How to give advice

[LeoLupinos]

If I were you I would be grateful for it. And I would even ask away my doubts.
Everyone teaching everyone is better than solo play with no sharing of information.
Nobody is perfect, even you have things to teach him. Just be grateful and push the pride aside.

[Kakiko]

There's a right way and a wrong way to offer advice. We can't hear each other's voices in random content, we can't see body language, so we're relying solely on text and sometimes text can be very deceptive in tone. Telling someone "I'm going to school you on x class" in the middle of an instance, without knowing that person beforehand, comes across as super informal and antagonistic, not to mention how do you even know that person knows how to play x class? I was in a Skalla run one time with a WHM who was constantly sheathing their weapon and not healing during Kelpie. Later on, during a trash pack, while things are melting under my aoe, they called me out on my rotation and said I should do a different one. The rotation they gave me didn't even make sense for BLM - there literally wouldn't have been enough mana to do it because they were telling me to avoid using any blizzard spells at all, but they acted high and mighty about it and called me a nasty word when I told them my rotation was fine (it was the one I'd learned off The Balance discord server) and were swiftly removed from the instance via vote dismiss.

The WHM I had yesterday in Tsuku Ex with me. If she thought I was doing horribly as WHM (which she must have given her comments), she could have given some pointers. She could have said "hey, I'd love to give you some advice" instead she asked if I mained healer, and when asked why she asked that replied with "just watching you." When we wiped, she singled me out with "Kiko how are u dying so much" even though everyone else was dying as well (she left the tank dead for at least 2 minutes before the wipe finally happened and any raises before that were given by the RDM or myself). If she had tried to give advice after "how are u dying so much", I probably wouldn't have listened because she was being antagonistic from the get-go with "do u main a healer" and "just watching you" comments.

By all means, open a dialogue with someone you think could improve but remember that your words can be misconstrued in an entirely text-based system and it's not someone "being a snowflake" or being too thinned-skinned, it's entirely a lack of tonal context. "You need to work on your rotation" is vastly different than "I could help you with a better rotation."

[MomomiMomi]

Entitlement attitude? The folks picking apart my posts are thin skinned. It doesn't feel great when someone challenges them and they are making sure to let me know it.

It doesn't feel great when someone talks to you the way you talk to others - but if this is the only way to communicate that to people then so be it.

That's my whole point here - there's a right way and a wrong way to communicate with people and most of the posters in here get that, the other x% have their hackles up because they viewed my tone as mean while posting mean things themselves and swearing that everyone should just have a thicker skin. You can't have it both ways. Folks don't get to be condescending and mean to others and then turn around and get their panties in a bunch when someone does it back. When that happens, that tells me they really *do* agree that the person described in the OP was being a tool and they *know* how to properly behave toward other people to get good results, but they want to feel superior and shred the OP anyway because it's the internet and we all want to have a big epeen and anonymity makes it easy to do that.

It's freaking ridiculous.

Alimdia's post was blunt, but I saw no mean intent in it. You seem to have interpreted that yourself.

Your post, on the other hand, can only be read one way.

You then went on to say this here:

Maybe read the OP first - OP didn't say don't give criticism, OP requested people not be jerks about it.

But if you had actually not just read what the OP actually said, but also inferred what it meant, you would have come to the conclusion that if a person must ask for permission to give any criticism, and the person says no, that equates to asking people not to giving any criticism.

[Kaurhz]

Whilst you may be slightly annoyed at the advice or how it was conveyed. I would just take it to heart and use it to get better. I doubt the guy was meaning to be rude, or annoying for that matter, granted he took the effort to link you a guide. Some people may or may not appreciate the advice, but you are playing a game that orients itself around group-based activities. Again, take it as an opportunity to learn. A lot of people in this community would typically be more antagonistic about it, and sadly aggressively so. All I can say is learn to take the advice, and use that advice to avoid more aggressive encounters with people that are frankly both arrogant and nonconstructive with their feedback.

