POTD

[Enla]

I say it does lady Enla

You can say that till the cows come home, after leveling countless classes through PoTD and running with several people who leveled their alts exclusively through it I've found it's absolutely useless until you get to 100-150 where the difficulty actually spikes. You only gain the most basic of knowledge of how your class operates but not how to actually apply it. Eos is a decent tank before then, and Eos is a squishy auto-regen faerie. When you don't need a tank OR a healer to succeed you basically are just face rolling everything, which is not what the rest of the game's content is like.

[HyoMinPark]

I have heard a lot of times on the novice network that POTD isn't good for understanding the true nature your class and powers. I beg to differ, I have a level 30 PLD and my POTD gear is 99,99 so I decided to do the highest level of the POTD and see what the level 60 powers are. It is safe to use them at POTD because there is no streeful situations to be worried about and this kind of practice is more fun than beating up a practice dummy. I have said this on the novice network only to be shunned and told i'm wrong.

And here is the flaw in your argument that PotD is a good source for understanding a class/job: there’s no need for defensive cooldowns or even tank stance in PotD because things barely tickle in there unless you go to Floors 150+. There’s no need for a tank to do anything more than bop the mobs like a DPS job. There’s no need for healers to know the difference between when to use powerful AOE heals/HoTs or to just toss a Regen or single target heal on a person. And PotD is certainly NOT a good place for a DPS job to form any sort of viable opener or rotation—level 50 or 60.

It is simplistic learning at best; not good for actually earning a deep and thorough understanding of a job.

[Enla]

And here is the flaw in your argument that PotD is a good source for understanding a class/job: there’s no need for defensive cooldowns or even tank stance in PotD because things barely tickle in there unless you go to Floors 150+. There’s no need for a tank to do anything more than bop the mobs like a DPS job. There’s no need for healers to know the difference between when to use powerful AOE heals/HoTs or to just toss a Regen or single target heal on a person. And PotD is certainly NOT a good place for a DPS job to form any sort of viable opener or rotation—level 50 or 60.

It is simplistic learning at best; not good for actually earning a deep and thorough understanding of a job.

And to be frankly honest, anyone who jumps into Floor 150+ without understanding their job is going to have a bad time... Floors 1-149 barely prepare you for it.

[Lmcgyver]

Whilst PotD is a great way to gain exp (if mind-numbing at times) and it does give you a taste of the class/job at level 60, the fact of the matter is that it doesn't prepare players for actual encounters; for several reasons. Firstly, everything dies before you can get even a few attacks off (which is not conducive for teaching combos and buff usage). Secondly, the mobs there are non-directional, meaning that positional attacks will hit optimally from any direction (whilst not a factor for most, this teaches bad habits for melee DPS in that they are getting the same result regardless of orientation... and this also doesn't teach the habit of referring to the target circle for enemy orientation, either, as the target circle is a ring instead of the typical directional one). Thirdly, the fact that the content is designed to be solo-able doesn't promote teamwork, as it's typically more than fine for someone to pull something on their own and kill it without much difficulty; and in fact, you can often even kill stuff quickly whilst barely putting any effort into it. Fourthly, due to the Aetherpool mechanic, new players levelling through PotD often don't maintain gear suitable for their level - I've seen many more people than I would like using gear from 20-30+ levels below them because they have nothing better. Fifthly, due to the lack of tanks and healers in many runs, people are typically only pulling a single enemy (or maybe two) at a time - there's very little opportunity to learn how you should use AoE.

In summary, it's great for levelling classes and teaching basic mechanics, but is terrible for actually learning how to play a job to its fullest.

[SenorPatty]

To add to Enla's post, pre-100, a new player going through PotD with other players just means they're barely using half a rotation due to how the mobs die off too fast. Bosses don't offer enough mechanics for a new player to grasp how effective their in-progress rotation learning is against them.

What PotD should be for novices other than leveling is a testing ground for their skills. They can check how far is a X amount of yalms for some of their skills or get a sense of familiarity how long some buffs lasts, to name a few examples.

[Derio]

POTD is not a great place to gain xp for a tank. Not only that no tank stance or cooldowns are required so it doesnt really teach you your job. Not only that, enemies die so fast that you cant even get a full rotation in.

It can perhaps teach you how to hold aggro for under 10s but that is about it.

Best bet for tanking is to run dungeons where 1. You help the leveling queue. and 2 you learn important things to look for and mechanics.

POTD is great for leveling dps and basic gameplay mechanics that you learn from the story anyway, but its not a good tool to use to actually learn your class.

[Lilseph]

Agreeing with others, yes, PotD is a terrible place to learn your class, doing openers and sustaining rotations. Learning how to manage your heals/MP, managing your defensive cds. It's really good to get experience, but other than that, it doesn't work as a proper tutorial. The meme of the "PotD player" in DF is there for a reason, before the jumping potions were implemented.

[DiamondOrion]

Lots of good useful information here ...