Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[VanilleFang]

My gf also uses Medica II during some trash pulls, generally ones where she knows we'll take damage. I know the second pull in Library HM with all those Boogymen mobs that cast their AoEs at the same time, Medica II is really helpful for that. Sohr Khai was another one where she used it, (if we had melee) as those stupid little bird things always managed to cleave the melee. Sometimes I think they ran in front of them on purpose..

These are all valid reasons to use Med2, but in places and situations like the first area of Snowcloak? Yeah, it's a complete waste.

[MeridaQ]

So I have been noticing a trend in the posts. There seems to be some bad mentors out there and even a stigma about mentors. Is this right?

Okay story, I was in PotD with a friend to level. We got a girl who was like: streaming live check me out. We were like huh okay. She was just talking about random things, responding to followers oh and not attacking. XD Might as well had put us on follow because I had to spam chat to get her to realize we cleared the floor and were waiting on the teleported.

[VanilleFang]

So I have been noticing a trend in the posts. There seems to be some bad mentors out there and even a stigma about mentors. Is this right?

There are a lot of bad mentors, just like there are a lot of bad non-mentors. I have run into many good and helpful mentors so I don't really have an opinion on mentors as a whole. It's just more jarring when you see mediocre or terrible play coming from a mentor since becoming a mentor takes quite a few hours of playtime.

[MirielleLavandre]

I've seen some terrible 'mentors' running PotD as well as leveling dungeons. Tanks who didn't use any cooldowns and pull more than the party can handle then berates healers for dying, healers who endlessly medica 2 spam and then stand there, dps who pull for the tank and rage when they die // all from mentors. I really think there needs to be some kind of 'rate the mentor' screen after any duty with a mentor present and negative ratings should either accrue and eventually remove mentor status, or each hit against them is a deduction of 1 or more 'commendations' needed to become a mentor and if they fall below the 300 they are removed. Then again, most of my FC decide against being a mentor just because of the negative stigma associated with many of them now.

[AkashiXI]

There will always be bad mentors mixed in with good mentors, it's the nature of the beast that Square created. Make the curve of being a mentor too high and we will have a lot of people complain they can't be one (which still happened when it was released), and make it too lenient and you'll eventually have mediocre mentors. Instead of complaining about it, do any of you have a solid way to fix the problem?

Edit: My personal fix would be to hide the mentor icon in Duty Finder when you're not in Mentor Roulette. The only time the symbol should hold validity is in the roulette or in open world content. Also that way we have less people complaining that the person was a bad mentor, rather than a bad player in general.

[Atoli]

There seems to be some bad mentors out there and even a stigma about mentors.

Mentors are a mixed bag, just like any other group of players. The reason why their failures come up so much un this thread is because we expect it to be different.
Basically, if you give a burning stick to a child and it accidently burns the house down, that was kind of to be expected. It doesn't know better yet. If you give it to an adult, you expect them to not do anything stupid with it, but when they do it anyway, you remember that just because someone is an adult, does not mean he acts responsible.
But if you give it to a teacher in front of a group of children, you absolutely 100% expect him to be a good example, not do anything bad with it and maybe even teach the children about fire hazards in the process.
So when a Mentor displays horrible behaviour and really bad gameplay, it's the equivalent of the teacher you gave the torch to burning the school down while laughing like a maniac.

On the topic of bad mentors!
Mentor roulette yesterday on my WHM, Halatali normal.
Got 3 sprouts, 2 of which were a couple. They were absolutely dreamy; talkative, friendly, had already looked at a guide but still confirmed the strategy with me, played their roles well (or at least fairly decent)
I noticed though that the tank was..not exactly comfortable with how low I let him drop before exiting Cleric Stance; always ready to flee when his HP reached double digits. So I told him something like "Don't worry, I won't let you die " and because I'm a Mentor, he trusted me.

3 pulls later, a friend asked me something about static business in LS chat, so I switched to chat to answer him, while my brain went into healing auto-pilot. As his HP dwindled, the young tank stood there like a wall, fully trusting in my words, and I, without worry, hit Tetra to bring him back up....but nothing happened (duh, it's a lvl 20 dungeon >.>).

So he died.

I couldn't even ress him, because WHM doesn't get that stupid in-battle ress trait until lvl 28, his arcanist girlfriend had to do it. And then he even went on to apologize how he accidently pulled an extra snake and was sorry about making the pull too big. No. NO. I just suck, okay? ○-○'

[Mysterysword]

I've seen bad mentors, ones who offer no help and do nothing but insult and belittle the people they're supposed to be helping.

I've seen good mentors, ones who take the time to offer advice. Some might even go so far as to offer tips on positioning, skill usage, and boss strategies, but that's even rarer.

But far more than these two groups combined, I see mentors who do nothing, who just stay silent and do the bare minimum of their jobs, not knowing or caring that these sproutlings could use some advice.

