Very confused

I was yelled at in Weeping City today :(
I've only done it twice. The first time went okay. I placed a meteor in the wrong spot, but it ended up being fine. And I died to haircut, and also the attack Ozma does where you have to not attack.

Second time went awful.
First, to start this all off, I walked off the edge in Ozma before the fight started. Everyone said it was fine and it happens to everyone, and so that was fine.

Then came meteors. First set of meteors I was targeted, and brought it to the right spot this time. Fight continued on as it should. Until the second set of meteors. I didn't see that I was targeted immediately, and so tried to move out of the way of the meteor, then I realized I was targeted and tried to move to a safe area, but all the ones around were taken. There were people from the other groups on the side areas, and the other meteor target from my group at the bottom. I had nowhere to go, and ended up blasting the entire group. A bunch died, I was scolded, and I felt really, really bad. I didn't know what to do in that situation! What was I supposed to do? I don't want to mess that up again.

And then, again, I died to Haircut.


So now I feel pretty awful and I'm scared to go back in again. I don't like to let my party down like that. I can do the first two bosses really well. I haven't died on Forgal or anything. And I can do all of Ozma fine except the meteors :(

Edit: Finally had success (for me) on the 5th run. By that, I mean I didn't die due to messing up mechanics. I did die twice, but that's because we actually wiped twice in Ozma, which made me giggle because of course we wipe the one time I actually do the mechanics right!
Anyway, yeah. First boss was as easy as it was the past times, and so was Forgal, although I did mess up and get zombified once at the start of the fight :(
Ozma went well for me. I did get meteors the first attempt and managed to place them correctly. The second two attempts I only got the first meteor and then didn't get the other sets, so that was pretty stress-free for me. First attempt we wiped after one of the other groups died, second time I don't even know why we wiped. It kind of happened too quick for me to really catch. Third time was fine.
And then a pretty perfect Calofisteri. I only got stuck in a trap once! And I didn't get hit by Haircut this time! And I think my group actually only had one death and that was Haircut-related and easy to fix. 
And I'm now at i230 so I can stop worrying about running it over and over and go do Baelsar's Wall like I wanted to do. Yay, now I can do this with less stress! I still want to keep doing it for the gear, but that's less stressful than doing it to unlock something else. 

Urgh

So, I tried playing GW2 today (I am apparently playing allll the MMOs this month?).

I am mildly frustrated.

I decided that I really wanted to focus on my Mesmer. Reason being that I don't like the playstyle that is currently advised for Necro, but the Mesmer one sounded okay. I like being utility better than pure DPS anyway. Plus, I love Mesmer in WvW, but did not like Necro in WvW.

I haven't seriously messed with my Mesmer since HoT's release. I remember that I'm stuck on Hearts and Minds (I'll probably finish that up this week regardless), and was grinding Hero Points to max out Chronomancer, as well as finishing up map completion.

So, anyway, because I haven't played her since HoT's release, all my gear is left over from the old all-Berserker meta, when I'm seeing that I need to be in Assassin's gear with Berserker weapons/trinkets. Great.
I look up where to get Assassin's exotics. No karma vendors. No dungeon gear. My only option appears to be crafting it myself or buying it. Buying it is out of the question, since each piece appears to be about 11G each. I had about 20G to my name. I was able to level up my Tailoring considerably today; I'm about 350 tailoring now, which I don't think is high enough to craft my own Exotics yet, and my gold supply is dwindling too quickly. I have about 11G now.

My gear right now looks like the following:

All armor is full Berserker exotics
Weapons are all Berserker. I have two exotic swords, and exotic staff, and exotic shield, as well as rare focus, pistol, and greatsword.
Accessories/trinkets vary widely. Rare Berserker backpiece with Exquisite Ruby Jewel. Exotic Berserker accessory with Exquisite Charged Ambrite Jewel. Exotic Soldier's accessory (I kept dying in HoT...), Ascended Berserker amulet, and then bad not-even-rare rings (one Soldier's, one Berserker).

