Normally I'm all hunky-dory about my experiences in this game as a whole, but yes, even I have my bouts with failboats, such as the one in Skalla last night. I queued up as DRK so I could get in instantly + I do respectable damage from the tank role. Oh, and more credit toward the armored panther.
Everything seemed alright at the start. Noticed the first boss took longer than I've ever seen it take. "Hmm...*looks at ACT*...well then, Mr. 1k dps SAM". It's late and I don't care to drop the group over one person being bad.
Second set of trash mobs (the 2 Muk-looking things and the 3 Dhara golems, cause why would I not pull them together), the SAM pipes up:
"Could you knock it off with the big pulls? Makes it hard for me to focus."
Pretty sure my posture and expression IRL could best be summed up by that meme pic of the guy with his head tilted and "???" plastered next to him. I suppose it was the SAM's lucky day, because there's really no other opportunity to do bigger pulls after that, aside from the very last sets of mobs near the end (which I only pull as a pile if I have a trusted healer with me). Oh, and for the record, during that trash pull where he made that statement, he died twice.
Strange thing I noticed: This guy literally moved slower than anyone else, as if he was perma-heavied or something. Yet he had the run animation and all, so it wasn't RP walk (nor was it that slow). Couple that with bad reaction time...lol, dodge the bad? Puh-lease. Healer, adjust!
Needless to say, I had low expectations for the last boss. Surprise: They were met with flying colors, to the tune of 4 deaths and 300 dps (no, I didn't leave a digit off that last number). Overall dps for them throughout the run: Just over 800. 7 total deaths throughout the dungeon.
Much to my horror, a minion (that I was unaware of) dropped; Salt and Pepper Seal. "Oh my fuck this shitlord is gonna win this thing"...and the guy passed on it, but yours truly rolled a whopping 17, so it went to the SMN instead. I was actually relieved to see that, honestly, although the preference would've been for it to land in my inventory. I've seen more than one pony/bird go to someone who couldn't stay alive through the simplest of things and die repeatedly on the fight. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite, though, seeing that I looted my Titan pony while at the bottom of the pit...
Keeping in mind the numbers I saw, I decided to look at my previous dungeon run, which happened to be Neverreap. I was on NIN for the first time in at least a year. Overall damage right at 1k (980-990). Keep in mind that Neverreap, while level 60, has ilvl sync to 210, and I fucked up mudras at least half a dozen times (because the muscle memory I had for the job wasn't 100% accurate). I didn't die to anything, though, so I supposed that helped. Just need to play it in more group settings for practice and I'll be fine.