Combat Mentors - From the view of newish player

[ArmaDragkun]

Short Answer: Kinda pointless I've seen Sprouts give better advice as well as play better than the vast majority of CM players

Long Answer: I love the idea of this. Players who put themselves forward to offer advice on either how to play better or the ones to explain tactics on bosses when things go wrong. It seems however in reality this never happens. Sadly every time I've met a CM it's been a negative experience. From a CM tank on Odin who despite 3-4 people saying they are new went and insta pulled the boss and even after 4 wipes refused to say anything, to most recently having a CM healer in my dungeon group who was telling me I should be using my Storm's Eye ability as a warrior a lot more often despite the fact he was so bad at healing I was having to pop pretty much every cd I had on every pull just to stay alive as he did pretty much nothing but spam damage spells.

I've been told a lot of players just have the CM icon to get the free goodies that comes with it. That saddens me as it feels like it tarnishes what was supposed to be an awesome way for people to help and be looked for when someone needed help.

Now of course I might just be super unlucky with the ones I've met and the majority could be those super awesome people who do help. Please tell me if that's the case!

I just wanted to put forward my experience with combat mentors as someone who at the time of writing this has 722 hours in game (A scary amount of that is levelling up my gathering professions)

(The two experiences I put aren't the only two I just didn't want to bore people by recounting every single time I've met a CM)

As a final point I know this is rather negative post but I do want to make the point that 99% of players I meet in game are awesome it just seems out of that 1% of the not so nice bunch that a lot are CMs

[BaconBits]

We really needed another Mentor thread huh?

[KageTokage]

Most "mentors" do just want to get the rewards and have little interest in actually being helpful.

I honestly took off my mentor crown at this point because of people making generalizations and the negativity surrounding such.

[Katie_Kitty]

It's the trade mentors you have to worry about mostly.

[ElysiumDragon]

I think the main issue with Mentor is how they'll push people into things like synched Extreme trials, and then wonder why the Mentors are salty that a bunch of new players are wiping to fights even many established players don't bother with synched. It's one thing to coach a Sprout through MSQ content or side story content, another entirely to throw Mentors in at the deep end with Sprouts.

[ArmaDragkun]

We really needed another Mentor thread huh?

Sorry but I don't tend to scroll through page and page of forum posts. I just wanted to put forward my personal view about them. If you hate it so much why even reply to the thread? You could clearly see what the subject was about so you could of just as easily moved on and ignored it.

[Katie_Kitty]

I think the main issue with Mentor is how they'll push people into things like synched Extreme trials, and then wonder why the Mentors are salty that a bunch of new players are wiping to fights even many established players don't bother with synched. It's one thing to coach a Sprout through MSQ content or side story content, another entirely to throw Mentors in at the deep end with Sprouts.

So I'm creeping up on the halfway point to the mount, and I gotta say, the number of problematic mentors I've witnessed don't even fill up one hand. I've seen one guy who has a tendency to post a whiny macro and then leave if he gets extremes, but that's the worst I've seen. Generally, the extremes I see in mentor roulette tend to be completed within 30 minutes, although some take longer and some do not get completed at all. But it's a tiny minority of extreme runs where there are any issues, especially from mentors. I've seen more sprouts get immediately sassy with people just because of the crown than I have mentors causing problems.

[KageTokage]

I've seen more sprouts get immediately sassy with people just because of the crown than I have mentors causing problems.

This, honestly.

I've seen more sprouts queueing up for extremes getting cheeky for people rightfully calling them out on their repeated mistakes then actual toxicity from mentors.

I find the "bad" mentors tend to just immediately drop time-consuming and/or difficult content instead of engaging with it at all.

[ArmaDragkun]

So I'm creeping up on the halfway point to the mount, and I gotta say, the number of problematic mentors I've witnessed don't even fill up one hand. I've seen one guy who has a tendency to post a whiny macro and then leave if he gets extremes, but that's the worst I've seen. Generally, the extremes I see in mentor roulette tend to be completed within 30 minutes, although some take longer and some do not get completed at all. But it's a tiny minority of extreme runs where there are any issues, especially from mentors. I've seen more sprouts get immediately sassy with people just because of the crown than I have mentors causing problems.

With the experience I have I wouldn't say most of the Combat Mentor's I've seen have caused problems it's more of, and please correct me if I'm wrong. I sort of look towards combat mentors to explain what happened if things go wrong on an attempt, if then all I get from them is silence it's kinda frustrating. The Odin attempt for example I ended up having to explain as best I could what to do as the other tank who was a CM just rushed to pull the boss as soon as he could.

[Xirean]

With the experience I have I wouldn't say most of the Combat Mentor's I've seen have caused problems it's more of, and please correct me if I'm wrong. I sort of look towards combat mentors to explain what happened if things go wrong on an attempt, if then all I get from them is silence it's kinda frustrating. The Odin attempt for example I ended up having to explain as best I could what to do as the other tank who was a CM just rushed to pull the boss as soon as he could.

Mentors are players. And like all players they come in all varieties. There's no system to enforce or even encourage behavior aside from penalty timers which don't really do anything. The requirements to become a mentor are not to understand anything but rather to get clears of most content and get 1 of each role to 80, also comms but those are kinda easy imo. The mentor system has a lot of flaws. The expectation that it brings is imo the largest.