So, basically, my gear is kind of bad. I need to make money to get better gear. But I feel like I need better gear in order to make money. I think I could probably get by with my Berserker gear for some dungeons / low level fractals, but I'm not sure about those rings...Or that one Soldier's accessory...

How do I make gold? D:
Also, I'm too nervous to enter fractals or dungeons, so that is problematic and makes me question what I'm even working on this for in the first place...I don't know, the thought of entering some sort of content, maybe...

Edit:
Well, poo. All that work for nothing. I got my Tailoring up to level 400 and unlocked all the recipes I need to craft myself some exotics, but with the price of materials...I'd only be saving 1G by crafting it then by buying it outright. Grand total of about 61G.

I guess...I could make a couple pieces, and then try to run a dungeon or a fractal or something. Maybe. Or I could use some of my remaining gold to upgrade my rings at least.

I'm going to go wallow for a few minutes and then find something to cheer myself back up again!

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...

Is The Vault always this bad for healers?

The Vault is torturous to me. I got it this morning as my leveling roulette (I really wish there was a separate roulette for Heavensward dungeons, because I like to queue into leveling roulette to help newbies...).

Oh my goodness is it awful. I can't tell if I'm just not a good healer, or if I'm not getting good groups, or if it's bad luck, or maybe Astrologians are bad in the dungeon? I don't know: all I know is that something always goes horribly wrong every single time I do this one.

Take this morning's run, for example.

Ser Adelphel:
1st Wipe: I get boxed in by the exploding bubbles + I have the ground AoE under me. I die, everyone dies.
2nd Wipe: We were doing absolutely wonderfully, and then the tank gets disconnected.
3rd time, we cleared it.

Ser Grinnaux:
No wipes, but a couple deaths and overall trouble. I remember when I went in here the first time I thought this fight was very easy and rather inconsequential. Not this time. I think it was a combination of not-high-enough DPS and unfortunate tank positioning. We ended up having barely any safe areas left from portals, and the boss was kind of positioned at a weird angle, so personally, I always got knocked back in a direction I wasn't expecting, typically straight into a portal. I think I ended up with like 5 stacks of the debuff by the end? While the first time I did this fight I had none by the end. Lost a DPS twice I think to a similar issue.

Ser Charibert:

1 wipe. Absolutely my fault. My computer decided it wanted to open the chat box instead of move, so I ended up getting hit by a triple combination of the ground AoE, horses, and the chain thing.
Beat it the second time, barely.


First time I did the dungeon we wiped on Ser Charibert about 3 times I think.


As a more positive, I witnessed a miracle yesterday in The Aery. Last night I was doing roulette trying to get to level 57, and I was put in as a fill-in healer for a friendly group in The Aery. They were on Nidhogg, with 18 minutes or so remaining. We wiped a couple times. Mostly due to Sable Price.
Last try, very few minutes remaining. The two DPS die to something or other. I get caught in Sable Price. Only the tank remaining. Tank is on a tiny sliver of HP. I warp back to the start because I knew the tank was about to die. And, nope! Somehow, SOMEHOW the tank managed to kill Nidhogg with only a sliver of HP left. It was a miracle.


As a side note, the more I go into dungeons with Bards, the more I want to play a Bard. Their animations are so nice :x

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 :(

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.

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.

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:

Back on FFXIV

I'm back to playing FFXIV again. Still playing Ayame Miyumi, although I used a Fantasia and she's Xaela Au Ra now instead of Raen.

I did a couple practice runs of low-level dungeons (I think I did Copperbell Mines, Tam-Tara Deepcroft, and Haukke Manor) just to get used to healing again. And then I jumped right in and did Steps of Faith because I needed to in order to continue on in the story. That went surprisingly well. The party assigned me the role of main healer while the other healer did cannons. There was only one death, and that death was me because I was dumb and stood too close to the dragon's feet. Luckily, the other healer was able to pick up the slack while I ran back. If I remember correctly, I died pretty much right at the end and the dragon died soon after I got back, so I guess I wasn't missed too much there.

