Character

So, you FINALLY get to the duty finder, Yay! Just what IS this strange thing people people in FF14 both love AND hate? Well new people, the Duty finder allows one to queue for any dungeon, raid or trial that you have unlocked in the MSQ and side quests. People do this to...

A. Get experience for their various jobs on their character.
B. Complete quests and challenges.
C. Farm the instances for items of various kinds.
D. To have something to do because they are bored.

If you are going through the MSQ, you won't really care about the duty finder other than queuing for the instance you need to advance the MSQ. But as you start leveling other jobs, you will need it for easy Exp.

You see, the Duty finder roulette gives a LOT of exp to entice people to do it, and it really helps with leveling other jobs. The best roulette exp in order with level requirements is.

(level 50) Main quest Roulette (ie, the end of Arr):
(level 50) 24 man Raid Roulette:
(level 15) Leveling Roulette:
(level 50) 50/60 roulette:
(level 60) Normal 8 man raid roulette:
(Level 50) Trial roulette:
(Level 10) Guildhest roulette:
(level 70) Expert roulette:
(level 70) Level 70 roulette:

(The 70 roulette's obviously DON'T give any experience right now since, you know, you got to be 70 to DO them, Duh!)

There is also mentor roulette, but since I am not a mentor, I have no idea the level you have to be to do it.

Also, even though you might have the exp to do it, you still need to actually complete the MSQ in various places to access them. The 24 man roulette is not until ARR is done. The normal raid roulette not until Heavensward is done, and the level 70 roulettes not until Stormblood is done.

See, LOTS of ways to level up those extra jobs if you want to put in the time doing them.

Note: even though the Main Quest roulette gives the best exp and rewards, people HATE queuing for it, HATE it with the fury of a thousand blazing suns! Why? Because it takes a Loooooong time to do it compared to the other roulettes. You gotta sit through ALL of the cut scenes and if you get the last dungeon, it will last around 45 minutes, an ETERNITY to impatient level grinders!

Also, you can't access the expert roulette unless you have ALL the dungeons listed in it, some which are NOT part of the MSQ.

The various roulette bonuses can only be gotten once a day. You can still DO them after that but you wlll get much less exp for them. They reset about midday server time. (ie: 11:00 EST for me, East coast and all) If you miss one and do it early enough the next day, you can do the other one too once it resets.


Ok, so ACTUALLY queuing for it, either roulette or specific instance. You check the box, click the button and wait.....and wait.....and wait....and WAIT.....and FINALLY it pops. WOW, this REALLY SUCKS!

Yes people, you have found out the ugly truth of the duty finder, it REALLY sucks doing it as ANY DPS job! WHY? Because my dears, there are soooooo many DPS jobs to choose from and SOOOO many people who choose to play them over Tanks and Healers. This mean it can take forever and a day for the damn instance to pop for you! UGH! And God help you if it finally DOES pop and someone withdraws, then you gotta wait for the NEXT one to pop and it can take a while for that to happen... Double UGH!

Now Tanks and Healers are blessed. Because of the demand for them, their queue times are MUCH shorter, usually instantaneous but not more than 1-10 minutes for the various roulettes. This is not ALWAYS the case though. It can be much longer depending on time of day and if they are queuing for a specific instance. But in general, they don't wait long.


Sooooo, what can one do if they choose to be a killing machine instead of a meat shield or person everybody blames.....er Life giving healer?


Well dearies, here is darling Annabel to tell you naive newbies the best ways to avoid those soul sucking queue waits!

First off, the BEST and I DO mean BEST way to avoid the queue wait is to have a PREMADE party BEFORE queuing! If all the slots are filled, whatever you queue for will pop instantly no matter what it is. This works best with dungeons since they only require 4. It will also help other queues be shorter though since slots will already be filled up.

Of course people, this means actually having friends or FC mates willing to go with you. (Antisocial people need not apply!) Complete loner? All is NOT lost! You can use the party finder to advertise for a specific dungeon party or trial and hope people are interested (or bored enough) to join you.

So, no one wants your company and you have NO choice but to queue up the normal way, sigh.... But there IS a way to make it go faster as a poor little DPS....TIME of DAY!

Yes newbies, WHEN you queue can help immensely with shorting queue waits. As you probably can guess, servers tend to much busier at certain times then others. Knowing what times the data centers are hopping and are dead can get you in those dungeons faster.

Now, of course your server's prime time, (ie: when people are home from work and playing at night), is the most active. People are getting their daily roulettes done for the day so queuing up at that time is fairly quick, maybe 10-30 min usually. Sometimes it actually hits in less than 10 if you are lucky. It's pretty much a good time to do it.

It is not the ONLY good time though. If you have weird hours and are online in the morning, queuing when the roulettes reset is actually a GREAT time to do them. Many people queue as soon as its available to get it out of the way and roulette queues tend to be quick for everything, sometimes BETTER than server prime time. (guess there are a LOT of hardcore people with odd hours)

Other times of day are pretty much crapshoots on how long it will take. late night/early morning server time is the WORST time. You will be waiting a looong time for that queue to pop.

If you don't want to do the roulettes at all, there is Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High to level your job, but those are not duty finder based so are really not part of this.

So, other than those things, is there anything one can do to make the queues go faster?
Not really. If an instance is new, queues will be fast for DPS's. It does not matter what DPS job you play, the queue time will be the same. You kind of just have to bare it and hope for the best when you queue if you have no way to alter the odds.

Seriously though, making some friends and asking them to help you goes a LONG way to getting those DPS queues pop quickly.