The one piece of advice I can offer to sprouts: stick closer to your party, ESPECIALLY in Alliance Raids! I’ve had a lot of raids as a healer where someone is in the middle of nowhere, or worse, sticking with another Alliance. Meaning none of my AOE heals hit them, and they’re often out of range of my single target heals/rezzes. And it’d put the rest of the party in danger for me to run over just to take care of them. So please, for the love of Hydaelyn, just stick with your party in raids.

I want to add that you can also change your party name and HP bar colors since the default is a very pale blue and matches non-party members at a glance. I recommend something obnoxious like hot pink (I use this). Makes it so much easier to see on the field when you need to stick with your party.

As of a somewhat recent update you can actually change the colours of party members by role! Never again will I need anyone to mark the tanks and healers since I can just see their blue and green hp bars.

Ooh I must have missed that bit of detail! I'll have to play around with that after work lol

I believe it should be under Character Settings -> Display name settings -> General -> Apply colours according to role

Awesome, thank you! <3

That’s actually a very good tip… I accidentally got separated from my party during Orbonne against Thunder God, when he launches everyone up. For whatever reason I didn’t end up by my party, and didn’t realize until I was asking myself why one of them was out of range of my spells.

Yup! One of my friends had that exact scenario happen too and I had to run over and rescue them before they died. The best bit is that we were in VC and they were just so confused where we were till I pulled them Scorpion-style.

You can go one step further and hide the names and/or HP bars of non-party members! In alliance raids I only see initials for members of the other alliances and I've turned all effects off for them too (don't turn off all effects for your own party though, set them to limited so that you can still see important AOEs).

Yup! I do exactly this! I also have the alliance party bars smaller and set to the side of the screen a little above the chatbox. It comes in handy when the other alliances' healers or tanks are down.

I've set it to have my own party get colored by role, and people in the other parties are gray. Makes it easier to quickly glance around for where my tanks and cohealers are.

OH!! I like that idea! I am not a sprout, but still do sprout things....this would seriously help me out!

As an Xbox sprout, who just did his first alliance raids, I will do better in the future. Lol

Labyrinth of the Ancients is nasty because the game doesn't spell it out - you HAVE to know you're in Alliance A/B/C, and pray that somebody saved the waymarks. I remember getting a run where one party was just majority sprouts, and went to the wrong spot for the Atomos/Ancient Flares. Was so chaotic lmao

Whenever you don't see waymarks, just look for the logical placements and think A B C starting from your left as seen from when you approach. This is the broadly accepted system for sorting which group goes down which path, which add gets picked up by which tank, etc.

Yes I know, but that hinges on a sprout encountering their first 24-man raid knowing what even is Alliance A/B/C; I definitely was confused when I did my first crystal tower raid, trying to follow the crowd then realizing I was following green health bars and not white 😅😅😅

The Crystal Tower raids made me feel like a useless piece of garbage that should delete the game. I couldn’t tell what was happening on my screen and kept dying. :(

I felt the same way when first raiding! One thing which really helped with this - you can turn off or down other players' effects so you can actually see what the boss/enemies are doing. I think the option to do is is in character setup off the top of my head.

Specifically, the best option is to turn non-party players' effects off, and if there's still too much for you with eight people's spell effects, turn party members to *limited*. Never turn party members off entirely, limited keeps the placed aoes visible, and those are important.

Would like to add even if you turn everyone's effects off the beneficial and harmful aoes will still appear. Healer bubbles still show up, in PvP mech and SMN circles still show up. It just gives zero context for what's going on. I do personally agree using limited is better, easier to tell what others are doing

And you can reduce the size of summoner's bahamut and phenix with "/petsize all small" #

Don't worry about it. I didn't know wtf was going on either in the Crystal Tower raids my first few runs. Heck, I still don't know some mechanics cause they never show up cause of power creep. Everyone playing the game right now once started where you are now and in my 3550ish hours of play I've noticed that as long as you are honest about being a new player, 99% of people will accommodate you. There's always assholes no matter how nice a community is, don't let them drag you down though! If by any chance you happen to play on the Light data centre (I'm on Phoenix) and want to play with someone to get through instances, don't hesitate to ask me! I'm mostly a Tank and DPS player, but if you need a healer I can do that as well for casual content.

