of DPS during the second ball phase, and one of the tanks told the healers to LB and resurrect the DPS because we were just about to enter the meteor phase, and they said that they had been in a group that has cleared the meteors without DPS LB. Well, we got the DPS up (although one died shortly after in meteors), and we were soooo close to finishing the meteor phase. SO close that I honestly thought we had cleared it when we wiped. But no, we wiped. Second time went so easy that it was kind of anti-climactic, honestly. OH, and so exciting: my healing partner was an Astrologian who was in Diurnal Stance! First time I've seen that, and honestly, that's probably part of why we did so wonderfully! Yay for synergy!
I was so proud of myself in Chrysalis though. I felt like I did well as a Scholar in this one. Whenever we got Triple Spark I would Adlo the main tank + Virus Nabriales or Eye for an Eye the tank if Virus was on CD. And when he would do his explosion after the ball phase I would Succor + Sacred Soil (yay!).

Steps of Faith went pretty flawlessly. I was assigned main healer (thank goodness! I was so worried I'd have to do the Dragonslayer part, and I was so nervous about the idea of having that much responsibility!), and basically spammed Adlo on the tank and/or Succor whenever everyone was taking damage. Whoever was on the Dragonslayer missed with it like, twice, and I think we got the counterattack from it on the last one because we very nearly wiped. I say very nearly, but we did actually all die. It's just that, our deaths were staggered. I was in the first group to die, which consisted of me and half the DPS. By the time we had run back to the boss, the other healer and a tank had died. By the time the second tank died, the original tank had made it back, etc. Weird. We won in one try though.

And now I just got done watching allll the cutscenes, and I'm in Heavensward!

Astrologian here I come!

I might also try Dark Knight. Not sure yet. I stockpiled some tanking accessories from the MSQ and I also have a full set of Monk/Ninja gear (also from MSQ) for if I ever want to play that. Neat.

Big sigh of relief!

Making very fast progress on the MSQ if I do say so myself. I'm on Before the Fall - Part 1 quests now (just starting them).

Last night was interesting, doing the Dreams of Ice patch quests. Primarily because I ended up being on the same quest as another player, and we ended up grouping up. I then did Snowcloak and Shiva with their guild. I stayed up way later than I liked to doing Shiva with them, but it all worked out in the end, so it was fine!

And then I went to bed dreading today because I knew what the next encounters on my list were. I think I had nightmares about hard mode Primals.

Did them bright and early this morning. Ifrit was wicked easy. Trivial, in fact. The group DPS was so high that he only did one rush and we never got even the second plume pattern.

Garuda, also easy. I would dare say easier than normal mode. We skipped the last phase entirely, I think. We just kind of ignored the adds since she was already basically down at that point. Mostly solo-healed that one as well because the other healer forgot they were in Cleric Stance and was healing with it on.

Titan...was not as bad as anticipated. There were two deaths, but they were both the same person because they didn't dodge the bombs at all. I had a few very close encounters because I kept getting hit by the plumes even though I wasn't standing in them. Don't know what was up with that. I don't think it was lag because then I would have had problems with Landslide, and the game didn't feel laggy except for the plumes hitting me strangely. Oh, and the other healer was an Astrologian in Nocturnal Sect again. I have yet to see an Astrologian in Diurnal Sect. Ended up being fine this time because we had practically 100% upkeep on shields without draining either of our MP because we just kind of switched off.

Keeper of the Lake will probably be a breath of fresh air, oddly enough, and then on to...Chrysalis. The encounter I said I never, ever wanted to do ever again. But, then again, I kind of thought the same thing about Titan Hard, and that really wasn't that bad. Oh, I hope Chrysalis doesn't go horribly on me.

