Quote Originally Posted by Malzian View Post
My analogy is actually very appropriate for this situation. It is -entirely- possible to read a whole book or even a series of book on how to play a guitar and still hold it 'the wrong way'. Now, if you mean holding it upside down and backwards, yeah, but that's a whole other issue. The fact is that there is a very specific way to hold a guitar which you can certainly read about, but it's likely that you (unless you're somehow a natural at it) aren't going to get correct right away. There's a nuance in how you hold the neck, in how you play the strings, all of which you can read about but none of which you will ever fully comprehend until you actually do it. (Oh, and in reference to 'playing a guitar with a bow': Violin bow on electric guitar | Frank Steffen Mueller)

And no, if you just learned to play you don't immediately get up and play in a band, but what you should do is find someone else who does know how to do it and have them help you through. The point still comes down to the fact that you don't learn to play by reading, you learn to play by playing. I'm not sitting here saying, "Don't read your skills." By all means, you should be reading them... but you can't expect everyone to suddenly just understand the proper way to play their job through that alone. Many people need to practice those concepts, they need to work with them and see them in action in order to understand when they're effective and when they're not. By saying to a whole group of people 'Unless you can read these skills and know how to play your job, don't bother' you're only serving to perpetuate the very problem you're complaining about.

Maybe it's a difference in ideology here, maybe it's partly because of what I do for a living, but I'd much rather encourage people to try, fail and try again with some guidance and correction than simply tell people they're not good enough and should simply get out.
It's not a "whole other issue" it's actually completely relevant to the point at hand. Not placing your hand at the specific right place on the neck, or not resting it correctly isn't the same as, let's say, holding it upside down or backwards. One suggests that you have some idea of how a guitar is played, and the other suggests that you payed little or no attention all to how a guitar is played. The subtle nuance to holding a guitar isn't the same as the explicit description expressed in a skill ability. One is direct, the other isn't.

The whole point of my parallel was that, you don't learn by playing professionally, or in this case by jumping into endgame content. And yes, I agree having players who do know how to play is a good way of learning! But endgame content isn't the appropriate place to search for help, or learn. You don't read a book on how to play the guitar, and learn by playing for the first time on the stage during a professional concert. That is rude, and inconsiderate to the others who are with you, especially if the party is intended as a clear party. You don't have to join endgame content to learn your job, and in fact it's actually counter productive to try to learn that way, as beginners become easily overwhelmed and unaware of what they're doing wrong among the chaos in fights like Ravana, or Thordan. As a teacher, I would assume you would be well aware that as a beginner, you need to learn in content aligned with your experience, not jump in head first in content above your level. You can easily learn these assets in unsynced primal fights, or story content.

I'd much rather encourage people to learn on their own time in content they can keep up with, than content that requires a party to rely on everyone knowing their job to achieve their goal. There's a time and place to learn, and endgame is not that place.