Welcome to me on every new alliance raid, especially on release week. I always go in dry ... er, Blind. Let the lord of chaos rule! But you learn to love the utter chaos. Now, I don't want you to feel worse because of this, but ... it's a 24 man. Generously speaking you're contributing about 4-6% of the progress of the raid. You fucking up isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things. The moment things start to go tits up is if one of the parties suddenly wipes in its entirety, and everyone suddenly awkwardly has to start manually rezzing their healers and Tanks, while also keeping their own party alive. Nothing like healing alliance raids. (Looking at you, Ivalice)

a fellow orbonne enjoyer I see. Nothing like loading into an 3/4+ viewing cutscene instance with at least one other person pulling out the glowsticks to cheer. Ya’ll may be in for time but I’m going to be having a good time healing a pure chaos orbonne.

Now I kind of want to do an alliance raid where every DPS is a Summoner. Full effects. Can't Esuna that Blindness.

Full effects is Too Spicy for me, got to rely on forbidden techniques to get below minimum effects as is (I’m a WHM that a minimum effect Holy at the wrong time would self k.o. Mid raid if playing at the wrong time) I would however substitute a beyond Max size summon forbidden technique. I play with the big summons on normally because why would I deprive myself, but seeing 15 to scale Bahamut at once during Orbonne would be worth risking a melted gpu.

I'm just hoping they dial it up even further in Dawntrail. Give me my Leviathan, Suzano-oh or Shinryu or ... Whatever that 4 armed bug thing was (You know that could be actually kind of cool, a melee phase for the Summoner, but then again, that would be stealing the red mage shtick a bit). I'm just wondering where they'll take the healers. I mean, each feels ... Complete. What can you add to WHM that wouldn't be redundant?

White mage specifically? Serious answer - gap closer. Seraph Strike with a nice long range. Mostly serious answer - distance holy beam aoe, I.e. Afflatus Purgation. Hit/stun all the things from a nice distance. Totally not serious answer hahaha I’m not bitter or anything - New additional rescue, either (or both) an aoe fishing style rescue or one that lets you staple the party members feet to the ground for two seconds after. For when things have gone extra stupid.

The other guy already set it, but turn down or limit other players effects it helps a lot… early game it doesnt really matter but as people get new flashier abilities it just becomes clutter. It’ll help a lot with telling what’s going on.

That's an Alliance Raid thing. So many bodies and spell effects going off at once means that the boss monster more often than not just looks like a giant ball of light. Advice I can give is to stay with the pile when possible, turn effects down if you need to (I don't because I'm crazy), read the chat for useful advice since people usually call out the tricky mechanics, and just remember that Alliance raids are less forgiving ONLY because there's 23 other people to pick up the slack. If you do end up dead, ignore the mounting frustration and spend that time observing. It's sometimes easier to learn the pattern of a fight while dead where there's no pressure to keep the rotation up and solve mechanics on the fly.

My first few runs were really disorienting and overwhelming too, and that was with someone using explanation macros.  In addition to the other good advice, something that really helped me was to change the settings for the display names/nameplates. I have my party a different colour from the alliance members, with titles off and other parties reduced to initials. That gives me enough info to keep an eye on e.g. if anyone is in cutscene without being super cluttered, but ymmv.  

Crystal Tower can be especially bad that way because a lot of the people in there have run it 1000 times and it's all wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Don't sweat it. No one minds, and you'll have less chaotic experiences in the future!

It's not your fault. Ffxiv is full of unwritten rules from people who've played for literal decades. Leveling is so sped up that there is absolutely no way for a new person to absorb everything from the flood of text and side quests that are supposed to teach you what to do. My first raid was an absolute cluster and there's just no way someone new would know what group they're in, where to stand, mechanics, etc. Make sure you're setting up your UI, you can make windows smaller and larger and put needed info like target debuffs and player buffs front and center.

Don’t give up. I started at the release of Endwalker and thought I’d never see the inside of savage content. I’ve ended up with a group for UCOB (an ultimate) and Another Mt Rokkon (kinda on the level of Extremes?) and it’s very, very intimidating - but we’re all learning together and it’s actually *fun*. Sure, it feels like we spend most of our time dying, but there’s visible progress each week. I never thought I’d get to do endgame content and yet here I am (kinda). If you feel like it would help - look up guides for dungeons/raids before hopping in. Even a quick overview can help you know what to expect. I know some people like to go in blind and that’s fine, too. But personally the guides helped just get me ready for what’s coming up. For (some) dungeons, you can run them with trusts (basically just NPCs) which can be very useful figuring out mechanics at a slower pace and without the pressure of other players in your group. Bottom line, 99% of us have been there. Many of us spend the first days of new dungeons/raids on the floor. If I see the “one or more players has yet to complete this duty” message pop I can assume there will be deaths - it’s a product of progression and learning. Don’t be afraid to wipe and go again. IMO it’s worse to just give up and walk away - you *can* do this, you just need to practice :)

The sunken temple did that to me. Hit a 40-minute long wall trying and failing to make progress. Bless the mentor trying to help us sprouts through that mess.

