Level 80s who single target groups of mobs

[Packetdancer]

The game itself does a poor job of teaching people about certain situations. So firstly, I would blame the dev team for some of this issue. Sure, one could say "read your tooltips!" but...there's a portion of the player base that truly doesn't care.

Also, the tooltips are not what I'd call a shining example of clear writing in many cases.

Yes, technically pretty much all of the information you need is there. But the way it's formatted can be extremely hard to process for someone trying to get used to a job. AST is particularly bad in this sense, but it's true of a lot of jobs.

Let's look at Arm's Length, for example:

Creates a barrier nullifying most knockback and draw-in effects.
Duration: 6s
Additional Effect: Slow +20% when barrier is struck
Duration: 15s

First off, a lot of people read only the beginning of the tooltip, so more than a few may skip the Additional Effect section. But 'Slow +20% when barrier is struck.' is not intuitive to someone not already familiar with a lot of how the game phrases things. If you showed that to a completely new player, how do they know exactly what that means? Does it mean it slows you down when something hits the barrier, meaning it's a drawback to using the ability? What does 'Slow' even mean in this case? It means they move more slowly, right? So they couldn't catch up to you if you were running?

Contrast that with:

Creates a barrier against many knockback or draw-in effects, allowing you to remain in place and continue actions uninterrupted. In addition, if an opponent physically strikes the barrier, they will be momentarily disoriented; all their attacks will be slowed by 20% until they recover.
Duration: barrier lasts 6s; effect applied to opponent lasts for 15s.
Notes: The 'Slow' debuff does not affect movement speed, only attack speed. Barrier must be struck physically to apply Slow; magic-based attacks do not count.

More verbose? Yes. Clearer and presumably easier for a newcomer to understand? Also yes. Hence why I think it might not be bad to have a key you can press to view an 'expanded' tooltip or something...

I would thumb this up but.....it's Tiny Toon Adventures, not Animaniacs.

They're tiny lalafells,
Their moral sense never gels,
They'll wave their cheerful farewells
As they stab you in the knee!

...wait, that's not how the song goes. Never mind.

[Quintessa]

I would thumb this up but.....it's Tiny Toon Adventures, not Animaniacs.

Thanks for the correction. Im embarrassed lol. I was thinking of Plucky but I donno why memories of Animanics got mashed along with it.

[EtherRose]

MCH main here. It depends on class really. AoE ain't that great on MCH to start with.

My rotation on mob pulls mainly consists of Bioblaster, Flamethrower, Ricochet and Auto crossbow. Bioblaster is up basically every 20 seconds. I always keep that up. Flamethrower you can only use once per mob pull because the pulls will be dead before the 1 minute timer. Ricochet i spam in between and Crossbow i use when my heat gauge is up.

However on the last mob pull or split between both i do go through single target rotations to get my battery gauge up all the way and heat gauge. This is mainly done when everything is on c/d or i weave them in between AoE's. It's so i can start all the bosses with everything up and i can burst it in the beginning.

I don't bother with spreadshot because most pulls done are dead within 30 seconds. And depending on how big the pull is my single target rotations will deal more DMG than AoE overall. (Usually 3 mobs or less).

OP states " Explain to DPS that on about 3 targets, it'd be better to do AOEs". This is wrong. It's better to do single target rotations on very small pulls consisting of 3 or less because you can burst down them faster then using some weak AoE skills. Single target rotations of course have higher DMG potency than AoE.

[Absurdity]

I use trusts to farm the dungeon glam while I do laundry. I don't even cast anything. I just stand there and move from mob pack to mob pack until its done. Usually about 25-30. Something is really wrong if you're in a dungeon of four real people and it takes 35minutes.

Yep, that's indeed the case, but not impossible.
I've probably had more terrible players in any ex/savage pug than I had in dungeons for about 6 months now but I also remember things like a ninja in amaurot that did less dps than you would do at level 60, it certainly can happen that you get players who are actually worse than bots.

[Vahlnir]

I use trusts to farm the dungeon glam while I do laundry. I don't even cast anything. I just stand there and move from mob pack to mob pack until its done. Usually about 25-30. Something is really wrong if you're in a dungeon of four real people and it takes 35minutes.

I'm not disagreeing, and I have already stated why I handle Trusts the way I do. No regrets. However, 35 minutes with random people is on the fringe of what my patience can handle before I begin my profanity laden commentary outside the game, unless it's already going poorly. 35 minutes isn't amazing but I also wouldn't consider it unreasonable with random people, especially if they are new. Going beyond that to 40-45, maybe longer though? You can bet I'm not enjoying myself at all. But, as a Mentor, I feel as if it is my duty to stick something out until the end. I might not be happy about it, but I will usually stay if I know a dungeon is going to be cleared eventually. If it is going nowhere, and my patience is already on thin ice, I have no issue with bowing out. Thankfully this isn't something I encounter too often.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I feel like there should be some forced 'Class Certification' every 10 levels so you will have no excuse to not understand basic concepts.

*nods*

The current role trainer* should be expanded on to do precisely that. It should be you cannot queue for certain dungeons unless you have proven yourself capable of doing them. I'm not talking about 99% percentile performance stuff. Just basic knowledge like when to use a cooldown, when to AoE, etc...


*(pulling a blank on their name.Sorry.)

[ForteNightshade]

OP states " Explain to DPS that on about 3 targets, it'd be better to do AOEs". This is wrong. It's better to do single target rotations on very small pulls consisting of 3 or less because you can burst down them faster then using some weak AoE skills. Single target rotations of course have higher DMG potency than AoE.

Actually, the OP is correct. It is a gain for every job to AoE at three or more mobs, and a gain for tanks, AST, SCH, BRD and DNC to AoE at just two. In a two target scenario for tanks. they will use their single target "finisher" (Fell Cleave, Gnashing Fang and etc) to dump their gauge.

[DPZ2]

As a former trainer for new joiners in my company, I wholeheartedly support this form of "certification". We cannot take anything for granted.

The game definitely need some form of:
1) Newbie training
2) Knowledge Check of the Newbie Training
3) Refresher Course
4) Certification
5) Re-certification (long term)

So, basically, you want to turn this game into a non-paying internship with a training regimen that would make most computer consultants livid at the waste of their time.

Note that your 5 steps would be required for every. single. job. in. the. game.

Now tell me that this is going to be "fun".

[Goji1639]

So, basically, you want to turn this game into a non-paying internship with a training regimen that would make most computer consultants livid at the waste of their time.

Note that your 5 steps would be required for every. single. job. in. the. game.

Now tell me that this is going to be "fun".

I probably wouldn't tolerate that amount of red tape at my actual job, let alone a game I'm paying monthly to play. Wasting everyone's time to deal with an issue that involves a handful of people is exactly the way someone in a management position would address this problem, and it always galls me.

This game's easy, so the player base is going to be casual; which means the occasional slow run. No ones stopping anyone from starting a FC and setting up a Network of static groups with an extensive "certification" process, but this doesn't belong anywhere near the Duty Finder.

[Garnix]

Here is how you fix it : extend the trust system to every single dungeon in the game.
For sure you'd still get a few bad apples but I think that a large portion of the people who show no desire for self-improvement are probably not interested in the MMO aspect of the game.

They added the hall of the novice to teach the basics, and even then people were not doing the basics.
If people don't want to learn, they'll never learn, no matter how much training they have.
That's also why even the easy solo instances have a 'very easy' difficulty option now. People don't even want to try learning the patterns of those easy encounters.
If they want to learn, they have plenty of tools at their disposal (Google/Reddit/forums/in-game chat/skill tooltips...)