Can't talk, busy dying

Red Mage has a reputation for being a rather stressful job. I can see how this would be. It was quite apparent last night. However I don't think it's the most stressful job in the game, not by a longshot.

The award for biggest headache goes to the role of Party Leader, no contest.

As the party leader you are responsible for everything. You have to make sure you are covering your own job's role, but you also have to make sure everyone else is on task. Additionally you get to be in charge of choosing a camp, locating it and making sure everyone gets there alive. This is no easy task, believe it or not. Once you get to camp there comes the serene bliss of having party members deciding to leave and, you guessed it, it's your responsibility to find a replacement for them. All of this while still covering your responsibilities as a normal party member.

Being the leader truly is a headache. I think a lot of it is the knowledge that if things go wrong, it's all your fault.

Puller pulling too fast? You should have told them to slow down.

Mages not casting appropriate spells? Your job to give them the kick in the ass they need.

Tank being lazy about using their job's abilities to keep hate? You need to step up and tell them how it's done.

Damage Dealers stealing hate from the tank? You need to tell them to knock it off.

Party wiping to everything in the zone? You were supposed to pick a camp that people could handle.

Party falling apart as members leave? Why weren't you finding replacemets to keep it going?

I don't know how you could possibly make being a party leader anymore of a headache.
Oh wait, yes I do. You do it while playing as a Red mage. You know, the job that's already supposed to be doing everything at once.

Boy was that a rough party the other night.

Earlier in the week my friend was having trouble getting invited to a party as a Monk so we decided to make an attempt over the weekend to team up and put together another wonder party. I haven't told you about the wonder party yet, I will at some point, just rest assured that it was awesome. So using my spiffy-keen google-fu powers I consulted Campsitarus to see where I might want to hold an exp party as a level 52 Red Mage. Kuftal Tunnel seemed to fit the bill so I started the long and tedious process of finding a tank.

There really aren't enough tanks on my server.

I ended up asking a Warrior if he'd be willing to tank. He said yes. I took this as a good sign, since I'd partied with him before when he was a paladin and he'd done a fine job then. So with the roles of tank and healer filled I decided to rope in my friend and some other hooligans to head out for Kuftal Tunnel.

Our lineup ended up looking something like this:
Red Mage - me
Monk - my friend
Warrior
Dark Knight
Dancer
Thief

It is becoming increasingly clear that I need to stop partying with non-paladin tanks if I want to have a relaxing evening. Our warrior did a fantastic job of keeping hate, but he was still a warrior. This meant he tended to bleed a lot. I think we would have been sunk without the Dancer there to help with the healing. I really can't get over how useful Dancers are. This one wasn't the best, but they still added a lot to the party. Namely they helped keep everyone alive while our Thief was pulling like a madman.

My friend informs me that the pulling was actually a pretty standard speed. I am dubious however. I never felt I had enough MP during this party and I blame the thief for pulling so fast that I couldn't find time to rest for MP. When you are in charge of debuffing at the beginning of the battle, buffing the party, healing and renewing debuffs midway through the battle you don't get a lot of time to sit down other than when the mob dies and the puller runs off to get a new one. I'm not made of MP. Convert is on a ten minute timer. Cut me some slack. I guess I just need to get better at managing my MP if this is going to be the norm, but damn.

See, this is where I as a party leader probably should have said something to our thief in order to keep my own stress at a manageable level. Unfortunately I had two things working against me.
1. He was Japanese and I don't speak Japanese.
2. I'm not enough of an asshole to pull off telling people how to do their job.
So instead of causing a fuss I just attributed my stress to my own ineptitude and the ever present need to improve my skills as a Red Mage.

Somewhere along the line our Dancer says something's come up and they have to leave in ten minutes. Have you ever tried finding a replacement for a party member while main healing on Red Mage? I find it doesn't work out very well. So we had to take some down time while I tried to find someone to replace our dancer. I figured a Summoner might work. I know a lot of summoners don't like the healing role, so I try to make a point of not having them as a main healer. Backup healing however, I have no problem sticking them in that role.

You want to know something funny? For all the complaining I hear about Summoners not getting party invites, a lot of them won't even take an invite to a normal party. Apparently it's all about the Astral Burn parties or it's not worth their time to even show up to a party where they won't be the main healer. No wonder they don't get to come to parties for their Summoner abilities, they're flat out refusing to. Luckily the Japanese Summoner community seems a little more receptive to the idea of actually participating in a traditional party. I figured I might as well give our Thief someone he could talk to.

At some point during the night my linkshell figured out that I was in Kuftal Tunnel leading a party. They inquired about what I was doing there, to which my response was something along the lines of "Can't talk, busy dying". It was a very stressful party even with the support of a backup healer.

Towards the end of the night our thief managed to bring back two crabs at once. While I did manage to keep one slept while the party worked on the the other, it was a huge MP drain for both the Summoner and myself. We were running on empty by the time the second crab went down. So of course the thief wanders off right away to pick up some more mobs. Heaven forbid we should ever be without something to kill, even if we don't have the mp to sustain the party. So of course shit begins to hit the fan when the mages don't have enough MP. Our tank went down due to a lack of MP available for cures and the Summoner followed soon after. Somehow the remaining front line jobs managed to hold their own long enough for me to get back enough MP to keep them alive long enough to kill the mob.

After raising folks we decided to do one last batch of mobs in order to get our Dark Knight leveled up since he was pretty close. After that we all parted ways.

This was easily one of the more stressful parties I've had in recent memory. Not only did I have to be responsible for everything in-game as a Red Mage, I had to be responsible for everything on the meta-game level as a Party Leader. I honestly don't think I did a good job. I was over-eager to get a party going and picked up a less than optimal tank and didn't have the sense to keep our Thief in line, which ultimately resulted in a few people dying.

I'm not cut out for this, I think I'll let other people be party leader for a while.

From Mediocre Mage

A goobbue ate my face once. True story.