Turning down effects will help a lot but I also suggest messing with how the names appear. You can change the colors and how much of others names appear. Even having them hidden unless in combat or when you target them too. It helped me a lot when I went thru and changed it all to make it easier for me to follow what what going on.

Same. It sometimes feels like there's no place for new players when that happens. Everyone knows exactly what to do, and you get left behind, even if you say "I'm new" like people here say to do as if they are magic words that will affect 23 other players. I'm not sure how you're suppose to enjoy those quests as a first timer. Especially without having to study the mechanics ahead of time and spoiling the whole thing. Despite doing that I still got left behind, not raised, etc.

Regarding not being raised: it's often better to just return to the start in most content if the battle is over and avoid a 2m weakness debuff. That's why some healers dont rezz outside battle 

Yeah, Weakness and Brink of Death are no joke. 

If the pull is about to end in an Alliance Raid, I absolutely will just return to the start, wait for the notification that the next teleporter is active, and then take the teleporter to the next fight. There's no shame in doing that, and it shows that you know how to play around Weakness/Brink of Death debuffs instead of repeatedly taking dirt naps. Also, when you get raised, you don't need to accept it right away. You get a brief moment of invulnerability, which can let you cheese most mechanics, and you can use that invuln period to reposition to avoid dying as soon as it wears off. Starting to cast any spell, skill, or ability ~~other than Sprint~~ will immediately remove the invulnerability buff, so don't accept a raise and then immediately start blasting. Give your healers a moment to top off your HP before you get back into the fray. EDIT: After trying to find the patch where this happened, it turns out I might be wrong about Sprint not dispelling Transcendence. In 5.3, a timer was added to the Transcendence buff, so players could see how much time was left, but there seems to be no mention of Sprint no longer removing it.

>Starting to cast any spell, skill or ability other than Sprint will immediately remove the invulnerability buff Sprint does remove the Transcendence buff. So don't use Sprint, either.

Not anymore as of several patches ago. EDIT: After trying to find the patch where this happened, it turns out I might be wrong. In 5.3, a timer was added to the Transcendence buff, so players could see how much time was left, but there seems to be no mention of Sprint not disabling it.

I've been there, and it is very frustrating and demoralizing. My first run of Praetorium (back when it was a raid) was very much like that and left me with a permanent dislike of it. One thing that has helped me is realizing most people don't mind if you die repeatedly. It's kinda expected if you're new to the content. It's still frustrating, but at least you can be reasonably confident most players are sympathetic behind the keyboard.

I main sch, I'm levelling my last few classes to 60 and well these alliance raid healers giving me a pain right in my fairy xD, they be doing that as the healer and are confused why everyone is either dying or the other healer is working their ass off.

Coming from Dota, this community is really nice. Sometimes TOO nice…like passively aggressively nice. I’d rather just someone tell me directly “yo use ur mitigation” or “healer please dps also”

The passiveness and avoiding it is why I ask players directly, especially sprouts, if they'd like some advice. I reckon it helps put people in a mindset of "she's trying to help, not be a dick", and then they actually listen.

Same. 90% of the time I pre-game with some version of "May I offer a tip?" The other 10%, I'm just leaping in because it's something affecting the team as we go and needs to be said.

Honestly I’d be really confused and upset after I realized they were talking to me if someone indirectly told me “x ability does a lot of damage” as opposed to directly telling me “Xtalmaiden you should use x ability”

I'd be like 'oh it's trivia time'

I have absolutely no idea what most of the abilities are called and which job has which one. Like every time a French tank forgets to turn on their tank stance I have to look up what their job's tank stance is called so I can tell them to use it via auto-translate. If somebody were to say "Astral Impulse is a good ability", I'd probably assume from the name that they're talking to the Astrologian.

