Mentors...please!

[LineageRazor]

Sorry, but once again. I'm not talking about training. I am talking about the mentors unacceptable behavior.

DarkMasamune addressed this topic as well. One rude mentor. In six years of the Mentor system.

Rude and unpleasant mentors seriously aren't that common. Do they exist? Sure. I challenge you to come up with a Mentor selection system capable of keeping unpleasant people out. (Such a system would be SO useful in real life, too!) Bear in mind, you'd also need to fine-tune the system so it also keeps out Mentors who are usually nice, but might sometimes have a bad day. Your selection system must accept ONLY Mentors who are sunny and pleasant ALL THE TIME - otherwise the mentor system is TOXIC!!! (Or so one might gather by reading the various "A Mentor Ate Mah Baby!" threads that pop up here from time to time.) Regardless, mentors who are outright unpleasant people are pretty rare. Like all bad things, though, they tend to stick in one's mind a lot more than the good or average things do.

If you expand the definition of "unacceptable" to also include mentors who are simply unhelpful - well, that pool is much larger, I'll admit. And sometimes, being unhelpful is justified, if the group clearly does not need help. I've heard people complain about Mentors who remain silent throughout an entire dungeon run - but when asked if the run ran into any problems that needed mentoring, they admit that no, everything went smoothly.

This thread was about Expert Trials, though, and the mentors that abandon them. I agree that this is bad behavior - but I also think that the mentors who suggest the runs be done unsynced are giving good advice. Even if you're a player who wishes to be challenged by the old content (at least, as much as you actually can be, given the stacking Echo and overgearing), duty finder is a terrible way to get that buzz. For one thing, it takes forever to fill a party, even with mentor roulette helping out. Then you run into the OP's problem, of mentors who drop out without even trying, which will delay things even longer until enough tolerant mentors fill in to give the run a try.

It's MUCH better to use Party Finder, whether you plan on running the content synced or not, and if a Mentor gives this advice, they are doing good mentoring. Using party finder, you can find like-minded folks who are actually interested in doing the content in the way you wish to do it - and, more importantly, can do the run with you multiple times. Depending on the trial, it's often difficult to win an Extreme trial in a single one-hour session. You need several sessions of progress, and using Duty Finder, you're likely to end up with a whole new team each time you run it, many of whom may be unfamiliar with the fight to the point you're starting from scratch each and every time.

Even when these trials were relevant content in their prime, folks did not use Duty Finder to run them. Folks that use Duty Finder now, do so because they do not know any better. A mentor that educates them on their mistake is doing good work.