2000 Mentor roullete complete: a review + ideas for improvement

[Rehayem]

I've set myself to complete the achievement long ago, doing the roulette now and then, however, I decided to put much more focus since about November of last year. In case anybody is wondering, sometimes I would do about 5 mentor roulettes a day, sometimes 40, and ultimately depended on my mood or how tired I've felt after a working day. The maximum number I managed to do at one point was about 60 mentors in one day, but that kinda did fry my brain for a few days as a result.



Now, it's clear that the purpose of Mentor roulette is just to fill the queue for whoever is queueing for some dungeon. Most of the time I would go as healer, because queue was obviously faster, but that also had tons of downsides I'll tackle on later. Here's a small list of jobs I would play and switch to do this:

• Preferred healer: Astrologian -- AST has Essential Dignity at level 15, meaning it's the strongest healer from the start. Because my brain demands dopamine on constant basis, having to shuffle cards from level 30 actually made this more bearable for me.
• Preferred tank: Gunbreaker -- similar to AST, GNB has a two-part combo, but only from level 70+, however Camouflage from level 6 really helped mitigate lots of damage from early levels
• Preferred melee DPS: Reaper and Monk -- MNK has a complete AOE rotation by level 45. RPR is the same with its AOE combo, but Death's Design from Shadow of Death at level 10 does really speed up things a lot.
• Preferred ranged DPS: Machinist and Dancer -- Spread Shot from level 18 for MCH, Standard Step and Windmill from level 15, you can just breeze through packs with ease.
• Preferred magic DPS: Black Mage and Summoner -- Self explanatory, but SMN would be used at most when I felt fatigued from healing.

The chances for Extremes depended on the job, however, not once have I gotten it on a healer. At most, I would have a raid or a trial. DPS had the highest chance for Extreme runs, followed by tanks. Most of the Extreme runs were Thornmach, Ultima, Shiva, Ramuh and Rathalos, and Ramuh seemed to be the one I'd get the most out of all of them. I would generally sit through them and explain the mechanics to players to try and clear it, and at most it would take about 3-5 wipes to complete. The only time party was disbanded if both tanks were sprouts, and neither read the chat... and this is where my biggest gripe comes now.

• The game doesn't teach the importance of your own job stone quests, and this one I've gotten plenty of times at low levels, especially as healer. When I asked the person in question whether they're in progress of doing their job quest, I received no answer. The "General" tab is completely flooded with endless information from everything in the game, which is extremely easy for players to miss any party text, even when I did the <se.1> sound effects in chat.

Personally, I believe the game shouldn't allow players to continue with Duty Finder if they are above level 30+ and without a Job Stone. It should be locked, and new players should get a big pop-up window saying they need to complete their job quest before proceeding. This could stay unlocked for Party Finder if people wish to do specific runs without job stones for challenge or fun, but my entire point focuses on Duty Finder only.

• The gearing system from level 1 to level 49 is atrociously horrendous. Many, many of the new player sprouts I've seen had level 1, or level 5 accessories from the vendor at level 40+, and so many more not understanding how gearing works in general past level 50 with the Poetics tomestones. Even with Rowena's Representatives in every major city, new players have no idea what that NPC is even for, meaning there needs to be a clearer indicator from the game to instruct new players.

• The game doesn't teach players what AoEs even are, and I'm not talking about the orange circle shown from enemies. Because there's a HUGE discrepancy between jobs and at which level they get their AoE skills, players ultimately don't ever use them. Of course, people are free to play as they desire and there's many arguments to be made with "ugh you don't have to force that on players mmkay". This isn't only new to sprouts, in fact, I'm not talking about them because they're learning the game.

I believe all jobs should have at least 1 AoE skill by level 15 (because you start Sastasha). I believe the Hall of Novice should be revamped to teach those skills to players, and become mandatory before the player can even queue in for dungeon. Too many tanks skip that, and don't use their own AoE skills to hold mobs because the way aggro works in this game is different from other games: here you have to keep hitting them, in other games, you probably just hit them once.

This image below shows how players misunderstand how aggro works, and because Hall of Novice can be skipped, players don't learn crucial knowledge the game provides. This was after the first pull pack wipe.



Ultimately, I'm just another speck among million of players and my opinion or ideas won't matter to the Dev team because I am well aware they don't read English forums. There's a lot of other things, like people not reading their skills or not using skills, ultimately this is very trivial for casual content.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Please keep it civil.

TL;DR: Many areas can be improved to provide a better experience to new and returning players, but the Devs have to put effort to actually do it.

