The Mentoring Requirements... *Rant Style*

[Riardon]

The requirements are fine. It's supposed to be only for "veteran" players. Only new players do not match the criteria. You aren't supposed to be "veteran" experienced player if you just came to the game.

[LadyVal]

It may not add much to the discussion, but it did say the mentor roulette is specifically designed so it is easier to join your student in a dungeon. So my guess is you need one of every role, so that the dungeon can be run with the proper party makeup (because if a tank is teaching a tank, no dungeon under level 50 will have room for both of them) so you'll need to take the role that they aren't, and on top of that you'll be able to give them advice in the dungeon. The level requirement is just ensuring that you have had direct access to the core mechanics of each role, you should be able to tell a baby CNJ "Hey don't worry, your mp management becomes easier once you get Shroud of Saints and then later you'll get Assize," WHILE you are DPSing or tanking in the dungeon they need help in. The game is ensuring that you can become flexible enough to accommodate a new person undertaking any role, and not make them wait on you while you form a party so you can both go in and tank or heal. The comms I /think/ are just a guard to make sure you're not a complete jerk (though the system is flawed, admittedly) and the dungeon requirement (while high) is making sure you didn't just power level in fates, and that you could run the content blindfolded so that any questions a newbie may have, you can answer.

The system isn't designed to cater to the mentors. It is designed to cater to the students, and making sure they are getting help from qualified people who know what they are doing. Not a perfect system, but better than just judging everything on raid content or play time.

[Toguro]

The very, very basic fundamentals of all roles(DPS, Tanking, Healing) can be learned without leveling those classes. I'm talking specifically with the Mentoring time limit of 40 hours. Mentees can vary as some rush through some don't. When I joined FFXIV it was about Nov. 11, when I was lv23, it was Dec.1. I was taking it slow. My mentoring hours would have been up.

The very basic fundamentals of healing: healing of course, watching MP bars, using Cleric Stance at the right times(All newbies will be Conjurers at the beginning), knowing the effect of Cleric Stance, watching your aggro(something every role needs to know to avoid taking aggro), shielding(Protect, etc), staying within range of the tank and team to heal them, staying out of AoEs, using basic cures and AoE cures, detrimental effect removal, watching the overall status of the team.

Tank fundamentals: Keeping aggro on all enemies, position them away from your team to avoid AoEs and AoE melee attacks bosses tend to have, look at your team's classes,(I have a pugilist, I need to make sure they can get their attacks in so I must have the enemies in a position to attack efficiently), Provoking(Although technically not a "fundamental" because that is learned at lv22, you would already need to know how to tank then but Provoke is a must-know), watching your root source of enmity(TP/MP you need that to keep attacking to keep aggro), checking your team's gear(gotta know what gear they have before you do things to make decisions in the long run), knowing your enmity attacks like Skull Sunder or Savage Blade and how they work(This includes Flash range), cycling through enemies to obtain substantial aggro on ALL enemies in the group so in case a team member does not know the fundamentals of focusing, you will not lose aggro.

DPS Fundamentals: Watching your aggro so you don't take it from the tank IF they are not cycling. Stop attacking that enemy. Attack the tank's enemy, watch TP, attack, priority targets.

Once you tell them the fundamentals of the role, you may teach them the fundamentals of the class and neat tricks and cross-skills(Here's where Impulse Drive comes in, leveling Gladiator to 8 to get flash and help with AoE enmity generation, etc).
Bonus Fundamentals: You can teach them the importance of provoke, AoEing big mobs down, avoid using push attacks for no reason(Push them into tanks or away from healers or into walls to avoid moving them), using cooldowns right, using your attacks/heals right, teaching functions of traits, avoid AoEs, positionals, finishers

Those are things that a "specialist" can teach better than a non-specialist but players who play for a long time can still teach those particular things easily. Only deep job stuff requires a specialist, absolutely. That is useless though because newbies only have 40hrs.