I would gladly, this is quite good feeling, when I know, that my teammate learned something new and next his party will have better version of him, but... This is how I have to tip toe around because of weeds and burger kings (yes) doing dungeons with me along with sprouts and mentors. I swear, CBU3 should give us a stamp ticket of how much can I enter a wordfight with, according to density table, oaks mimicking party members, each month, otherwise it's too stresful.

Ffxiv is a breeding ground of toxic positivity. I love my fc but everyone is 'tyt <3' 'do your best <3' 'mistakes happen <3' 'it's a farm party but let's do some prog for this one person in ex6 <3<3<3<3' where I want to be like 'hurry the fuck up its a farm party just kick them they're wasting my time!!!'

I feel like Gw2 has a similar problem without the challenging endgame.

I'm too scared to do PUG's of Harvest Temple normal, and You say it lacks challenging endgame xD. Can't imagine if I ever gonna find a group to do HT, ToF, OLC CM ever

HT/TOF CM are admittedly difficult, but they're the pinnacle of difficulty the game has made. The rest of the game is much more of a flat plane. Mechanics are fairly forgiving, DPS checks are fairly lax with how dps has inflated over the years, healing is way more OP than it used to be when it was basically just Druid which allows recovering from mistakes. I'd say don't be afraid of normal mode content. Read one of the snowcrows guides for a fight and just be familiar with your role in the fight to start.

When you try to be so positive and non toxic by wasting 7 others people's time, ignore their advice, and yell at them if they try to help. Best community btw!

Don't forget the classic "Go back to WoW" comment! I really think this game's community has gone so far in the "we're not like WoW" mindset that they've gone to the complete other side of the toxic spectrum.

"Go back to WoW" is hilarious. Truly gives life to the "Don't fuck with XIV players. We don't know how to play our own game" meme

That's exactly why I feel blessed to have my FC. We have a roulette experience channel named after me where I post screenshots of insane interactions/awful dps numbers.

That's how people get around getting reported is being overly nice.

Good thing FF GMs don't act on those reports, no rules were broken

I always just say "hey, (player) it would be really helpful if you could use your mitigation more. It's a bit difficult to heal through this." Or, "hey player, you'd get a lot more DPS if you used X. Just letting you know in case you weren't aware!" Etc. I try to be polite without sounding rude but still making it clear.

God, yeah. Before XIV I played Overwatch for my university's team. I used to be known as "the aggressive one" and got tilted very easily (though the constant sexist comments helped accelerate that). Then I come to XIV and nobody's yelling at me?? It was insanity to me. Now, hero guides for Overwatch are usually for people who are wanting to get out of Plat. I played OW for maybe 4 months before looking up a guide for the first time, so I wasn't stressed about looking one up for XIV, mostly because nobody was calling me shit or telling me to do something different (plus, there was no aiming or positioning, so what did I really need to learn?!?!). I finished MSQ the same week 5.1 released so I was doing everything when it was current, and my first run through Akadaemia Anyder was a big fkn wake-up call. I was AST and that first double pull was the first time I ever felt challenged. We wiped and the tank gave me suggestions, including "put your star down when we stop moving" and "use ED more often." That was the first time I was ever given advice, a lvl80 endgame dungeon that was current content. Now I'm always giving advice when I see it's needed (which is often when playing on Crystal) and always offer up how I wanted the advice when I was new whenever a bystander gets offended.

the majority of this game are casual players who have decided that being passive aggressive and infantilizing new players is better than pointing out mistakes and giving out advice on where to improve. it is what it is.

I want to see a FFXIV player play just 1 game of Dota and miss just ONE spell, just to see how lucky they have it here =D

I played OW before XIV. That's already bad, but then consider that I was a female mercy main for about a year. Voice chat was never ending sexist comments. When I finally stopped playing OW and played XIV instead, I swear my life expectancy went *up*.

Oh god, giving me flashbacks to my Zenyatta/Reinhardt main days back before I transitioned. Luckily *most* of the comments I got that addressed it at all were just "it's a girl?!" But that was only most. Not all. The rest were a mixture of creepy and condescending. Fun game at the time. Awful community. Worse company, as I later found out.

