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Context

A while back I thought about maybe dipping my toes back into serious raiding for XIV. Having heard the savage tier was easy this time around made it the perfect chance for me to jump back in, but sadly I didn’t have a lot of luck. My own nerves combined with the quality of the average PF group meant it was a demoralizing experience to the point I was thinking of just giving up.

Friends saw me talk about it on twitter and invited me to their free company (in spirit, we’re on different servers) and helped me get through it. While some of my first times were by myself I wouldn’t have been able to do it without their help, and thus they invited me to a new static they were making.

They wanted to try an ultimate they’d cleared before, thinking it would be a good opportunity to improve and test people who haven’t gone into them but they felt were good enough to clear. I thought why not and went for it.

The group had many issues. First, at least half of the group couldn’t make it last minute. Some due to scheduling conflicts they hadn’t even mentioned until the last minute (despite the group leader having to adjust the schedule to everyone’s schedules) and others due to the good old fashioned ‘oh this person is a dickhead and literally left right before we were going to start the static as a final fuck you to us.’ This led to us having such issues as bringing in people who’d never done combat higher than normal raids, having to try to find replacements through PF and other venues mid prog, and having to try to deal with personalities we got out of virtue of beggars can’t be choosers. Needless to say, we didn’t clear. With the last day being particularly disastrous as one of our raiders just fell asleep at the keyboard as we filled leading to our PF fills to get.

Gamer colorful we shall say.

One of my friend’s apologized for the last day going bad but I honestly didn’t care, I had no delusions we would do it and while we did make more progress than I could see the writing on the wall early on. Which was why I kept telling the other friend to not stress themselves over this, having been a guild officer back in WoW I knew the pain of corralling people for content and figured out long ago pixels ain’t worth it.

But as the FRU times settled down they pinged me to try again, this time for real and actually vetting people enough to get people we assumed could do it. And that this would be a ‘speedprog’ party where once we cleared we’d do some totem farm. So I decided again, fuck it. Might as well try to go all the way and be able to say ‘Yeah I somehow managed to clear an Ultimate, not sure how.’

This is the story of a group where nearly everything that could have gone wrong did.

The Recruitment

We had some returning folks. Me, the Free Company leader, and a healer that was in the first group.

That last one will be important later.

The Free Company leader had plenty of frustrations recruiting, but we eventually got a group of people together that made a pretty balanced group. Myself main tanking as Warrior, the FC leader as dark knight, an astrologian, the healer from the first group as sage, a bard, a dragoon, a picto (due to them being so OP for Ultimates) and

A viper. Which is universally considered the worst melee dps to bring to an Ultimate from what I understand. But, at the time, I was okay with that. I’d seen things like the four viper clear of TEA before the changes to LB so I figured it would just be a nice challenge. After all, plenty of people told me any class can clear!

With this our group began and we.

Had issues.

[Essence of Suffering voice] Pain and Suffering are All That Await You

The first few weeks were as one might expect. Some issues with the first phase, and Limit Cut causing us so many headaches. Unfortunately some of this could be targeted to a single person:

our picto, who unfortunately was not grasping the fight at all. They had to be let go after being found doing such things as:

Asking to play black mage because ‘they knew the class much better’ only to be caught asking basic questions in The Balance before the raid they played it.

Constantly getting defensive whenever they were given refreshers/advice.

And

Complaining about how fragile dolls were only for everyone else who had even touched picto going “Those aren’t your lowest potency spells.”

But a different disaster struck us around this period. Our viper, seeming to prove my apprehensions wrong, got a clear in PF about two weeks into our progression. So I thought that was pretty cool, we had someone who proved they could do it, and we

Lost the dragoon and the bard who knew each other. See, turns out in revealing how fast he could prog the viper had made them self-conscious enojugh to believe they were holding back prog. Couldn’t get them back either, they were that kind of self-conscious player and if what happened next didn’t I’d just feel bad for them.

But that’s for later.

Anyways, thankfully the Viper knew some people who could fill as part of the static and we continued with prog. This was good since the last group we were in found it impossible to find a phys ranged so it was a relief to find one so quickly, and we soon had a different picto in the FC helping out.

So it continued, wipe after wipe. Week after week. But we were making progress, slowly and with humps but the words kept coming.

‘Once we get past BPOG it’s one more wall then clear.’

‘The fight is just frontloaded, once we get past BPOG it’ll be smooth sailing.’

