Why is it so common to join extremes without watching a guide first?

[SassyAssassin]

FTR, I don't consider players who enter groups and say "strat?" as blind players. But I also don't lump those players in with newbies who are asking for advice or opening the floor to you helping them. Thats pretty standard practice in MSQ content when people are new, and the game does not communicate the step up to extreme particularly well. In this case, judgement is kinda harsh because they aren't going to know how things work.

Oh boy look, let me clear it up by saying first and foremost that YOU or players like you are NOT the people Im talking about alright?

Not once did I say newbies or people wanting to learn are in the the same pot, I don’t know where you got that from when I specified multiple times that I have no problem and like explaining and helping people that need and want to improve and I even rejoin them if needed. So be a bit less emotional and actually READ, because you end up being the one judging without knowing and taking everything out of context.

Doing over 900 mentor roulettes I encountered a lot of different people and the ones I am complaining about are rare and the type that are very clearly not new, not sprouts and are looking for a very easy carry and clear without giving a raisin. They join, they know there has to be a strat and directly ask you to write it down so they can give it a short look because they couldn’t bother looking it up themselves and were most likely arrogant enough to believe they don’t need to, and not because they want a blind run to “have fun”.

You tell them, they ignore you, you res them but they sit dead on the ground for minutes until you have to waste your mana on them AGAIN, while everyone else is actually struggling to learn and burn the boss down. You mention the mechanics again, they ignore again, start attacking before you’re even done explaining after they legit joined the party and asked for strat.

I understand you had a bad experience but dont mirror whatever happened to you on me and what I was asking, because obviously I don’t know what really happened there but from what you said there is a 99% that I would have been on your side.

So stop taking offense or assuming you know how I do duties when we haven’t ever done a duty together. Breathe, its not an attack against you or new people or people that want to learn.

[LianaThorne]

I kicked him because I didn't want to know going in that we'd NEED partners. Wiping to something surprising and having half the team go "oh it's partner stacks / Hades cones / split stacks / etc., let's assign positions/groups" is part of the fun IMO. The whole point of a blind run is that everything is a surprise, and I go in having accepted the fact that this style of prog is inefficient and most of what the group comes up with will not get used by future groups. You get exactly one blind run of any given instance, and that's a valuable and enjoyable part of learning high-end content to me.

Wha? How does assigning "just in case" stuff before a blind pull make it any less blind? You're still going to wipe to the mechanic either way because you won't know thst you need stacks there for example, until after dying to it...?

All it's doing is saving you time so you can just immediately pull again since you did assignments in the beginning.

[ArchlordPie]

Wha? How does assigning "just in case" stuff before a blind pull make it any less blind? You're still going to wipe to the mechanic either way because you won't know thst you need stacks there for example, until after dying to it...?

All it's doing is saving you time so you can just immediately pull again since you did assignments in the beginning.

Is it really saving time to assign positions prior to pulling instead of between wipes? Either way you still need to assign positions, and nothing's preventing people from going "oops i forgot my position, can we redo them real fast" and causing the group to have to assign positions twice in the end.

Also, choosing as a group to assign positions before pulling does not make a pull any less blind. Someone coming in to a blind run and trying to assign partners before we've pulled, because he knows partners are needed, is what makes the run less blind, and that's what I kicked him for.

[Deveryn]

Is it really saving time to assign positions prior to pulling instead of between wipes? Either way you still need to assign positions, and nothing's preventing people from going "oops i forgot my position, can we redo them real fast" and causing the group to have to assign positions twice in the end.

Also, choosing as a group to assign positions before pulling does not make a pull any less blind. Someone coming in to a blind run and trying to assign partners before we've pulled, because he knows partners are needed, is what makes the run less blind, and that's what I kicked him for.

That's some very flawed logic. The fact is clocks, groups and partners are a regular part these encounters. That's not a blind run. That's an ignorant run.

[Gemina]

Typical foray into an EX trial for me goes something like this:

Beginning stage - Totem count 0-5: Study a guide extensively, fail all mechanics anyway. Very likely will wipe the raid.
Intermediate stage - Totem count 6-10: Understand most mechanics at this point, but still cleaning up. Less likely to wipe raid, but still a high possibility.
Damage Dorito stage - Totem count 11+: At this point, I am capable of teaching the fight to others as I have a full understanding of all the mechanics. I can still make mistakes, but am more likely to die to someone else's error. I will also allow myself to start rolling for any dropped mounts at this point. I don't roll on mounts during the learning/clean up stages.

Guides helped my awareness level of the mechanics. But I need to participate in the encounter in order to break it down. I will never learn an unknown mechanic through a guide, or by being told where to go. I would much rather rely on my own reaction to the mechanic, than someone else's. This helps to ensure that I still don't get clipped by the damage anyway.

In short, the guides aren't needed. The majority of the learning takes place inside the encounter regardless.

[Ivtrix]

That's some very flawed logic. The fact is clocks, groups and partners are a regular part these encounters. That's not a blind run. That's an ignorant run.

If people wanna stumble their way through the encounters like that, so be it, just make sure it’s damn clear in the PF description cause I want no part in a run like that LOL

[Packetdancer]

Is it really saving time to assign positions prior to pulling instead of between wipes?

Yes.

No, seriously, it is.

And the reason I do it at the beginning is that many people will sort of hang generally near their clock spots in general when you do, meaning if a clock spot mechanic turns up people are more or less already in the right spots. Moreover, it gets people thinking about those spots from pull #1; in my experience, when you do 5 or 6 pulls and then hit a mechanic and assign clock spots, there's a non-zero chance that someone has now basically ingrained "I STAND HERE" wherever they were for those first 5-6 pulls and then you waste another couple of pulls before people actually remember to start standing in their clock positions.

