Quote Originally Posted by Misplaced_Marbles View Post
I think mentors should stop excusing their own laziness and either stop doing the roulette just for the rewards if they're unwilling to do their job, or quit blaming others for their own shortcomings and help others do their best while they do their own. Multiple times i've seen a bunch of mentore, as in multiple mentors, in a duty and none of them explain jack, so their job fall on someone elses shoulders who didn't even sign up to help. They just did it because it would help everyone complete the duty and they got no extra rewards for doing it. Unlike you pompous lot, i won't say that all mentors do that, but many do. "Anecdotal evidence"? Yeah, exactly like your unbelievably unrealistic claims.
Allow me to share my experience as a mentor. Whenever I got an extreme trial, the first thing I'd ask is: "Do we need to explain the fight before we start?" or "Do people know what to do?" (Sometimes I'd ask if people watched a guide beforehand.)

There are 3 types of answers I usually got:
1) Yes, please explain. (fairly common)
2) No, I didn't watch a guide. (very common)
3) Silence and/or instanpull. (extremely common)

I never start by explaining the mechanics immediately. I ask first if people want them explained because I honestly don't wanna type walls upon walls of text if there's no need to (not to mention that some fights can't be explained via text only). There's also the language barrier. I don't speak German, so when I see most of the party has only D highlighted as their language and they don't respond to anything I write in chat, I know it's a lost cause.

People are very negative toward mentors and expect too much of them. You call mentors lazy, but what of the people who don't make an effort to watch a guide before queuing or don't wanna watch one even after you ask them to at the start of the fight? I had instances where I asked people to watch a guide (while we waited to get new members, so we were doing nothing anyway) because there were too many mechanics in the fight to explain clearly via text, and do you know what their response was? Silence for a few minutes followed by a swift leave.

I never understood people who don't wanna watch guides. If you're not good enough to pick up on mechanics on the fly and learn a fight decently quickly, then you're holding everyone else back. What's the difference between watching a guide that explains things very clearly using footage, and inconveniencing another person by making them type walls of text that don't explain things nearly as well as a video? Either way, you're not going in blind to discover the fight--you're being fed the mechanics. But in case one, you make an effort. In case two, you're too lazy and you inconvenience another person and/or are expecting to get carried.

The way I see it, by getting a mentor in your extreme trial, you are guaranteed (hopefully) a person who knows what they're doing, so they won't hold you back. If you're someone who did their homework and looked up a guide beforehand, this mentor will definitely help you clear. They can also help you by explaining a few things you might be struggling with here and there. I don't see why it's a mentor's job to carry you. You do your part by making an effort before queuing or after being asked to watch a guide, and the mentor will do their job by not being a dead weight and by supporting you to get the clear. It's a shared effort.