‘Trust me. Once you see Perfect Alexander it’s basically a clear.’

So this got me through a lot of it, I had my moments of frustration but nothing major, and with us replacing our what I thought were our only underperformers and bad personalities I thought things would go well.

Then the FC leader told me something in passing one day.

Oh, Our sage isn’t healing

So, you may recall we brought in a healer from the first group that went under. In fact, one of the ways I felt encouraged to try this again was because the FC leader mentioned they wanted to help them get the clear. They seemed nice enough, and they’d cleared Ultimate Weapon Ultimate. So I assumed she had what it took.

Then the FC leader let me know one day as we did some out of schedule PF time that she isn’t healing. That she could tell she wasn’t healing, that it had been incredibly difficult to be their cohealer and that they brought them in assuming they’d gotten better only for the astrologian to say the apparently universal healer call for help (‘Wow guys, I’m healing so much!’). In short, despite everything it was clear she hadn’t improved at all since the first group.

This turned into a situation where the astrologian said they’d talk to her, then the FC Leader said she’d talk to her. So I got a little frustrated at that and I had a bad few raid days. Then…

She cleared.

Yeah.

Turns out they went into party finder, and cleared in one pull.

Now, my first response to this was ‘Oh shit, guess that’s karma for me! Here I am so angry and they could do it. Surely this is a sign that they have improved and–’

They didn’t improve. In fact, people looked at her logs and saw that there was no way she could have cleared with how bad her healing was. Turns out.

She had just so happened to find a group consisting of people who live in TEA.

She had just so happened to play better than usual.

She had just. So. Happened. To be able to clear in one pull.

I’d initially thought this meant she had RMTed but no. She’d just randomly been trying to make her healing look better by spamming her instant cast heal to bloat her parse. So she just got a combo of lucky group and lucky tactics.

Because HOO BOY when she came back to raid and was ‘helping?’ Playing like ass. Fucking up mechanics. Couldn’t heal past the one big healing check. She had 100% been carried.

While being the reason we’d wasted 4 months total between both groups.

This now brought on a major problem. Because now the FC Leader had to tell her that the way she was playing was making it impossible for us to get any farther. But now that she had the clear she of course assumed it was just that she was that good and that she didn’t need to improve. She didn’t want to be ‘sweaty’ after all. And even after the FC leader explained to her how she could improve because the FC leader had looked up a bunch of sage resources to help she just no sold it with ‘well I want my cohealer to tell me instead.’ To which said cohealer could only say ‘I don’t know your class you were supposed to know it before going in what do you mean you haven’t been following any mitplan?’

She, of course, decided that she couldn’t be wrong. So convinced she was wrong that she wasted two entire raid days (two weeks before our deadline due to the new savage tier dropping) continuing to argue that she shouldn’t have to improve.

People who understand high level play more than me told me ‘she has 50% gcd uptime she does not know what she is doing.’

But hey, she dropped. The FC Leader took over shield healing and the other healer felt a lot better about her healing and we got a friend to fill in as the co-tank. And we kept going.

And kept going.

And kept going.

I managed to get to Perfect Alexander with some extra PF time.

But not the group.

So we reached the final day, having not been wholly consistent with Wormhole but.

Surely.

Surely we’d squeak out the final push. After all, seeing PA is basically a clear as I’ve been told!

The Final Day

So here we are. Not even seen Perfect Alexander as a group and about to hit the final day. We get told we’ll try to go an extra hour, so about 9:30 before we call it quits.

Our phys-range clears with his other static that day.

I chose to consider it a good omen.

Another person who had only been progging the fight during off hours with the FC/static lead for 3 weeks also gets a clear, where he can’t stop shouting ‘whoa guys, whoa. Our dps whoa. Whoa guys we’re not even seeing past 6 j-waves whoa. WHOA WHOA. Guys we’re not even going to see jails guys. Holy shit guys we did it!” All while myself and the FC leader are in chat. They also cleared DSR before we started.

I.

Chose.

To see this.

As a good omen.

Oh how foolish I was.

There was an immediate issue, and that was our Viper deciding to update his computer (not forced into updating, just decided to update before raid) and having to deal with his computer essentially not functioning for about an hour until he managed to get it working probably about thirty minutes into raid time. So we had to use PF, and I’m so pissed at the people we got in PF for being the wonderful PF of not knowing what they’re doing but proudly displaying their TEA Adventurer Plates.