Moreover, if you see a mechanic that drops a stack marker on each healer, you can scramble last-minute and hope you end up with two sufficient stacks (rather than both tanks and three DPS stacking on one healer, leaving the other healer and one DPS to die)... or you can have set up light parties ahead of time and go "Oh, there's a stack marker on each healer... better get to my healer."

(And there's a decidedly greater than 0% chance that there will be a light party stack on each healer at some point in a fight. They basically use light party stacks for seasoning in these fights... like adding a pinch of oregano, if oregano was prone to exploding.)

Same with role buddies/quadrants, etc. I have found that getting people to keep those in mind from the beginning tends to make the later pulls go much more smoothly if it turns out you need them.

Also, choosing as a group to assign positions before pulling does not make a pull any less blind.

I mean, that is correct? That is more or less what people are telling you in this thread.

Someone coming in to a blind run and trying to assign partners before we've pulled, because he knows partners are needed, is what makes the run less blind, and that's what I kicked him for.

Again: many of us have said would assign partners from the start whether or not we know a fight needs them, which is the point here. The vast majority of higher-end content in this game has some combination of clock spots, quadrants, role buddies/partners, and light parties.

My usual "okay, let's square this away before we start" is:

• Clock spots. (Drop one waymark, people stand around it.)
• Light parties. (Drop the '1' and '2' waymarks, a tank, healer, and two DPS gather on each.)
• Quadrants/role partners. (Drop '3' and '4' in addition, a Tank/Healer and a DPS stand in each, thus partnering up.)

Hey, cool, we have now accounted for the vast majority of things we're likely to see ahead-of-time. Those may not show up -- maybe you don't need light parties! Maybe you don't ever have quadrants or role buddies! But if they do, we've already sorted them from step 1.

I'm not saying this person wasn't planning to give away mechanics; I have no way of knowing. I'm saying -- as are others -- that many of us think that just the act of dropping waymarks is insufficient to find them guilty immediately. It's sort of like going "This person drives a red sports car, so they obviously must always break the speed limit." Sure, there are people who drive red sports cars and break the speed limit. The person you're accusing might, in fact, be one! But just owning a red car is not sufficient data from which to draw that conclusion.

I mean, you do you; when you're the one running a party, it's sort of "your way or the highway". But if you're looking for validation of that choice, I don't think you're going to find it in this thread. Many of us do run blind prog parties, and still will drop waymarks to set up positions ahead-of-time.

[Iyrnthota]

I mean, even in literally fully blind progs, when new content drops, people still drop standard waymarks, assign groups, clock spots etc.
It's just useful.

[ReynTime]

Typical foray into an EX trial for me goes something like this:

Beginning stage - Totem count 0-5: Study a guide extensively, fail all mechanics anyway. Very likely will wipe the raid.
Intermediate stage - Totem count 6-10: Understand most mechanics at this point, but still cleaning up. Less likely to wipe raid, but still a high possibility.
Damage Dorito stage - Totem count 11+: At this point, I am capable of teaching the fight to others as I have a full understanding of all the mechanics. I can still make mistakes, but am more likely to die to someone else's error. I will also allow myself to start rolling for any dropped mounts at this point. I don't roll on mounts during the learning/clean up stages.

Guides helped my awareness level of the mechanics. But I need to participate in the encounter in order to break it down. I will never learn an unknown mechanic through a guide, or by being told where to go. I would much rather rely on my own reaction to the mechanic, than someone else's. This helps to ensure that I still don't get clipped by the damage anyway.

In short, the guides aren't needed. The majority of the learning takes place inside the encounter regardless.

That's because any well designed game teaches you through the experience of the challenge. The idea that players should be expected to watch guides or it's "griefing" is one of the dumbest things I've ever read in gaming communities. That's like admitting one thinks the fights are poorly designed. But even the harder fights in the game are designed to be learned.

[Eien713]

Ok people dont seem to understand what I mean.

Why join and ask for the strat written in party chat when you can easily read the strat on google?

Offering guidance is one thing, rewriting the mechanics for you as soon as you join the party makes no sense when you can just go to google to read before that and save everybody some time.

Some mechanics are so lengthy to explain (Thordan?) that more often than not nobody gets to finish and they maybe would if you would have read beforehand. And I can understand you can’t remember everything, but you will remember at least SOMETHING that in the end will make the whole run smoother for everybody.

If you want to do a blind run then join and say that. Don’t join and ask for the full written guide when that is accessible literally everywhere online.

It makes NO difference.

If you learn by doing then congratulations, everyone learns that way, thats not even the point, but don’t join asking people to write down for you something you can find in ten seconds to begin with.

This pretty much sums up how I felt when I got extreme fights in Mentor Roulette. It's not that I didn't want to help or mentor (I was there to do just that, after all); it just made no sense whatsoever to ask for the strat and not make an effort to look for it yourself. This just reeks of laziness (or maybe ignorance, in which case the mentor has the right to tell the person the proper way these fights should be approached without being accused of not wanting to "do their job"). If we all go into the fight prepared, we spend the 60 minutes learning and trying to beat the fight instead of wasting time explaining. If you want to prog blind, I respect that and am willing to stick around for it if you really try your best to learn the mechanics. But before queuing, can you guarantee that everyone else in the random DF party you get also wants the same thing? I think not.

Sigh, all those people in the comments coming at you without even reading or understanding the point you were making shows they just want to have a swing at mentors whenever they see an opportunity (whether the opportunity is actually there or not) -.-