Honestly, I can't tell if things are easier this time around for me because players as a whole are better geared than they were last time I did these, if I'm just getting wicked lucky with groups, or if I'm a better Scholar than I am a White Mage. Probably a combination of the three, honestly. Except maybe the last one. I don't think I'm a great Scholar. I don't like stance dancing and I always forget about Eos. But I am good at shielding! And placing Sacred Soil! I love Sacred Soil. It's my favorite Scholar ability and I wish I got to use it more often, but it often feels like a waste when it takes Aetherflow stacks that could probably better be used for Lustrate. Lustrate is great, but it's so boring. And even though I do forget about Eos, if there is a ton of damage happening, I often Rouse + Whispering Dawn without really thinking about it.

Why?

I hit level 50 on my Scholar last night, and I'm working my way, with decent speed, through the MSQ to get to Heavensward.

Anyway, for every 8-man thing I've done thus far, I've been paired with an Astrologian. And every single one of these Astrologians has been in Nocturnal Sect?
Am I missing something here?

Nocturnal Sect adds barriers to Aspected Benefic/Helios, but those shields do not work with Scholar Galvanize.

Diurnal Sect adds Regen to Aspected Benefic/Helios and also increases attack speed.

Are the Astrologians I've been with just trying to get that extra +5% healing potency out of Nocturnal Sect, or what? Is it because they're a higher level than me? Because, I don't know, I don't really feel like I'm very useful as a Scholar if I don't have to throw out shields. Every single one has also overwritten my Protect at the beginning of the fight, and overwrites my Galvanize whenever I use Succor. The only thing they don't always overwrite is Adlo on the tank. And then they don't really ever seem to contribute to the actual healing at all, leaving me to do it with my otherwise quite-lack-luster Scholar heals.

Example is Good King Moggle Mog earlier. We wiped three times. The other healer wasn't really healing much, aside from using Aspected Helios. I was trying in vain to keep everyone up. Adlo on the tank whenever it was needed, Lustrate whenever it was available and needed. I think I used Sacred Soil once. Rouse + Whispering  Dawn whenever it was needed/available. Physick practically constantly. Didn't have time to do Cleric's Stance because the other healer wasn't healing aside from overwriting my Succor.

I mean, it just seems to me like Diurnal Stance would have been the better choice there. I don't have much in term of AoE healing. I can heal the tank just fine, but if they're handling the shielding, then I don't really have anything I can do for AoE except when Rouse + Whispering Dawn is ready to go. It's not like I'm going to overwrite with Succor because that seems like a waste of MP then, and even then, that doesn't really actually *heal* for much. I would have liked if the AST had been doing the AoE healing, since they're actually capable of it.

I really want to know though. Is there any reason why an AST would be using Nocturnal Stance with a Scholar (albeit a new one) in the party?

Ooh!

I don't know if I just had a good group, or if Scholar actually makes Garuda trivial. Seriously, I swear Sacred Soil + Succor actually just makes her trivial.

That was the easiest and most stress-free Garuda fight I have ever done.

Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak Rant...again

I swear I write a post on this every month I subscribe to FFXIV.

Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak.

Why, oh why, does this appear to be the most difficult dungeon in the game for people to grasp?

Brayflox's Longstop has nothing on Toto-Rak; that's what I think. I've done Brayflox's Longstop many, many times, and it's only gone wrong once or twice and that was because the tank was new and didn't know to keep Aiatar out of the poison puddles. But Toto-Rak consistently goes wrong.

I always make sure to explain the last fight, and if someone is consistently running face-first into Fleshy Pods I ask them to please not to do that, but almost every single time, one of those two things goes wrong.

Let's start at the beginning of Toto-Rak with what can go wrong?

First boss? Not much can go wrong here, so we'll skip over that.

Second boss? The tank not picking up the adds can be problematic because then they focus on the healer and slow them. This isn't bad at all if your healer is a SCH, but it can be fatal if you have, say, a new Conjurer. Also, ranged classes, please stay out of melee range on this fight so you don't get unnecessary poison. That can make this harder.

Trash pulls from the second boss on? Again, ranged, please stay out of melee range of the plant-things so you don't get poisoned when you don't need to.

Slow green goop area? Don't go running face-first into Fleshy Pods. This goes for literally everyone in the group. Every single class with the exception of Pugilist/Monk and Dark Knight have a ranged attack by this point.

