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

[NephthysVasudan]

Sadly, considering how braindead easy it is to get Mentor status...it doesn't surprise me. They really do need a test for when someone applies to be a mentor. Something that throws a crap ton of mechanics at them, and they need to pass with a 95% success rate(for all three combat roles!). Things like knowing when to stun, what to Esuna, when to stack, when to spread, etc(if the NPCs in job quests can do it, a mentor damn well better be able to!).

Problem is.....the chakra mechanic while not entirely familiar you could sort of faceroll. But the bibliotaph phase...where EVERYONE had to go through the great gubal library at least once in their life time.....how the bloody hell can you not recognize that? It's a near guaranteed wipe if you get more than one failed seal on that phase....one you can sort of roll through. This blew my mind....you should know what to do already. Yet that white mage just stood there derping around. Yes...it didn't help the party was chaotic about it..but at least they knew what to do.

[Avatre]

Yes...it didn't help the party was chaotic about it..but at least they knew what to do.

In all the runs I've done of that, I think there was only one run where it actually went smooth with the pads. Mostly because one of the healers and I(on RDM) were in PS chat together. One of the other ranged(think it was either a SMN or BRD...it was quite a while ago) saw how we positioned ourselves to get the farthest platforms and ran to join us as they spawned. No party communication other than my friend and I in the PS chat(unless others were in their own discord/PS chat/whatever) all other runs I've done have had it be a millisecond before one of the adds would spawn at BEST.

[MoroMurasaki]

Bad o7n whm mentor.

I think people who are inexperienced with content should probably take their crown off when doing that content but as it stands right now that WHM could have been a mentor since HW days and this could be their first time running o7n. I'm not saying it is but I don't think it's inherently less likely (especially based on their performance) that they had no experience with that fight.

Being a mentor is not a "go ahead and rip me apart for any mistakes" badge. I'm not saying you were rude, all I have to go on is that you described yourself as "mouthy". If you were just defending the more competent WHM then more power to you, rock on! If you were mouthy with the mentor for flubbing mechs/not healing to your liking... no?

Mentors have to experience things for the first time too. Mentor status is easy to get and retain despite not being up to date on current content. I wish that mentor status was revoked each patch until a player had completed all current content (perhaps excluding Savage) but SE would never do that because mentor roulette wouldn't be filling as many queues.

I guess I just want to express my distaste with the idea that mentors open themselves up for abuse when they make mistakes. It's very easy to forget to go into your search info and take your crown off when doing something new and no one is perfect. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your post and you weren't rude to them, if that's the case then feel free to ignore me, but if you expect perfection from everyone with a crown (or, frankly, even marginal competence by my own standards) you're going to be sorely disappointed.

[Avatre]

I think people who are inexperienced with content should probably take their crown off when doing that content but as it stands right now that WHM could have been a mentor since HW days and this could be their first time running o7n. I'm not saying it is but I don't think it's inherently less likely (especially based on their performance) that they had no experience with that fight.

They could probably do something similar to how they do Mentor Roulette, where if it detects you are the one giving the bonus to the party it strips your crown for that run so that people wouldn't get the ideas(and I admit, I am guilty of being a bit more critical of a mentor in almost all content when they constantly mess up) that mentors are perfect...probably won't help much, but it could be a start.

[ko_]

I think people who are inexperienced with content should probably take their crown off when doing that content but as it stands right now that WHM could have been a mentor since HW days and this could be their first time running o7n. I'm not saying it is but I don't think it's inherently less likely (especially based on their performance) that they had no experience with that fight.

Being a mentor is not a "go ahead and rip me apart for any mistakes" badge. I'm not saying you were rude, all I have to go on is that you described yourself as "mouthy". If you were just defending the more competent WHM then more power to you, rock on! If you were mouthy with the mentor for flubbing mechs/not healing to your liking... no?

Mentors have to experience things for the first time too. Mentor status is easy to get and retain despite not being up to date on current content. I wish that mentor status was revoked each patch until a player had completed all current content (perhaps excluding Savage) but SE would never do that because mentor roulette wouldn't be filling as many queues.

I guess I just want to express my distaste with the idea that mentors open themselves up for abuse when they make mistakes. It's very easy to forget to go into your search info and take your crown off when doing something new and no one is perfect. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your post and you weren't rude to them, if that's the case then feel free to ignore me, but if you expect perfection from everyone with a crown (or, frankly, even marginal competence by my own standards) you're going to be sorely disappointed.

HUGE edit. but you're more forgiving then me.. just about all the mentors I met have either been awesome OR dicks. And I met more dicks than awesome mentors. So I'm abit jaded on the subject and think this person who apparently is one and played like that should've been kicked instantly. Like there's a way people play when they are new, and it sounds like this person was just trolling. But I could be wrong and I'm going off my own experiences which isn't yours or anyone elses so yeah. I agree tho. People should be tested every patch to keep that status.

[BillyKaplan]

Queued for 50/60 on a tank with a NIN buddy. We get Amdapor Keep normal. I pull about as much as I'm used to when I notice things are dying slowly. Look up and true enough the level 54 BLM is casting Fire. Ok, they might be new or something, give them the benefit of the doubt and ask them to use Fire II on big pulls, and preferably finish with Flare. From then up to the first boss they keep casting Blizzard II. That's obviously a troll but ok, keep trying to be nice, maybe I looked up when they were in Umbral Ice. Tell them that's a point blank AoE and they're not hitting anything.

Healer: "She's keeping me nice and cool."

So you're partied with this troll and you don't mind a 15-20 minutes dungeon run is going to take 30. Wonderful. Thankfully as it was my buddy and I, we managed to kick the BLM.
"Bad move", said the healer. "I'm out, enjoy Amdapor to its fullest o/" and left.

I get trolling when you run with your friends, but 1. if you're going to do that, get a premade, that's what my clique does. 2. you're not just with your friends here. 3. Even then why would you intentionally make a run like this take that much longer than it has to. Why. Even when trolling my friends and I try to make things run smoothly. It'll be the tank Shirking me on my BLM and me popping Manaward and making them work hard to take agro back, not intentionally nerf myself so it'll take forever. DPS obviously filled instantly and I managed to get a healer from one of my linkshells so it was smooth sailing from there on out.

I wish blacklist actually kept you from queueing with people like that :\

[Raven_Darkstar]

Just when you think you've seen every horror the DF can possibly throw at you, it proves you wrong.

Last night I was taking my sprout PLD alt through Brayflox (at around 2 am. yup should really know better than to brave the df at the beginning of the derp hours >.<) and got the absolute worst run of the place I have literally Ever had. Were there rude people? Were they insulting? DPS pulling ahead of me? Nope, none of the above. Would actually have preferred that last one. At least the people who run ahead pulling are usually competent. No, what I got was a terrible, virtually no dps healer, AND two dps who absolutely sucked. No parser needed to figure that out.

First boss, I saw more waves of adds than I have ever seen on that fight. Typically, you get 2 waves, and boss is dead by then. Not this run. By the time the boss was finally, finally dead, I was about to get overwhelmed by adds; 3 more spawned before I could finish killing the previous set. That's right, "I" because if the dps were helping with them, it sure as hell wasn't obvious.

Second boss, no real issues. It just... took way longer than it should have. Hellbender however; sigh. Again, saw more repetitions of the mechanics than I ever have. Both dps and the healer got bubbled multiple times, and who freed them? Even with a giant number 1 marking the bubbles? Me. The tank. Had to go break them out. Each, and Every time.

Now, the first trash pull after this boss is where I realized exactly what was going on. Till then, I'd been a bit too focused on what I was doing to really eyeball the dps. So, I pull the first 3 mobs, and then I see it. NIN is standing right beside me, staring at me. O.o tf? What's he doing?! Doesn't he realize standing beside the tank, who is *trying* to keep mobs aimed away from the group, is Not a good place to be? So I change position. He follows me. Change again, and again. Each time, he follows. He actually put himself on /follow.

