How to give advice

[MoroMurasaki]

Levelling,50/60 and 70 dangeouns ARE training grounds, and to do savage competence and practice IS A MUST.
...
2 k DPS as you say are rare like 1 in a 1000 and mostly people jumping in with no training at all.

The issue with this mentality of putting off learning for later is that it can be applied to all casual content. So someone forgoes learning their proper abilities and rotation but since no one calls them on their poor performance they complete the msq, complete normal tier raids and the next logical step is Savage.

At this point they have sunk what is likely months (learning the wrong habits btw) into this game and rarely if ever been confronted with any kind of criticism. Since there is no in-game representation of their dps they don't know they are doing anything wrong. They join a Savage party and people rip them apart because they're using Thunder 4 on single targets or whatever... yeah, you better believe I would say something if I was in even a learning party and I watched someone making egregious rotation errors.

Know why? A learning party in enraged content is not there for you to learn your rotation or how your job works . If I get a no-melee RDM or a BRD who doesn't use Straight Shot (both things I have seen in o5s) I am 100% going to tell them they need to work on themselves before entering Savage again.

This is the conundrum. The game does virtually nothing to teach players how to play their class. The game does not allow parsers to show someone how they are messing up. The game will allow you to progress through the entire main story with basically no idea what you are doing as a dps. If we discourage people from giving advice in casual content under the premise of 'it's unnecessary' then allow those same players (who have received no feedback for 70 levels and perhaps days of playtime) to waltz into Savage they are invariably going to have an overwhelmingly negative experience.

Yes, tone matters. You don't have to give your advice in a rude way. That doesn't mean all advice is rude, though. If the person giving the OP advice had opened with 'I know a fair bit about BLM and there are a few things you could do to really increase your dps such as x' it would be better received for sure. That isn't the point though. The point is advice is a net positive and even if the OP had his feathers ruffled by the delivery of it helps him grow into a more competent player I would say it's overall a win.

[NanaWiloh]

There are 2 reasons why players hate being giving advice that they did not ask for. 1. They want to figure things out out their own. 2. They have had too many experiences were a player gave advice like half-cocked jerk. Which for some people instantly makes all players who give advice jerks. If dont you like being seen as a jerk then dont give unrequested advice, otherwise accept the fact that when you give unrequested advice you may be seen as jerk. Lastly dont get angry or butt hurt cause someone you gave advice too does not make use of it.

[RiyahArp]

The issue with this mentality of putting off learning for later is that it can be applied to all casual content. So someone forgoes learning their proper abilities and rotation but since no one calls them on their poor performance they complete the msq, complete normal tier raids and the next logical step is Savage.

You have to realize, no, not many people do Savage like this.

You kind of view every player as naturally going into Savage content, when very few do. If you look at pickup groups, where there will be random players with no mentorship, there's maybe something like maybe 20 or less for current/ex or savage level content. For an entire data center.

I mean, they had to create cross-world PF in part because there were so few people raiding on specific servers that they had to broaden the partying ability, for statics and pugs. The issue is actually this game really struggles to get people to raid at all, and most people seem to complain about bad players in casual content. A lot of people just want to log on, do casual gameplay, and then log off; hard endgame has even less appeal than pvp to them.

[Vidu]

There are 2 reasons why players hate being giving advice that they did not ask for. 1. They want to figure things out out their own. 2. They have had too many experiences were a player gave advice like half-cocked jerk. Which for some people instantly makes all players who give advice jerks. If dont you like being seen as a jerk then dont give unrequested advice, otherwise accept the fact that when you give unrequested advice you may be seen as jerk. Lastly dont get angry or butt hurt cause someone you gave advice too does not make use of it.

To 1: If you want to figure things out on your own, thats fine. If its something like boss mechanics etc. I'll even gladly do a blind run and keep my mouth shut. But if you want to figure out your rotation on your own, then do it on your own time aswell, not in a dungeon. There are training dummies out there, if you want to try out a (new) rotation. There are tooltips, that you should read before you enter a dungeon - not in the middle of it (only expection being ofc if you level up in a dungeon and just got the new skill). With how this game works, there is very little wiggle room on rotations and they're also pretty straight forward. There isnt much to figure out or try out to begin with. And you dont need to be in a dungeon to figure most things out - all you need to do is sit down, read your tooltips and then think for a moment in what situations that skill is useful.

Wanting to "figure out stuff on your own" isnt a proper argument against advice that concerns someones basic-rotation in content where they reasonably should be expected to have it figured out. And if you havent, then accept that people will point that out to you.

To 2: I'll repeat myself, by saying that advice should be given in a polite and friendly manner, but thats all. If someone calls anyone a jerk because of unrequested, yet polite and friendly advice or thinks of them that way, the problem here doesnt lie with the person giving the advice, but the person reciving it.
Dont get angry or butthurt, because someone in a team-based game noticed a weakness of yours and gave you advice on how to fix it.

