What makes a good mentor?

[Nhisso]

Dont be a dick.
Help those with questions if you can.
Boot drama starters from novice network.
Dont be a drama queen yourself either.
Give me 1 mill gil. Er wait. Uh nevermind.

[Mycow8me]

Someone who doesn't mentor for the sake of being a mentor.

[technole]

One who actually doesn't display the sword icon and can be helpful on their own terms.

[Avatre]

One who actually doesn't display the sword icon and can be helpful on their own terms.

This.

The only time I display it(since I believe it's automatic...I have my name hidden on my end so don't see it anyways) is during Mentor Roulette.
I will always offer help if people ask(and I can type it faster than others) when asked, but if nobody asks, then I won't say anything because you never know if they want to run it blind or not. Only exception, is multiple wipes to the same thing.

[ilea]

Mainly, I think a good mentor is somebody who knows when it's time to put on the crown and when to take it off. You don't queue into Mentor Roulette if you're not ready to offer explanations or be patient. You also don't let yourself get spoiled by easy guildhest runs, and then pitch a fit if you happen to get Shiva EX.

IMO the most important quality a mentor should have is letting people make mistakes. Given how most of us are veterans of the current content, it's easy to want to bombard sprouts with mechanics or tips as soon as you load in. Unless someone asks, though, you really should let them experience the mechanics on their own for the first time.

There was a Garuda EX run I had where the other healer ditched after 4-5 wipes. Everybody else (I think 5 others were new) stayed, and I did my best to explain where we were failing while waiting on a new healer. Everybody got their clear on the next pull, and I think seeing their excitement outweighed the frustration.

[SuperZay]

I have a mentor mount and let me tell you, this game has so much anti-mentor mechanics. You can explain the fight however you want, but you can not teach people to dodge landslides and not fall off in Titan Ex. You can not teach undergeared people to do high dps in strict dps checks in Urth's Gift when the boss casts Shin-Zanetsuken. You can not teach foreign players to understand basic English (ok, this one is Chaos DC specifics). So many times when you have little to no influence on result. Thanks god we didn't get Savage raids in mentor roulette, and adding trials like Ramuh Ex was a mistake already, they are not puggable, they are not clearable, it's a static difficulty content if it's not unsynched.

[Catwho]

Long time mentor here (1.0 and alpha tester... I hit mentor status within a day or so of it being introduced.)

A good mentor pays attention to the party, watches and observes, and tries to help people figure stuff out on their own before intervening. Good mentors also immediately own up to their own mistakes, and laugh off mistakes in lower level content if someone oopsied and failed a mechanic (thinking of stuff like the Doom squares in baby Temple of Qarn.)

A bad mentor will not really make any attempt to teach or coach, but will yell at people for mistakes that seem obvious to a veteran but are still new to a sprout.

A good mentor seriously acts like they are an ambassador for the game, doing their best to present the helpful and friendly part of the community. Bad mentors almost seem to be willing to deliberately chase new players off.

I seriously love coaching a willing, brand new player through a dungeon or a fight. If I can show how much fun I'm having, I hope that it encourages the new people to stick around for a long time.

[Paladinleeds]

5.3k character message incoming

I must say, pre-SB, I did a mentor roulette where I had to kick one of the tanks. The reason being: They were warrior, and had not levelled gladiator up beyond 15 for the job stone, so didn't have Provoke. There were tank swap mechanics involved. We had about 7 attempts before we realised without them having provoke we were going nowhere with the fight.

I ended up initiating a vote kick, but before I did, I explained to level gladiator to 22 for provoke, since they will need this as a tank. That without it, people will rage at them, and they won't give them advice and support like I did. I felt so bad for vote kicking them, but there were other newbies wanting to progress. That being said, Stormblood fixes this bullhockey, since for the stuff where that'll be needed, you're given access to all your role skills, and you can swap them out for the fight as needed.

So I would add, have a basic rudimentary knowledge of all classes. You don't need to have top tier DPS with them all, but understand the basic gimmicks of the job (such as form shifting for MNK, mudra for NIN, ice/fire shifting for BLM, etc). Use this to help guide people to get their knowledge down of the job and help learn how to play it. For example, this will help with the fabled "ice mage" I hear about but have yet to see. Because Umbral Ice gives back mana, they understandably think to stay in that so they never run out of mana. Not the right way to play, but I can understand why they come to the deduction that they do. So I'd help them understand.

IMO the most important quality a mentor should have is letting people make mistakes. Given how most of us are veterans of the current content, it's easy to want to bombard sprouts with mechanics or tips as soon as you load in. Unless someone asks, though, you really should let them experience the mechanics on their own for the first time.

As a kinaesthetic learner myself, I do believe in letting people have at least one go at it blind. I'll say "Alright, let's give it a try, I'll cover any missed ground after". I believe that trying to do things blind (at least at first), is great, as it helps commit it to memory. But I might just be basing that off my learning style too much. Of course, if someone is really struggling, I'll watch their performance in more detail and help pick out their mistakes and how to learn from them. But I won't be condescending about it, I'll feed everything as suggestions in a "Have you tried this?" manner. I find they more often than not garner a positive response, because you're leaving them feeling in control.

I have a mentor mount and let me tell you, this game has so much anti-mentor mechanics. You can explain the fight however you want, but you can not teach people to dodge landslides and not fall off in Titan Ex. You can not teach undergeared people to do high dps in strict dps checks in Urth's Gift when the boss casts Shin-Zanetsuken. You can not teach foreign players to understand basic English (ok, this one is Chaos DC specifics). So many times when you have little to no influence on result. Thanks god we didn't get Savage raids in mentor roulette, and adding trials like Ramuh Ex was a mistake already, they are not puggable, they are not clearable, it's a static difficulty content if it's not unsynched.

I want to get Ramuh Ex in Mentor Roulette. I want stuff that challenges me. But I still would consider Ramuh Ex puggable. They were designed to be puggable. Savage and Coils however were considered the content for statics. Hence they don't appear in roulette. But I do feel they need to incentivise running those synced, though I digress here.

That being said:

• You can help make it easier for people to be aware of landslides and to move out of them (you can even use Rescue if needed to give them that extra nudge, as a healer).
• The high DPS check of Zanketsun-Shin... well the tanks can go into their DPS stance, healers can pump out DPS, etc. Since there's no damage to tank or heal, they can help push out the numbers. Sure, the DPS should be pushing their numbers, but at the same time, this can help even out the playing field a little. I do agree though, that the ilvl is too low for Urth's Fount. I think a bit like Gordias Savage, it was slightly overtuned.
• For foreign players, my stance is to use Bing Translate (where possible). Now if they're using a language where the character set isn't available in game (such as Arabic), then I'm at a loss. For those, I'll try my best, possibly set up a temporary Discord for it (which does support Arabic), and communicate stuff that way.

A good mentor pays attention to the party, watches and observes, and tries to help people figure stuff out on their own before intervening. Good mentors also immediately own up to their own mistakes, and laugh off mistakes in lower level content if someone oopsied and failed a mechanic (thinking of stuff like the Doom squares in baby Temple of Qarn.)

A good mentor seriously acts like they are an ambassador for the game, doing their best to present the helpful and friendly part of the community.

Yep. Even when the crown isn't on, I will try to be a force for good. It can be frustrating though when there's zero progress being made, and I think that's tied in to my Myers-Briggs personality type (Architect, aka INTJ). I do my best to work around it, but I also make sure I know my limitations. That being said, I will try to phrase things in a positive helpful manner. And I will psyche and rally people up to hit their own IRL limit break.