My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

[Jarre]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

One thign I can;t get you had yourself and another whm, yes teh aprty ws low, but why was he resting when you were all battleing, having 2 whm's means you have one less DD so, the tank has 1 less person to help him defeat the mob. theif attack is weak until he gets sneak attack at 15, the only good fighter to help teh ar was mnk, and they should have war sub (if had subjob) so they can voke off the war if you go to the red, with 1 tank and 2 DD's one of which would be lucky to get 1 or 2 points a hit on a lizz, it would be very important with 2 whm that both of you were able to cure, the party was too weak for just yourself to keep everyone alive. You shouldn't be attacking anything below VT with that setup, fi the elvan whm was resting all the time, the elder shoudl of kicked and got a DD preferbly another war to share hate and voke.

[Nakti]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

It sounds like the mobs you were fighting were just too tough for your party. You could say something like "Why don't we try fighting something easier for now? We could use a little warmup."

(Almost?) everyone should be using food - even if it's the poor-man's version. ie Apple Pies (+25 MP) for mages. But not everyone knows what's available. I myself didn't know about food until I partied with some JP players in the early teens and the BLM gave me some pies to use during the party. I got hooked on food after seeing the great benefits. ^^

Check out the Tips for WHM thread for some ideas to help you for the future.

It's not your duty to give suggestions to other players, but go ahead if you feel comfortable and qualified doing so. As a warning, though, even if you phrase it nicely, the player may react negatively.

[Hamlet]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

If you're all lvl 10, lizards are tough for a good pt setup, and you didn't have one of those. Only one of you had a sub, and you had two whms. The thief was probably hitting for very little damage, so basically, only 3 slots in your pt could do any damage.

[Dayala]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

Simple solution is to solo until lvl 12. Avoid the lizards period. Waste of time with their petrification. I never go to the dunes before at least lvl 12. Tank bitching about dying? It's always going to happen. Eat pies (Rolanberry pies for 50 extra MP), get yourself some MP regen juices (get to lvl 20ish cooking and you can make them uber cheap, pineapple juice ftw) and get yourself lots of MND gear. Your cures will do more and regenning your low level MP will be golden. IF your tank can't share hate or has crappy gear, not your fault if he dies. WAR / PLD / NIN are jobs that die alot and sure it sucks when you're main healer but don't beat yourself over it. You're lvl 10, if you were lvl 75 then I'd kick myself. It's a learning process and whm can be difficult to learn. Elvaan has low mp yes, but he shouldn't of been resting all the time in the fight. Should of been enough MP to last the battle, especially with more then one healer in PT. Wtf was he doing? MB'ing fusion with Banish? waste of MP at that level XD

[Shirai]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

I agree with Dayala here,
you might want to solo to level 12 or team up with a melee to duo on a few tougher mobs in the Highlands or in La Theine.
Valkurm dunes is a pain for whms, and a hard learning curve.
It will get better over time.

And yes, food and drinks are a great help.
Drinks can be made at a lower level cooking as well.
If you find a chance travel down to Windurst waters and get a few stacks of Saruta oranges.
save your water crystals and make orange juice out of them.

When you get to lvl 6/8 cooking which should be quite quick bring the oranges to the dunes.
In the dunes you'll be fighting crabs and pugils from 15 to 20 so water crystals shouldn't be a problem to get.

[Deuciont]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

We were fighting lizards when the tank died.

Here lies your problem.

Every member of your party was level 10 and you were fighting a mob that parties really shouldn't start fighting until level 12 maybe 11 if you want to try and see how it goes. The best mobs for a level 10 party to fight in the dunes are the Sand Hares. They're low level mobs with not very much HP, def, or attack. Although they do have high evasion and their attacks are fairly rapid in succession. Plus they have a pretty nasty AoE attack, but if the camp is setup correctly the mages should be able to avoid the AoE damage. Plus the Sand Hares are really easy to chain on at lower levels.

If I were in the party I would've recommended to fight Sand Hares until everyone was level 11 or 12 and then move to Lizards. Then level on Lizards till 14 or 15 and then go on to crabs. I can't remember if goblins are a good option for a level 12-14 party, but I believe they're an alternative when lizards are few and far between which happens often.

So you really shouldn't beat yourself up over it things like this will happen every once in a while even to the best parties. Plus at level 10 parties are really limited in what they can do and fight both by abilities and stats. Also players are still figuring out the dynamics and roles of their job in a party and how to perform those roles correctly. Plus there will always be pressure on the WHM to not let the tank or anyone for that matter die, but any well mannered player will understand that they'll die every once in a while. The tank especially needs to get in this mindset quickly otherwise they will not enjoy their job very much.

[Chveya]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

Well, today I had the opposite experience. I joined a party and the PLD brought a powerlever. I had nothing to do for three hours except cast a few enfeebs on the mob or help cure when a gob did a bomb toss. I went from lvl 10 to lvl 13 with that party, but damn it, I wanted to skill up and learn my job, not have pl do it for me! So goes the life of a WHM I guess, lol.

[Jei]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

well you have good attitude ^^ I'm sure you'll have little to no problem learning about your role in groups once you get a normal PT. When you get a PL, I know for Whm it's quite a bad experience since your main role got taken away from you. But anyway, just get all the EXP you can out of it. But try not to get addicted to it.

[Taskmage]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

May as well use the extra breathing room to skillup divine magic when you have a PL. So long as that mp isn't going towards cures you may as well use it for something. You still have things to do when there's a PL. Running up for Barfira or Barwatera is always good, and a PL can't track hate changes and area effects from outside the party as well as you can, so there's still some curing to be done.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your attitude already makes you a great player. The skills will follow one way or another.