Then there's the next section that Gunspec posted in this thread earlier. The fundamentals of the game world itself outside of fighting/combat. FCs, GCs, chocobos, sidequests unlockables, materia, dye, glamour, the market board, guildleves, guildhests, and all the other stuff the game throws at you before 30 at least minus glamour. You can teach them about the very deep options section(I think its deep, has a lot of stuff in it). Tons of stuff that you can teach outside of fighting.

^ All of these things can be done and taught by players who are at least 50(returning players and/or players who lack Heavensward). They do not, should not need a level 60 class to teach a newbie, newbie things. Your Heavensward knowledge is useless because they will never be 60 in 40hrs. The game's fundamentals were created long before Heavensward. They were created at release. Level 50s at the start of ARR 2.0(Release I mean) should be qualified to mentor as they know the fundamentals. A level 50 tank can teach just as good as a 60 tank because the fundamental skills required to teach and tank are learned at an early stage. The stuff at 60 is add-on stuff.

What SE should do is make another mentoring system for higher level players so they can engage in the next step of mentoring. Learning your class/job. THAT will require "specialists" when you get to the deepest parts of the job. But fundamentals? Basic fundamentals? That is learned through experience in the game world itself. Not leveling a healer. As a lv60 DPS, when you level a healer, you're already gonna know the general concept of healing.

Having the dungeon restriction makes no sense as you can learn the fundamentals of combat in 300 dungeons. I'm sure there are tons of people who are left out of teaching because of the requirements. Left out of teaching early fundamentals about the game itself AND combat fundamentals.

[Ronyx]

The requirements are ok, in fact there should be more and more strict I think.
1. The commendations weed out some people although I think 300 is so few, should had been more.
2. Having at least one Tank, Healer, DPS is probably the best course to be a mentor because when I had used and tried every of the roles it's when you truely get to understand each points of views and have a better scope of what everyone should be doing. Also would means that you are able to guide anyone regardless of what path he or she choose.
3. If you are so good and perfect at DPS, raiding as you said you were... then you should be close to the 1000 dungeons if you started at 3.1. There had been more than enough time for that. If you dont have 1000 dungeons then I;m sorry and keep practicing. I guess the reason behind all these dungeons is so that mentors know every dungeon and mechanic like the palm of their hands and you get that only by experiencing yourselves over and over and over a 1000 times.

[Serilda]

I personally think the rules will be adjusted later, until the number of mentors across the various worlds is at a level the developers are happy with - they can calculate how many people would be eligible easily enough but they won't know how many people actually plan to participate until the new system is live.

However, having one of each role at 60 should remain and any alternate routes for the dungeon requirement should be at least as difficult and time-consuming to obtain as that one is. Three level 60s is a trivial request and it's absolutely true that the experience you get playing various roles is like gold. It's all very well to say "I can learn from YouTube or guides or my own natural intelligence" but the weight of evidence shows that most people are not as good as they think in that respect. I have had enough gruelling experiences with novice tanks/DPS/healers who made it to level 60 without learning good teamwork to doubt any sweeping claims of competence posted on the Internet. I'm still learning stuff myself, even about my main job, and not all of that wisdom is limited to level 60 play. To assume that you already know everything there is to know seems awfully overconfident.

Understanding the challenges of levelling each type of job is important for giving out advice. I have several level 60s but no tanks (I don't enjoy tanking) and I know that for all of my experience healing across dozens of games and situations I can't give the detailed tanking advice I'd like to be able to. While I have stayed up for hours with my real-life partner (tank main) and discussed strategy so I think I'm probably better on the theory than most, investing a little time into actually putting things into action and feeling how the abilities interact and other players treat you as a tank is something that studying alone can't give you. The tank is often the default leader of any party and sets the pace, too. You can't learn the necessary social skills to be a great tank by running a few levequests to grab your cross-class skills then switching to something else.

And besides, as people have said it's simply logical to ensure that the mentor roulette has a good population of jobs available so there are never any troubles making parties. People can just pick whichever job is in need and compatible with their student at any time since there won't be any bottlenecks with players who have only got a DPS job levelled. I see no problem with this and don't mind having to do a tank job if that's what it takes.