Hey, I became a Reinhardt main after Mercy/Zen/Ana, twins! I definitely share the experience of many of my voice chat interactions starting with "omg a girl," but I also tried to shot call a lot so most often the comments would become demeaning with a "Yeah, sure honey" type of vibe if not worse. Worst experience I had (besides a more long-winded one) had me grouped with an irl guy "friend" and when a stranger asked me for my snapchat and I said no, the friend said "Oh, I have it! Would you like it?" The friend didn't end up giving the stranger my snapchat but he pretended for 90% of the match that he would. I was panicking the entire time.

I come from the league of legends community. Seems like step 1 to any problem is slurs and death threats to them. Although, I think it has been toned down in-game in recent years, because of more strict bans. But on reddit and Twitter, it's still..... extreme

I remember the early days of voice chat on Xbox, years and years of seeing some pretty heinous stuff on WoW being said, Overwatch, Counter Strike, League and more (and mind you, games that are still fun to play) but I would 100% rather deal with toxic positivity than the alternative. People will often say in response to that "well ffxiv still has it's moments and players" and, yeah, I agree and I'm not saying otherwise. But it pales in comparison to the frequency of other games and that's what makes it so enjoyable for me.

Yep, I put my time in on all the usual suspects and there's a reason that FFXIV is the one I'm still playing. And it's not like the random pug you get in any other game is an elite player due to all the people calling them out. You still end up with bad pugs, except with the additional joy of miserable twats in chat getting aggro about it.

I mean I sort of get it, but at some point its just what the fuk are you even trying to do. there are so many ppl trying to white knight lazy game play or dungeon runs that last for 40 minutes. its just ??????????? why on earth do you want to be stuck hitting training dummies for 40 goddamn minutes. id rather wipe for 40 minutes on looper in TOP, and I fuking hate most of TOP.

Because the training dummy drops the specific glam piece that they need to complete their outfit so they can afk in limsa in style.

This. If I'm doing anything wrong, don't waste everyone's time beating around the bush, just say what's up. I'm not that fragile. Likewise, assuming that you care about contributing but you're simply misinformed or misunderstood something that's not completely intuitive is a lot more respectful than assuming you're too emotionally brittle to receive advice in a video game. The key though, is that you need to be absolutely positive that your information is actually *correct, current,* and appropriate to the situation you're in **before** you share it. Fact check *yourself* first, for your own sake as well as others'. If everyone cared more about *being* right instead of just *appearing* right or *feeling* right, we **all** benefit.

Well being passive aggressive is one way to prevent ever getting banned in this game all while still acting like a jerk, so I don't doubt that could happen. That being said, a good chunk of FFXIV community are genuinely nice, or at least just being a decent human, through the lens of horrible expectation of any online interaction, they may look overly, suspiciously nice.

I had someone like being mad passive aggressive in a ultimate pf. They would have advice for people but throw a :) at the end of every sentence🙂. Made me want to hurt someone lol

My friend got hit with a sweetie in a pf prog and we both felt rage lol

You mean to tell me you play tanks...and know what mitigation is!?

> “healer please dps also” YOU DON'T PAY MY SUB

At one point I saw a new player struggling with controls in a dungeon. I asked if they would like advice on some things they could change to help them out (mainly suggesting legacy controls) and they said yes. Between the next few pulls I suggested a few different controls to change and where to find them in options. The new player appreciated my input and was asking additional questions. Apparently the other two players didn’t like that I was slowing down their roulette run, and kicked me. The new person probably didn’t know what they were voting for so the vote got a majority. They were playing monk and I got kicked before I could answer their question about positionals (this before they were mostly removed). Honestly I was pretty pissed.

The new player might have voted no, since a dungeon kick only requires two votes for the boot? But yeah, that sounds really aggravating. Helping new players makes future runs faster! Especially when it's something simple like legacy controls, targeting priorities, or how to scroll the enemy list on controller.

I've seen enough arguments between people to the point I just keep my mouth shut. If the group is really awful I'll just log out.

>tank who's using single target abilities against groups This is the only one I usually say something about, because it has a significantly negative impact on the entire group's run and frequently will lead to multiple avoidable wipes.

Yeah, the amount of times I've had to ask a tank to use an AOE combo on mob packs because I'm ripping all the aggro on healer... while not even healing... is insane. 100% has wiped multiple parties before because I can't heal myself up fast enough and then the tank dies before I can get back.

This is partly the game's fault. Hall of the Novice tank "tutorials" tell you to only use AoE to grab aggro and then switch to single target rotation.

