Sometimes, you just have to wonder...

I'm broke.

Amazing, right? Not really. Anyway, I decided to try my luck with the lovely Jade Sepulcher ISNM again. As usual, I got a chocobo egg and a bunch of junk. However, that's not what this post is about. No kiddies, today we're going to talk about knowing your jobs.

What's this have to do with an ISNM, you wonder? Wait till you get a load of this one.

So here I am in Whitegate, doing the standard shout for the event. Thankfully, this one doesn't take nearly as long as a CoP 6-4 shout or something, so it wasn't long until we were 6/6 and on the way. Our group was a little different from the normal setup. We were SAM, WAR, RNG, BLM, BRD, and WHM. Now while this doesn't go with the "approved setup" of wikipedia or whatever, what we had was fine. Except for one tiny thing.

Our White Mage. Not because she was level 72. That's of little consequence in this ISNM. Not because it was a Japanese player amidst of a bunch of English speakers. You find that quite often. No, the thing that was so different about this particular level 72 White Mage is the fact that she didn't know what to do.

Before you think too hard on that, let me clarify. I mean she didn't know what to do as a WHM. Oh wait...a level 72 WHM. I should have seen the signs. They were so blinding that I had to turn away from my TV screen.

Sign 1: Level 72 asking to join an ISNM.

In all fairness, I didn't think this would matter. I'm not one to judge people so quickly, and all we needed was cures and haste. What's the worst that can happen, right? /slap

Sign 2: The cryptic /tell

Before the fight, she sent me a tell:

"My WHM {Experience Points} 0 {Please assist}"

I had no idea what the hell she meant. I thought she had just leveled or something and didn't have a buffer into 72. I now understand that it means she didn't know what she was doing.

Sign 3: Cryptic /tell v2

This one wasn't really all that cryptic. Instead, it was flat-out scary. Imagine that you're seconds from entering an ISNM with a creature that is very capable of whipping your ass into oblivion in a couple of seconds and your only healer sends this to you:

"{White Mage} {How?}"

That's right, a Level 72 WHM just asked a 75 SAM how to be a White Mage. The amount of fail in that short exchange is beyond measure. Of course I'm also a 75 WHM, but she didn't know that. Still, the job isn't really all that complex. Even if you don't know about Afflatus Solace, Flash, or any of the many tools a WHM has, the basics are pretty straightforward. Heal the party. Don't let them die. Pretty simple, no?

By now, it was too late. We entered the arena and the fight began. I was crying inside as I watched this mage. Personally, I'm gimped to hell and back in every job I have, but I'll be damned if someone ever says that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I mean, come on...somebody help me understand this.

What is your thought process when you see a party member at less than 10% health and you're casting Cure III? What the hell people? Cure III? That might work when you're level 30, but not at 75. I'll tell you the end result of that one though. Death and lots of it.

Or how about somebody dies and you haven't raised them 5 minutes later? Oh wait, even better. You drop to low health and your WHM is busy casting Banish on the NM. That's right, Banish. Not Banish II or III. Just good old Banish. A spell that is 7000% useless on its own, unless you're casting on undead for the after effects. I'm not even going into the amount of times we had to ask for Haste, or the fact that she recast Protectra / Shellra IV at the start of every single match (they have a duration of 30 minutes and each fight we did lasted 3 or 4.)

I can go on but I feel my blood pressure rising as I type this. In the end, I was left wondering if she is the product of an Astral Burn or bought account. In the case of the latter, we just got hit with bad luck. If it's because of the former, then I hereby petition to have an atomic bomb dropped on Korroloka Tunnel and shut that damn place down.