So, as background: I left in post-ARR content around the launch of Heavensward, then came back this past August and have played all the way through to endgame. (And have begun raiding with a static!) As you might guess, I had to pretty much re-learn the game upon my return, because there were just a few changes during the time I was gone. ("Where'd Protect go? Where's Stoneskin? What happened to Cleric Stance? ...also, why am I growing flowers??")

Needless to say, I asked folks for advice along the way! And while I haven't personally had any really terrible experiences with mentors in that time, I've recruited a lot of sprouts to the game in the past two months or so, and I've heard some horror stories from a few of them about mentors in randomly matched parties. Not many, but even two or three tales isn't great. (In my opinion, a mentor should never tell a brand new sprout who's in Sastasha or Tam-Tara for the first time "You suck at playing your class.", much less have that be the entirety of their advice before they leave.)

So, yeah, the whole mentor system probably could be better put together.

Meanwhile, I enjoy discussing system design, so instead of diving into an argument, I'll provide a new facet of this topic to argue about! In that spirit, here's my personal take on how the Mentor system could be fixed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

(Apologies for the external link. Unfortunately, the forums have a very harsh post-size-limit, and fitting this into 3000 characters or less would mean breaking it into quite a few sub-posts. Thus, a Google Docs link instead of 6 consecutive posts in the thread or whatever.)