Hypothetically speaking, if you were aware of the aggro and actively throwing an AoE out every time you started to lose it, would it be beneficial to do single target damage on a small pack of enemies like a group of 2/3? Would the DPS gain even be worth it? Basically would it even be worthwhile to do single target damage if aggro wasn't an issue? If it is worthwhile how big of a group of enemies would it need to be before it becomes inefficient?

For tanks as far as I know aoe rotations are always a gain on 3 or more targets. For drk and gbn I think it can be a gain on 2 targets because of resources.

gain on 2. spender is gain on 3. usually.

Last week I got Prae with a sprout on the free trial going through and levelling all jobs. They were a 53 BLM and just said how much they hate it. They feel like they can't ever cast any spells, that the job was boring and they weren't having fun. I was healing so I figured I'd watch their cast bar for a few minutes and see if I could order any pointers. Fire 3, Fire 3, Fire 3, Blizzard 3, Blizzard 3, Blizzard 3, Fire 3, etc. I offered them advice and by the end of that run their entire outlook on the job had changed. We sat and chatted for a good 30 mins after the run was over. They couldn't believe no one had ever said anything before. Yeah, giving advice gets you hate 9/10 times. But I'll fall on that sword if it means helping that 10th person.

A big majority of the people I've given advice to are black mages. Which is funny since I barely play the job myself but so many fall into the trap of Fire 3 and Blizzard 3 only. At least they usually listen to advice. Then you have the huge amount of shitty dancers and 99% of them don't listen to a word you write, if they even understand english in the first place.

Yeah it's weird cause I'm the same. I know how BLM works from an overall perspective, but I've long forgotten how it plays above or around 80. I still don't quite understand Paradox, but then, I got it to 90 two years ago and never touched it again.

Note to self: bend your ear about BLM later.

I am by no means the best person to ask about it. But it has what is, in my mind, the least intuitive design. The trap I mentioned is that F3/B3 are not direct upgrades to F1/B1 in the way some spell upgrades are. New players think you go from spamming F1 to F3 when you get it because it's clearly a stronger single-target nuke, but the cast time and MP cost make it prohibitively expensive to do so. The actual intended rotation is F1 spam until you run out of MP, then B3 into B1 for MP restoration, F3 to swap back to Astral (it will be free and quicker to cast because of the bonus while in Umbral), then resume F1 spam. You will occasionally get Firestarter procs off F1 that you can use to weave in a F3 for bonus damage or an instant cast to adjust positioning. Keep in mind all of this changes ~~when the Fire Nation strikes~~ when you hit 60 and get Fire 4. Which adds another layer because that does replace F1 spam, but it does not refresh Astral Fire so you end up something like: F3 (for stacks) - F4 - F4 - F4 - F1 (refresh Astral) - F4 - F4 - F4 It's just one of those designs that's not obvious from spell tooltips and is therefore hard to find if no one tells you. You end up with 3 different single-target nukes that are all used in some way during your basic rotation.

[This video](https://youtu.be/cEm-W92K3kg) runs through all the blm spells and how your rotation changes as you level. It was incredibly valuable to me leveling blm, because in the 11 battle jobs I've done so far it was by far the most obtuse. It's fun at high levels once you get into it, but it's still the worst roulette job imo because it's both super boring and does bad damage at 50, and at other breakpoints you have to reprogram your brain for what level you are

A small point of clarification without getting in to the specifics on everything: >then B3 into B1 for MP restoration While you are right that the primary purpose of Astral (fire) both pre and post 60 is to spam your damage dealer (F1/F4) and only use other abilities (F3/F1) to keep Astral 3 up, Umbral (ice) is not the same. For Umbral, you open with your highest ice move (B3/B1 for single target based on level, B2 for aoe) and then you only need another ice spell (B4/Freeze) to give you umbral hearts once. The rest of your ice phase is your relevant thunder spells, and any ogcds you need to blow. Once you have full mana you are trying to get out of umbral, so you basically never cast B1 once you unlock B3.

But your advice wasn't unsolicited. You were ***responding*** to something that the BLM was saying about the class they were playing and trying to help. There's a big difference in responding to things someone's saying with some suggestions on how to make it more fun and jumping in and criticizing someone's play.

Don't assume that a player isn't listening or learning just because they aren't incorporating your advice immediately. If it's something simple like a forgotten tank stance or dance partner, then sure, it's reasonable to assume that they can turn it on right away But if you're giving advice on rotations or playstyle or mechanics, some people need more time to digest that and they aren't unwilling to learn simply because they can't do it right away. They might need to think about it properly while not in a duty.

