Am I doing something wrong? I can't tell.

I was playing my Bard (level 40) in leveling roulette. I got Haukke Manor. Fine, I know that dungeon. I've directed groups through that dungeon before. No problem.

My problem is, and this applies to many other pre-Quelling Strikes dungeons is that I keep getting aggro off the tanks, and it's frustrating.

It's frustrating because I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong or not. I'm doing my rotation, and in these situations I don't use my nice attack boosting CDs (as in, Blood for Blood / Raging Strikes etc.) because I know that if I do any more DPS then I'll take enmity. I slow down my rotation a bit, and I wait a good few seconds for the tank to get aggro.

And still, I usually end up pulling things off of them. I always feel horrible about it.

Today, this happened in every single boss fight too. I sometimes ended up stopping attacking entirely because I was on the absolute verge of getting aggro. Like, the enmity bar was filled, I just didn't have it yet. But then I feel bad stopping my DPS because then I feel like I'm a bad DPS. And I also feel bad not using all my CDs because again, I feel like a bad DPS. I could be doing soooo much more damage!

It's better post-30 or so once I have Quelling Strikes and tanks have better skills and stuff, but it is awful in the early level dungeons.

I hate the concept of cross class skills so much. I hate that on my SMN I can have Quelling Strikes for Sastasha (or, more importantly / relevantly, Haukke Manor when I have access to Bane :3 ), but I don't have it until 34 on my Bard. No way to control your own aggro is a pain.

DPS is certainly not my favorite job, but I hope I'm not as awful as I feel at it. I'm too stressed out to heal, and no one should ever have to be put through me tanking, so DPS it is...

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

Tanking's gotten better

After that first mishap, I'm feeling a lot better about tanking now.

My Gladiator is currently level 23 and still going. I've only been tanking when I feel completely awake and focused though, just to be safe.

I've also been leveling my crafting to make sure I have half-decent gear.

I also had a big landmark today (aside from multiple successful Tanking runs)! And that waaaas...I posted on the FFXIV forums! Yay! Not, like, on the General Forums or anything. It was on the bug forums, in a pre-existing thread about an issue I also encountered. But it's still a huge step for me!

All in all, very happy with myself today!

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:

FFXIV Progress Update!

Still going strong!
Although I have to do Stone Vigil next for the main story quest, and I'm nervous about that one. I swear that dungeon guides are useful to learn about the mechanics, but they are terrible for anxiety. I just hope I get an experienced party that can easily blow through the dungeon. Please. Oh goodness, please. I'm generally okay with dungeons once I've gone through them once, but the first time is killer for me. I practically shake the whole way through. After one successful run I'm fine though. I still panic a tiny bit if Titan pops up in my roulette, but I get through it without issues, so even that's fine. And Brayflox? Psh, easy healing now. The only one that I would say still gets me a tiny bit anxious is Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, but I only feel anxious on Graffias. To be fair, I rarely get a group that doesn't stand in the poison puddles, so I think that's an acceptable nervousness.

So, my White Mage is level 41, I have Scholar/Summoner at 33. Thaumaturge is currently 23, and I'm working on getting three more levels there for Swiftcast. I'm not going further in dungeons until I get that, so that's priority number 1 right now.
I also have Puglist at level 18, Lancer at level 8, and Archer at level 6 because I was too lazy to do dungeons last night, and I woke up today wanting to play a Pugilist, so I leveled it today. I'm not sure about it. I think I enjoy Thaumaturge more, but it certainly wasn't a terrible experience. Can't get into Lancer though. Not as fun to me.

So yup, still going strong over here. I have to work tomorrow,  so no Stone Vigil tomorrow, but perhaps Thursday.

In other news, my family is getting a puppy. He's a rescue, and very cute (we already did the home visit). The rescue center is having him neutered on Monday, and then they'll keep him while he recovers for a few days, and then he's ours. Very exciting!

I really do think FFXIV has cured my dungeon-phobia

I really, really do.

