Tactful ways to inform people that they're playing badly?

[Angus-Beef]

Hmm, the fact that you're tossing around terms like "white knight", and trying to pretty much completely dictate the Tank's gameplay to the letter makes it hard to believe that you're a polite person. Work on your social skills.

Nah my social skills are pretty solid, a person snapping at me for trying to give advice to a tank who isn't using cooldowns is straight up white knighting. It's not dictating someones game play when they're straightup not using half their kit.

If I say for example *hey I noticed you're not using rampart, you should try leading off with it when you start pulls* I'm being polite and patient, that's 1.

2. Most healers I've seen in situations like that will just be rude and rag them for doing a lvl 73 dungeon as their first dungeon in the first place.

[Alucard135]

Only if they're lalafells.

Spoken like a true gentleman.

[Angus-Beef]

Hmm, the fact that you're tossing around terms like "white knight", and trying to pretty much completely dictate the Tank's gameplay to the letter makes it hard to believe that you're a polite person. Work on your social skills.

Also how can I dictate gameplay if they're arent even interacting with half what tank gameplay is, which is mitigating damage, how can a tank mitigate of they dont even read the tool tips before they run a dungeon, or just not run a lvl 73 dungeon as their first run and do something like sastasha, or take like 15 min to look in the hall of novice, or watch a video. I mean literally anything so we literally dont even have to have this discussion of how to be polite to people when they're not even realizing they're bad

[TroySoFab]

"WHM, Holy is an AOE centered around you. You're not hitting anything casting it back there."

Yeah I'm making this my sig But please tell me this never actually happened.

[sakkito]

Eh, I don't leave parties I am in unless someone is pile of vile or I am in a hurry somewhere. I do leave feedback if someone does mechanic wrongly (even if we pass it; it is useful for them to know for the future's sake) or if someone's rotation is off to the side so much we may wipe because of it or someone does something weird. The fun part that nowadays anything can offend, but you can at least keep up with niceties so you know that it is not you triggering them, it is on them. Also I would avoid using term 'bad' because it is general and not really helpful. There is no point in informing someone that their game play could use improvement, if you are not about to help them change that or at least inform exact things he should change about what he is doing. There is a difference between constructive criticism and plain flaming.

The general advice I would give anyone wanting to give feedback to always make sure to be polite (seems like duh but...), remember about your 'could' 'please/pls' especially when it comes to changing the way they are doing mechanics, etc.

p.e. 'pls move behind rock 4 shardfall so you don't get the vuln stack' (in the burn)

If you want to educate someone on what he is doing wrong rotation wise I avoid using anything that makes it personal. So like, in my last sastasha run with CNJ I typed in:

'Medica is aoe heal'
'Cure is for 1 prsn'

It is not the first conjurer using medica in sastasha (I do believe in giving advice for non job players in first dungeons because that is where they actually learn). I think one run before when I did just that I got a responce from the conjurer that she knows but she prefers medica's animation. Weirdly enough she stopped using medica forward on. I just laughed.

In general It works for me. I actually never got flamed for advice I give (admittedly I don't do that often ) besides one random time I have run on as tank (and I don't feel super confident in that role at all) in Hell's Lid and I realised that the ast didn't pick a sect. So I have stopped and asked them 'could you please choose a sect because its lack is making me nervous xD'. The healer raged at me about staying out of her business. I literally blanked her for a min or two (just left it) and then after a min she apologised saying she had a bad day. The rest of the run went fine but I just kept quiet.

But yeah if I had to make it into a precise advice I would say: be polite, specific in your advice and not personal (and defo no rude words).

[SamSmoot]

I don't know enough about other classes to even comment on their ability usage, nor would I notice even if I did. (I don't even know how to tell what abilities someone is using or not.

Now, in the case of mechanic failures, I've mentioned things to the group like "You have to hide behind a rock when XYZ ability is casting, or please don't drop the meteors too close to the wall so we can get behind them. I do this without singling out the offender, and usually they do it right next time.

[SieyaM]

I haven't read the entire thread so I do not know if it was derailed or not, but I will throw my pitch anyway. Yes there are some people that no matter what you say or how you say it they will be offended or upset and cause a scene, but I really believe these are a minority of players. I think it is a much greater value to offer help and try and teach other players than to just leave it and let people play poorly. Most people who play want to play well, and I would imagine most people who say their advice isn't met well most of the time probably aren't as friendly with it as they imagine. There is a great deal of difference between telling someone you want to help them improve and telling them they're bad and need to improve.