By that I mean white mages who cast Cure III on the puller when he’s only taken between 20 to 30 points of damage from the pull and then wonder why the monster goes immediately for them.

Spunky WHM> Why am I taking damage?
Angry Samurai> Cure or Cure II during the fight only { please } unless someone is in red
Disheartened Dragoon> you’re pulling hate from the tank
Spunky WHM> { Understood }

For one fight everything would go good. But then the fight after that..

Spunky WHM casts Cure III on Angry Samurai Puller.
Spunky WHM is hit for 50+ damage while everyone struggles to try and regain hate.

Spunky WHM> why did I get hit?

Ugh.

So I was in Garlaige Citadel in a group that consisted of: a monk, a thief, a dragoon, a samurai (myself), a paladin to tank, and a scholar that was two levels higher to main-heal.  Now I had never partied with a scholar before but everyone kept telling me that they were the end-all be-all of mages and that with a scholar we couldn’t lose.

I was skeptical at best.  But I was willing to try it out.

The first 30 minutes consisted of the thief pulling siege bats, the paladin occasionally using provoke (see previous entry), and the scholar waiting until everyone was near death in order to start casting cures.  Our thief then disconnected and never returned.

A redmage was seeking so we invited her.  She then took the role of backup healer.  Things went more-or-less the same for yet another ten to fifteen minutes when the scholar somehow got one of his LS friends to come powerlevel us.

Things really picked up then.  “So why you are writing this blog?” you’re probably asking yourselves.  Well, the scholar leveled.  “Don’t worry,” he assured us, “I have a replacement on the way.”  Awesome, we all thought.

A few minutes later a samurai showed up.

Yes, that was his “replacement.”

We said our goodbyes and parted ways.  The samurai hopped into the group and we started going again.  The powerleveler kept us alive, which was great since we only had the redmage to main heal now and it was too much of a strain.  Then suddenly we noticed our HP going into red.  All of us.

“Cure please?”  A cure never came.  We started to sweat.  What happened?

After we managed to beat the monster with a mere sliver of our lives left, we took a quick look around and noticed that the powerleveler was nowhere to be found.

Turns out she decided to warp in the middle of a fight.   IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT!!

WHY!?  Was her house on fire?  Did an army of guards come rushing into the room and drag her away?  I cannot understand the impatience of not waiting through ONE last fight.  Or, at the very least, you know, having the common curtsy of saying “hey, I have to go.”  No, instead she just left us hanging.

And the scholar left us with a damage dealer for a replacement, meaning the party was now defunct and unable to continue.

For you people out there leveling, when it’s your time to go and you want to find a replacement be sure it’s actually useful to the party.  If you’re a main healer and you know you’re a main healer, please find a healer to replace you so that the party can continue on.

There are two things that I just cannot stand when it comes to tanks: outdated armor and not using job abilities. I will break these down seperately.

Outdated Armor
Listen, I hate to break it to you but your job really depends on you staying alive in order to keep us alive. In order to minimize damage you should be wearing armor within at least two levels of your job level.

Now, I’m not one of those ZOMG ELITE types. I can understand if you’re a little short on gil and can only afford the normal quality gear. I don’t mean those types of people. I’m talking about people who are wearing level 16 gear at level 24.

Paladins.

If you are a paladin wearing level 16 gear at level 24 you might want to consider taking a short break from leveling to farm and get some better gear.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that at level 24 a pure damage dealer who is specializing in DD gear is not only pulling hate but is taking less damage than the tank. And that sort of brings me to my second point.

Using Job Abilities
You have them for a reason. Start using them.

I have seen, in multiple parties, paladins and warriors that refuse to provoke even when the mages are taking damage. I’ve seen paladins who refuse to use sentinel. I’ve seen horribly under-equipped paladins refuse to use sentinel after using provoke and nearly dying because of it. I’ve seen both refuse to use defender. And, naturally, I’ve seen paladins who refuse to cure themselves inbetween all of this.

Why?

Why are you people not using your abilities? I cannot understand this.

As a Samurai I use hasso like clockwork. I use meditate when I need to pull off some skill chains (remember those?) or need to do a lot of damage fast. And hey, when I pull too much hate, because I’m a damage dealer with up-to-date gear and you tanks refuse to use your abilities to even try to hold hate, I even switch to seigan and shoot off a few Third Eyes to try and stay alive.

It’s not hard people.

Really it isn’t.

If you’re too afraid to die, stop playing a tank. In fact, you might want to stop playing the game. I hate to break it to you people but death is a part of FFXI. If you die as a tank and your party members survive it means you did your job well. Take pride in your job.

Now get out there and start using what SquareEnix gave you.

So who am I? I am someone who has been playing FFXI on and off for the past four years. At first I was on Asura but grew tired of the game and had other life obligations. About seven months ago I restarted on a different server and am trying to level Samurai to level 75. And it is not going well. In seven months my highest job is only level 34 and it’s not Samurai. At the time of this writing, my Samurai is level 23 and is apparently stuck.

I have successfully avoided pick-up parties until now due to just how BAD they are in the dunes and early Qufim. I won’t rant about how bad the dunes is, since anyone and everyone who has played FFXI (and even some who have not) knows. But it has become next to impossible to solo. Even if it were possible, it would take far too long. I have decided that I must start joining pick-up parties to reach my goal of 75.

So I hope you’ll stick around and read my rants and rages as I struggle to get Samurai to level 75.