I have three dungeons available right now: Sastasha, Tam-Tara Deepcroft, and Copperbell Mines, and I'm doing them frequently as a Conjurer, with no anxiety. Well, except my first run of Tam-Tara Deepcroft (the tank was speed-running).

I actually did a pretty entertaining run of Copperbell Mines a couple minutes ago. We were doing the Ichorous Ire boss (I think that's what it's called), and our tank didn't get out of the explosion radius fast enough and she died and one of our DPS got disconnected. I couldn't Raise her in combat, and there was seemingly no way for us to get out of combat due to the nature of the fight. So I healer-tanked it. And it worked. The only other player in combat (due to one being dead and the other DC'd) was an Arcanist, so she helped keep my HP up, spawned the bombs, and killed the Spriggans. I'd grab the bomb with Stone and then keep healing myself until it exploded. And it ended up working out in the end :)

So yeah, I'm feeling more confident about going into dungeons. I'm still nervous when I enter a new one, and I'm dreading Brayflox because I always read about how hard it is. But, it seems like once I know what's going on in the dungeon I end up being okay.

Really proud right now

Well, I've successfully defeated the story mode Ifrit, and I'm really proud of it.

It wasn't even half as stressful as I thought it would be, although the part with the nail was a little scary because it didn't feel like we were killing it nearly fast enough, but we were okay, as it turned out.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good thus far.

Sastasha = Fine
Tam-Tara Deepcroft = Fine
Copperbell Mines = Fine
Story mode Ifrit = Fine

Feeling good right now :)

FFXIV may cure me of my dungeon-phobia

I don't know if this is normal for FFXIV dungeons, but the two I've been in (Sastasha and Tam-Tara Deepcroft, both for story quests) have been amazingly calm and non-stressful.

Everyone has been so nice. I have yet to run into anyone rude. And people see the little new-player sprout icon next to my name, and they emote pat me on the head and cheer me on and help me along, and it's great. Thus far, I am feeling very welcomed and it is putting me at ease and making me more comfortable with group play. Which is good because I generally actively avoid group play.

FFXIV: ARR First Dungeon: Complete!

So, I did it!
This morning I queued in the Duty Finder for Sastasha, and I got through with no problems!

My group was friendly and seemed to know what they were doing.
We had a couple of problems with adds in the last boss fight because from all that I read from guides, those bubbly pits are a whole lot farther away from each other than you expect. It's hard to get to them in time!

Other than that, it was fine!

So nervous!

I've been playing FFXIV: ARR again lately, and I just hit level 15 with my new Archer on the Brynhildr server, Aria Iris.

And I just got that one quest that makes you join the Duty Finder for Sastasha...

Oh goodness, the anxiety I'm getting right now. I've never once done a dungeon in FFXIV since I've only had one other level 15, and I gave up on her when I had to do this quest.

I've looked up guides for Sastasha, so I know a bit of what to do, I guess.
Kill clams when they're open, and you can't do anything when they're closed, but what do I do with the adds that they spawn? I get that they keep spawning until the clams are dead, so do I just ignore the adds for the tank to deal with until the clams are dead, and then work on DPSing the adds down when the clams are closed and I can't hit them anyway?
And then there's colored coral switches. Do we all have to figure out which one is right and press it, or does only one party member do that?
Same with the things you have to deactivate around the final boss? Is it part of my job to take care of that, or is that more of the tank's thing?
And what are these "treasure coffer" things I see on the map that's listed on the guide I'm reading?
How does loot work in this game? Is a Need/Greed/Pass system like WoW? Is it individual loot? Is there any determining who gets what at all?

And how is this going to change once I unlock Bard? I get that I'll have songs I'll have to use to give buffs and stuff, but does my role change much besides that?

And how do I even get Bard? I keep reading different answers. Is it level 15 Conjurer or Pugilist?

I wish I had kept up with the game since the beginning when we were all newbies. That sounds so much less stressful to me. I'm hopping back into this in the middle of everything, when there's plenty of people who know exactly what they're doing.