In my experience, at least, seeing the mentor crown on someone is a safe bet that that player is an arrogant blowhard who thinks they're the gods' gift to the world and is intent on raining hellfire down on anyone who inconveniences them the slightest bit. Sometimes I'm wrong, of course, but it's a safe bet for a reason.

Either way, this whole mentor system feels completely meaningless to me, because I met a lot of people who were nice and willing to explain things to me before the system was ever mentioned in-game. I extend that to others now too. I have never had mentor status, but I am still perfectly willing to stop and explain things to a newbie, on 3 conditions:

1. They admit they are new to the dungeon.
2. They actively ask for help.
3. They actually listen to what I have to explain and take it into consideration.

Fulfill all 3 conditions, and I am perfectly fine with stopping to explain everything I know about the dungeon, down to methods of dealing with bosses. I don't see how speaking up and asking for help is such an impossible task, but apparently for some people, it is.

Take this recent Vault run that I was tanking. Newbie WHM who never once said anything during the whole run, caused a wipe at Grinnaux because they clearly didn't know the mechanics and got kicked into a black hole. It wasn't a language barrier either, because after the wipe, I proceeded to explain it entirely in English and they followed the strategy I outlined. But I would've preferred to just explain the fight before engaging at all, and save ourselves the trouble of a wipe.

Also, that WHM never dealt a single point of damage during that run. Which is reasonable in a large trash pack, and even while the boss is actively throwing a huge chain of mechanics at us all, less so when Charibert has spawned all his fireballs and they're just standing around doing nothing, not even Cleric Stance on.

Which, in turn, leads me to another run I tanked, a Dusk Vigil. The level 52 WHM never once used Asylum, and once again, never dealt a single point of damage. I suggested stacking regens on me, and considering I was deliberately keeping pulls small, they had plenty of room for it. But nope. Not even Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, or Shroud of Saints.

Halfway through the run, they started talking about how fun it is to be a healer. I sincerely thought they were being sarcastic, but apparently not, standing around doing nothing but casting maybe 3-4 spells over and over again is their definition of "fun". That's an insult to literally everyone who's worked on this game, I swear.

[dragonseth07]

Story time!

Tried yet again to get my Ramuh EX clear. Convinced the DRK I was with to let me solo tank it. He said he didn't trust it, but okay. It's all going pretty smooth... except it's pretty clear that only 3 people in the whole instance know what's going on. Me, the DRK, and one SCH. DPS never cleared any orbs, so the damage got out of hand. We told them to clear orbs. No big deal, right? Wrong. Clearly, we needed to be far more specific. On every subsequent attempt, I was not able to actually build up 3 charges and get the shield, because the DPS kept eating all the freaking orbs, even after we told them to let me shield. I watched a Ninja run away from the boss he was hitting to grab the last orb on the field to deny me the shield. I was pretty angry. The DRK and I know that this party is doomed, so he asks someone to leave (abandon time is not even close to happening yet, but we've wiped a good 5 times already). I bite the bullet and leave. But, the story is not over.

As of this moment, I decided that it's not worth trying to get it synced, and it never will be. I've resigned to my fate of getting the clear unsynced via PF, because the people DF gives me will never be good enough to beat it. So, I make a party. It fills up immediately! I go to queue us unsynced... and I still have my penalty from leaving the synced run. For another 22 minutes. I apologize to everyone and leave the party. I'm just so sad right now.

[Erim-Nelhah]

(Ramuh EX story)

I feel for you. Ramuh EX is one of the hardest fights to do synced (alongside Titan EX and Leviathan EX). It's actually a bit tricky unsynced as well, since you have to make sure you don't push him too far while adds are up (Shiva EX, Ifrit EX, and Levi EX have this problem as well).

As for your leave timer....just wait until it expires and put your PF back up. Unsynced with bonus will fill extremely quickly, and with people who know what they're doing, since for most of the people joining you it's gonna both get them a WT stamp and a Second Chance point.

--Erim Nelhah

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Had an odd scenario running leveling on Warrior. Now I'm still getting a good feel for it at this point, but end up paired with a Scholar, Monk and Black Mage in Darkhold. Should be fairly straightforward, right? It was until after the first boss. I purposely pull just the toad and puffball because of the potential knock back aoe. Second trash push, I grab everything and settle in to tank it only to notice my HP fast despite popping Bloodbath. Admittedly, I waited just a touch too long on Thrill of Battle. So my mistake there. Still, I've never had that issue, especially with a 250ish Scholar. Anywho, we wipe (it wouldn't be the only time either). I queue a second time just to see if I did muck up somewhere and intentionally recreate the same pull. I had Holmgang and Thrill waiting just in case but only used Bloodbath and... my HP never came close to 1,000. And my new healer managed to toss DPS no problem. I did pop Convalescence a little after since I wasn't going to make her work extra for long, though I wouldn't have needed it. I just wanted to test a theory. She was only in ilvl 135 gear.

Basically, an ilvl 135 healer did better than a ilvl 250 fully melded one. Thinking about it after, I have to imagine that Scholar was watching Netflix or something because I swear I didn't get much healing.