Finally, he starts dpsing again, we get through the rest of the trash and on to the last boss. No major issues here, other than the fact that I ended up doing a full circle of the room, moving him out of the poison puddles. And LB? Yeah, was used at %1 health.

My reward for putting up with this at least 40 minute run? (didn't actually look at the time elapsed, but considering it was a couple minutes after 2am when I got in, and about 2:50 when I got out... yeah) One piece of the cavalry set, 1 comm, and a headache.

Now, to be fair, I will say that the other dps, a BLM seemed like they were trying. Rarely saw them idle for more than a few seconds. And the sprout WHM did at least keep me alive. But, no Esuna, ever. My hp bar was consistently way lower than I'm comfortable with, which would be fine, If they were at least dpsing. But NO, no Stone II, and only an occasional, random Aero here and there. Otherwise, they stood around, doing nothing.

Had these 3 been silent, I would strongly suspect bots, but they were talking with each other throughout the run, though oddly, it turns out they were all from different servers.

Oh, and get this; the NIN actually had something of an excuse. They apologized a couple times during the run (we had to wait for them to stop standing around and actually get in the room to even start the first boss fight). What was it, you ask? "Sorry. Doing too much multi tasking."

...

Really?!

Really.

Here's an idea; how about if your attention is too focused on something outside the game, Don't freaking queue up for group content!

[Shalan]

Just got out of a WoD group with a BLM casting nothing but Blizzard. It was my first time seeing an "ice mage" but the weird thing about them was they had almost full 370 gear w/ 375 weapon (a couple of 360 accessories). They didn't respond when we sent any messages or asked them to cast something other than Blizzard, so we eventually kicked them.
Is there some bot program going around that players are using for such things, or do you think they were just trying to troll/annoy us?

[ko_]

A really bad run.

to be fair about that ninja. He might've forgotten he was qued and started doing other things. and the que shocked him. DPS que times are stupid and I think we sometimes forget how stupid they can be. Tho yeah...

[MoroMurasaki]

They could probably do something similar to how they do Mentor Roulette, where if it detects you are the one giving the bonus to the party it strips your crown for that run so that people wouldn't get the ideas(and I admit, I am guilty of being a bit more critical of a mentor in almost all content when they constantly mess up) that mentors are perfect...probably won't help much, but it could be a start.

I think this is a wonderful idea, I'd be all for it! I know I've personally queued into things on patch day and not taken off my crown, I'm sure without knowing the mechanics I didn't play up to what everyone's standards for a mentor might be.

HUGE edit. but you're more forgiving then me.. just about all the mentors I met have either been awesome OR dicks. And I met more dicks than awesome mentors. So I'm abit jaded on the subject and think this person who apparently is one and played like that should've been kicked instantly. Like there's a way people play when they are new, and it sounds like this person was just trolling. But I could be wrong and I'm going off my own experiences which isn't yours or anyone elses so yeah. I agree tho. People should be tested every patch to keep that status.

I feel like you (and people who might share this mindset) need to look at the minimum criteria for being a mentor currently endorsed by SE.

A tank, a healer and a DPS at 60 with their level 60 quest completed. 300 comms. 1k dungons run.

That is.... insanely easy, honestly. There are plenty of people walking around as sprouts right now who have been playing significantly longer than people who could fit all of these criteria. Those sprouts are still given a free pass when they screw things up because they're inexperienced but they could very well be more experienced than some mentors you've run into who are less than awesome.

I am in full support of a system that allows us to hold mentors to a higher standard and expect better play/better attitudes from them but that isn't the system SE has given us and I am of the opinion that that is an intentional move on their part. The mentor system is designed around mentor roulette, they want to be able to fill space in whatever queues they can.

How do you do this effectively? You make mentor roulette very accessible to a wide bredth of the playerbase and lock an exclusive reward behind it's continued completion. Exactly what SE did.

Until there is serious revision of this system or some sort of change that actually means mentors are held to a higher standard I will continue to disagree with "omg bad mentor kick them" vehemently because it is no less abusive than "omg bad sprout kick them" and we all know that would never fly.