"Don't Explain; Learn by Doing"

[Kerwin]

Are you ok with wasting people's valuable time? Don't take advice or learn about it by reading a few lines of text.

Are you ok with actually learning? Take at most 5 minutes to understand the info and take advice.

[Malicewolf]

I will admit, I'm one of those people that write up huge wall's of text with lots of details. But I will also say, whenever I do them, I've never had a group that's wiped more than twice. Sometimes you do infact need to see the mechanic to really understand, but it's not that hard to correlate what I said in my explanation to what happened in the fight.

"When you see a big flashy arrow AoE marker above a player, stack on A"
1st time, people didn't get it because it caught them off guard and they weren't near.
2nd time, oh yea, that's the big frickin flashy AoE marker he meant.

[StouterTaru]

Huge wall of text means nothing to me if I haven't seen a video of the fight. If I've seen a video of the fight, I don't need huge wall of text.

edit - I prefer to go in blind, and figure out from there

[Zojha]

Simple solution really: Ask if people would like an explanation and if one person wants them, you kindly as the others to tab the chat away or minimize the chat window while you explain for the person who wanted it. Then you give it a couple seconds so people can hide their chat and then start explaining.

That way, people who want to go in blind can do that and people who rather not can do that too. Win-win.

[Jpec07]

I'll admit I never thought of not explaining as a courtesy to people who want to go in completely blind. The hostility I face usually comes from the "GOOOOO" guy, or from the veteran and his friend who have already cleared this place a bunch and, because they don't personally see the value in explanation, think all attempts at describing mechanics are a huge waste of time.

When I ask if anyone wants an explanation, I've never had anyone new ask that I not explain. It's usually either met among new raiders with ambivalence or gratitude. It's only ever the people who've already done the fight who are opposed to explanation of any kind.

[AskaRay]

Personally you can give me a huge wall of text or tell me to watch a video but it's not gonna help me even a smidge if I can't DO the fight.
I learn by actually doing, so...
Is that harsh? I don't care. I love going in blind the first time I do a run. Though especially for the first few days of new content, why do you want to tell everyone? I mean, for example if the fights in Praetorium were still hard or something, and I waltzed in as a new player, I'd get that someone explained the mechanics to me. That content came out almost three years ago. Patch 3.3 just dropped a week ago; it's not wild to think that everyone hasn't done it yet.

[NanaWiloh]

Not every player can simply learn by doing. There are players that need and explanation like it or not, explanations need to be given for people who can't learn by doing. If you don't like explanations close your alliance and party chat windows for a few minutes. You can let someone take a few minutes to explain or wipe repeatedly cause you got people in group who can't learn by doing. Me personally Ill take either path learning blind or explanation did Nidhogg blind the night it came out while I took and explanation in Weeping city.

[Estellios]

I only really hate explanations when they are crazy walls of text that aren't necessary. Most fights in this game have very few mechanics that aren't obvious, especially now that the devs are thankfully standardizing the AOE indicators so that specific ones always mean the same thing. Typically I only try to explain stuff with obtuse status effects or the random AOE that you need to get hit by instead of avoid, since those are the exception instead of the norm.

So for example, tell me "don't face the boss during move X" or "don't move or do any actions while you have dice over your head" since stuff like that will have people die and give them absolutely no indication why. Don't make people sit there while you tell us to avoid AOEs on the ground.

My FC and I did Final Steps of Faith this weekend, we were 7/8 and all blind to the fight and we got an 8th who vomited a several paragraph macro immediately upon loading in. You can't really expect people to memorize all that stuff in a timely fashion and it turns out the only bullet points that were necessary were "Attack the middle add first since it has random hate" and "Stay gathered for Akh Morn until it's finished" (which coincidentally wasn't even in their explanation), everything else was pretty easy to figure out. No wipes either.

[alimdia]

Get killed by the same mechanic 10x
Learn while doing sure

[Sakuraluna]

I do most of my learning by actually experiencing the content, but if I'm new to an instance I usually don't mind a quick rundown if someone is willing to give it, it can save me the trouble of dying to something needlessly. I won't usually ask though. Most of the time I'm already in voice chat going over the fight with friends I'm running the content with.

That said, there's no reason you should be stopped from giving advice especially if people are asking for it. It's rude behavior, but I think it amounts to people being impatient and not wanting to wait for someone to take two seconds out of their time for any reason, even if it's just to hit a macro. Doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider that it might help someone catch on to fight mechanics a little quicker and save the group from a wipe which would waste more time than it took to explain the fight.

My FC and I did Final Steps of Faith this weekend, we were 7/8 and all blind to the fight and we got an 8th who vomited a several paragraph macro immediately upon loading in. You can't really expect people to memorize all that stuff in a timely fashion and it turns out the only bullet points that were necessary were "Attack the middle add first since it has random hate" and "Stay gathered for Akh Morn until it's finished" (which coincidentally wasn't even in their explanation), everyth--ing else was pretty easy to figure out. No wipes either.

^ I actually agree with what this guy says though. I've seen those macros plenty of times myself in the 24 man raids, and there's no way anyone can read and understand a wall-of-text explanation macro before everyone else starts moving, so anyone new to the raid just ends up skimming over it and missing a lot of relevant information. There's no need for entire paragraphs, it just confuses people. If you're using a macro, just keep it sweet and simple.