[sakkito]

Tbh. I do agree with OP when it comes to the fact that people should consider the way they offer advice but also on the other side the person receiving the advice needs to consider that mid combat usually nobody takes time to be super polite. Most recent time I have spoken mid combat was 2 days ago in the copparbell dunge when we had undergeared combo of both tank and mch. Tank didn’t flash at all(nor used much of an aggro combo) and single targeted stuff with smn and mch in party. After initial try at communication in English (use flash please so you don’t loose aggro) I used the ‘translate’ buttons and literally typed in ‘flash please’ type. My friend typed in same thing five mins later. Nothing. I ended up spamming medica to tank myself because anything I wouldn’t do I would still end up tanking so I may as well as do it well :P got comms from both tank and the mch o.O. That was one of the weird runs. But yeah I usually don’t hand out advice on rotation or skill use unless it is key element to the fight. If it relates to aggro I am more insistent when I am a healer. Otherwise I usually just move on. More often than on rotation you will find me handing advice on mechanics especially if their badly execution caused us to wipe (but then I usually have plenty of time to explain what happened and what needs to be done and why) or well, if I have a bonus message I ask at the beginning if someone wants me to explain mechanics before each boss. Usually it is a yes’s and those runs are waaay more smooth than the runs with ‘all pro team’. On that note from receiving side I do agree with constructive criticism side. I got advice just yesterday ‘try not to die’ on extreme where everyone involved knew I had no idea what’s going on as I was new. That doesn’t really help me. On that note dear op, I will tell you one of my best duty finder stories. I levelled arcanist with aim of it becoming a scholar. Went on a break came back and then didn’t want to heal so I rolled with summoner until I reached 70. And then I ended up doing 70 roulette and one of the newest dungeons in the mix. I have a really good tendency to type in message in any instance I am not sure of ‘Hi! I am still fresh to the place and the class! Any advice welcome!’. Then I realised that I had another smn in a party. What followed was summoner basically pointing out nuances of a job that I was not doing optimally and thanks to him I shifted my rotation quite a bit . But that took me being open minded and whole party being patient when we stopped for like 30 seconds after a large pull or a boss fight. It was genuinely my best dunge experience up to date

[Canadane]

I mean you could just, you know, read your tooltips. Most bellyaching would be avoided if people just learned to do this one simple trick.

The amount of people who don't is just staggering.

[Nixxe]

As long as they aren't antagonistic in how they express the advice, they've done nothing wrong and you need to be less sensitive.

[WhiteArchmage]

snip

I think THAT'S actually what irks me the most, when someone is trying to "school me" about my job without even knowing how it plays. Like on HW I got Antitower for my roulette and, of course, I was feeding every Arrow to the BLM. At one point, he just stops and goes "Why are you giving me Arrow? You should be giving it to the MNK" and I was so taken aback by that that I could not respond for a few minutes until I finally told him "you know Arrow is for speed, right?" and then they go on to tell me "Arrow is for mellee, Spear is for casters" I tried to explain how, as a BLM with infinite mana, Arrow has the most to gain and less to lose out of all my cards except maybe Balance but they still held on to that (Hell, I used Arrow to TROLL my MNK friend in HW...).

Bottom line is, unsolicited advice is ok as long as you are not being rude about it and ACTUALLY KNOW WTH YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Looking at this thread, I feel glad that I didn't bother saying anything to that WHM in Haukke who was only spamming Cure and Medica the whole dungeon. I would never try to give advice rudely, but people seem to take it personally regardless.

[TaleraRistain]

Unless you've established a mentor-student or teacher-student relationship where said person is actively seeking advice from you, then you should ask if someone wants advice. The reason is because it's important to keep the control in the person's hands. They're a random person in Duty Finder. You and they will probably never meet again. When you say something like "I'm going to school you" you are disregarding any experience the person may have and setting yourself up as the ultimate authority. But that person does not have to see you as an authority.

Someone might try to call it sugarcoating or hand-holding, but that doesn't change the fact that it's essential that the person maintains control over whether they want to seek out advice or not. If they don't, then you may just need to exit yourself from the situation. Or grin and bear it until the end and then leave, having gotten what you came in for.