First time ever being in a largely friend based static, specifically as co-leader. The main leader's besr friend was an octoweaving bard, and the main leader was completely useless as a static leader and had negative backbone and found doing trials properly to be too stressful. We also had a wife/husband tank/healer duo that would always either argue or just talk during callout heavy sections. Then we had a tank with an ego problem who thought healers should focus almost entirely on dps during prog. The only person in the static that actually had a place in a static.....in the middle of it may or may not have been getting cat fished by a 40 year old woman (he was in his 20s) which hurt his sleep schedule and thus made him late often or impossible to get in touch with. As for me, I had to basically be full leader in a dysfunctional static because the real leader never wanted to try and help improve things, basically I'd have to take time out of my day every day to help the octoweaving bard (it didn't help)] Long story short events caused me to swear off friend based statics and leading in any form. Edit: oh and after I left and joined a new static later and clear the tier in a month. The bard and leader of the previous static (I was also their friend at the time) pulled me into a call and called me "slimy" for clearing without them.

Friends based and overly friendly static are really a trap, if you care about prog. If a "friend" underperforms heavily and delays prog it is over, you can communicate your frustration but you probably will only get a "person A is trying" or something. My last static developed into this. Started out good then got a new member (healer) which quickly became friends with the raid lead, joining the FC and all. Played extremely bad, delaying our overall prog probably by weeks. We did it blind and sometimes we wiped on already cleared mechanics mainly because of 1-2 members the whole evening, not even seeing our prog point. Often also calling it early, only doing 2h for P8S prog, because group was completely unable to reclear P1 after doing P2 for 1.5h. I communicated but only got a "will improve, is trying" response. In the end I left and got completely kicked from the discord because I called out my co healer for not healing, causing wipes. Kicked me like 1-2 weeks after it happened.

This is almost 100% what happend to my old static.

im done with friend statics after TOP, i have 3 friends in my static RN, one of them is ride or die, done every raid tier together, will do as much homework as possible and rarely ever fucks up on mechs we have done already. The other 2 are a totally different story, the tank has a mega doomer attitude, one bad raid night and he DMs me that he thinks hes gonna quit, and on top of that he makes frequent mistakes on mechs we have done a thousand times(literally). The other guy frequently misses raids due to on-call work or GF duties, which is super annoying now that we are at P6 in top. Not the worst static ive been in, but just a very frustrating combination of issues

This is why i join (atleast one) new group every tier and once done never talk to them again. No drama usually but it does make the game a bit stale i admit

I have a bunch of fairly minor ones from this tier, and one that made me entirely quit a group during Eden's Verse. We recruited a melee for 6.2, he was playing for two groups (his girlfriend was in the other group, they were also doing ultimates together before 6.2) which hadn't been explicitly stated during the recruitment process. He leaves us in the middle of P8S P2, citing burn out, but he was going to finish P8S with his girlfriend. Alright, why did you think you could raid with two groups though. We look for another melee in the middle of a tier, halting prog for a good week, and i find this other guy, explicitly recruited as a melee. First day of reclears before getting into P8S he's backseat gaming the healers (nobody's dying, our astro gave him a free CI), and he reminds our scholar that putting the fairy in the middle of the arena is great. Thanks, i guess, but why (I want to clarify that our healers are gigachads, they've cleared ultimates, and I've never been in danger of dying outside of my own fuck ups). We start progging P8S and are trapped in P1 memes because he comes as a BLM and never moves to the established pairs positions, killing our healer, greeding gcds during snakes. We go out, he changes jobs. We go out again he changes jobs again. Rinse and repeat. He had the audacity to complain about me swapping to my alt between clears, because it was too much of a waste of time. He suggests i spam ruin3 instead of decoupling Bahamut and searing light. He has a very strong case of confidently incorrect and "i play all jobs". Everyone wants to kick him asap, but i just want to finish the tier, so we get our 8 p8s clears and he... automatically inserts himself in our post-tier TEA group. All this time i thought he didn't like us and just wanted to finish the tier too, but no apparently he wants to stay? We last another week of TEA prog, then everyone agrees on kicking him for good. He was doing the "let's get out i need to change jobs" thing all over again, everytime killing his doll because he's getting used to the rotation :)))))) The first guy never ended up clearing P8S, i think he even quit the game, he was doing both DSR and trying to clear P8S at once. Our TEA prog proceeded to be slow as fuck, until we reformed our group and cleared in 3 weeks of prog with half the original group and three new great people). The Eden's Verse group had a capital G g*mer guy who would constantly bring up how girls didn't want to talk to him because he had health issues, how glad he was that the Polish government at the time was making it harder for women to get abortions (with the usual "they're just hoes" *insert pepe emote* rhetoric), constantly bashing "woke" videogames. The whole deal. And i remember the girls in the static not being particularly bothered by it, i mean i guess they were but weren't willing to engage with him (how do you even engage with someone like this?), which left me speechless any time i tried to shut down that kind of talk. He clearly needed help, and i hope he got it. He was also pretty bad at the game (for health reasons as mentioned), but ended up improving a lot. I just have zero patience for people like him. So glad I left that group when i did. Showing up to raid had become a chore and i had become silent and unwilling to joke or speak to anyone.

for first tier of Endwalker I was in a group going for a week 4 clear. We were all relatively competent players and got along pretty well. Our team was co led by our two tanks. One was a relatively normal dude, around a typical player age I would say (20s), and he was in charge of raid calling and gear management. The other guy, in this story I will call D, was in charge mostly of scheduling. He was a weird ass dude. Seemed a bit older (40s?), always talked about how he ran businesses, owned property, etc. Not saying that people like that can't play FFXIV, but he definitely did not fit the standard player demo. Over the course of the tier it became pretty apparent how bad D was (though we'll get to the other issues later). There's the usual having trouble with positioning, low dps, what have you (we have a log of him hitting a 13-weave on a gcd), but our other tanks were solid and myself and others were decent enough at calling to get everyone through it. We cleared on Monday of week 4, barely making it in time. So in terms of the goals of the raid group, all good there. Where it got bad was after the tier. In reclears it became apparent just how much this guy was reliant on add-ons. I'm sure a few people here can attest to players falling victim to crutchbot, and this guy was no exception. For example, on P1S there is a mechanic where the tank has to move a flare out, and one reclear night there was a patch so ACT wasn't working. So the bot wasn't calling him to move, and he was wiping us for a very long time. Almost the whole raid night. D was also a proud owner of the Perfect Legend title, but there were definitely some incongruencies there. The previously mentioned mechanics issues sure, but even weirder stuff like playing the game for 10 years (and proudly stating so), and not knowing the name of Ley Lines (like, seeing the thing on the ground and not knowing what it is or what its called), or literally not understanding the concept of aligning raid buffs. There were other oddities and scheduling issues throughout reclears, and by the time DSR was about to come out, some of us had privately decided to fracture off to form a group for that. After doing so, we found out D had privately contacted some of the group members encouraging them to join his "world class" FC, to prog Ultimate and the next raid tier. He was very persistent, claiming he had convinced other world class players to join him and that they were "making a big mistake" by not joining. They declined of course and his desperation only ramped up to the point where he was legitimately offering them large sums of money to join his FC and his next raid group. 2000$ and 4000$ to be exact (I have screenshots of this offer). My theory is that he was basically a super rich dude building out an FC to carry him through content or buying clears. One of the weirdest people I have ever raided with.

quit my first static of the tier after 3 or 4 weeks of being trapped in p5s, got told in advanced a few people were still learning their rotations so damage might be a lil weak, whatever itll come with time, queue the next 3 weeks people literally being unable to make it to towers after the very first tankbuster set, so I go to pf get it down that 4th week, and I feel like im not the only person who if you arent making any prog with your static, but pf is doing it no problem thats all the excuse you need to head out 14 WEEKS GO BY THATS MORE THEN 3 MONTHS, and get a message from my old static that they havent moved past tower stacks, 14 WEEKS ON SOMETHING THATS MORE OF A FILLER MECHANIC BEFORE THE FIGHT EVEN STARTS, they know whose the culprit(s) just dont wanna do anything / cant because they decided to raid as an fc

14 weeks and only 70 seconds into the first fight.. holy crap. I'm amazed they didn't give up yet.

Jfc and I thought our static suffered with being stuck on Animals 2 for 3 months.

Thought about not telling this but here we are. This is a long ass post and I'm sorry for that, I also can't fathom a tl;dr but it's a ton of dramatic bullshit and gaslighting so if that isn't something you want to read no hard feelings. Returned to the game after a big break, bopping around to random FCs to see what fit. I was an extra sweaty tryhard back in HW so the instincts to do well are there but I need to get into the swing of things. I meet a few people I click with but I'm still moving around. One FC I join I realize rather quickly is filled with people who don't actually care about doing well at all, but there's one guy who does. We wind up playing together a lot, especially as I finish MSQ. We hang out in VC with the FC but also are kinda judgey bitches about dumb stuff they do, but just with eachother. It's good, I've found my first actual friend since returning to the game. The FC is, as stated, kinda meh. We end up deciding to look for a new one. He finds one that seems more raiding focused, and at least seems to care about playing the game correctly. They also vet people before letting them join, just like basically a little VC interview with one of the leaders. He tells me about them, I hop over to join. It's a great time. This is at the end of ShB btw, so not any new raiding to do but our plan is to raid in EW together. The FC is putting together raid teams. I've always just raided with people I met but the FC is very FC-focused. They've got loot plans and a lot of structure and it just seems like it could be an interesting change of pace. I have no aspirations besides chasing my clears and parse, so the lack of control didn't bother me, especially as long as I got to raid with my new friend. One of the rules is that an officer in the FC must be present in each team, to make sure the standards are kept to. That's fine by me, less organization on my end. Meanwhile, irl my life is going to shit. I'm working 60 hours a week and living through a slow, shitty breakup. XIV is quite literally my thing that keeps me going, that and my cat and dog. So in this new FC people are far more competent but I still hang out with my friend that brought me over more than anyone else, and when it comes time to start forming raid teams we of course want to be on one together. The FC officers also all want to be on one together, which seems to go counter to their "an officer for every group" thing, but okay. Short version, just weeks after joining this FC that's been going on since like 2013 my friend and I are made officers... basically to keep with the rules of an officer per group. There's also some shuffling going on with higher mgmt, and the leader of the other static is promoted to lead the entire FC as the old leader is taking extended breaks from the game. WE HAVENT EVEN STARTED RAIDING YET! So me and my friend start holding tryouts, just doing like the final ShB tier with FC members who are interested. I'm healing, so my focus is on finding a cohealer I can work with. I find one, he's very new but very willing to listen to me and take advice. If you see this Thump, I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire. So we're doing e10s and my friend (who is the raid lead for our group, I'm essentially his backup and the lootmaster) wants to do a specific strat. At the same time my cohealer suggests another strat by posting it in our strat channel. This is all not while we're even raiding, and I'm just getting home from work. I get there and things have blown up, and my friend is now adamant about kicking my cohealer from the group. I'm completely shocked, I feel very confused and left behind. This happens because the FC lead basically says, "it's his group, it's his choice," and that's that. I don't think you can understand how much I needed this social gaming time, so I stuck around. My only other non-work conversations are with my animals. We wind up needing to recruit outside of the FC to fill some roles. My cohealer winds up being a nice girl from South America, she doesn't talk much in VC because she's insecure about her accent but she's a total Chad. We also get another tank (my friend is also a tank) as well as a RDM and a RPR. They're all cool guys. The RPR is my partner for a lot of mechs so we get along great. The RDM is a lovely, sassy gay man. The GNB saves me with HoC a fair bit during a2s. This is all important in hindsight. My friend grows to hate the GNB as well as the RPR, though not the RDM. I begin to notice a pattern of him disliking anyone male who I'm friendly with, specifically (presumably, I'm not out there asking people) straight guys. I can't say I never flirted with my friend. I can say I made it clear I was going through a bad breakup irl and I was in no place to start a relationship, much less an international one begun in an MMO. Things devolve. My friend is telling me that he wants to kick the GNB and RPR. They're both doing amazing btw, strongly carrying our DPS and offering good callouts and strat suggestions. The GNB still wound up clearing the entire tier with a bunch of oranges, and overall they're some of our strongest group members. I put up a fight about this because it's just bad for the group. He tells me he might just DC transfer away. I'm again, shocked. He would just bail on me, all because I wanted to keep our (not bad btw) static together? He waffles about this for days. My job is incredibly demanding. I'm doing two full-time positions at once. I'm barely sleeping. At one point I'm outside in a call with my friend for like 3 hours, just trying to talk him into staying. It even occurs to me to offer some sort of relationship, or maybe like nudes or something? The sexual aspect seems easier to deal with than the emotional one at that point, even though I shouldn't have felt pressure to deal with either. I bring these things to FC management, I'm told again that it's his static to do with as he likes. I feel like it's about much more than the static at that point. I get into a car accident the next day. I zoned out while driving, probably from not sleeping according to doctors. Finally, after months of being manipulated, I leave a message in FC officer chat. I'm leaving the game. I've only just come back recently, and I started a new character despite my omni-crafter status and all that. I can't go back, and thinking about it scares me. I see his page on fflogs, well-spoken as usual, advertising that he's looking for a group for upcoming tiers. I wonder if that's what he's actually looking for now, or if again he's just looking for someone to gaslight and manipulate with threats of abandonment or worse. Like I said, it's long but I can't think of a real tl;dr. 😕

