'Was Emet-Selch just dropping glocks all over the place?' Yes. Absolutely. That sounds like something he would do.

Play healer and you get a tank that doesn't mit. Play a tank and you either get a glare or cure bot. Play a dps and you get no one because you're waiting in queue.

I was watching Happy's stream when he got into that dungeon with you. He explained that what he was trying to do in that last pull of Qitana Ravel was to make the last apes come down earlier, but he wasn't sure how far he needed to go for that, hence the back and forth.

Mrhappy jumpscare

2:52  This is actually elite ball knowledge, if you run back that way the monkeys up top on the right will drop down early rather than after that pack dies, speed running strategy

Alright, time for some fun machinist and gun lore.
While the machinist job is a recent Ishgardian invention, its unique thing isn't the gun, but the aetherotransformer (AKA the lunchbox).
Guns go a lot further back, to at minimum, the allagans, and they did have a presence on the steppes, as we saw in the MSQ, so there being guns in this dungeon isn't as strange as it sounds, as they could just be relics from part of allagan history, or attempts to copy said relics by the locals.
Now there are dungeons where finding a gun is questionable at best, but some of those dungeons also raise the question of why they would have loot at all, or how we could take items out of the place we are.

2:53 For anyone wondering why the tank ran backwards during this pull in the Qitana Ravel, this pull has three adds that normally don't spawn until the main bulk of the adds UNLESS you backtrack onto the tree branch, which causes the remaining three adds in the pull to spawn earlier. It's a niche trick that saves time in the dungeon.

"If only someone had a code for a VPN" XD

Was not expecting the collab in the first dungeon lol

adding fishing and other gathering spots to dungeons could be a fun way to use explorer mode tbh.

Zoraal Ja being like 40 and not knowing where children come from still kills me

About the "Joi" enemies in Kugane castle... The japanese is 上位 which means superior/high rank. Which makes the "Joi Genin" enemies towards the start of the pull particularly funny, because the genin class were the lowest ranked peasants.

I think there's a good argument to be made in regards to the Zodiark fight that, like... Fandaniel's whole plan is to have Zodiark die, so of course he's not unleashing his full power on you. He WANTS you to kill him, he's not gonna make it any harder than it has to be. Only reason he took control of Zodiark instead of just letting Zenos handle it was because it was more fun for him to do it himself.

Mitigatekeeping.

Regarding your question about critical hit mechanics in the game: Sage's Eukrasian Diagnosis has a critical shield bonus like Adloquium.

21:00 Sage's single target shield has the same "bonus extra shield if you crit" but they don't have the autocrit button, they just have a "double next heal GCD potency" button so you CAN get the nuts of a buffed natural crit but it's up to RNG

Fun fact about Kugane Castle, the tall boys you see in the second boss are supposed to be Karakuri Puppets, (Karakuri Ningyo).
Basically in Japan they are traditonal japanese mechanized dolls. They use hidden clockwork mechanics to surprise and delight onlookers with tricks. They were used at home, like serving tea, in Festivals who performed dances using Clockwork and pupeeters pullings strings. Or even in Theater alongside human actors.
Karakuri were never meant to look like scary, cold machines. The inner workings were strictly hidden beneath gorgeous silk kimonos and delicate porcelain heads.

or at least I think that is what the second boss is. Could be wrong /shrug.

There is another job that gets bonuses from crits - Monk. Every time they crit they unlock one of their five chakras for their oGCD attack. It has a cooldown, I noticed doing Bootshine->Dragon Kick->Bootshine doesn't light up 2 orbs, it's something like 2 seconds between letting you unlock an orb but it still triggers on crits.

20:51 Scholar main forgets about Sage's shield doing the same thing

As for my critical interaction, I think if scholar's fairy crits an embrace, it should give the scholar a minor crit buff. Like, 1 percent that stacks over and over again forever until the scholar crits, and vice versa, meaning every crit the scholar got on any of there abilites, it'd give the fairy a tiny crit boost. Basically giving it kinda a mini catch up thing were it'd be easier to get crit adlos and broils or crit embraces.

Mad because tanks!