And I know I shouldn't be feeling anxious. From what I understand, there's very little difference between these and WoW dungeons, but I'm still anxious! I still get anxious going into WoW dungeons as DPS! Healing? No problem. But DPS always makes me anxious for some reason. I can handle healing. For some reason, I'm confident enough in that that I don't feel like I'm going to mess up and ruin the group. DPS gives me that feeling the whole time.
Oh, and one time, I tried tanking in WoW. Protection Warrior Gnome Tank with Pink Pigtails. Even that was less anxiety-inducing than DPS. Weird stuff.

Today is the day of bad groups

I'm having really bad luck with groups today. It's really draining.

Group 1: Bear Tank and a Monk. Wailing Caverns. Tank runs over and pulls Verdan, Monk runs over and pulls whichever boss it is in the same room (Serpentis, maybe?). Cue me running back and forth trying to heal them both.

Group 2: Balance-Druid-In-Cat-Form-Tank. Also Wailing Caverns. This one was certainly exciting. We made it through with no wipes though, which was good. Also, there was a Hunter with a spider-pet, so I'm sure you know how pleasant that was for me. I soon appreciated the spider when it was tanking, though.

Group 3: Overactive DPS Warrior pulling way before the Paladin Tank was even in the room. Shadowfang Keep.

Group 4: Came in mid-instance. Blackfathom Deeps. Everyone was in completely different rooms and yelling at each other. As such, everyone wiped. Guess who got blamed? There was no way in the world I could have reached everyone. The whole entire group should not try to solo different parts of the dungeon, just as a note. Multitasking does not work like that.

Luckily, I just got a better group, so that's nice. Level 25 on my Resto Shaman, Glamaraa. Have the three guild Int Mail heirlooms, as well. I'm getting no Int Leather drops at all, so my top is Cloth and everything besides the Heirlooms and the belt I just got is quest rewards. So sad.

EE: Just soloed my first ever dungeon!

So, I just soloed Angor Quarry with Fiorenza. I'm so proud of myself right now.
Character level 18, level 17 Warrior.

I am certainly not a tanking build, but it wasn't too bad. Took a fair amount of potions, but that's about it. No moments were I was just like "Holy cats, this is hard."
I have 2 points into Rapid Healing, and 10 into CQC Training. All of my regular skills are level 18, and my class skills are all 17. I was also using a Thief certificate: Nimbleness I.
Equips were:
Courage Brigandine enchanted with Muscle Explosion Lv2
Deft Battle Belt
Courage Greaves +4, enchanted with Violence Lv2
Wild Battle Bracers +3, enchanted with Slightness Lv2
Crystal Sword
Blessed Fighter Shield +3
(Although, usually I've been using Saw Axe +4).

I'm really happy right now :)

Don't Know

So...I went into my first dungeon yesterday...As Florayia...
I'm not entirely sure if it went well or not. I couldn't get recount to work, so I can't tell exactly how my dos was compared to the other people in the dungeon, but...I don't know.
I feel like more than half the time, the enemy would be dead before I could even fire off any spell besides Moonfire.
 I was getting some fairly high numbers when I did manage to hit, I think. Or at least, high to me. I was way undergeared as well, having been questing and having no heirlooms. I believe I'm still using gray bracers, since I haven't gotten any green ones. I didn't really get any loot in the dungeon either, so no new things for me! Whee!

Should I keep sticking with balance and see how it goes, or should I switch straight to Feral, because I know I'll be doing good dps with it? I'm really rather torn about it. I wanted to do balance to try something different, which is also why I'm trying to do dungeons this time around (instead of going back and doing the same quests I did fairly recently on Theeriyi). Should I just give up on that and go Feral instead? Or go back to questing?
I don't know what I'm doing! I'm new to dungeons! Help meeeeeeeee~!

So, I stuck with it; did a couple more dungeons. I feel like I'm doing better now, although that may be because I got recount working so I feel less self-conscious about it.