Okay. Okay that’s fine, we should be fine. All we have to do is be here and…

Our picto isn’t here. It’s and hour into raid and our picto isn’t here. So desperate this made us that we even tried to merc a magical dps. 6 million gil because we just wanted it done.

He lasted about an hour before saying he needed to go, something about his girlfriend. Thankfully our picto came online so we kept going.

Kept going past raid time.

Kept going past the 9:30 mark.

Kept going despite everyone saying they should get their materials together for the patch.

We’d reached PA and hit enrage with a sloppy pull, we could still do it.

We kept going. We kept going to a point I auto-piloted so hard that anytime someone said anything my brain registered it as just ‘you have to reply’ and from what I’ve been told no one could tell what I was saying through my mumbling. To the point the FC leader even asked if I was okay and I just said ‘I seem more tired than I am.’ Because everyone wanted it, and I didn’t want to be the reason we stopped.

So we kept going, people groaning at PA wipes but we kept at it. We were getting it. It was past 10. 11. 12. 1. Some pulls were terrible, but we started getting to PA more. We were getting. Everything. Fate Calibration Alpha. Fate Calibration Beta. I was timing my invincibility with tankbusters perfectly. We lost each healer at different points in the fight but recovered. Trines were clean. The cages started up.

We could do this.

Our picto said he thought this was the pull.

We could do this.

The health was coming down.

The healers were caged.

I was caged, my cotank caged.

Slowly each dps clicked down, we’d long since used the limit break.

Alexander.

Was not going down fast enough.

All seven cages clicked down.

Enrage hit.

One point four percent.

I stopped this. At 2 AM. I said I can’t do this anymore. I said I told myself I’d never do this again. I left as people were trying to understand what happened, some saying that they thought it was the healers dying. But as I went to bed, as I was frustrated and having trouble getting to sleep out of the sheer frustration of 4 months wasted, as I told the FC leader I was fine just frustrated so I hoped she wouldn’t worry, I knew one thing.

This wasn’t the healer’s fault.

And I would learn I was right the next day.

The Truth

So.

Remember how our Viper managed to find us replacements? Well I never told you what those replacements were.

Let me give you a quick primer on a concept in FFXIV: The selfish dps. Selfish dps are classes that offer nothing but their own damage to the party. This means they provide no general dps buffs to the party, and that means that if you play a selfish dps what you are saying is your own dps is high enough that it will make up for what buffs you don’t provide. If. You play. Well.

The viper is a selfish dps.

The other melee he brought on was a samurai, the other selfish melee dps.

The phys range he brought on was a machinist, the only phys range selfish dps.

Now. If they were really good at their classes it wouldn’t have been an issue.

The viper parsed green, which is FINE. Passable.

The samurai parsed green, which is FINE. Passable.

The machinist.

Parsed.

8.

Out of 100.

Grey as grey can be.

And suddenly so many of our problems made sense. Why so many dps checks were so tight (Cruise Chaser’s Shield, how long J-Waves went, and of course PA himself enraging).

But oh you say, what of our pictomancer? After all perhaps they could have tried more since pictos at that moment were considered carries for Ultimate groups they’re in! Maybe they were under performing as well!

98.

They parsed a 98.

That man could barely have squeaked out any more dps, he was not the issue.

It was this machinist.

The man could have played literally any other phys range and we would have cleared by virtue of having any of the dps capable of buffs.

Which meant literally every person who was the reason we couldn’t clear.

Cleared.

The sage that couldn’t heal.

The machinist that couldn’t dps.

The viper for bringing us dps who couldn’t clear without being carried.

And hell, remember our first picto? The one who couldn’t even do dolls right?

Cleared.

With the same group that cleared that terrible sage the second time that group cleared her.

[Arthur’s Dad Voice] I am so fucking mad

And so, through this experience I now have several beliefs spawned out of spite.

Parsers Aren’t People

There are people who are just trying to improve, and then there are parsers. People who want to improve are people who do their best to do the fight right while trying to squeeze in as much dps as they can, their numbers are only as important to them as much as they serve to do their best and help the group get a clear. Parsers are creatures who will go into groups assuming the boss will never target them with mechanics, and will act as if the very concept of a single gcd missed is grounds to wipe a party. I cannot tell you the number of times someone is told ‘resolve the mechanic correctly/use a gcd heal to keep us up’ and acted as if it was a personal affront to their existence. Not just in the Ultimate, everywhere.