[Chveya]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

I was seriously thinking of telling that party that they didn't need me, but figured the exp was good so I stuck around. We had a PLD and a BRD and a pl and me- more than enough healing power. The bard even sent me a /tell, saying to stop healing so much, 'cos I was healing the DDs anytime hp dropped into yellow, if the pl didn't catch it first. The bard had done a Regen song (I forget what its called), and said I was wasting mp. But, then he conceded that with the pl there I might as well heal or else I'd have no skillups. I didn't once come close to running out of mp, and we were doing exp chains.

[avhmia]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

Honestly, this is the reason I never step foot in the dunes until level 14 or 15. Soloing before then is so easy (even mage jobs), but it just seems insane to pull IT mobs at that level. The margin of error is tiny, and unless your party is well above average, no one will have the skills, gear, and food to make that worthwhile. I really miss parties by the thickshell lakes. They were so goofy, and by level 12 you'd just end up running circles around the lake, killing them so quickly.

I'm sorry to hear you got stuck with a babysitter, though. I'd almost prefer futzing with the lizards, personally XD

[Vandros]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

Low level whm is simply rough. You don't have a lot of mp to work with, you don't have much hmp gear, and you don't have any regens to give you breathing room. Add inexperienced tanks and pullers, and you're going to be frantically throwing cures out. Doesn't sound like you did anything wrong in either party to me....PL parties are a touchy subject for me, I dislike them, but you sound like you have the right attitude about them.

One thing that will make your life easier is a Pilgrim's Wand. 2 hmp, lvl 10, equippable by Whms. Drops off Nunyenunc, low lvl NM bird in West Sarutabaruta. Use it when healing, then switch to a Mnd wand for curing. Best of luck to you.

[Kitalrez]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

Well, today I had the opposite experience. I joined a party and the PLD brought a powerlever. I had nothing to do for three hours except cast a few enfeebs on the mob or help cure when a gob did a bomb toss. I went from lvl 10 to lvl 13 with that party, but damn it, I wanted to skill up and learn my job, not have pl do it for me! So goes the life of a WHM I guess, lol.

Good on ya! This is the main reason I don't like PLs or doing PLs for others. As great as a PL may be for a straight DD melee, it's crap for any mage job or tanker. Sure, you hit high levels faster, but you end up hitting them with the same skills as someone 30-40 levels below you.

Ever watch a tank try to make up 50-100 skill points in Parrying or Shield skill? Entertainment at its finest.

Yeah, waaaaay back in the days of the NA release, (when we all rode dinosaurs and had pterodactyls play our *VINYL* albums), no one really used food and we levelled up on Toughs and the occasionally Very Tough. Levelling was slower than molasses in January, but you tended to get your skills capped faster. Also, dual sniper's rings were considered HNMLS gear and completely unnecessary for the everyday melee party member. In the days of 75th level PL'd characters who can't land a stun spell to save their lives, I look back on those days as a kind of golden age.

[samarium]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

I'll just echo what everyone else was saying with a good hearty "Don't kick yourself over it!"

You have one singular Cure, which isn't anywhere NEAR enough to keep your tank full unless he's taking under 15 HP damage per hit. Cure II is good to have, but almost useless if your tank is underequipped - you'll pull hate and wind up a bloody mass of WHM on the sand before spells like Blink(19) and Stoneskin(28) - which should stay up ALL the time once you get them, MP willing, I guarantee they'll save your life over and over and over.

In those early levels, people are STUPID. New players hear from their high-level friends that 200 exp a fight is good and everything else sucks, and high-level players are used to the enormous rates of exp they previously had and healers with refreshers who can go and go and go and still end fights with over 500 MP left. A fight that ends in 200 exp and 6 almost-dead out-of-MP party members is GOOD, but chain #3 for 150 exp with healthy tanks and energetic mages is bad.

I understand your fear of losing your edge due to powerlevelers, and it's totally valid, but not all that bad - it'll give you the chance to cap enfeebling, and healing skill goes up agonizingly slowly even if you ARE main healing; it'll catch up. And ignore the bard. He's got Army's Paeon I, that's 1 HP per 3 seconds, he's not doing you any favors.

Especially since nobody uses food in the dunes - honestly it's just a waste of money until you get to a level where everybody sort of understands their job and eating a 6k pie only to die seconds later is generally a thing of the past.

Just stick with it. I just hit WHM 50 the other night and love it to death.

-sam

P.S. Try not to get mad at powerlevelers, as frustrating as it may be now - the time WILL come when you're taking a job you really have no intention of doing forever, just long enough to make it a viable sub -- a job that you HATE playing and just want to get it over with. You'll see things differently then. [cough MONK cough]

[Xanctum]

Re: My first party as a WHM, arrgh!

I'm currently a lvl 18 WHM / 5 BLM (am lvling up my BLM so its actually the other way around). The time that I was in a party, half of the time we had no PL's. Surprisingly I don't see many PL-ers in the Titan server. It was just the occasional one that a party member called over from his linkshell or something. Other than that, there weren't many... But then again, I played 5 hours without ending up with any more xp than I started with. I figured we had a bad configuration at that time (I was a 16 WHM) fighting Dahmselflies (getting ready for the subjob quest). In the middle a friend came (randomly, not called over) and PL'ed us. During that period, I barely had to do anything since we already had 2 WHM (including me) and now a PL-er. So we were pretty free MP wise. In Titan, it seems as if everyone knows their job pretty well, not many people are PL'ed frequent and people know their jobs well (although I have had a few occasional new guys who tried to go to Valkurm Dunes and get us to heal him while he fights a Rock Lizard, he was lvl 10 too... lol, and yes, he did die)

As a matter of fact for me in the Titan server, I would prefer it if we had a PL-er since it would be easier for me and we could fight harder monsters with me healing the ones who get hit besides the main tank.