I ran Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima Bane 2 nights ago and it took us about 45 mins to clear it. 7/8 people were new to the fight and the 1 dude who cleared it years ago said he couldn't remember anything. I was running PLD and so was the other tank and despite having the same left-hand gear you get from completing the level 50 job quest it was clear he hadn't done anything with his right-hand stuff (I used tomes of course). So I took up the mantle as main tank and we had to figure out how to swap aggro and back each other up which I feel neither of us had really dealt with at that point. Each time we wiped the same healer kept prompting a dismissal vote because the other healer was giving them crap and saying things like "I can't heal through this alone" (no way to report people in a duty?). But we kept trying and trying and finally persevered, each time we got a bit closer to it but eventually it dawned on us that the little balls touching was wiping us, people were figuring out how to dodge the AOE's, etc.
After the fight I tried to /tell the healer about what a great job they did but for whatever reason the message didn't go through. Still a really great experience overall and my brother who used to play a lot of WoW watched about 10 mins of it and kept remarking about how chaotic it looked and how good the visuals were compared to WoW. I wonder if that provoked something in him because he talked a lot the next day about his old raiding days.
Only thing I wish I had done differently was let the healer who was being aggressive towards the other one know that what they were doing was not acceptable and that just because they were right or more knowledgeable about the game doesn't give them the right to be such a dick. No one in the group said anything at all towards them and the healer who was getting blamed was the one who kept prompting the vote dismissal. Of course I tried to be a bit peppish and talk about how no way we could quit now after the 6th wipe and all but I think being a bit more direct could have gone a long way even if it meant risking the other healer quitting or whatever. No duty completion is worth having someone else tank the heat like that.