Upon getting into Heavensward content, I immediately made my way over to the Astrologian guild, and I am now an Astrologian (level 32)!

I'm loving AST. Have to say. I've done a couple dungeons (Tam-Tara, Haukke Manor, and Toto Rak), and I don't feel like I'm doing horribly. Bad, certainly, but not horrible. Although that Haukke Manor run went flawlessly, just saying. Tam-Tara was a bit hard because I hadn't healed on AST yet before and was having problems with taking enmity, and Toto Rak...well, we'll talk about Toto Rak in a minute because that run was horrible and I really don't think that was my fault. I think I did great!

I enjoy Draw way more than I should. Just working on memorizing what cards do what before Royal Road comes in and messes me up! And the skill animations just feel so satisfying. I know I'm not healing any more than I am on my WHM, but the skills just feel like they have more punch to them.

Ok, Toto Rak. That run was terrible. I just want to write this out and vent about this one because this was honestly the worst run of Toto Rak I've ever done. First of all, to set the stage, the group is all melee DPS, which is rough in Toto Rak because of the poison clouds from the microchu things. Tank and a DPS are both new, which is fine, I get that. I'm patient and lenient and all that, and I know my healing can pick up the slack when need be.

Except when everything is working against me. Then my healing can't pick up the slack at all.
First of all, I get walking into the poison exploding pod things once, not knowing that they'll explode and poison you and stress out your healer, but repeatedly running into them? Constantly? Even though I'm standing behind you frantically trying to dispose of them before you get there?

So, first tank death. Tank runs face first into some exploding pods, and I stop to try to heal/remove at least one poison stack. Everyone continues running on ahead and activates one of the web walls that pops up. I get stuck behind it because I stopped moving for a second to try to keep the tank alive. No one bothers to try and help me get past the web, so I'm frantically trying to break through with my meager healer DPS while watching the tank's health lower. Make it through with just enough time to start casting a heal and he dies. DPS is able to handle the mobs while I resurrect him.

Second tank death. Tank runs straight into at least three exploding pods and then into a group of mobs. Can't keep up with the poison damage and incoming mob damage. Tank dies while I frantically try to heal.

Third, group wipe. On the final boss. Goes fine for the first half. Once the tail comes out and starts shooting poison puddles it all goes downhill. Everyone stands in the puddles because they're melee and the tank doesn't move the boss. No one bothers to attack the tail. I get boxed in by puddles and the boss spawns an exploding pod on top of me. I die. Everyone dies.

Second time through the boss we miraculously make it through despite no one attacking the tail again.

Really though, the running straight into poisonous exploding pods knowing full well that they explode and poison you and stress out your hero is a huuuuge pet peeve of mine. Toto Rak can seriously be one of the most frustrating dungeons just because no one bothers to deal with those pods properly.

Long story short / moral of the story: Don't run face first into the exploding pods in Toto Rak. It annoys your healer. If no one has a range attack feel free to wait for your healer to dispatch it because they have a ranged attack and it only takes one hit. Please.

Huge update on my FFXIV playing!

I am now level 50 (actually, 51 now, sorry, I'm late on the announcement)!
I am also about half-way or so through the level 50 personal story stuff. The Crystal Braves were just formed about one quest ago.

Healing is still going well, or at least I think so. It's difficult to tell if I'm doing well or not in these 8-person groups with another healer. I sometimes can't tell if I'm helping at all, or if I'm just deadweight. I hope I am helping and doing my job correctly, and I just am too nervous about it to tell! These past three Primal fights have been kind of rough, you see. King Moggle Mog is so confusing. I read guides beforehand, but I was so confused by all the different moogles, and once I got into the fight I got killed by something (still not sure what. I swear I was one-shotted, but I was the only who died...), but I felt like I was healing okay up until that point. Leviathan was fine, although I was a little more stressed out than usual because our tanks were arguing, and there is a serious lack of guides out there for Leviathan. I don't care that he's apparently so easy that I shouldn't need a guide, I need a guide because otherwise I get incredibly anxious. And then Ramuh was a big bunch of I-have-no-idea-what's-going-on-even-though-I-read-three-guides. I didn't die though, so that's good!