[Gordita]

Agree about novice training, but the novice training is obsolete as is , and it tells tanks to aoe once then to use their single target abilities. This is based off of what, stormblood and earlier when they had to manage tp? Yikes. It needs to be updated to reflect the current game, and teach the basics, making in mandatory to be done once per service account seems fair. Novice hall provides them with appropriate gear too, which is a big deal. The vendor gear is extremely confusing for a lot of new palyers since a lot of it can be equipped by all classes. I've seen many players wearing crafting/gathering gear , and accessories for an entirely different role.
Agree about the aoes , I won't nitpick too much about which level they should get them but they should all have an aoe around the same level , and lower than they currently have it set at (which is all over the place) , and agree with the soul crystals mandatory for brayflox and onward.
When I was new I just turned off the pop up help windows because there were so many of them, so I imagine a lot of people probably do the same after a while. There's a lot to take in when coming to this game so it's probably not the easiest task to teach someone all they need to know before they hit the dungeons, as too much info at once can be overwhelming. Hopefully they take the time to tidy up the mess of the early game to bring it up to reflect the rest of the game
Congrats on the 2k grind, and the mount! Good post, and good suggestions. Now maybe just copy n paste it into the Japanese forum so maybe it gets a review lol

[Rehayem]

Congrats on the 2k grind, and the mount! Good post, and good suggestions. Now maybe just copy n paste it into the Japanese forum so maybe it gets a review lol

Thank you, though I wouldn't really want to translate this whole thing with Google or DeepL translate, I think that'd be disrespectful in a way. If there's someone who's good at Japanese that wishes to translate all I've written here, they can go ahead and do it.

[Jeeqbit]

sometimes I would do about 5 mentor roulettes a day, sometimes 40

Guildhests, trials and raids don't fatigue me enough, so I do it over and over until I get a dungeon. Then I stop. Sometimes that means I do 40 and sometimes it means I do 1. I never get alliance raids unless someone leaves, causing me to join in-progress, which is rare.

Most of the time I would go as healer, because queue was obviously faster

Doesn't take long, if any time, on a DPS or tank for me either.

The chances for Extremes depended on the job, however, not once have I gotten it on a healer.

I've got them on a healer lots. The most common is probably The Great Hunt (Extreme). I've healed most of the ARR extremes in this roulette, usually they are a success, occasionally just close.

DPS had the highest chance for Extreme runs

I got them on healers most and also on tanks. Rare for DPS for me, but I got Thordan on a DPS the other day, I had The Great Hunt (Extreme) once, and maybe shiva and titan once.

Most of the Extreme runs were Thornmach, Ultima, Shiva, Ramuh and Rathalos, and Ramuh seemed to be the one I'd get the most out of all of them.

Had all of those except Ultima. I've had Rathalos the most and Shiva/Titan most. The Ramuh runs were all successful, usually everyone knew what to do.

The game doesn't teach the importance of your own job stone quests

It tells you to complete the job quests every 5 levels in the chatbox. But I can relate to where I put off my class/job quests until I returned to the class/job location in the MSQ. For me that was Ul'dah. As a result, I was not a Paladin when doing Brayflox's Longstop for the first time.

new players should get a big pop-up window saying they need to complete their job quest before proceeding.

By default, there is a "Scenario Guide" at the top-left. This tells you to do the job quest instead of the next MSQ quest, if it's time to do it.

The gearing system from level 1 to level 49 is atrociously horrendous[/B]. Many, many of the new player sprouts I've seen had level 1, or level 5 accessories from the vendor at level 40+

That's normal. You probably don't remember what it's like to have low level jobs. But you can't really even get high level accessories from dungeons until like Aurum Vale, so that is just normal.

many more not understanding how gearing works in general past level 50 with the Poetics tomestones.

You're right. This is an MMORPG concept and players new to an MMORPG won't understand a concept like this, and expect all the gear to come naturally from quests and dungeon loot. Fortunately, SE retroactively altered the MSQ to reward the minimum gear needed, including old tomestone gear from patch quests, so that this isn't an issue. Combined with dungeon loot, they should be alright. Most players have a friend to tell them about tomestone gear, but the ones that don't will be alright.

The game doesn't teach players what AoEs even are

Well true but AoE attacks are a concept in a variety of game genres, including FPS, so at that point it's worth asking if they are new to video games.

[Rehayem]

It tells you to complete the job quests every 5 levels in the chatbox.

But I can relate to where I put off my class/job quests until I returned to the class/job location in the MSQ. For me that was Ul'dah. As a result, I was not a Paladin when doing Brayflox's Longstop for the first time.

Yes, it's there... but but should be a bigger box to let players know those quests are important also. I remember being a sprout and I didn't do the job quests until I was like 28 on ACN (starting job). It happens too often, I believe, and should be improved upon.