Here, have a list of what attacks you can use to kill Fleshy Pods:

Marauder / Warrior = Tomahawk
Gladiator / Paladin = Shield Lob
Lancer / Dragoon = Piercing Talon
Archer / Bard = Anything
Conjurer / White Mage = Aero is the fastest
Thaumaturge / Black Mage = Scathe is the fastest
Arcanist / Summoner / Scholar = Bio is the fastest
Rogue / Ninja = Throwing Dagger
Astrologian = Combust is the fastest
Machinist = Anything

So, unless you are in a group with a Dark Knight and 3 Monks (in which case, good luck without a healer), then someone in your group can kill the Fleshy Pods for you.

This is especially true if your healer is a Scholar. At least a Conjurer / White Mage can Esuna the poison stacks off you when you stop running around. A Scholar just has to heal through it, which is a particular pain when you then run through one of the spider web gates and it closes in their face. And then proceed to die because you're now being hit by enemies + 3 stacks of poison and your Scholar is stuck behind a wall that you aren't helping to break them through because you're dead.

Finally, last boss. Please kill the tail. Please. If you don't know to, someone will probably remind you. Please kill the tail. I was in a group the other day where I told them twice to kill the tail, and they ignored me. Do you know what happened? The entire floor became poison and we all died. Just kill the tail.

Please.

Please make Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak less painful.

You know what is so frustrating?

That Duty Finder can pull up Ifrit / Titan / Garuda and there's no new player message, meaning that no one there probably actually queued for it. I don't mind getting placed into a Primal if someone actually needs it, but if I'm in there with 50+ characters, it's honestly just a waste of time. I wait 15 minutes in the DPS queue for a fight that gives no drops or much exp, and that people often just leave before it begins because it's such a waste.

Like I said; fine if someone specifically queued for it and I get placed in theirs. I don't mind helping! But if no one specifically queued for it, I don't think it should randomly come up in DF. It's a waste of time if no one needs it.

In case you're wondering what prompted this, I just got placed in Ifrit on my Summoner. Everyone in my group was high level (they all had glamours), so I assume they didn't need normal Ifrit. Tank and Healer immediately quit. I quit after that because it wasn't worth sticking around waiting for a new tank and healer. Frustrating.

Progress!

Doing good in FFXIV, I think!

My character, Yomi Tosho (Adamatoise server) is currently leveling fairly well!

My main class at the moment is my Bard, which is level 37. Followed by my Summoner/Scholar, which is 34.

After that, I have:
Conjurer: 28
Gladiator: 24
Rogue: 23
Thaumaturge: 17
Pugilist: 15
Lancer: 13
Marauder: 8

I'm really, really enjoying my Bard right now, but I am frustrated slightly with it. I want to have Invigorate and Blood for Blood before I get to Garuda, but I absolutely despise Lancer. It has been torturous to get it even to 13, so I am absolutely dreading getting it up to 34 for Blood for Blood. 22 for Invigorate at least seems doable, but 34 is just...ugh.

The only class I dislike more than Lancer is Marauder. I hate Marauder. It will probably never get past level 8. As far as I can tell through all my researching, I probably don't absolutely need Mercy Stroke to tank as a Gladiator/Dark Knight, and if I don't absolutely need it, I am not going to level a Marauder.

I'm almost half thinking of just giving up on my Bard now and swapping to Summoner. I like my Summoner well enough, and now that I have Quelling Strikes then that's the hard part out of the way. I don't mind Thaumaturge, and getting it up to 24 for Swiftcast will be easy. And, well, I need Swiftcast anyway for healing, so I have extra motivation.

But, honestly, I don't care enough for any of the DPS classes besides Bard to have enough motivation to level Lancer to 34. I've been enjoying DPS, but I think I can enjoy it just as much on Summoner, at least for now. Maybe at some point I'll work up the motivation to level Lancer, but for right now, I'm very, very much thinking of swapping to Summoner.