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.

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 :)

Explain something to me.

Why do people in WoW find it fun to go to low-level zones and kill the questgivers on PvE realms?
I'm talking really low levels here. Like, the Pre-10 zones.

Because I have yet to hear a good argument for it. "PvP happened on a PvP realm," doesn't work because this is not a PvP realm. If the answer is "it's fun," then why in the world is that fun? There isn't any glory in killing low levels that have no way of protecting themselves, nor is it honorable to ruin someone else's fun by killing the questgivers.

And if you are killing low level NPCs, don't be surprised when one of them logs off and comes back with a max level. Sorry for ruining your fun, but you were ruining everyone else's fun, so it is quite utilitarian to then ruin your fun in exchange for everyone else's.

And I'm not going to guard your corpse or anything; I won't even attack you if you run off to do something else. But I am going to guard the area that was attacked for a while. You're free to get up and leave to do something else that isn't harming the fun of others.

Really though, I want to know the perspective of someone who enjoys this, because I certainly don't understand at all. Is there some angle to this that I'm just not getting?

Well then

Well, I was considering playing Wildstar, but I guess not.

Kind of hard to play a game that you get perma-banned for logging into. Or, at least, it looks like a perma-ban considering that it says "NC Account <email> has been permanently blocked."

I'll contact support at some point, but basically it told me that my computer needed to be verified, so I went to my email and put in the verification code, and then it banned me!

But Guild Wars 2 still works.

I'm wondering if maybe I put in my password wrong? But then it wouldn't have gone through and asked for email verification, right?
Or maybe I had to manually type in the verification code rather than copy/pasting it from the email?

I just wanted to try the free trial, but now it seems like way too much effort T_T

EDIT: Yay! I sent in a ticket yesterday, and they got back to me today with a password reset. Thank you thank you :)

Really?

Hi! I'm playing WoW...again...for the fire festival...

I've been playing WoW for about six years or so, and I always get back into it at the time of the Fire Festival. I think it's the only event I ever have really played for.

Getting real sick of throwing fire torches.

Every. Single. Year.