The dungeons one is a bit harder for me as it's a chicken/egg issue. The main reason I would want to be a mentor is that I primarily want to play with new people; I don't enjoy joining roulettes with a bunch of other 60s and stomping familiar content at all. It's extremely efficient and safe, and it gets me the rewards in the least amount of time, but what I actually play MMOs for is a more social experience. Kind of like a mentor experience, in fact. Ironically, this means that I'm stuck in a situation where I don't want to repeatedly grind old dungeons/trials with other experienced players so I won't actually make the target for becoming eligible to focus on new ones for a long, long time (will FFXIV even still exist then?)

It's a shame my server is so small as opportunities to meet newcomers or join 'new player' learning groups in PF are limited and I'd hoped mentor roulette would have made things easier; still, if it means more new players will be doing content then I could benefit as a non-mentor too. I'd totally join mentor roulette for no reward of any kind other than the experience of being able to play with newbies too shy to come find me in PF.

(The commendations paranoia in the OP was fun too. If you do enough content you'll have enough commendations regardless of job - I originally mained BLM and did fine with them - so I don't even know why this requirement exists. It's pretty obvious to me why people get commendations and I imagine it's similar on English-speaking servers rather than them being full of horny guys desperate to reward cute girls. People who make funny jokes, look cool, play well or do something helpful get commendations. As a healer I sometimes give out guilt-commendations when I screwed up and didn't take good care of someone. Heck, sometimes I have just picked someone with a name I liked when all of the players were equally good.)

[Tint]

i have a bigger problem with the crafting and gathering mentoring. these are 2 completly different things. and not only that: i am an endgame fisher. i know a lot about fishing. but i have no idea about the other gatherers. why put all of them together? i can understand this for PVE, but crafting and gathering?

and what should i teach a newbie about gathering in his first 40 hours of playtime? "click that tree, click the item you want, go to the next tree" i don't understand this. crafting okay, but who needs a mentor for gathering? the interesting part about gathering starts only at lvl 50. and of course new players MUST play their battle class first for unlocking all the stuff with the main scenario. that will take a while. i don't think any new player will reach endgame gathering in his first 40 hours...

[Serilda]

i have a bigger problem with the crafting and gathering mentoring. these are 2 completly different things. and not only that: i am an endgame fisher. i know a lot about fishing. but i have no idea about the other gatherers. why put all of them together?

I guess that the logic is that no matter what you've been doing, to meet the DoH/DoL requirements takes a lots of time and effort so you're presumed to be reasonably well-rounded and knowledgeable about the game in general by the point you qualify. Except it kind of flies against the justification for the battle class requirements in every way. I'm sort of the opposite of you as I love gathering but can't stand fishing, and everything you say in this post makes perfect sense. I think the only questions I had when I started fishing (botany and mining are so self-evident that there were none) were just about finding specific low level fish which isn't really something a mentor is required for :s

[CUTS3R]

I was hoping i could get my friend who mainly spend his time crafting and gathering as mentor for DoL/DoH.
I havent crafted in almost a year since i got my Lucis and then HW happened. I completely stopped crafting to focus on battle jobs and now i forgot rotations and stuff. With him as my mentor, he could have been able to teach me how to craft efficiently again AND be rewarded for it, but nope...
I have the requirement to be a mentor myself so i cant get one for me.

I iz sad.

[Toguro]

To assume that you already know everything there is to know seems awfully overconfident.

Not sure if this is directed towards me but if it was, I definitely don't know everything. I cannot teach people how to play their jobs thoroughly and to the point compared to someone who knows has the job as their career job or something. But I can still teach the basics that a newbie should learn in their first 40hrs. No newbie should be lv45 in 40hrs. They had to have been getting help somewhere.

Were the fundamentals I listed wrong though? Will those not be helpful during the first 40hrs of play?

[Toguro]

.

Because the fundamentals of fishing....

nvm..

For crafting I hear you need cross-class skills and rotations to create high-end items. That's completely useless though because you wont be makin' nuffin' at a low level. Them being 60 does not help you in the slightest at that level..

For Gathering, maybe they can tell you what a cordial is or which Gathering Up/HQ Up to use? Dunno..