An Amazing Restoration In My Faith In the FFXIV CommunityFollow

So often in forums we hear about that horrible group where nobody was prepared for a fight. The Tank was undergeared and couldn't hold aggro, or the Healer decided to AFK in their seasonal gear. We can all attest to having a story or two where we were so angry with another player because of this. Well this story is one where I thought was going to be one of those...I'm glad I was wrong.

I've taken a break from playing on Ultros and have made a Lalafel Marauder on Leviathan just so see how the servers compare. Well I got to level 19 and got the quest to do Copperbell Mines. Ok cool - Ive already done this before on my Ultros Character so I queue and get into a group where 2 members were doing the Low Level Duty Roulette and Me and the other were doing it for story. The party broke down as followed - MRD <Me>, WHM (36 in DR), LNC (Story), and BRD (48 in DR)

As I'm marking the first pull the LNC decides to facepull and proceeds to hit mob mark #2 instead of #1. Ok nobody dies - run proceeds smoothly until we get to the first giant that comes smashing through the wall. Before I have even thrown a Tomahawk at it the LNC pops every CD he has and unloads on it much to the ire of the White Mage who is trying to heal him while in Cleric's Stance despite being informed by me that its hurting his healing output and that he wouldnt have to use Medica all the time if he would get out of it. Well we make trudge along and make it to the Ichorous Ire and the LNC decides it's Ok to kill the spawning Bomb time and time again....Even going so far as to insult other members of the group as he does it. The Bard who has remained quiet up until now has lost his patience and calls the LNC out. The WHM who most know the LNC starts backing him up and throwing insults at me claiming that the dungeon run would have gone smoother if I could hold aggro. This is where I was ready for the oh so common disastrous DF party story.

The Bard then said something I wasn't expecting...."If you haven't noticed yet our tank is new. He doesn't have any cross class abilities and he's managed to keep himself and this group alive despite the limited healing he's getting from you in Cleric Stance and you hitting the wrong mobs and not giving him a second to build threat. This is why we lose good tanks at the later levels....Work with him and not against him."

I was shocked to have someone say something in my defense when so often the tank is the first person to be put down when a party starts falling apart. So to that Bard who was so kind enough to stand up for a "New" Tank in a dungeon thank you for showing me that there are still good decent people out there. :)

You have to be a tank to know a tank's pain.

I wasn't aware how much crap a tank has to deal with until I tried leveling one in instances. Now I understand. It also made me quit the game entirely though, so it doesn't matter much in the end

Reminds me of being chewed out for not being able to heal as a healer while tanking adds that no one else was willing to remove off me, "Just use Surecast you dumb *****!" There's nothing more outrageous than being blamed for someone else's poor playstyle, especially over basics they should have learned by level 20.

But I've had plenty of good moments too. We had a tank that decided to troll us for the final boss in Brayflox for some reason. We kept explaining that you can't keep the dragon in its own poison for a good 10 minutes while we watched him circle the beast by himself. The healer kept him alive, but there just wasn't any getting through to him. When he finally did fall, he went AFK, so we kicked him out. We decided to try killing it, just the three of us, before giving up.

I was on Dragoon with some nifty high defense scale armor so I signaled I'd give tanking a try. But I realized because I wasn't a Lancer anymore, that locked me out of all the coveted Gladiator tanking skills. All I had access to was the Marauder's Skull Sunder (without the combo). So I asked the archer to give me some time with the boss before wailing on it, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to hold it long. But much to my surprise, slipping in a Skull Sunder between combos seemed to do the trick. And the healer was awesome and didn't miss a beat with the cures. Altogether we actually took the thing down all by ourselves, and that moment felt like a much greater accomplishment than anything at endgame.

In hind sight, at least in my case, I guess I can take solace in the fact that you can't really understand a tank's woes without being a tank yourself. There really is more to the job than casting one ability repeatedly. Like the OP, I'm kinda taken back when people stand up for you when you're being bashed for x, y, or z. I'd like to make more of an effort myself to be that person standing up for people when these things happen.

Asshats will be asshats, and they're everywhere and we know who they are from a mile away. The best thing we can do is let the asshats be asshats together and let them burn each other out on their own. I, for one, want to enjoy the game. That attitude served me well back in the beginning during launch issues, it'll serve well again (/whiteknight).

I remember 'pro-gaming' in the CPL when Counter Strike was a thing. I'm surprised to hear that WoW is considered 'professional gaming', and I'm hoping like hell that 'professional gaming' doesn't find it's way to XIV. If it does, I sure as hell hope that some of the good ol' community philosophies I fell in love with in XI follow it, else I'm sure a lot of the good folks that play will either heavily isolate or leave.

No denying that it would mean more people being interested. I'd never dispute that eSports does that for a game. My fear would be that it'd suddenly attract a super elitest crowd that 'does PvP professionally' or 'plays XIV professionally' and therefore are better players right off the bat. I didn't see it so much in the ooooold days of Counter Strike but I couldn't stand Source after the first... oh, two years or so. Every pub server I went to had or was run by some elitest who was CPL and therefore you had to worship the ground he walked on or get booted.

That's what I fear. Directly it wouldn't impact my gaming in XIV, but indirectly I'd be running into a larger asshat crowd.

A great way to make a party better is to look for opportunities to do this for others.

We got to King Behemoth in a CT last night and we were having issues. Someone pulled about 2 seconds after I said "Does anyone need to know the strat?" in alliance chat. I guess several of the OTs were inexperienced because people kept leaving their towers, and 4 or 5 guys died to the first Meteor. DPS weren't on the bombs fast enough and we kept losing a tower. It was an ugly wipe. The insults started right away "Effing noobs, effing retards, yadda yadda, your mom is an etc. go kill yourself" Someone tried to vote abandon my party after the worst of it.

"Relax. Some people are new, and I didn't see any of you explaining the strat before you pulled him."

Best line I typed all week. Two of us started giving the rundown on what to do, tanks picked towers, and we beat him on the second try and aced Acheron. Still no SCH body. =/