Also, has anyone else noticed that out of all the dungeons, Toto-Rak appears to have the highest chance of something going horribly, horribly wrong? I swear I haven't had groups wipe on any other dungeon as much as Toto-Rak. I mean, I was warned about Brayflox and Stone Vigil, but I have yet to wipe on those nearly as often as I do on Toto-Rak. The majority of the time I can get through Brayflox and Stone Vigil without someone dying, but I cannot say the same for Toto-Rak. And it doesn't ever appear to be the fault of my healing abilities because all the wipes we've had were completely out of my control. I'm talking people standing in the green poison puddles during the final boss, tanks running headfirst into the Fleshy Pods and then keep running ahead so I can't Esuna/Heal them, DPS pulling things, DPS accidentally pulling things and then running waaaay away from the rest of the group where I cannot safely take care of them and the tank, etc. Don't even get me started on ranged DPS standing in melee range of enemies that do poison AoEs, or the serious lack of picking up adds during the final fight.
And then, there was a lancer I was in a group with earlier today. You know how in the final boss room there are fleshy pods all around the room, and you're supposed to get rid of them with ranged attacks so no one accidentally runs into them / gets pushed into them? Yeah, those. Well, this lancer ran around the room purposefully running straight into each group of them. There was absolutely no way I could have saved him. He was dead before I could even recognize that damage was being taken. That one was impressive, and I'll give him credit: He did take care of about two groups of those things, and we did end up beating the boss. He just didn't get to participate in the boss because you can't Raise in battle at that level.

Really though, what is it about Toto-Rak that people can't seem to grasp? I don't have any trouble with groups in any other dungeon. Is it just because it's kind of the first one that's more mechanic-heavy and has AoE poison? Is it the Fleshy Pods? I just don't understand.

Well regardless, my character's name is Ayame Miyumi and I'm on Adamantoise. I'm happy to heal dungeons if I'm needed, just don't ask me for directions in those dungeons because I have no sense of direction. That's one of the reasons I like playing as a healer; I don't have to know where I'm going because my job is to follow the tank around :)

I can't decide if I like my characters or not

I'm pretty satisfied with the majority of my GW2 characters.

My Necromancer is feeling rather weak at the moment, but that may just be me not being used to her again. I'm enjoying Dagger + Dagger more than Staff though, which disturbs me a bit. I'm having a lot of trouble against enemies around my level and such. Maybe my reaction times in placing down marks is slower? I can't really figure it out.

My Guardian is fun enough. I'm enjoying her quite a bit at the moment. I'm using Sword + Torch, but no other weapon set has clicked with me yet.

My Mesmer is...okay. I don't really know if I like her or not right now. I'm doing Scepter + Sword with a Staff alternate, but I'm not sure if I like Scepter + Sword. I might try Sword + Sword, and mess around on the dummies or something. I like my actual character though, so that's a big plus.

My Warrior is okay, but I don't really have much direction with her. Greatsword with Longbow alternate. Kind of boring.

Then, there's my last slot. I can't think of what to do with it. The only remaining classes are Elementalist, Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. I know I don't really like Ranger and Thief. Ranger because I don't particularly like being forced to use a pet, and Thief because Thief classes have just never clicked with me. Yes, I've tried it. No, I still don't enjoy it.
That leaves Elementalist and Engineer. Elementalist is just not clicking with me for some reason. I can't find a weapon that I really like the skill set for. I want to like it, I really, really do, but I can't find a skill set that I enjoy. It all feels too slow.

So, Engineer? Another weird one for me. Maybe I'll go mess with it a bit on the dummies.

I guess I'm just a little discouraged with my recent failings on my Necromancer, alongside having bad anxiety the past couple of days.

I really, really just want to stick with a class, you know? But I can't find one that clicks with me just right. I thought it was Necromancer. Maybe it's not. I don't really know.