That's normal. You probably don't remember what it's like to have low level jobs. But you can't really even get high level accessories from dungeons until like Aurum Vale, so that is just normal.

It may have been normal back then in ARR, but we're plenty of expansions deep, and ARR is the only one that's inconsistent and janky. It should be improved upon, because ARR is also the place where people often give up.

[sindriiisgaming]

Congrats. I was also recently freed from this sentence XD. Sadly I don't think reform will happen. So it remains a 2+ year slog. But I'm glad u completed it

[Khryseis_Astra]

I’m still in the double digits on my Mentor roulettes, and so far they’ve been fairly good. The only Extreme I’ve gotten so far is Ramuh; I’m keeping a list of them as I go through. lol Some of them are just as “new” for me, because when I started, my FC at the time took me through most of them unsynced, so I never had to learn the actual mechanics!

Having recently leveled an alt, I agree with the need for the Hall of the Novice to be updated. It doesn’t seem like it’s kept up with all the changes made to the game. Some of the job quests could also use a revamp to explain new skills as you get them… most levels are just, “here you go, a shiny new button for your hot bar,” and unless you’re on a class with a combo that procs the next button you’re supposed to press, there’s not really any indication of where a new skill should go in the rotation.

And leveling a new retainer too, yes the gear system sub-50 is awful. My retainer is in the 40s… they got a couple new pieces at 40, then at 41, then nothing til 45, other than some random dungeon pieces they brought me, so they’ll be in this stuff til they can wear the 50 tome gear I already bought them. Jewelry is just random at this stage too… afaik there’s nothing between your level 1 weathered jewelry and the vendor stuff that starts in the 20s. So it’s no wonder that regular gear updates get overlooked by the time a player actually gets to the 50s, as it’s wildly inconsistent until then. Especially if someone’s just rushing through the early expansions to unlock all the story bits.

I’ll also echo the wish for everyone to have their first AOE at 15. I remember hearing an idea awhile back, and I’m not sure if it was random brainstorming from the devs or was just player speculation around the time of the stat squish, that we could have our full kit in lower dungeons but just have our damage synced down to be level appropriate. Not sure if that’s something they’d ever actually do, but it would make lower level duties a lot more enjoyable.

[DivineP]

Hey,

Firstly congratulations!

I recently finished mine too, however I only ran as AST mainly and MCH secondary.

I noticed as AST that 90% of the time I got dungeons. As AST I noticed that Essential Dignity in the lower dungeons was amazing for both upkeep on the tank while DPSing. There was also Lightspeed for those spicy moments or spamming Gravity / Malefic.

As MCH it was mostly guildheists or extremes. I used MCH for the early AOE in the earlier dungeons if I got them aswell as maintaining Peloton between groups.

The most seen extreme for me was Thordan EX.

When I joined an extreme I noticed it was mostly the sprout players explaining mechanics so I didn't really get involved unless asked. I noticed that if I was asked instead of explaining before I was asked, I would be treat with kindness for my advice instead of some of the horror stories I've read. Haha.

I kept food buffs up on myself on both roles and the dungeons went by quite fast when I got them, there was not really any problems with my runs, ppl seemed to leave each one happy.

I do agree that an early AOE for all jobs would be very beneficial as the early dungeons. I wanted to try SMN for my DOS role but it really does make the early dungeons a slog to go through with single targeting things.

Congratulations again!

[Asako]

Currently on 1822 on my Alt. Love doing the Mentor roulette, I mainly run as Tank [PLD/WAR] and healer [WHM/SGE]. I agree that all jobs should have some form of aoe by level 18 and they really really need to look at Monk. How is it the only job in the game that gets their third hit of the aoe combo [30] before the 2nd hit. [45]

A pass all loot button would be nice because you just get flooded with them but that's just me being picky.

In the 3.8k roulettes that I've done I have never once got a 24man fresh, only in progress so I am convinced this cannot occur. People have said they had them fresh but I don't believe it. Rathalos EX popped 21 times as I have 22 tokens and I never had a party that never completed it. A lot of other extremes popped all handy enough, mainly ARR but I did get a few Shinryu, Thordan, Bismark and Ravana.

You're probably looking at 3/4 main scenario runs a day. The majority of your runs as Tank / Healer will be dungeons and it's mainly Expert ones.

If doing this yourself I highly recommend the Khloes book as you'll usually pump it out without paying much attention [even better with the 300 weekly for 1 line now] and you will have access to tons of 2nd chance tokens.

Almost time to start it again on my third character. It's great fun, more lads should get on it. Great for when you want to do something but you don't know what. Let the game tell you.

[LianaThorne]

I look forward to returning to my journey in Dawntrail. ^_^

Congrats on your achievement and good luck to anyone working towards it!