Playing a Selfish DPS in an Ultimate is Griefing

Do I know I’m wrong here? Yup. I’ve seen the four Viper video, I know that even the worst dps for a fight if played well can work at that level of content. But now I know that every class with buffs in a fight contributes to seven other people doing more damage, and thus choosing not to do that means you have chosen to hurt everyone else’s chances unless you’re a godly player (you are not, you are here with a group of desperate people and they will hate you by the end of it).

In short, my fireplace in my in game house currently contains the job stones for Machinist, Samurai, and Viper. I am in fact, that mad.

Never Underplay Ultimates

Don’t call it an easy Ultimate. Don’t try to act like because it’s simple everyone can do it. If I had been told at some point in that prog that I was not capable of clearing I would have been much happier to say ‘aight cool.’ The amount of times people who told me PA was basically a clear that messed up during PA was too damn high.

And for the love of god.

Never fucking call a group a speedprog group unless you know they’re actually capable of speedprogging. Four. Fucking. Months.

I Hate People Who Carry Those That Wasted 4 Months of Our Time

I shouldn’t be mad about this. Since it seems like it wasn’t RMT but just people willing to help out after all.

Until I found out why this was probably the case.

Through complaining about this with other people who play XIV, I was told something that makes me absolutely loathe parsers even more.

So.

As an Ultimate becomes legacy, it becomes ‘easier’ through the fact that while gear and stats are synced down, buff food and potions aren’t. So the farther away from current content an ultimate is, the higher stats can be and the easier dps checks can be (which is why I’m going to be mad forever at that Machinist).

But.

What this means.

Is that the better your stats get, the less time you get to complete your rotations before downtime. Causing people’s parses to go down. So what do parsers obsessed with this fight do?

Carry people who are completely awful so the fight goes on longer and they can get their perfect little gold parse.

I repeat.

Parsers aren’t people.

There’s no reason to prog an ultimate, just get carried

If we’d cleared, I would have seen this proof that sheer willpower can overcome all the odds. A reason to go into this content no matter what, and just prove you can do it no matter your comp. Proof that with enough grit and determination you can triumph with a group of fellow adventurers.

I no longer think that. Instead my advice is to just cozy up with some hardcore raiders to the point that you can ask them to prog you through it once it’s considered a legacy Ultimate. There’s no reason to try to find people at your skill level, because they’ll always be worse than you.

After all, that’s the lesson of this group: don’t try to improve and you’ll be rewarded.

I Hate Every Level of Player of FFXIV

I have a friend who couldn’t get into a week one prog party for this patch’s savage tier because he hadn’t cleared DSR or TOP on content. On. Content. Everyone he tried to submit to just went ‘yeah you only killed FRU on content, sorry that’s not good enough.’

When he was trying to prog FRU his statics (plural because he kept doing more that said ‘this is a real prog party!’) they kept being absolutely godawful. To the point that he had to say ‘We have seen everyone’s dps, we know it’s not me AS THE TANK’s dps that’s the problem.’

And his PF groups couldn’t fucking clear because dumbasses were again, trying to be parsers while being dogshit.

I hate hardcore raiders.

I hate midcore raiders

I hate casual raiders.

And I hate every level of dogshit raider that tries to act like they’re totally good at the game.

And through all this bitching, I have got to admit.

At the end of the day, I shouldn’t care

I don’t care about clearing quite honestly. I saw PA, I did it to a level that I did everything I had to (and that’s admitting Main Tank is the easiest role in the fight). Hell, I’m sure if someone looks up my logs they’ll tell me how I could improve, and I’m sure they’ll be right!

But I hate that I wasted four months on this.

I hate knowing every person that was the reason we couldn’t clear cleared.

I hate that my friends that put all this effort into putting together the party and knew their roles won’t get a clear.

I don’t care about the pixels. The weapons and glow aren’t my style. I would never wear the title. Literally the only reason I’d want the clear is for the funny filigree and maybe steam for my adventurer plate, and I don’t even need that.

But I will now forever see every bastard with a TEA weapon and feel great rage.

Especially with how many of those people are wielding the machinist weapon.

Because my Adventurer Plate has a new slogan, and it sums up my feelings on the existence of Ultimates as a whole.

So.

Hope ya’ll enjoyed my rage!

If somehow this makes it out into the mainstream XIV community and any of the people who live in TEA see this: