[Warning: Wall of Text]
So I've been doing my roulettes with a friend lately because end-of-expansion Duty Finder is just hell on earth, and this way I know there's at least one competent player with me. Usually things go okay enough to just shrug them off, but yesterday's roulettes were special. No chat logs for this one because I didn't take any screenshots and barely anything was said anyway, and no fflogs because I'm a filthy console player.
First, expert roulette. I'm a Warrior, my friend is a Samurai.
We are paired with another Samurai and a Sage, finding ourselves in Mistwake. Nice, I've been growing tired of the Clyteum.
Right off the bat, it turns out that the Sage is one of those really cautious healers, spamming me with Eukrasian Diagnosis. This is slightly insulting for a Warrior, but it's whatever since I also see Kardia healing going off. At least they're dealing some damage.
The run is mostly uneventful so far except for my realisation that this Sage doesn't really let me use Bloodwhetting because I'm pretty much always at full health due to the shield spam. Well, it's better than letting people die, right?
After the second boss, my friend needs to fix some internet issues and we continue to the next pull without her. Which takes forever to die - now, I know very little of Samurai and nothing on the random one's rotation looked weird to me, but even considering that a whole DPS is missing, the pull drags on for much longer than expected. I just want to be done with this run already.
My friend returns and we move on to the second pull. The one with all the AOEs every couple seconds... which don't even hurt that much, so I just shove myself into a corner and eat them. Gives me an excuse to properly use my cooldowns, including Shake it Off because both Samurai are staying with me and eating AOEs too. Good.
I guess the Sage isn't too thrilled about us taking harmless, yet avoidable damage, because when the two Samurai are getting hit by lines at the last boss, the Sage isn't healing them at all. My friend dies at some point and gets revived, but she's not getting healed up, so I toss a Nascent Flash her way. Then the other Samurai is at low health, the Sage isn't doing anything and Nascent is still on cooldown, so I can't save them from the next raidwide and they die.
We clear the dungeon, the Sage leaves almost instantly, and I'm left thinking... Are they a powertripping asshole, or just stupid? Guess I'll never know, but I hope I won't see them again.
Next, it's leveling roulette. I'm staying on Warrior, my friend switches to White Mage.
We load into the Skydeep Cenote, a dungeon I personally like a lot, my friend however isn't thrilled because she hates the sound effects of persona-type enemies and was probably glad to have dodged those in the Clyteum. But spooky baby ghosts are the least of our problems in this run.
Our DPS are a Reaper and a Bard, and the latter is kicking things off with... Army's Paeon? Okay, not the song you would usually start with, but at least they're singing. It's more than I can say about many other Bards I've encountered in the last couple weeks.
The first pull takes absurdly long to die. So long in fact that I have Rampart back for the second pull. At some point, I notice that the Reaper hasn't applied Death's Design to anything. Oh no. This is gonna be a long ride.
We reach the first boss. Death's Design is still nowhere to be seen, and the Bard applies only the poison dot, but not the wind dot. Both DPS also get hit by a lot of avoidable stuff - mind you, there are no firsttimers in the party. The Bard dies a few times while the Reaper is kept alive through a total of six vuln stacks, thanks to the combined efforts of Nascent Flash and Divine Benison.
While we slowly plough through the next pulls, I predict the final boss to be a dumpster fire and a half, so I tell my friend that if we get the multistack tower while both DPS are dead, I'll solo it with Holmgang. Can't be too cautious, now.
The second boss is more of the same, but at least the Reaper gets hit by Mirrow Maneuver only twice before realising that following the Warrior is probably safe for this mechanic. At least they're learning something.
During the single pack after the second boss, I ask "[Bard], can you LB the next pull please?" and receive... no reaction. They turn out to be a PS5 player and probably don't have a keyboard - fine, as long as they end up LBing.
...which they don't. The party menu lists the Bard as German and their search comment also says "Deutsch", so my friend sends an auto-translated message. Still no LB. "...guess not", I say, to which my friend replies: "Yeah, single targeting is more important apparently". Ouch. I haven't even noticed that. No wonder the pulls drag on.
We reach the final boss. As predicted, the first deaths happen very early with the DPS getting yeeted by the halfroom cleave and the knockback circle respectively. The deaths don't end there, once both DPS have Brink of Death, they won't lose it for the rest of the fight. Combined with their lackluster rotations, you can probably imagine how long the fight ends up taking. At some point, the Reaper says that the mechanics are too fast for them, and they apologise for dying so much. At least they're trying their best, even if their best is still pretty bad.
No such thing can be said about the Bard, however. They eventually just seem to give up as they're not even attempting to move out of the blue instant death circle or the halfroom cleaves anymore. My friend responds with raising them only once per minute or so. Bless her, I'd have left the Bard on the floor.
Both my friend and I are eating through our respective cooldowns like candy, until we end up having a stack marker with three people and zero mitigation. Maybe it's a blessing that the Bard didn't LB the pull earlier, because now we have a tank LB when every other resource has tried up. Imagine needing a tank LB in a leveling dungeon.
Eventually, the boss dies of old age. Usually, we send our "gg"s and leave, but instead my very much tilted friend says: "You guys made me age 20 years", and honestly, I can't blame her. This run was exhausting.
...at least the remaining roulettes are fairly uneventful. Which we absolutely need.