[AngelCheese77]

Can't sympathize. I don't understand the people with your mindset who think they are above criticism and that people need to sugarcoat every little word they say. You already admit you should work on that, so instead of getting upset take the good points and learn from the situation.

Less about criticism and more about how the person in the group thought they knew the ONLY way to play BLM correctly.

My mindset? Are things dying? Y/N Is everyone alive? Y/N If you answered Yes to both questions, then just have fun. If you answered No to either or both, then maybe look at ALL the players and not just one, and adjust things.

I get tired of those who tell the tank JUST PULL BIG GROUPS! without even asking others if they are okay with that ... especially the tank! I mean, I've had that happen and I was the healer. Did anyone ask me? Nope. So people died. And I'm like ... I can't handle that much, especially as it was a new area. Most of the tanks apologize and do less, though I've had some to just complain and continue. /shrugs

[CorbinDallas]

Less about criticism and more about how the person in the group thought they knew the ONLY way to play BLM correctly.

My mindset? Are things dying? Y/N Is everyone alive? Y/N If you answered Yes to both questions, then just have fun. If you answered No to either or both, then maybe look at ALL the players and not just one, and adjust things.

I get tired of those who tell the tank JUST PULL BIG GROUPS! without even asking others if they are okay with that ... especially the tank! I mean, I've had that happen and I was the healer. Did anyone ask me? Nope. So people died. And I'm like ... I can't handle that much, especially as it was a new area. Most of the tanks apologize and do less, though I've had some to just complain and continue. /shrugs

Ok that's your mindset, fine. But what about the mindset of potentially 7 other people in your group? If you want to waste time by being inefficient for the sake of "fun", then do so via your own PF, not in DF.

[ko_]

...the way you phrased THAT did some harm now! ...I'm feeling old all of sudden... excuse me, while I'll try to convert my blm-staff into a walking cane...

Omg. Hugzbigsqueeze. We dont call it the big grin anymore? I is old so forgive me.

[Sigma-Astra]

Excluding jobs based on what they can contribute to your group with respect to other choices is not and never will be toxic it's done for even reasonably competitive or serious content. If you have an issue with it, take it up with whoever is in charge of balancing classes, not other players.

Why on earth would I blame the devs for other people excluding certain jobs because they decided that catering towards themselves and the meta compositions is more important than being a decent human being online and offline?

No, I blame the human being behind the damn screen, not because the developers can sometimes be incompetent. The developers being incompetent is not an excuse to act like a bully towards other who favor certain classes and then ostracize them from said content. They deserve, so long as they bring the skills to back it up, to enjoy any piece of content as any job with the same amount of importance as you do. Any job can do casual and Savage content, I call bs on that. It's the person playing that job that determines that, not the job itself.

If you're ostracizing someone else from your static simply because of the job they play instead of their own skills and effort at playing said job, then yes, you're being rather toxic.

[AngelCheese77]

Ok that's your mindset, fine. But what about the mindset of potentially 7 other people in your group? If you want to waste time by being inefficient for the sake of "fun", then do so via your own PF, not in DF.

Well, hm. Since I don't go hardcore raiding ....

Though I was in a DF where the BLM only cast FireI. When we had made a comment that there was more skills to use, as it took forever to go through trash, they just told us off and kept doing it.

There's a difference ....

As to what I meant, if my rotation isn't perfect but things are dying, we aren't dying, and progress is being made .. that's good!

If there is a person like the BLM I stated in my post ... that's reason for a kick because they are just griefing and impeding progress.

I'm terrible on AST. I've had a few people give me advice in 2 ways. 1) "Try X if this happens and stay in this stance. Use your cards as much as you can ... or B ) "WTF. S--t healer can't take large pulls. WTF is my cards! Hurry up!" And B was even after I told them I was new to the instance AND to AST. /shrugs

Which would you rather take?

[Dreamsoap]

Seconding the whole "Can't exactly trust a random stranger to give good advice". 2 years ago before I quit, I met a higher lvl monk in a 40 something dungeon. Could not drop the self love and boasting, using newbie me as a means of comparison for skill. The aforementioned self love made it really hard to take any of their "advice" seriously, because it really just sounded like she was tanking any opportunity to snark, making herself look better to her friend. Another time was told that "Flank" means rear and I should always attack from behind. Later met a friend Monk on my server who started teaching me higher level content, and just showed the results of his rotation rather than blowing hot air about it. These days I'd really rather just learn off of people who can put their money where their mouth is. Not discounting that valid advice can come from a PUG, but I'm going to laugh if you really think yourself so important to random strangers.