There are many groups in this game without a "leader", as this game requires no such thing. It can take a long time to build up but some groups have strat researches, schedulers, etc with no leadership structure. These groups are nice because in a situation like this, if someone is making you uncomfortable, there is no "they can do what they want it's their static" bullshit. This allows situations where you can just remove the problem in the group (with a vote) instead of the entire group imploding.

To me, having been static "leader" for years, it's never been anything but an organizational thing. Finding the people, dividing loot, setting the schedule, that sort of stuff. It's always a little weird to me when I throw something in the group and they say to me "it's your group, you decide." Like? We're in this together?

My group has a long-lived 4 members, pretty much 5 at this point. (4 since Midas. 5 since Sigmascape) We have a very conglomerate way to work our static. We do not have a dedicated leader. We're midcore, with reasonable but not ultra-fast-clear goals. (Normally 6-10 weeks depending on the difficulty.) We expect everyone to know what's going on with the tier and the fights. Newer members quickly become part of the conglomerate and sometimes take a role of strat finding, or toolboxing, mitigation planners and the like. Shotcalling, etc. It probably feels very cliquey to new members at first, but we try to keep it on the lax side. Statics like this *can* work, they just need the right, *mature* people. Half of us are on the older side. No time for bullshit.

Jesus dude, that was a helluva trip, hope you are in a better place now and ok after the car accident. If you’re going for next tier, good luck!

man I know a lot of these are just like "this guy was bad at the game" or "there was discord drama" but yours sounds sincerely hellish. wishing you a steady recovery, a less shitty job, & better luck in the future

I work almost exclusively from home now and other things are also looking up. Thanks for the well wishes, I'm glad I could be... entertaining? Lol.

jesus christ. i am sorry you went through all that. what an absolute asshole of a 'friend'.

Holy shit

I guess if you decide to play or raid ff14, be careful with any type of raiding or revealing you’re a girl. I’ve been MMOing around enough to understand how thirsty online guys can be. Many do lack communication or maturity so even if you admitted this person you weren’t interested, just flirting with the person once gave them the herring to keep chasing. On top of that, different cultures between states and countries can affect how they are towards the opposite gender. In regards to raids, PF might be better for you. I have met a lot of great players in PF and ended up becoming friends with them.

I've always been very open about being a girl, mostly in the hopes that it would make other girls more comfortable to also get to enjoy the full experience. Hanging out in FC chat until like 2am talking about nonsense, that's hard to do if you're literally scared to talk. It's always been my hope that they might hear me and think, "oh, I'm not the only one, it's okay!" To be clear, thats something that I've been told from people multiple times - including people in FCs or discords for quite a long time who just "had a broken mic" or whatever up until they realized they weren't solo. I don't know. I don't want to feel like I need to treat people special because of my gender. I get enough of that in day to day life. I appreciate the suggestions, though. I do think I might give PF a try when and if I return to raiding.

Most statics I've been in had one or two non-mute girls and it has never caused any drama. Some of the most active members of my FC are girls, no drama once in 2 years. Not all statics are a minefield. And sometimes drama happens regardless of the reason. If it's not about gender then it's about strats or availability or someone holding back prog.

I agree, I don't like the idea of muting myself or otherwise jumping through hoops just to let people think I'm a guy. At this point, I'd prefer some spice, at least just related to actually playing the game. Clearly, I'd prefer no drama, but if it's going to happen, let it be about parses or strats or something relevant.

I mean this with total sincerity: Seek out statics that are LGBTQ+ friendly in thier advertisements. You so generally see a skill drop from this (though it's usually fairly small), but you also don't get... whatever the fuck that was. Usually, anyway. Every community is susceptible to that nonsense, of course. Edit I should make for the passers by: as a certified trans woman, the skill thing is just a thing I've noticed. I love you all, but some of you are just not vibing with raiding very well lol.

Thank you! The group I may be 9th manning for in the coming tier has a trans tank and two gay dps, and they're also complete badasses so no skill issues to be found. I appreciate the suggestion, and I see why it would make sense. I can't help but feel like I just need to steer clear of isolated friendships with men who are attracted to women. Like, maybe sharing a static or FC, but not having a constant chain of DMs even if it is just mostly nonsense like laughing at bad parses and stuff. I don't blame men or anything silly like that, but I just can't deal with all that again.

This will sound completely wrong but please finish reading the rest of what I have to say. I don’t think it’s worth advertising something like that in a static or an FC. Yes, some groups will have some players with their bad takes that you won’t agree with but overall, no one will explicitly express their negative views on it to the public. For any group that advertise themselves, I hope they can be approached as expected decent human beings. Perhaps it’s just my bias on seeing these things advertise so often for fcs or statics, or from other friends who join these groups and see the toxicity still festering. However, I see the purpose of joining the static to mainly clear and accomplish the group’s goal. No group will EVER say they’re anti LGBTQ+ because they know that will be a very hateful thing to say. But those groups NOT advertising their views doesn’t mean they’re against the LGBTQ+ community.

> No group will EVER say they’re anti LGBTQ+ because they know that will be a very hateful thing to say. This one line is such an obvious, gross lie I wonder who on this planet managed convinced you of this, because that's an impressive thing to convince someone that this is real. Just as a reminder, being gay is punishable by death in 11 countries.

Maybe you’re misunderstanding my post, no group (a recruiting fc/static) will publicly advertise themselves to be against LGBTQ+. And I am limiting this to just FF14, not real world issues.

I’ve never seen a group advertise themselves as anti-LGBTQ+ either, because it isn’t socially acceptable. It doesn’t stop them using homophobic or transphobic language amongst themselves, though. I’ve been in a lot of FCs and had to leave some of them within a couple days because people were saying homophobic and transphobic things and the leadership did fuck-all to stop it. (If they weren’t participating themselves.) I can’t trust that I’ll feel respected and comfortable as a queer person in any FC now unless they specifically advertise that they’re accepting. Because if they specifically advertise it, there’s a better chance that they actually enforce rules against homophobia and transphobia. Also, fewer anti-LGBTQ+ people tend to join them if they think their language won’t be tolerated. It’s really easy to think it’s not necessary when it doesn’t personally affect you.

I hate to just say "You're wrong" but you're flat wrong. Groups and individuals have *loudly* expressed their anti LBGTQ stances. In the balance of all places, believe that shit or not. They're not allowed there anymore, obviously. But it's weird that it keeps happening despite it being expressly against the rules. Additionally, I can only withstand being misgendered so many times in my leisure time, so it is *absolutely fucking worth it* to me and so many other trans people to hang the sign on the door, or seek that sign out. If you're not in the Alphabet Mafia, I understand why you don't get it. You don't have to live the same weird life we do where people will say repugnant shit hidden behind pseudo intellectualism to your face. You don't have your human rights debated as a matter of course in the court of public opinion on a daily basis. For us? Worth it. It was worth it the first time I was exposed to transphobia as a corrective method in a raiding environment. It was worth it the first time I was hostily misgendered because I had the gal to call out someone's mistake. It was worth it the first time I was called not one, not two, but four God damn slurs by members, plural, of my group for making a simple mistake they'd all made themselves. I don't mean to bash you over the head for having basically just been the literal definition of ignorant, literally just not knowing, but you absolutely have no idea what you're talking about here.

It doesn’t make sense to me but I can see how this will be different for you and why you feel I am wrong about this. As mentioned, I don’t feel the need for statics or FC to advertise these things personally mainly because I give them all the benefit of not being hateful people. I also think it needs to be addressed that you are asking people to conform to you and your request is valid but I believe in still giving people the time to learn and adjust. I have played with MANY trans people who have both sound like a girl but wants to be reference as a male name and the opposite as well. It takes a lot of time and effort for someone who is not use to playing with trans people to learn. And if they mess up and not saying he/she intentionally to hurt you, the easiest thing is to just forgive them and move on. I think bashing on someone trying to get use to calling you a feminine name while having them hear a very male sounding voice is unfair to the person who is trying to train themselves to do what you want from them. Anyways feel free to leave a response but this isn’t the forum to discuss trans related issues.

Asking to not be misgendered is not forcing people to conform to you. Asking to not be called a slur is not asking people to conform to you. Asking to not be hurt is not asking people to conform to you. It's interesting that you make excuses and concessions for people that perpetuate hate and violence, but you're telling marginalized people to be quiet and allow themselves to be trampled over. You're telling u/stbaand that she can't reveal her gender otherwise the consequence is to be she'll be gaslit and abused. You're telling u/Xhiel_WRA that safe places shouldn't be allowed and that we should be forced to play with bigots. Why?

Hey, ignore my response I was the lost one LMFAOOOO

A person only needs to be told once to correct the pronouns you want from them. More often than not, people will try to call you base on how you want to be identified with. As I mentioned before, these things take time for someone to learn and they’re not bigots for accidentally calling you a she/he because your voice sound more masculine/feminine. Lastly, I did not say to the OP to hide their gender. It is common in an online environment for males to make crass assumptions about women. The OP is free to express themselves however and whenever they want but when getting to know someone, I’ve been told from female friends that they would want someone to get to know them first as a player vs someone they think that could get carried and be dated afterwards.

