I don't think losing mettle on death is a good mechanic.

[Callinon]

While I hear you and it does initially feel demoralizing to lose progress just because you died, you'll eventually come to realize that your total mettle at any one time is not actually all that important. It is ludicrously easy to come out ahead on mettle gain over the course of a single stint in BSF or Zadnor. This gets even sillier when you start doing CLL, Dal, and DR. Unless you're feeding yourself to the bad guys all day long, you're fine.

[ReiganCross]

While I hear you and it does initially feel demoralizing to lose progress just because you died, you'll eventually come to realize that your total mettle at any one time is not actually all that important. It is ludicrously easy to come out ahead on mettle gain over the course of a single stint in BSF or Zadnor. This gets even sillier when you start doing CLL, Dal, and DR. Unless you're feeding yourself to the bad guys all day long, you're fine.

Yes, you DO come out ahead on Rank 25, y'know, assuming you're not doing Bozja content that costs you 61k Mettle per death while the CE itself only gives 25ish. Or you have to release and lose 300k while probably failing to get the 25k to begin with.

But what you don't see is that the penalty adds up over time. That mettle that you lost is mettle that you wouldn't need to grind again, grinding mettle back gives you a net 0 mettle, making part of that grind a waste of your time just because you lost Mettle. And considering that you start needing upwards of 40mil Mettle for a SINGLE Ray of Valor, every little bit that you're forced to grind again stings all the more. I don't even want to THINK about how much total Mettle I've lost, probably 1 or 2 Rays on that alone.

It's just a throttle so you'll need more of the stuff. It's artificial and because of the ammounts lost with that much insta-death? It's infuriating.

[MellowMink]

One annoying thing I sometimes see is when someone refuses to accept a raise for the remainder of a difficult Delebrum Reginae fight (after they died) because they don't want to lose more mettle since they're afraid of further deaths, when people should really be accepting raises almost all the time; the only time you shouldn't is if you're waiting a tiny bit longer to time your mid-battle respawn past an ongoing mechanic. I want as many people alive and contributing toward the fights as possible; it'll cost us less time and less future deaths.

It's also more perplexing now because you get something like ten times the amount of mettle for completing that instance, but that's how some people are, I suppose; even slight losses discourage some people from more actively contributing toward bosses.