Being Proactive vs Reactive in FFXI

[The Stig]

A plague amongst a lot of BLMs I play with ...

Sometimes they land a massive nuke which rips hate from me. The NM (usually) runs after them.

What do they do? STUN and then run/try to put up buffs/cures themselves. I don't think stunning is very helpful in this situation... but this is very reactive.

Very reactive. If I was BLM, I'd sit there and let my ass die. We did Tinnin yesterday (tanking) and the 5-6 BLMs (3 that were new to the fight) we had fucked up what could've been a very easy fight. Stun, run, draw in, Tinnin goes apeshit, repeat for a while...

Had to get a mule to sac it while we recovered...

[LakshmiToralyn]

I dont think there are any linkshells (on lakshmi at least) that ONLY camp hnms, and not do ANY sea/sky/dynamis/einherjar/salvage/znm type stuff. And if anything taking off the shell just makes you look worse. Especially when you have low numbers and youre starting to /sea people and find them all over the place and not in the shell, when you know they were just talking 5 minutes before it popped.

HNA on Lakshmi???? they dont do anything besides HNM

[LakshmiToralyn]

A plague amongst a lot of BLMs I play with ...

Sometimes they land a massive nuke which rips hate from me. The NM (usually) runs after them.

What do they do? STUN and then run/try to put up buffs/cures themselves. I don't think stunning is very helpful in this situation... but this is very reactive.

Very reactive. If I was BLM, I'd sit there and let my ass die. We did Tinnin yesterday (tanking) and the 5-6 BLMs (3 that were new to the fight) we had fucked up what could've been a very easy fight. Stun, run, draw in, Tinnin goes apeshit, repeat for a while...

Had to get a mule to sac it while we recovered...

nothing more annoying than a BLM pulling hate in Einherjar kiting the boss away from 20 other bound/gravitied people, instead of running it back into the shitstorm

[Pharaun]

The one thing I've noticed that most bad mages have in common is that they don't know how to properly filter their chat log. It's really easy to miss when a mob does some type of buff move if the log is filled with all the attacks, damage, evaded attacks, etc of the melee. When I'm playing Rdm the only things I want to see in the chat log are the special abilities that the mob uses, and maybe when other party members use special abilities if I have the chance to toss out a magic burst (haha it never happens anymore). I'm pretty much a melee only player these days, but I was so glad that I took rdm to 75 first.

If I get in a exp/merit party and I see a mage that's struggling I send them a /t asking if they have their filters set up. 95% of the time they don't so I give them a few tips on how to set it up so they can catch more of the things they need to dispel or -na. Some people take my advice and improve their game, some don't. I choose to stop playing with the ones that don't.

[fishstix]

nothing more annoying than a BLM pulling hate in Einherjar kiting the boss away from 20 other bound/gravitied people, instead of running it back into the shitstorm

a mage pulling hate on 4F Bhaflau gears and running away while everyone is gravitied. or or... a rdm standing near the mob, converting with a DS cure4 on himself, getting hit, resulting in more self cures.

I think a lot of a BLM's reaction mindset comes from soloing for exp. When soloing, one of your first instincts is to run or stun if a mob's coming after you. I see BLMs sometime try to cast bind and then nuke... while 10 melees are whacking away at it, instantly breaking bind if it landed. I solo'd my way from 55-73, so I know where they're coming from, but I've also read Kaeko's blog and would have stoneskin/blink up, standing in -dmg gear, eating the hits if I pull hate. Not only would each hit reduce enmity, whereas stun/cure would increase it, melee/tanks can pull hate off you, since they can actually hit it.

Although yeah, there's a lot of less than average people out there, 50% of the world, you need to see where they're coming from also. Maybe they're busy casting a 8sec nuke, or rebuffing, to be able to sleep things instantly. Maybe the rdm was busy with refresh/haste/cure to dispel the mob before you engage. Unless they're in the frontline or pulling, it can be hard to. Yea, they can skip buffing to run to the next mob and dispel, but it doesn't come naturally. Especially if you're the only healer in salvage and everything aggros HP, yet no one brought hi pots.

[dejet]

Happens a lot, I was a full on whm for years then lvled blm and smn and finally sam. Sam did teach me a lot! like ice spikes blow a lot. >.> as well as sleeping mobs is big thing (and to be fast about it) so if a person is not doing something most the time ill start out by telling them in /tell. "Please can you be a little faster with taking X spikes off". Most the time the person will be happy but you always get that one person out of 100 that will tell you not to tell them how to play their job. In the end if they change great if not just try and not pt with them. Over time people will slowly stop PTing with that person and he/she will get the message. it is a pain to deal with, but if you can help them its better then getting mad at said person. ^^

Also as a blm it is rare that i ever run away, but i can not say i have not. If i do not trust the group i am with i might end up doing so. if i am with my linkshell I won't run at all. To me it depends, I know that within 5seconds my pld will regain hate. If i do not know the pld i might run a little just to give him/her the time to provoke ,flash or do whatever. Unlike the others tho i would not do this when everyone is bound or has gravity on haha thats great.

[Valyana]

Is it just some people just suck?

This.

Well, it isn't always this; sometimes people are out of practice with a particular job mindset. But a lot of the time yelling/coaching/whatever isn't going to help. There seems to be no hope for people that have trouble reading party chat.

[Lujei]

a mage pulling hate on 4F Bhaflau gears and running away. . .

I can not express my intense hatred for this, even being a mage myself.

[Spekkio]

if you pull hate on blm or even many other jobs, the first thing you want to do is generally to close the gap. you don't want to haul a mob to the mages and get them trashed by an AoE or encourage a mob to have more choices of TP moves (flail, homing missile, that sort of thing.) after that, while the melees are trying to recover hate, stunning is perfectly fine. if you'd die anyway, what's the harm in a.) trying to last a little longer and hope the tanks can recover hate or b.) stunning the mob and impeding it from hurting others for just a little longer? yes, stunning generates a lot of hate, but a blm generally has a modest chunk of -enmity gear on as it is, while a pld will have a strong chunk of +enmity gear. thus my stun will only generate a fraction of your flash's enmity, giving an ample opportunity for a pld to recover hate before i bite the dust. just don't go kiting it off into the mages or hauling it out of range of the tanks/melees or you're going to make a bad situation worse.

[Hanyoko]

I never understood that either. Ack i got hate, better run away from the rest of my team so they.. can.... help... me.. WHY DID YOU LET ME DIEE!!!1!

I've found in a lot of situations its better to run towards the mob then away. Oh, big nasty is casting a ga and the possible targets are all running to the four winds...

I know I putmyself into an action cue on rdm far too often and i'm sure it annoys my melee. Lamia pulled with ice spikes.. but I was hasting/curing the tank, then i'm going to Silence the mob, then dispel the spikes.

I need gambits =>.<=

[drwaffles]

Bottom line: most people are absolutely terrible at playing this game, to the point that it simply can't be attributed solely to thier level of commitment to it/how seriously they take it (especially when people with millions of gil in gear are completely horrible players).

The worst part is that for ages I've tried to point out people's mistakes, correct them when they're wrong, try and give them tips to play better (all done in the politest way possible, in most cases), but when they basically ignore me or show that they simply can't be bothered to put more than an iota of effort into what they're doing I start to get really pissed and say what I think. That, of course, leads to a reputation for being an "elitist asshole", which in turn simply increases your bitterness towards people who perform badly and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle of resentment.

I think life would be a lot more enjoyable being dumb.

[LakshmiToralyn]

Bottom line: most people are absolutely terrible at playing this game, to the point that it simply can't be attributed solely to thier level of commitment to it/how seriously they take it (especially when people with millions of gil in gear are completely horrible players).

The worst part is that for ages I've tried to point out people's mistakes, correct them when they're wrong, try and give them tips to play better (all done in the politest way possible, in most cases), but when they basically ignore me or show that they simply can't be bothered to put more than an iota of effort into what they're doing I start to get really pissed and say what I think. That, of course, leads to a reputation for being an "elitist asshole", which in turn simply increases your bitterness towards people who perform badly and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle of resentment.

I think life would be a lot more enjoyable being dumb.

This sums it up perfectly. QFT

[Palom]

A problem with many mages is that they cannot "feel" how it is to be a melee because they never leveled a melee job to a certain level.

I don't think this has any bearing on it at all. The problem with many mages (and melees alike) is they fail to learn group dynamics. You need to learn how your job interacts with the jobs around you.

Time and again I see boneheaded melees make retarded decisions. For example, I sleep a mob. Some melee comes up and hits it, "oops wrong target." So, they switch targets and run off to a different mob. That pissy-ass 20-damage melee hit isn't going to hold hate off the enmity generated from a Sleep II. So, the mob comes over and starts beating on me. If my Sleep timers/buffs/etc. are down, I'm dead.

I honestly don't think you can pin it on anything other than the difference between crappy players and not-crappy players; not whether they've leveled other jobs.

[Nishida]

When I see someone that isn't Dispelling fast enough I usually just say {Dispel} in party chat. I do this for everything. If a mob needs slept from a bad pull right away I'm spouting off "RDM {Sleep}" or something of that nature. I mostly do this because I automatically assume everyone I'm partying with is new/new to their job/an idiot. Does this make me an asshole? Maybe. Does this help more often than not? Pretty much.

Also..in my FFXI experience I've jumped back and forth between so many jobs, and done a ton of research as such. With this..I know how to play any job I get on effectively because I have gained experience one time or another from said job. Be it doing research, studying good player habits, etc.

In the end though..people are people. Stupidity cannot be avoided, only ignored.

[Yugl]

Time and again I see boneheaded melees make retarded decisions. For example, I sleep a mob. Some melee comes up and hits it, "oops wrong target." So, they switch targets and run off to a different mob. That pissy-ass 20-damage melee hit isn't going to hold hate off the enmity generated from a Sleep II. So, the mob comes over and starts beating on me. If my Sleep timers/buffs/etc. are down, I'm dead.

That sounds more like a mistake than anything. Furthermore, if they make that mistake, it puts them in a compromising situation since continuing to hit the mob may prevent said mage from sleeping the mob. If on the other hand the mage doesn't have buffs and they don't continue to hit the mob, the mage will hit the floor. However, if that is the case, both are to blame since the melee obviously made a mistake by hitting the wrong mob, but the mage is also to blame (Maybe even more than the melee) since he or she intentionally did not cast buffs.

[Callisto]

Edit: Eh forget it.

[Nishida]

How about when a pop spawns and agros as the main target is about to die and you switch to the pop and voke/melee it to take hate for the time being until the tank can change targets and AFTER you've already engaged the mage casts Sleep like it will do any ounce of good, haha.

[Devinry]

The one thing I've noticed that most bad mages have in common is that they don't know how to properly filter their chat log. It's really easy to miss when a mob does some type of buff move if the log is filled with all the attacks, damage, evaded attacks, etc of the melee. When I'm playing Rdm the only things I want to see in the chat log are the special abilities that the mob uses, and maybe when other party members use special abilities if I have the chance to toss out a magic burst (haha it never happens anymore). I'm pretty much a melee only player these days, but I was so glad that I took rdm to 75 first.

If I get in a exp/merit party and I see a mage that's struggling I send them a /t asking if they have their filters set up. 95% of the time they don't so I give them a few tips on how to set it up so they can catch more of the things they need to dispel or -na. Some people take my advice and improve their game, some don't. I choose to stop playing with the ones that don't.

Semi-off topic, but would you mind laying out your filter settings when you play RDM? I've recently taken up the job and want to make sure I catch all that stuff. So far, it's been pretty straightforward; but later on, I really want to be on top of it.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

Bottom line: most people are absolutely terrible at playing this game, to the point that it simply can't be attributed solely to thier level of commitment to it/how seriously they take it (especially when people with millions of gil in gear are completely horrible players).

The worst part is that for ages I've tried to point out people's mistakes, correct them when they're wrong, try and give them tips to play better (all done in the politest way possible, in most cases), but when they basically ignore me or show that they simply can't be bothered to put more than an iota of effort into what they're doing I start to get really pissed and say what I think. That, of course, leads to a reputation for being an "elitist asshole", which in turn simply increases your bitterness towards people who perform badly and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle of resentment.

I think life would be a lot more enjoyable being dumb.

This sums it up perfectly. QFT

Seconded

[Silenus]

A lot of people play stoned, too. Your friend has issues.