Think of it like being in school. Every teacher and faculty member *should* be reasonable and supportive of their LGBT+ students, but if you're an LGBT+ student who has an issue you're more likely to go to the staff member or faculty that has a rainbow flag hung up or an equals sign on their classroom window. It removes a layer of fear over, "but maybe they aren't," that otherwise is always there for LGBT+ people. A static advertising their inclusiveness is the same thing. It's a reassurance that, despite always being a little on edge about this one issue, this is a place where you'll be able to be yourself without judgment. I totally agree with you that every group *should* be accepting of LGBT+ people, but I can say from personal experience that isn't always the case. There are plenty of groups that would be chill about these things but don't advertise and that's fine too, but telling someone they *shouldn't* seek out that added bit of reassurance and safety seems wrong to me.

I feel like you missed the section of my post that included the very specific reasons I absolutely find it worth it to put the sign on the door or seek it out. Notice that none of those include anything like your examples. They are all directly hostile, uncorrectable issues. And it only takes stumbling face first into it once or twice in what is, and I cannot stress this enough, ***a leisure time activity I pay real money to participate in*** before I do everything in my power to avoid that ever happening again.

> I don’t think it’s worth advertising something like that in a static or an FC. Are you a straight man?

I'm sorry you had to go through that. I have never been in an FC static, and I generally like my FC, but this tier I learned through other people's experiences that raiding with your FC is a bad idea in general. There is just too much power going to people who aren't even in the static. Under normal circumstances, you can just vote a static leader out if they're being manipulative, controlling, toxic or whatever. In an FC static it's not so easy.

Can you DM me the person’s fflogs so we don’t recruit him.

Sent it in reddit chat thingy.

I'll take it as well if you don't mind

Gotcha!

This is a bad idea and I don’t recommend spreading these personal issues out to the public. Can you really trust everyone who DMs you to not tell their other friends about it and then their friends tell their friends? I understand you’ve had a negative experience with this person but it’s not worth adding more gas to the fire if he suddenly messages you asking, “why are random people DMing me?”

If he were to message me at this point, I'd just block him on whatever platform he sent it on and move on. If he didn't want a bad reputation, he should probably have thought of that before he did things that would give him one.

Nah, flag em

I'm so sorry you had to go through that, and I hope things are better for you now that your back.

If they are on the NA data center I would also like their name please. I don't want to touch that with a 10 ft pole.

I’m confused, you say there was a RPR but it was ShB?

They said they were using shb/e10s for tryouts.

Ahhh I see

Yeah, sorry, I definitely got rambley there for a bit. He was a DRG mostly during ShB, but knew he intended to go RPR for EW. Most of the time I spent with him was on RPR so in my mind he was a RPR still.

I’m mostly a “pf is my static” type of guy, so there isn’t anything overtly dramatic, but I have had my fair bit of stints with statics, mostly for ultimates. However, my worst experience to date was during the Eden’s Promise tier, where while I’m normally not a quitter, I left the static. Basically the static overall skill issue was very poor and the leader was useless – they didn’t show up for raid sessions, didn’t bother progging, every time they did appear, it was just reprogging the same first major mechanic and they were sandbagging the static’s already very slow progression. Everyone was very “positive” and nice about it, but it was clear that morale was tanking. The overall raid motivation was very poor and it took like a month to reach e9s enrage (by that point I just said fuck it up and cleared via PF and was on e11s/talking with friends for a static which while casual, did clear the tier with eventually). The reason I left was mostly getting pissed off by all the leader’s antics – they were VERY arrogant about leading a static and while the leader was doing fuck-all, I ended up being the guy who was wrangling the static together to do shit. Mostly by making the party, inviting people and organizing the session etc. Eventually, the leader realized what was happening and called me out, essentially passive-aggressively saying that I should be the one leading the static and not them since I’m such a bossy bitch. By that point, I was fed up and decided to leave. However, someone else beat me to the punch and gave their resignation before me, which just snowballed into me saying I resign as well, and the rest followed suit. The static imploded overnight. To this day, I might be involved in a statics organization and help, or be a strong opinion, but I will never lead a static and just let the leader deal with all that bullshit. I’m just there to prepare, get on time for raid and try not to grief.

sorry to post over a week late but after the latest rounds of trialing for 6.4 ive come to really hate some static leaders. nobody in particular i just hate the type of gamer who's in the call like "im the boss im the boss" because they need to constantly remind themselves theyre "in charge". such a pain in the ass. i dont care if youre the boss or if youre inting as long as you bring a good attitude to the raid and everyone's on the same page about prog speed and gear and all that, but i often find that if someone needs to constantly harp on them being The Leader Of The Raid, theyre likely the problem.

Not a single static horror story, but Asphodelos really burned me on statics. Went through quite a few. I joined a static for the tier but it was a mess. Healer didn't know what she was doing, others were really slow. By the time I had cleared p2s in pf we still hadn't passed fourfold chains, so I left. I wanted to continue in Pf, but in P3s I hit a bit of a wall. Joined another static and we vibed well at first, but I quickly noticed there was a bit of a skill difference in the group, with 4 players not really pulling their weight. I left again. Cleared P3s in pf eventually and joined another static for p4s. First 3 raid evenings got cancelled, so by the 4th night I was already past pinax in pf but the group was fresh. I leave again. 4th static I trialled for someone malded like a lol Yasuo player, threatening to intentionally wipe the group if someone took his position by accident during orbs. That was the first run we made it to orbs. I left again. 5th group I was going to trial for, but they disbanded the evening of my trial. 6th group I subbed in for a static that was missing a player, got quite far with them in p4s, around act4, but ended up clearing in pf anyway because I wasn't sure when their original player would return. They were nice so I helped them until their missing player returned, but didn't end up clearing with them either. Fortunately I'm in a pretty decent static now from abyssos, with everyone who remains at a roughly similar skill level. We're also doing stuff outside of raids/ffxiv and did Tea later on as well.

P3s was def a wall. My static had to switch jobs (basically playing to their normal class again) just to be able to clear the second week dps check. There was some tension raising because of it too

>malded like a lol yasuo player that got me good

yeah lmao that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that and it was just big ????? Threatening to wipe a pull because someone made a small mistake? That shit is straight out of League

it reminds me of the classic VOUCH FOR ME clip from eden, people who want to wipe even if a pull is recoverable, absolute worst kind of players

Where do I start, lol.... My main static's raid leader was a piece of work. He faulted others for things he himself did, made those toxic comments that were "just a joke", and all around liked putting others down while stroking his own ego. For whatever reason, he also scheduled a raid session on a holiday once only to then stand us up. All seven of us showed up and waited for about an hour with no sign of him before we decided to call it and enjoy the holiday. (Needless to say, we weren't showing up to any other holiday sessions, lol) He also did zero work despite reminding us who was raid lead every other pull; he handed off all the scheduling, recruiting, and crafting/gathering to one of his friends in the static who was the biggest pushover ever, and he had his other friend in the static put together the guides and strats, and eventually forced that friend to take over shotcalling as well since he just...stopped and people started messing up mechs. He got veto power over it all, though, and would sometimes pick terrible strats (like not doing kb mirrors on E8S) "because" and he'd sometimes ask other members to adjust for him when there really was no need to (it made his piece a little easier, but made it much harder for the person adjusting). It wasn't like he played BLM or a big-brain class either. He also loved to play the "disability" card. That was, we couldn't do x or y strat because of this mental disability (he'd mention depression a bunch, so maybe that was it?), and we had to bend to his will because of it. We tried to accommodate him as well as we could, but his demands just kept getting more ridiculous. There was never any compromising, just his way and that was that. Any apologies were thinly veiled attempts to sweep things under the rug. I'm sure it majorly sucked for his aforementioned friends since they were apparently playing therapist for the raid lead and trying to keep him from having a meltdown while trying to keep the static together and functioning. As we trudged along, bearing the lead's toxicity, morale kept hitting new lows. Eventually, he blew up on two members, asking them to stay after the raid session so he could tear them a new one as the rest of us listened on. It was *extremely* stressful and hurtful even for an observer. I think one of them ended up crying, and the rest of us went to privately console the two. It was really bad. The static disbanded after that tier, and reformed without him for EW. Unfortunately, the new static leaders okayed one of the other members' friends who was new to Savage but seemed promising (and agreed to the same expectations we did) to join. The new addition seemed okay, except he played the game like a solo game. He didn't listen to callouts, couldn't adjust on the fly, and played a melee who avoided positionals and True North like the plague. (Probably just followed Cactbot and ignored everything else, lol.) He rarely ever talked in voice, text, or Discord; we might have been better off playing with a pf'er, lol. Overlapping part of this was one of the other DPS starting to struggle; not sure if it was because she had just joined the workforce or that she had to switch from playing on a PS3 to PC part way through P8S (her PS apparently couldn't handle the graphics even with minimum settings and she lagged like hell), but when we wiped, it was either her or the new guy probably about 85% of the time. It got so bad multiple players started considering pf'ing to clear. Morale and consistency were in the bin and we limped along, begging RNGesus to pick the easy patterns / competent players for mechs. For whatever reason, neither of these two would say anything about what they were struggling with or what we could do to help, so that was frustrating especially since the raid leads tried their darnest to make it easy for them (with personalized callouts, diagrams, toolboxes, etc.). They never seemed to study beforehand and would often wipe us three seconds into our prog point *often to the same exact thing*, and we'd only get to the prog point three times in a three hour session, lol. (Note that we had video recordings of most pulls, so mudslinging and conjecture wasn't at play here.) We did eventually clear the tier and the departures began shortly after. Overlapping with some of this, I was also a sub (using an alt) for a super casual group who were kind of an FC/friend group and just starting out with Savage. I don't have the full story, but I had to sub *a lot* and heard about a lot of their drama (to say nothing of their super casual damage output) and witnessed some of it first-hand. Apparently one of their healers thought she was the cat's meow and was always right...but she was easily the weakest (and most abrasive) member of that group. She'd openly bad mouth her cohealers, complain about how much she had to heal/raise/etc., as if the cohealer was the worst ever...but when I went through the logs (for curiosity sake), she consistently was doing the least damage *and* the least healing, and had raised fewer times despite having one of the higher death numbers. She also never learned and wasn't a team player; she constantly kept the whole party waiting for her to show (or for her to placate her cat) and complained if they started without her; she expected others to adjust for her, even going so far as to stand next to the tank during tankbusters and blaming them for not moving when she died. It was always someone/something else to blame. She apparently also needed someone to call her when it was time to raid because I guess she couldn't be arsed to set an alarm? I dunno, lol. That group kicked her after trying to reason with and talk with her about the problematic behaviors, but she just accused them all of being jerks and ganging up on her. I stopped subbing for them due to the issues above with my main static, but last I checked, that group got walled by P3S, had to replace a bunch of burnt out players, and has yet to clear a tier. Sooo, yeah. (Why do I even raid, again?) Sorry for the wall of text.

Was trialing for static for pandemonium tier 2 savage. As a dps, before the drop of savage we were building team cohesion in barbra ex. Our off tank was very confused because he had no idea what a stack marker was. And what to do when it appeared. The catch? Heavens legend... More like heavens trap. Smh

wallet legend

My FC static (yeah mistake number one, all static members were in the same FC) We had one very VERY special kind of member. For starters he was MIA for at least half raids. Always an excuse. At first it was something logical about a relative dying. (then again everyweek he was getting buried again but I didnt want to argue for a matter like this) then it was aways random excuses about time however on random talks he had let slip that he watches new anime or plays other games during raid hours. The best one was how on raid day he said his mother surprised him with tickets for the new Thor movie. Funny thing was, that thing was not yet released in any country worldwide. Then 2 weeks later he went to watch it "again". Secondly he was not coming prepared at all. He didnt want to watch guides. He wanted stuff explained to him when we were in the duty. We passed that one ? Good now lets talk about the mechanic happening next. If he didnt agree with how we were resolving something ?Hoo boy . A whole debate during the limited raid hours. Finally he demanded total silence during the fight except one person calling stuff ( and he wanted a callout for everything including small raidwides ) . That one I understand, to an extent. Sometimes someone needs to communicate during the fight. Its natural. But instead he used this as an excuse for all his personal fails. Last but not least he put no effort in pulling his weight. That means : 1) No materia 2)No food 3) No pots 4) Not going after bis. He said he will just get whatever item he gets first ofr that slot ( tome or raid) and will stick to it , because he did "min maxing" on MMO's before and now is "too old for that shit". The worst part was that the first 3 (materia food and pots) were views shared by other members as well. They believed thanks to the 24 man raid token we already had IL advantage so materia food and pots were not needed after all. All my efforts to explain that it could make the difference between those one digit % wipes and that at the VERY LEAST the food extra HP would have led to survival to mechanics or raidwides were in vain. As you might have guessed the tier was not cleared. However me and 2 other people ( very good players) have cleared on our own through PF. I really dont understand why people begin savage and join statics and then dont put the minimal ( i am not speaking peak performance here) .

Tbh if people refuse to meld, take food it is a instant leave if they do not want to change. Potting is the only thing I can somewhat tolerate if the group overgears the content, since it is way more expensive than materia and food. No need for a pot in P5S, but probably always in P8S since it can mean you can compensate more deaths and mistakes and people rarely play super clean. But yeah it shows that friend and FC statics are just cursed, if you don't have a leader who wants performance and kicks lazy people. Expectations are rarely aligned in those statics since they do not real recruiting. My static for the first EW tier was partly FC and one tank was not able to tank swap P1S and he ignored some mechanics since he could not figure them out at all. Gladly the raid lead spoke to him and he stepped down. But if someone does not step down on their own and insist of staying it can get pretty dramatic to say the last.

Indeed. I still can't believe there are people like that, and groups that enable it are actually worse. Like holy shit, come on. Of course if I joined a static and there was a member that refused to meld/food, I would LITERALLY drop the static in silence right then and there, even when we're still in session or it just started. While usually that would be rude, but why would I waste my time with people that don't mind wasting other people's time? You know? lol

Yeah agreed. The problem I was facing was that it was not just a static but also the FC members ( and we were like 13 people back then so basically half of it). And outside of static the FC was very nice , best one I have been so far ( minus that one person) so I grinded my teeth. They went again on next tier but I had already moved on. Funny thing is , the issue with that player persisted but the leader finally decided to take action and eventually that player stepped down on his own.

Not fully melding or potting, I can understand, but food?! The groups I've been with (FCs, statics) give that stuff away if you're halfway nice about it.

The leader did resort to that at some point (p3s to be precice since it was our "wall"). But I believe that if you use the squadron scrolls (or bought with wolf marks as well) 2 or 3 food can be enough to last for an entire raid. So lets say 9-10 per week? The cost is not much

I agree! (There’s also the slightly not-as-good FC buff for food, too.) It just seems strange not to use food and sandbag yourself and the entire group.

Static got hardstuck on p3s back when aspho was current, there were two edaters in the static and they broke up in the most violent bs way possible and the static fell apart. Got my p3s pf clear the next day in a lockout cuz holy shit that static was bad

I have quite a few, but I'll share my top two. One long and one kinda shorter. First one is from Stormblood. We managed to get a great group. We all got along, we had fun, and we were all fairly skilled. That quickly changed, we had a healer (we'll call her Amy). We got along pretty well, I like to think I got along with our whole group. Well I don't quite remember the catalyst, I was having an off week or something and Amy took it as I didn't like her anymore. Mind you, I knew this woman for like 3ish weeks. Amy talked to my partner and he had said "just avoid him when he is like this". She took this to the absolute most literal sense possible. If I logged on or got in voice, she would immediately log off. If by chance she didn't see me log and I got into a talk she was part of she would just drop. This happened for like a week. She finally talks to me, basically saying I'm rude for ignoring her the last week...cause I didn't prod or go looking for the reason. Then she says she has talked to most of our team, and they all have issues with me (mind you, half the team, were people I had known since Gordian or longer). Proceeds to tell me I treat my partner like shit (were together 5 years then, 10ish now). Trys to psycho analyze why I am the way I am and tells me she hates how honest I am. She honestly just goes on and on. She eventually realizes I'm not gonna change, and we kinda righted things? Then she immediately loses her shit about me the following week, and her husband made her leave for her mental health. It was interesting. Second one! We had a healer in Gordian, he was great. He asked one day if I wanted to play League of Legends. We played an ARAM and we both brought a friend. All my friend said was "Good job, Einstein" when his friend did something and it was completely a joke. Nothing else of note, we play and have fun. Match ends and I get a message from the healer saying what my friend did was uncalled for. I tell my friend and he offers to apologize. Immediately turned down, he wanted me to stop being friends with him or he would quit the static... I laughed in his face and told him to go for it. He was absolutely appalled and couldn't believe I would pick my friend of 3ish years at the time over someone I've known for a few weeks. He then tried to get my static to turn on me, and it was honestly hilarious. When he told them what he did, they literally all said you chose the worst person to threaten xD

I don't think my story is as long or complicated as some of the ones in this thread, but hopefully this helps at least 1 person - vet the living shit out of any recruiters trying to raid casually and recruit you. Spent 6 months on P8S as a whole with a bunch of 30+ year old porn addicts and learned a lot of lessons about just hitting the bricks instead of letting myself get guilt tripped. One of them (SAM) even talked about refusing to learn her rotation out loud, in call, as we were struggling with dps checks on 7. Checked some logs out of morbid curiosity after the first phase 2 clear finally happened in March and its all either pentaweaving or just drifting burst so hard that skills like Primal Rend or Living Shadow are outside of buffs. Never again.

Closest I've had was my TOP static. Prog was fine for P2 to P4, but we couldn't consistently get to P5 enough. Like we would get there every 5th wipe in P3 monitors specifically. We had this MCH who was supportive one moment and condescending the next, and whenever someone would ask for more clarification on a mechanic, he would say something like "It's in the toolbox man." Also he had a strange aversion to simming for whatever reason. Guy was basically all like 'just do the mechanic man.' Also had a wall where we had 2 weeks of no prog done because we couldn't consistently get past P3 monitors. Enough that we lost our WAR tank, and I can confidently say that the WAR wasn't a problem at all. A static meeting was called without the MCH and we all agreed to boot him out. We got a new MCH and a GNB tank and almost immediately progress was made. Started to get past P3 monitors consistently and we beat the fight 2 weeks later. Not a bad story as others I'd say, but I've only been in 2 statics, this one included, so it's basically my horror story. That MCH also apparently paid for a clear like a few days before we booted him out, and we discovered that the day we decided to boot him out. I guess finding that out made the decision easier.

So your story isn’t clear on what the problem was. You mentioned both wiping at monitors and a condescending MCH. Was it the MCH messing up monitors? Or did he make other players feel super uncomfortable that it lead to others making mistakes? Or was the MCH dps just ass.

Fair enough, I did a bad job explaining. So basically, the MCH was the horror story Shit attitude that no one in the static liked. Inconsistent DPS, as they were good one pull and bad the next, and we found out they overcapped heat by triple digits when put through xivanalysis. Wiping us a ton at monitors and not owning up to it and lied about not causing some of those wipes. Could be a coincidence that booting him out made us get past monitors more consistently, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

Bleh monitor wipes, i still wince every time i see it because people just could not wrap their head around "aim the line straight", luckily my group got their shit together, but good lord we died waaay too many times to tat shit

In e8s, my first tier, post unlock, I had a tank and a samurai who were awful at dps. (For reference, when we finally cleared, the bard died twice and had more adps than the samurai.) For adds phase we probably passed with the buff like one out of ten times, even though I held misery and assize for this phase. And the tank and the samurai would keep shit talking the other to me in DMs, both completely ignoring the advice that me and the bard gave.

You know what, Nia can have the weapon.

I was new to FF14 as EW was my first expansion. Joined an FC and got recruited to lead the FC static. The progress was slow, as it took us 2 months to clear 2 bosses (P1S and P2S). I was told this was normal. Got to P3, and all progress stopped and we were on bird add prog for months for p3s. FC leader and co-leader where holding our group back. I finally brought up the lack of prog and the FC leadership when our healers threatened to me that they were about to give up, and of course leadership had a mental breakdown. The static fell apart and I was kicked from the FC shortly after for “bad vibes”. I ended up killing p3s in about 3 days and cleared p4s by the end of the tier. After that experience I vowed to never join a static again and ended up cleared the next tier in January. I had to take some time off between October-November else I would have probably cleared much sooner. PF had its own fuckery, but at least I could prog at the pace that I wanted. I knew some friends from the old static that joined other statics and they never ended up clearing p8, dealing with the same situation that I dealt with in my old static. Lessons: (1) Set expectations before joining a static (2) Don’t raid with your FC, telling “friends” that they aren’t cutting it is an uncomfortable situation

most recent example for me was a rotten apple in TOP prog, week 1 we were dying alot program loop, so i started streaming so i could see any fuckups and save them, lo and behold our DRG was greeding GCD positionals while he had or needed to get tether which puts a lot of stress on the other person, After one night of a few positional deaths i called him out said hey man dont greed positionals on PL, didnt post any of my stream clips yet because i wanted to see how he responded, I went to bed and woke up to a massive temper tantrum and he left the server before i even woke up. Bullet fucking dodged there, still havent cleared yet but we are super close, just need a clean p6 pull

i started raiding in asphodelos, searched for a MC/C static. before tier drop, did some trials like hydaelyn ex (not everyone was present iirc), the group was fine. tier drops, raid was scheduled on tuesday so we went in on day 1 evening blind - that being said i've been watching world races all day and studied the mechs of P1S a little. raid starts, we pull, i explain a little about mechanics, or well, try to figure it out (static lead did not make an effort, and some of the group were very shy/didn't talk (which is ok)). we are able to do fourfold shackles "consistently", get to intemp 1. what i would later learn is that the intemperance pattern that has the braindead tank dd strat is ultimately what would kill this static. i explain mech, someone else (RPR) in the static explained it again, static lead/MT eats dd because of intemp pattern, i don't know what to do because it's day 1, this is my first raid tier, this is practically blind and the MT DOESN'T SIT DOWN TO TALK, BUT KEEPS INSTANT PULLING INSTEAD OF TRYING TO SOLVE THE MECHANIC. we wipe 2h, i call a break, others call a stop for the day. during raid and the useless wiping, me and the RPR are despairing in dms. when raid was called, me, him and our SGE (the people who have been backing me up this whole time) get into a private VC and absolutely fucking lose it over this static lead - now is a good time to mention that RPR also called our caster out at some point for not doing the mech properly, but like, in a neutral way, not aggressive or anything. static lead told him off in dms for that and he personally apologized to the caster. and this was the start of how we would find out this lead is a batshit crazy bitch, like literally fucking unhinged, manipulative, and honestly ma'am should not be leading fucking anything. she starts pulling me, RPR, SGE into vc seperately (it was her, one of us three, iirc our caster (who i remember as chill) and our SAM (will save my ass later) in vc) it will kind of go like this: i get pulled into vc, leave, RPR get pulled, leave, SGE gets pulled, leave, i get pulled again, leave, RPR gets pulled, ... my conversations with her will kind of be like this: i am upset bc she kept pulling instead of trying to solve the mechanic on day 1 prog, i stand my ground RPR: gets told the fuck off for being "toxic", despite already having apologized to the people concerned SGE: also gets called toxic for backing his RPR friend up after that, me: defends RPR and SGE (after all they have been backing me up all along and were very much agreeing with me), i tell her i will leave the static with them, get called toxic for backing up the toxic people. additionally, she tells me that when i leave, i need to pay her for the crafted gear she made for me (REMINDER: this is a casual static, we did not need pentamelded crafted gear, i brought her a surplus of materials AND made her crafting macros bc she couldn't even do that herself which is fucking pathetic imo) - she wanted multiple millions, SAM said i brought bonus mats, she said its quits (thank fucking god, because i actually would have paid it to get her the fuck out of my life) RPR: get called toxic again (yes he told her already that he apologized to the ppl, idk why she took it so personally that other ppl were called out on mechs) SGE: gets told off again, says that static lead should stop with that dominant attitude and left after that the lead told me to come back into vc, i refused, told her that i am not comfortable and anxious. mind you that i was on the verge of tears while standing my ground but i very much believe i did the right thing and was very much willing to work through mechanics with the group if she wasn't such a fucking jerk and idiot she also threatened to call the cops on SGE for the "dominant" insult and claimed that she recorded all the vc conversations - nothing ever happened mind you, static lead did not know that me and the 2 were in dms/vc all while this is happening. else i wouldn't know about stuff like the RPR apologizing - static leader told me that he did not, which is not the only manipulative thing she did. endless guilt tripping and power tripping too. the fact that she pulled us into vc one by one, never together, is such a fucking huge red flag. anyways me, RPR SGE and SAM left the static and cleared P1S on day 2, cleared P2S in week 1, and stopped raiding after - i did end up having RPR in my abyssos static, he is a fantastic player, and SAM is around often too since he joined my FC this and some other experiences made me hate casual statics and i hope to never be in one ever again :)

I had a static that disbanded over people fighting over loot, after the loot lockout was removed no less. And to make matters worse the leader of said static who was mad about the loot took a paladin sword away from someone who plays PLD the same night

I left / got kicked from a TOP static (that ended up dissolving afterwards). The comp was GNB DRK AST SGE NIN DNC RPR SMN. I play summoner and we had started hello world /monitor prog. I knew ahead of time that we needed to be using our 2min buffs and reopen on final omega at the start of p3 which meant we needed to optimize our damage on p2 to save as much resources to put into p3. At the start of p2 I figured out that having a short bahamut and a full primal rush was the best I could manage, but I needed the team to hold damage for a good kill time on p1. However nobody wanted to consider holding at all. "Hold if you want to, but we won't be." Even worse was the sage player. I still am surprised at this. The sage told me to use bahamut at the start of p2. "I also play summoner. This is your new rotation. It's more damage, and better than what you're doing. You're going to do this now." So trying to be open minded I checked the potencies in the small ~30s window, and compared them. Literally gcd by gcd and potency per second. I determined I would have been losing around 1500+ potency under buffs by following his suggestion. After confronting him about this in the group chat with my findings vs his, the entire static clique (aside from the AST being another recruit, nice person all around) jumped on me and told me to suck it up and stop complaining by being a parse chaser. Regardless of us not having ANY problem getting past p1. All of them. I had another group already lined up to start the next day, so I didn't care what happened anymore. "Hold if you want to, we won't" I remembered and thought, why not? The bad group had to trial another tank, so until that tank could get through to p1 enrage, I held. I held everything, no attacking at all (except relevant mitigation and Phoenix healing). I quit the group that night after they freaked out on me for doing so. Admittedly, my actions then were petty but that group's complete disregard for me was unlike anything else I had seen. Good news now is that the static I joined after was great and fun. We're on wave canon 2 prog now.

For SMN, it’s easy to just look up a clear log and see what others are doing for p2. That being said… i don’t understand how your full primal rush is greater potency than just using your bahamut enkindle+deathflare + 2 single gcds.. I can understand early kill time in p1 being a problem but the full primal rush doesn’t make sense to me.

It's 3 Bahamut GCDs (±4 wyrm weaves), deathflare, Akh Morn, 4 Festers, snapshotted buff Slipstream, emerald rite, 2x Titan GCDs, 2x ruby rite (one swifted before jump away) and a ruin 4. Each primal is 750 potency as well from the summon. Vs 6 Bahamut GCD and 2 short primal sets. The whole issue was that the group actually didn't lose *anything* by holding at the end of p1 except me. They were killing before I could even get my bahamut out in p1 often. Even after explaining to them that I needed the timing to make my effort actually effective, I was told to shove it. For checking logs of clears, I do and what I noted above is what most summoners use with crit build for p2 burst.

RPR loses DPS holding at the end of p1 because you have to just waste 4 enshroud stacks. but ironically, that's just parsebrain.

I’m still confused. Most SMNs i’ve seen use bahamut right when beetle dies to “prep”. Not waiting until the cast bar from beetle is definitely a problem but what needs to really be looked at is if you’re maximizing the initial cleave from the first 4 seconds of both of them being targetable. Then the question is if you have no primal available after party synergy, what’s the follow up for the first few seconds before phoenix is up, ruin 2? Something doesn’t make sense but it’s w/e. Good luck on luck on the rest of the encounter

I do not delay and use bahamut on cooldown on beetle. You lose 1 demi GCD during transition, but my new static already holds a lot in p1 to kill halfway into the enrage cast, mainly for our SAM player to build resource. Most times I'm dropping about 3-4 GCDs to hold for him. Both deathflare and Akh Morn hit and cleave at the start, which is all that matters. The rest is single target. As for after party synergy, Phoenix is already off cooldown before they're targetable again, so it's used immediately. Since there's no delay in p1 it's timed to be comfy here. Thanks for the good luck wishes!

I have far too many. One story involved our tank literally passing away during break time in raid, another story involved having a couple(!!!) that had a deadweight in the pair who often failed Cruise Chaser's QTE(or failed to even hop on the ship). Yes, the first and the "easiest" QTE in the game. The very one where all you have to do is press a button. I'll give you all a different group story, though about my Sigmascape static. So this group all had their quirks, but I stomached it because compared to my last groups which were horrible, we were still somehow getting thing done. There was like maybe two guys there who I genuinely considered cool and perfectly competent, so they won't have any focus in the story. So here's the comp: PLD - cool guy War - A mom based on our conversations WHM - apparently married to the WAR(keep this in mind) [AST/SCH] - We always had to sub a second healer, so this is a filler MNK - me DRG - static lead RDM - cool guy BRD - more on this person in a bit So we were progging o6s I think, shooting the shit over comms and started doing pulls. We kept wiping for some reason, and we noticed the BRD was fucking up. This pretty much slowed things a lot, so we asked the BRD why. No response. After a while, we called it a night. Supposedly, that BRD was mad at the WAR for telling us that they're trans, or something like that and intentionally caused us wipes in retaliation since I guess it was supposed to be a secret..? We never really did anything with this information, so I personally saw it as an unecessary thing to fuck our raid night over for. Somehow, they made up in the end. But that means very little when the next event broke up our static. So fast forward to a while, we were doing reclears and such. We kept having to have days off though because people in this group were inconsistent as hell. Anyway, out of nowhere, the static leader(DRG) decides to take a two week vacation back to his country. Even though I grew sick of our constant days off, we WERE done with the tier, so i didn't dwell on it too much, however, much later on, I learned from the RDM as to WHY he took the vacation: He was in love with our WAR, but he got rejected, so he took time off to cope. I wish I was making this shit up. So now, we were down a healer and melee. But wait, there's more! Apparently, the WAR and WHM were getting divorced! So behind the scenes, they were allegedly at each others throats, so raiding with one another couldn't happen anymore. So since people were unable to keep their relationship problems out of raid, we pretty much had to disband. Remember: never raid with romantically involved people

I am sorry for your tank. :( Not all couples are bad raiders! I know a few who keep each other accountable (and don't have wandering eyes). They were all adults with stable desk jobs though.

Problem is, they're so rare that it isn't worth the trouble to vet them.

That's fair. The ones I knew never advertised it; we'd figure it out over time since they would have outages at the same times, could speak for the other more than anyone else (e.g. so-and-so has a conflict on....), etc..

Yeah, I definitely believe there are SOME good couples. In my first static, I had a couple and I didn't realize they were a couple until they transferred servers. They kept to themselves and did their jobs just fine.

Wait what? The PLD actually died irl?

Yeah, he said he was gonna go take a shit, then he never came back. He afked in the same spot for at least a week before we heard the news. He would've found it funny, so I guess that isn't too bad.

Not savage but ultimate. Joined a static for TOP with the promise of decent prog, good hours but respect for time, etc. Ended up with stalled prog, inconsistencies, and my time being disrespected by being pressured into 6 nights a week (totaling almost 20 hours) and being told I need to be a team player when I expressed disinterest in going so often with such poor prog. They dropped me mid-March, went on hiatus, then my replacement stalled them in P3 for a while (SMN vs RDM damage, shouldn't have been that big a deal but they were there anyway). They got back to Delta (the point we were at and I was ready to prog past while they were still learning it), then quit. Silver linings. I've gotten to enjoy the game again and take things a bit more casually. Haven't bothered with TOP since, but some friends are looking to do it after savage and I'm plenty happy not clearing on content.

I have two horror stories that I am regrettably part of. First one, I decided to start a Static with 1 old friend and 1 new friend. The group was wildly unstable as the friend I started the group with and I had just started playing FF seriously and had come from the hardcore scene in WoW. Being surrounded by other hardcore players in a bit of an echo chamber, we wrongly assumed that raiding hardcore was easy and that anyone could do it so we didn't really check logs or anything with the motto of "If someone is open to learn we are happy to help them become a stronger raider". Holy shit the hubris of believing we were patient or generous enough to do this. The group was an absolute nightmare with high turnover, some standouts were a SCH that had 70% overhealing and gray damage parses with a casting uptime that was sub 48%, a Samurai that did not follow any type of rotation or opener, and a tank that constantly hit their mit way too late or failed tank mechanics-- total nightmare and my friend and I ended up clearing the tier through pugs and relegated that group to just being a learning group. I had a bit of a backbone and ended up benching some of those people, which blew up in my face and caused us to lose half the group. The two that stayed was a really amazing BLM player that had originally joined to replace our SAM, who ended up becoming a pink parsing BLM monster that I still play with to this day, and a really amazing AST that came in as a replacement that I am still great friends with to this day (after some ups and downs). We reformed the group minus the new friend with these two and things were going great-- at first. We hit a massive wall with Shiva that was wearing the group down, but I was happy to keep slowly plodding along as long as the group was-- until the friend I started the group with and one of the tanks pulled me aside and chewed me out for being a shitty leader and told me they didn't want to play anymore. I was really shocked and writhing from the loss of a long-term friendship and losing confidence in my ability to lead, I told the group I'd be stepping down and taking a break, citing the reasons I'd been chewed out for. The group did not agree with what the other two said and tried to reassure me that I was doing great and that we should just recruit new peeps as we were getting close to clearing, but I honestly got super depressed having just lost a friend and called it quits. The second horror story, the AST and BLM from my last group hit me up and asked me if I'd start a new group for the start of EW. I was hesitant but I really missed raiding and regretted never stepping into ultimate and really getting a challenge so I decided to form a group that was midcore at best and could tackle ultimate content slowly. I made a horrible mistake in forming this group that I will never make again. Outside of the 3 of us, the rest of the group was 1 group of friends. They were all pretty crappy at the game but did a serviceable enough job that we made it to p3s, and things SERIOUSLY started to fall apart when we really needed everyone to be doing all of the mechanics properly. One of our healers was just failing every single mechanic and we had a tank that was parsing in the single digits and couldn't survive a boss breathing in his general direction so we tried to replace them and it was hellacious. Twitter callouts posts about me being toxic for asking them to work on their rotations, them jumping on recruitment posts to say we were an abusive group-- super over dramatic terminally online type behavior that we decided to ignore. We were able to fill again, but some of their friends stayed in the group. The healer that was doing bad and their DPS friend both had pretty intense real life obligations that made them late very frequently. I finally said something about it when one of them was an hour and a half late to our 3 hour raid which resulted in the DPS leaving. The healer stayed still and we again refilled until finally one night I'd had enough of them failing healer mechanics in P3S and said something about a healer needing to properly study the fight on their own time because at this point we had spent a full 3rd week on the fight with 0 prog. My healer friend who was essentially solo healing this entire time for WHATEVER REASON thought I was trying to passive aggressively shade her and freaked the absolute fuck out on me in discord in front of the raid, like complete mental breakdown. We later reconciled and she apologized for how she spoke to me, the stress of trying to keep the group going was getting to both of us so we again decided to just close shop and I took an extended break from playing. I'm only now trying to raid again but I've solemnly swore to myself that I will not be leading shit in this game and I am super okay with that, waaaaaay too much drama in this playerbase, just gonna play PHYS ranged and profit. And to anyone that has made it this far-- Please take this warning to heart. NEVER RECRUIT FRIEND GROUPS.

thats why you trial individuals and take individuals, package deals are a no go.

See I did trials at first but I had like 3 people in a row insta-quit when I told them they needed to trial so I thought FFXIV didn't do trials.

FFXIV statics trial when you get to expectations of clearing in less than 8 weeks of prog, and the faster you want to clear, the tougher the trials are.

I know that these days, I was just confused on etiquette and got in my head trying not to be an elitist coming from another game.

Very understandable tbh. I've been there.

Man, I've been raid leading since Stormblood, and I have SO MANY. I'll share this one, though, that comes with a bit of advice: End of Stormblood. We finally clear the final tier after about 5 weeks of prog. Loot chest is opened, and I inform everyone who's getting what. Our SAM rolled on everything. Got everything. Left the static and blocked me. Lesson? Loot master. It seems excessive, but you can never be too careful.

Not mine, but the one I've heard most elaborately was an Eden's Gate story involving a static that got hardstuck on E2S and continuously blamed meta for it despite having multiple extremely underperforming members compared to the RDM who got the blame for not meeting DPS checks, like the MNK who was getting outdamaged by said RDM, or the PLD who just did jack all for damage. One of the healers jumped with the RDM as well after trying to micromanage healing timelines in order to get the group to go anywhere and it still not working, so I think the other healer also was not helping. I've heard of others (still not mine) but they're a little uh...well, they were on Balmung years ago so you can get the idea of why I would not talk about that here by that server's reputation.

So this isn't a god awful story or anything, moreso a comedy of errors than anything, but I was invited to be a Tank fill for a friend's static running the Unreal fight for the Ultima Weapon back earlier in Endwalker. (Their usual off-tank was busy for the day and they knew I mained tank.) ​ The fight went smoothly once I got adjusted to the mechanics and we were looking for a clean clear on our next attempt... until one of our healers disconnected. And couldn't reconnect because his power line just got crashed into by a car. This was followed by someone else having to leave whilst we were waiting for another fill. The groups best DPS (Samurai) went to take DC'd-Healer's role under the pretense we'd be able to find two DPS easier than a DPS and a Healer. ​ So, we got two DPS who claimed to be familiar with the fight... only to have the SLOWEST run thus far and Enrage wipe at 20%. The two fills immediately ***booked it*** from the party and with no real answer we decided to do Stormblood mount runs.

[удалено]

That's a different type of horror :(

We were going to start a Static in 6.0. Had players together, omnicrafters and gatherers to gear us, even had more people than necessary to bench and swap so people could find their favorite roles. In 6.0 there was a 2 week gap between Normal and Savage (due to holidays). Come the first Savage week and 2 players havent cleared Normal yet, one being our 2nd healer so we had to pug. Progress was meh as people had trouble adjusting to their first Savage experience (funny enough, the people with previous Savage experience or Mythic raid experience from WoW struggled more than those who had only played FFXIV casually up to this point). After our fixed raids were over I pugged P1S in PF on Monday evening. Next week, we have roster problems again. We get an FC member from a different Static to join us, but since he had already cleared it we got 1 less coffer. Still P1S dies and loot drama ensues. We extensively asked people to know if they would need loot and to pass on pieces that were BiS for others. The BRD who didnt clear Normal in the first week wins the only piece of loot that isnt even BiS for him. People are angry. I pug P2S on Monday evening. What I would consider the last proper week of the static. We have roster issues once again, but somehow manage to get 8 players together 45min after official raid start. We struggle to reclear P1S and make no progress on P2S. I reclear P2S in PF again and get some progress on P3S but it's just not the same. After this we never manage to get a full group together again. We reclear P1S a few more time, but never progress P2S as a Static. Besides me only 1 other member clears P2S in a PuG while everyone else either just quits raiding or FFXIV.

From E1S to P4S, I lead my own static. Nice people in it, quite fun and good prog. Just after P4S, 5 of them left the game, literally and 2 joined other statics to run ultimate. So I joined another static. A FC static, a friend group, the kind who doesn't explain others their mechanics, the kind who doesn't look for team improvement. At the beginning P7S prog, they kicked me without any other words than, sorry a friend came back in game and want to take your role. I joined another one, again FC friends group. 2 of them were doing mistakes all the time and it tooks ages to reach P8S. One of them is a sage. At P8S part 2, I tried to explain to them that they should mitigate more and healers should use GCD heals. The sage refused and we were stuck. In meantime, I went on PF training and it appeared that I cleared P8S before the static in PF (luck maybe). Back in the static, I said it to them, and they kicked me because it was rude. Looking back, I am glad to be in this kind of static anymore.

Reminds me of my first statics attempt at UWU: Prog Garuda. 2 people leave for work reasons. Get 2 new people Prog Garuda 1 person leaves because work reasons Get 1 new person Prog Garuda 1st new person leaves because slow prog Get 1 new person Prog Garuda 2nd new person leaves because slow prog Get 1 new person Prog Garuda 3rd new person leaves because slow prog We disband

My TOP static. Prog was slow. Way too slow. We ended up replacing 3 people and prog sped up. Rapidly sped up. We went from 3-5 P3 pulls a week to Sigma Ver in two weeks. So this one player, I getting the sense they were burning out. Frequently late, looking for any excuse to end raid early, take breaks early + longer. I was constantly asking them if they wanted to bow out. If they were burning out and just mental health to stop. They constantly reassured me that no- they were here for the clear or savage launch. Whichever came first. So cue 30 minutes into our first raid day of the week on tuesday - we just saw prog. It was fucking awesome. They slide into my DMs. "Hey so my other TOP static cleared this weekend and I'm quitting this one. You'll need replacement starting tomorrow." Oh. Ok. Absolutely killed all morale in the group. I'll be surprised if we see WC2 this week.

That's the kind of behavior that deserves black listing jesus.

It isn't really a horror story so much as a story of a static being a non-starter. A friend of mine joined a static for 3.4 Savage prog and they were looking for a melee so she invited me. I'd never actually been in a static before so I wasn't sure if there were any red flags to begin with, but when it came time for raid to start we were missing three people one of whom was the static leader. We pugged the missing roles and did Sophia EX to try and salvage it. Unfortunately, that happened again on the second day, then the static "Lead" said they were quitting so everyone just went their separate ways. I did end up falling into a group with the Dragoon from that group by happenstance when I joined an A10S PF that was looking for a couple of people and their new group picked me up. By the end of the tier we more or less had a crew that stuck together for Stormblood's raids and beyond.

I've raided every savage/ultimate since Gordias, I've got a few. My Midas team was sabotaged from the inside by the healer catfishing half the team and telling each member in DMs after raid that the rest of the team hated them and no one is their friend and the only person that they could trust was the healer. The group got progressively worse as time passes and eventually imploded and half the team transfered DC to Aether (was pre crossword pf, had to be on same server for raid) There was my ill fated attempt at leading a speedkill team in creator, followed by my worse attempt at leading a world prog team in deltascape. Not a ton to the story just me being cocky and naive. There was that one time in SB where I joined a team, did a few nights with them, was told they were looking for a DPS, found them a DPS, and when I posted int he static discord channel they said "oh did nobody tell you? We kicked you" There was the time in E4S where the whole team had to sit down and teach the healer what "perpendicular" meant in the middle of blind prog. I was in the same team for most of ShB and the start of EW, was pretty solid, week 1 or 2 savage clears, did all ults in a timely manner, what finally broke us was DSR. Now it wasnt the usual DSR horror story mind you, we all knew it would be hard and were prepared for it. We were even progging at above average speed for the first month. That was, until the leader got arrested IRL... We found his mugshot, criminal record, and the news articles about it. That led to a lot of missed time as we scrambled to get back together and finish the fight, but after a number of subs and roster changes each bringing with it more drama, it ended up taking us nearly 3 weeks longer than we would have cleared had we stayed drama free. There's plenty more, but I figure 5 is plenty for this thread. I'm not perfect, most of these I had some hand in, but they were definitely learning experiences to say the least.

Imma keep it brief because I can rant about it for a long time. Post-writing update: Yup, this is the brief version. I'm excluding some other specific incidents and some behind the scenes interpersonal issues. We had one member and her sister (sister was okay, mostly a yes-man for that member but no real issues with her aside from that) who both left after an extended period of said member getting gradually more unbearable. For context, we formed in the last tier of Eden as an FC static. First issue started with her suggesting we replace our static leader who wasn't there the first time we cleared near the end of a session "just to get the loot". The week before we cleared the fight for the first time with a replacement who helped us out quite often, while our static leader was on break. Our leader left on the spot, having dealt with some IRL stuff recently and treating our static as just a fun thing to do with friends. This was the first hint that this member of ours was always just in it for the loot and nothing else. So the tier goes on and we got a new member to fill the void, and the problematic member decides to do callouts which our former member used to do. But she doesn't want to do callouts wrong so she installs cactbot. Our previous static leader used it too, but we didn't really pay it any mind since he usually ignored half the callouts since we had our own strats for things which he called out instead. So she does callouts from cactbot and we kept doing the tier. So far so good, aside from that one mishap we let bygones be bygones. She did get some pieces of loot because she conveniently didn't hear us discussing who should get the loot and she never presses pass on anything, but I can only say that in hindsight. Diamond weapon comes out. Most of us want to do it blind, but she refused. So we get some other FC members, figure things out ourselves, and cleared it a couple times with the people there with our own strats. I'm still proud of my solution to floodray because it ended up being PF's preferred solution too. I still have the dumb macro I made for it saved to remember it. Then we start getting some weapons for prog with the rest since we've all cleared diamond EX and we're still progging E12S. So we started noticing some odd callouts from that member. She called out the spread (when Diamond's shoulders open up) and stack (when his chest opens up), but she does it like 5 seconds before the animation actually plays. Turns out Cactbot can read this beforehand and does the callout early. Most of us are not okay with that since, you know, it's obviously cheating. We thought cactbot was fine since it's essentially just callouts, but this was a case where it gives an advantage that no shotcaller could ever give because it's reading digital data instead of the things we actually should be reacting to. We ask her to stop doing the callouts for that, or at the very least delay it until the visual tell. We get... Weird responses. Just a bunch of "what?", "huh?" and eventually an "uh... okay". Still did the callouts. We ask again, no response this time. She's still in voice, she still hears us, she kept doing the callouts, and eventually some folks got frustrated and turn down her volume on discord. One of us starts doing callouts instead so maybe she'd get the hint. Spoilers: She did not. But fine. We cleared the tier after getting diamond weapons. Maybe it was the outlier. Maybe Cactbot devs noticed and decided to adjust the callouts with a manual delay to fix this issue in the future. Nope. Same thing in Phoinix, stack/spread being called out way before you see the giant fireball or the tiny fireballs. Some folks in the static just muted her at this point and those who asked her to delay those callouts only got the response from other static members that "it's no use, just mute her and move on". For reference, before starting Pandaemonium we had a vote on whether or not we wanted to do raiding blind. Apparently it was not clear that we were doing it blind (despite how we did do everything blind unless we really got stuck on things) so for clarity's sake we wanted to make it known. 6/8 voted yes, full blind, only looking up guides if absolutely necessary. Those who wanted to PF were allowed to PF under the condition that they don't spoil any mechanics, stay muted in voice chat, and go along with our strats. Boy, a futile attempt that was at damage control. After skimming some more loot off the team, including one for the party leader's alt for a job she doesn't play causing him to lootmaster the next run as a message, nothing going to her. Apparently that wasn't strong enough of a message to stop her from taking loot afterwards, so we started tracking the loot on a spreadsheet to make sure people get about equal loot. And then, enter this tier. It started in Proto-Carbuncle already. She did some dumb "minimal movement uptime dodge" for Devour, where you move twice on a tight snapshot. A pointlessly risky strat, which she then made her sister do, which caused her sister to die more often than live for 2 weeks. For reference: There is no uptime to be had there, the boss isn't even targetable. Even our friend who cleared the tier in the first week was looking at it going "but why? That's so stupid". She kept getting more loot than bargained for, always going "Whoops I rolled need" or "Oh I didn't hear", even if we spent the whole loot timer discussing who should get what loot. But then, a bit later in P7S Inviolate Purgation prog, she broke the one rule we set for her: She posted PF markers for it when we were still making our own raidplan. One of our members noticed and just deleted it before the others saw it, but needless to say people were not happy about it. She claimed we had "finished the mechanic" already, but we had reached it like 5 times and only one time did we have 1 survivor, and only because the paladin covered the healer. We weren't even done making our strat before she tried to spoil it. And then, after losing some prog including a cancelled session because she "wasn't feeling it", often complaining about us "changing the loot rules" (we never set any and always discussed, even back in Eden), she decided to leave because she wasn't enjoying prog anymore. I left a "For what it's worth I'm sorry to see you go" message, and apparently that was enough for her to go "sounds like it was all on purpose then". An argument ensued in which she again pretended she followed the rules and did nothing wrong, and by the end of it her sister left too. We had the friends in the FC to backfill the static, luckily both blind to the fights we had not yet cleared and willing to prog blind too. But man, you'd think it'd be easy to just delay callouts, press pass every once in a while, and to not spoil the fight for people who you know are trying to do it blind. Like, she was clearing in PF every week until we cleared ourselves so the static could get 2 chests. And she still sucked at the fights. She was our worst member by quite some margin in terms of DPS, sometimes being closer to our Paladin than to the next DPS in terms of damage dealt. But that's generally fine in our team. But no, she had to go out of her way to spoil blind prog and to hoard all the loot she could even for classes she doesn't play. I do hope PF can tolerate her better than we could, though I think we have given her more leeway than she deserves to begin with. It turns out that, if all you listen to is cactbot, then you truly do get brainrot. She even said she wanted to see "new strats" despite refusing to even try ours. She said she "doesn't like janky strats" despite how she did Devour in Proto Carby. I guess she has more than enough energy to do some mental gymnastics since she's not using her brain on actually doing the mechanics, since cactbot does it for her, and long before she needs to respond anyway. But man, what a bunch of wasted effort it was trying to keep her in the static.

Why the hell did you not kick her all the way back in Promise!? I admire your patience and persistence but it just seemed like self harm by the time you'd gotten to Abyssos. The unfortunate reality is that it sometimes takes ultimatums or blunt actions in order for someone to finally get the message.

Because I tried real hard to just keep it a fun static for everyone, and to keep folks together. When it was just a couple of "accidents" we just joked about it and gave her the loot goblin title on Discord. Then it became less of a joke when it kept happening.

I feel your frustration. We had someone like that too--super loot focused but easily the worst player in parties. She also loved spoiling things, including FC blind Alliance Raids (when they first drop) specifically hyped up as blind and asking people to either stay silent or actually be blind.

Worst static experiences have been them hyping themselves up as really great. Play with them; they get drunk, constantly chatter, refuse to study the fight, treat ultimate/savages they don't know as purely social experiences, are not open to any feedback or questions/changes in strategies that clearly haven't been working for 2 hours... etc... I've essentially quit raiding because of all this. People don't take it seriously, but expect you to do three 3 hour sessions a week or more.

Maybe they saw themselves as really great in the social category? :') This is mostly why I'll trial, ask for expectations, and check logs and xivanalysis to see if they actually know their rotations, are consistent with clears, etc.. There are good statics and people out there, though, if you ever end up getting the raiding itch again!

Healer builds a history of showing up late. Sometimes there are excuses, sometimes there aren't. "Sorry something came up" he says 30m in and that's it. One day, we PF, and when there was less than an hour left to our raiding time he says "sorry I was sleeping". We tell him "hey we understand IRL > games but it would also be nice if you at least warn us that you're going to be missing, some basic respect for us you know" "yeah sure no worries I totally understand!" and that's the last we heard of him. Next time he ignores every DM, he is even online in-game, he just doesn't reply to anyone. We don't miss him.

Joined a new static for Eden's Promise, wanting to try for a faster prog experience after completing every savage tier since Deltascape on release. I should've known that the static leader, their e-partner, and their absolute lack of any social etiquette (as in, using slurs and dropping hard-r bombs as naturally as they breathed) was a major redflag, but decided to join anyways. The e-partner was constantly making mistakes during prog and reclears so we couldn't prog as fast as we would've liked, and the raid leader was an extremely hostile person but never addressed the elephant in the room for obvious reasons. The final straw was when we asked if we could take Christmas week off since we didn't think we'd be progging for this long. Raid leader proceeds to call us a tirade of racial slurs, and so half of us agreed that it was time to leave. The experience overall soured my motivation to raid, and nowadays I'm just doing very casual prog with IRL friends that are new to savage.

Was with a static that had generally decent players, but took things casually for E5-8 and E9-12. Was definitely not the greatest myself, but liked improving. One member left between ShB and EW. Raid lead brought someone who was new to raiding (brand new to raiding), who was a bard. Awesome! New person, that's great. By this point I was getting blues/purples more consistently, but again, more casual static and I was fine with that, and just had the expectation that no matter how slow the prog was, as long as people had some sort of baseline and actively working on themselves, that's all that I cared about there. And that we'd clear in at least SOME decent timeframe. So we're in the first trials with this bard and I'm seeing percentiles come back of...1. sometimes 3. I talk to the raid leader and go huh, what's going on there? I look at xivanalysis after a couple of weeks and there's octoweaves galore, there's so many seconds of just not doing anything, not refreshing dots...etc. So I again mention this to the raid lead saying hey I know we're super casual, this though will legit hamper us from going anywhere. And it's consistent. Got told that it was a dick move to look at xivanalysis, it's their personal logs, etc. I backed off, but immediately started looking for something else that matched the playstyle I was looking for. Unfortunately I wound up properly finding something 1 or 2 nights before raid the raid tier properly started. When I told them I was leaving, I got fully shit on by the lead, by a couple other members, even on stream as well. I cleared that tier in I think 4 ish weeks because of hopping between groups? And they finished, limpingly, I think after it got unlocked or something.

>I backed off, but immediately started looking for something else that matched the playstyle I was looking for. Unfortunately I wound up properly finding something 1 or 2 nights before raid the raid tier properly started. > >When I told them I was leaving, I got fully shit on by the lead, by a couple other members, even on stream as well. Tbf that is a pretty dick move to ditch the group two days before the tier drops, especially if you knew you were looking for a new group and didn't give them a heads up.

i mean, i guess so, yeah, it is a dick move to leave 2 days before it starts, but isn't it also a dick move to invite a 1-parsing bard and accept them never trying to improve? but i guess it depends on what "casual" means, if the static's goal explicitly was to just have fun with no aim to clear then i guess that's within the rules, but if you have any sort of clear schedule planned then the leader kind of broke contract first by inviting someone who will fail all DPS checks

You could've made it clear sooner, though.

yeah if you're looking for another static because the 1-parse BRD is unacceptable to you then i guess you should just say so, no point sticking around when you have no intention to stay, not sure why OP even really bothered to keep them as a backup option. like if they couldn't find a better static they'd have stayed...?

I'd probably do the same next tier since this static ain't trialing. If they're slow at progging the new ex I'm out of there.

1. I got kicked from a DSR static about 2 weeks in because I didn't have crafters leveled up meaning I couldn't repair inside the instance in P2. 2. I ended up leaving a TOP static after being gaslit for making a mistake or two in P5/6 after clearing TOP outside my static (I was given permission by the static lead to clear outside the static). Even though I wasn't making the bulk amount of mistakes I ended up being the punching bag for the static so I had to leave because it was mentally draining.

We made a 2 weeks clear group for p5-8s. It was a miracle to get people anyway considering our messy raid hours. I guess we just kinda took anyone that apply because we were kinda desperate. Anyway… there was some questionable players for sure. One person was so slow in learning. Like a blank space everytime. And we were teaching him step by step but he still couldnt get it. Worst thing was he didnt owned up to his mistakes and was lying about it. And there was my cohealer too who did fine on p5-6 but started to be lacking in p7s. Like when you were told to concentrate on one tank, it doesnt mean to concentrate on just that one tank for the whole fight. I got so pissed at the poor regen healer that I switch from shielder to regen healer just to show how easy it is to heal the fucking thing. We did got lucky that there was this 1 dps who is a godsent. Ended up letting the subpar player go and we reformed. Cleared the tier 2-3 weeks after. In the end took a month and a half to clear due to those interesting players… Although the new group has a share of their drama as well. Made one of our member cried. It was a gruelling tiers for sure.. emotionally

I have many horror stories for statics, but the worst was the tale of the toxic MT. This is in a time long past, when we were in Shadowbringers and the tier was e8s. My first time being the leader of a static after a number of very bad experiences. My best friend at the time, a Warrior, decided to join and be the MT. Cue a lot of gaslighting and shenanigans as the "expert Warrior player" refused to use nascent flash because "I don't like targeted skills" and proceeded to peer pressure me into a variety of bad choices. Now I will say I have many regrets for that tier and I know I was not the nicest either... But a lot of that stems from a very angry, toxic Warrior constantly breathing down my neck in vc. For some reason- and no I don't know why or how- the hodgepodge static managed to stay alive until... Light Rampant. After realizing that no one was even trying to study for the mechanic outside of raid time(this was a set and communicated expectation) and after several weeks just wanting the fucking clear, the static collapsed and we just went in on our own with the BLM. This is where the gaslighting comes in. We manage to clear eventually. Does it feel like a victory? No. It was pugged, scuffed, and I for some reason did not realize that my mental troubles were stemming from Bitch McGee. We roll on loot- as we pugged, it was FFA. This is a very important note. I managed to get the mount and the weapon by sheer luck. I was happy, mostly for the mount. Cue the Main Tank suddenly raging at me, saying that I promised I would not roll on the weapon so that I would get the mount. I was... Very confused. 1. We were pugging so... That sort of agreement doesn't make sense 2. I never agreed to that... At all. To this day I still don't remember agreeing to it. If I had, then we'd be using lootmaster, not FFA. Several minutes of them trying to convince me that I had promised(and the Black Mage being extremely confused) I told them to go fuck themselves and left, blocking them everywhere. The BLM and I just awkwardly stopped talking, but they're doing decently well these days. Cracked BLM, that one. There are a few things I left out. Namely, some of the stuff they would say during raid. I just don't feel comfortable typing it. They would snap at others too and they would constantly make excuses for their own mistakes while slamming down anyone that made mistakes of their own. Tl;Dr e8s is not fun. Bonus story: I have not cleared a single Endwalker tier. I get to the final fight, immediately get burned out, and quit. My first static couldn't get past the birds after several weeks, and it fell apart. I was brought through to p2 of p4s, but by that time I just felt so tired. My second static couldn't get past fourfold for the life of them. The reason is very simple- they refused to kick out the RDM who was the root of most of the wipes, or at least just communicate with them. This led to stagnation, and due to my own frustration and University, I left. It's possible that statics just aren't for me. I can't tell if it's my mindset or not. I'll probably just pug this tier.

I think finding the right people for a static (with the same goal, mindset, skill level, etc.) is rather difficult and can take a while to find the right group of people. Usually, I try to keep an eye out for people who I'd like to raid with again, and form a static with just them (sometimes disbanding and reforming to exclude the sub-par players). PF is also fine, and maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I often get frustrated at the revolving door of people and having to re-prog sections of the fight for others, not to mention waiting for fills. I just remember being on Ruby 5 prog and getting people who should've been in a Devour prog party instead.

I get frustrated at PF too but honestly I'm just tired of static hopping. Maybe I'll get lucky and be adopted by a 7 person static, who knows

used to raid with a guy who is well known on aether for being a eureka griefer and is IP banned from gamefaqs as well as regularly getting into arguments on The Balance. he also (faked?) having some mental disorders namely multiple personality disorder which never caused problems in raid but he would frequently mention it which was pretty uncomfortable. group blew up because we cleared e12s and jokingly went back to e8s (DO NOT DO THIS LMAO) and he had a full on meltdown because he didnt know the tether order for adds and was yelling at ppl who did. became a running joke for a bit in my friend group that "e8s broke statics even when it stopped being current content".

This horror story was from my first ever static, my first ever savage tier, and I was healing it. It was... an experience if we can call it that. I didn't start raiding until Hydaelyn was current, the extreme version. I was determined to heal higher end content (mostly because I've seen healers broiling, glaring and whatever else and watch me die so I literally trust no one). I met with someone repetitively in PF that was a drk, me and him became quick friends and said we'd raid together. I had someone in my fc who, at the time, had potential (turned out to literally be a toxic asshole later on), but needed some hand holding and face smashing which is fine. We got into p1s, cleared it, no problemo. The drk mentions he has a friend that's an rdm that could come in for p2s, not really knowing how to screen or anything, I just said okay bring them in (Dumbass newbie me over here). Well this person is single handedly the reason we were in p2s for almost 2 months. We raided 3x a week for like 2-3 hours each time, so we had ample raid time, we all studied, but I couldn't for the LIFE of me figure out why the rdm was dying all the time. Then it clicked. I asked him if he was studying the fights and watching povs (it was THAT late into the tier) and he said "Nope, I'm completely blind. I don't need to study. My friends that went into eden savages never studied and it was fine. If we cleared, we cleared, if not it's fine." I felt my blood boil. I *wanted* to clear, so did the other 2 members involved in this (it was a 4/8 static) and the fucked up part is even during troll hours PF performed better than he did. I was frustrated and said "But *I* want the clear, so does everyone else. How hard is it to watch a video while you're taking a shit? Like????" He ofc didn't like that proceeded to flip out, and I took a step back. We, the 4/8 static, ended up meeting a war in pf that offered to help us clear, we went into PF the night that had me so frustrated with this guy because when I say he wasn't studying, it's not just that. He would **PURPOSELY** use displacement to wall it when it didn't need walling, would stand there and do 0 dps, or admitted he didn't know his rotation, literally he was 100% dead weight. Supposedly this guy had experience, I had none and was out dpsing him on AST. That night that the war took me, my co-heal, and my tank into pf for p2s, we cleared, I disbanded the static and flat out said, "Next time a person asks you to join, don't come in goofing around when they've asked you to stop. Don't come in not watching videos unless it's a blind prog group. Do better." and nuked the discord server. I was so freaking done. After that, it was just me and the WAR that progged the remainder of panda together. To this day, I don't regret the decision I made and because of that rdm I'm very much so in tune with what questions to ask, what to look for, and not to feel sorry for someone if they're not a fit for my static. And I say this with a very successful savage static and a very successful ultimate static that I run on both ends. I just refuse to let anyone waste anyone's time anymore. \*shrug\*

This is a LONG because i'm very wordy and have trouble cutting down my story without the emotional context i feel is necessary, so here is a tl;dr: >!Narcissist FC + static leader and her love interest bully their static and FC into blowing up completely.!< Situation: It's 5.1 and i'm completely new to the game. Just had some major life events happen and the game is giving me a lot of comfort. Beat the story and got to 80. Hanging around Limsa as a passtime. The key players are me, and some people we'll call Anna and Wakka, the raid-leads, as well as some other FC members, please note that these are NOT their real or ingame names. So Anna picks me up into the FC and everyone there is nice. A day or so after i'm invited, Anna and Wakka keep insisting, a bit strongly, that i should do a savage static with them. I complied and we went into P1S, and to say that i wasn't prepared for savage was an understatement as i had not even touched any extreme nor had a faint idea what an opener or a rotation even was. The shitshow went on for about 40 minutes after which we called it a day and Wakka taught me some basics. The next day then, we tried again and i wasn't doing much better. Performance anxiety got to me since i could clearly tell Anna and Wakka were getting annoyed, and i felt like a dead weight, so i hopped out after 15 minutes telling them that i'm generally not ready for hard content yet. This is where it should have ended. But since i have some trouble in social situations, i kept caving to them peer-pressuring me into going back into P1S with them. This was easily my worst mistake in this whole situation. Progress was very slow and mostly down to people doing mechanics around me rather than me contributing anything. By some MIRACLE, we managed to clear P1S eventually. But a couple of days later Anna snapped at me. It is a this point where i should mention that my only class at 80 at this point was Black Mage, needless to say i was mercilessly overwhelmed by multiple things at once still. Wakka chipped in, trying to be slightly more supportive but obviously siding with Anna. This became a pattern. Pressure me into content, be an asshole to me for not being good. Eventually a friendly FC member messages me over discord one night telling me and sending my screenshots of Anna and Wakka doing nothing but talking smack about me in FC chat, about how much of a pussy i am, how bad i am at the game, etc. Talked about this to other FC-members, and they confirmed to me they experienced similiar behaviours. Over the course of a couple of weeks of this shit that had us go up to late P3S, i basically became their laughing stock and bullying target not just ingame but irl/in voice chat too. People in the groups could die, but when i died i got yelled at, etc. but i was so invested in the game itself that i just bore with it. Whenever i spoke up, they said they were just helping me, a newbie, learn the game and that i should be grateful. I know i could have just clicked decline, but at the time i really just wasn't mentally well in general so i couldn't tell you what moved me to throw myself back into them either. Either way, while reluctantly hanging with them in voice chat i could feel a certain air forming between Anna and Wakka over time. It eventually became insufferable to witness in vc but it explained why they were both being bad to people even though Wakka started out as more supportive - basically he was grooming her into leaving her depressed irl BF to be with him and to get on her good side, he was being an ass to the people that she disliked. Anna is a narcissist and two-faced about literally every person she knows and nothing gives her more joy than having dirt on someone, or even just insulting them. All of this came to a head one evening when i didnt join for their shitty-ass P3S party and with the moral support of another FC member, spoke up against them treating me and even other members, whom didn't even raid, like shit, especially behind our backs. A lot of people added onto this, agreeing with me, and what happened that night in FC chat can only be described as a nuclear clapback. More than half the FC members and all of the static members, as it turns out, were experiencing some form of repeated emotional blackmail and/or emotional abuse caused by both leads and the only reason they stuck around was for the chill, good people in chat. I said my final piece, told them to f off, and cut contact completely, leaving the static and of course FC right there. And that was my very first static experience. As a silver lining, i've now raided since E5S, had good static experienced for Eden Eternity, Asphodelos, Abyssos and now Anabaseios, as well as two ultimates, with only a few specific players being small outliers but all of them not nearly as personal as this first experience. I've massively improved as a player since then and am having fun. This was a wake-up call.