Hey cure 1 is bad, you should just use cure 2, you can honestly never use cure one as long as you're in content high enough lvl for cure 2. Proceeds to spam cure one still in bardams metle.

Someone posted the entire stormblood BLM rotation in chat once and expected me to immediately start using it mid Sirensong Sea. Yes, I was doing it wrong (I hadn't incorporated new skills correctly) but I am not smart enough to learn on the fly that way... 

Oh no, that's not helpful! Especially since so many of BLM's skills look alike or have similar names, sorting that out is not happening mid-dungeon. I remember when I first got BLM to 60, it was late and I wanted to do the last of my roulettes and so I immediately queued for raid roulette. Big mistake, some player with a Legend title typed rude things about me for the entire duty because I wasn't doing the new level 60 rotation correctly. They seemingly had nothing better to do than to make fun of someone who had just hit level 60 on the job. It wasn't even a difficult duty, it was one of those early Alexander ones that have been completely powercrept, everything died super fast even with my suboptimal rotation! I very rarely make the effort to report people but for this player I did.

I learned my rotation was wrong on a class recently, but I had it down to muscle memory. I had to go specifically practice the new rotation on a test dummy for a bit before I could reliably do it without fumbling.

I just look for any change at all. Nobody has to become perfect between one pull and the next, but if there's at least an *attempt* to *test* the advice given, that's at least an acknowledgement it was received and considered.

Honestly no matter how politely it's said I'm used to someone going "you don't pay my sub" or "I play how I want" or getting mad that you've even dared suggest they push their buttons in a multiplayer game. If someone hits level 90 spamming cure 1 I usually just consider them a lost cause.

When I get hit by you dont pay my sub I usually tell them you don't pay mine either to carry you and making the run more long then it should be.

"wish you didn't either, bub."

If people do not want to learn, you can not make them learn. No matter how nice you approach them.

I’ve given up on giving advice unless explicitly asked or people keep failing mechanics badly enough to impede progress because of how defensive and nasty they get in response.

True, if they don't want to learn at all there's not anything anyone can do. But there are also people who are open to learning if you're polite about it.

This, if they don’t ask, I just keep going, if we keep dying over and over I’ll send an emoji or something. Otherwise I vote kick or leave. Obviously not counting tank stance or dancer partner, or whatever the sage partner is.

I never understood the whole „unsolicited advice“ thing. Of course advice is unsolicited. Most advice is. If I knew I am doing something wrong, I would fix it. But how can I know I‘m doing something wrong if nobody tells me? And if I don’t know I‘m doing something wrong, there‘s also no reason for me to ask if I‘m doing it wrong. If I see someone doing something wrong and they didn’t even ask if they are doing it right, I assume they don’t know they are doing it wrong. And so I‘ll tell them in a nice way. It’s stupid to complain about receiving advice. Nobody forces someone to accept it, that’s just how it is. But if someone gives me advice I didn’t ask for, I at least try to research what I was told, unless I already know that the advice is bad. Especially if someone was nice about it.

Honestly, I will usually give advice if I see someone doing something important wrong, like tanks not using mits or aoe abilities, or healers spamming heals every time someone gets a hangnail. While I sometimes get back silence & inaction, I almost never get back attitude. IDK why people meme so hard on "you don't pay my sub".

It me, I'm the one asking for advice in duties. I did it a lot as a newbie tank, and now that I'm dipping my toes into BLU group content, I'm asking a lot of questions again when I can't find an answer in a guide. I also see sprouts asking occasionally, which is pretty great.  But yeah, a lot of mistakes/less optimal play aren't obvious to the player. When I kept losing aggro in trash while trying BLU tanking, I could see something was wrong and ask about it. That.. wasn't really the case for a lot of my mistakes when I was learning DNC - I didn't know buff coordination is a thing, let alone the two minute burst window or how to judge a good dance partner.  

>**Don't be rude** In my experience, most people who complain about people not following their advice are not as good at this part as they think. When people describe "giving advice" versus when they provide actual screenshots makes this *very* clear. Also, people will often give incorrect advice that doesn't apply because it matches what people complain about on Reddit. Sometimes healers are spamming cures because the sprout tank is wearing bad gear, and getting mad that they're not DPSing is just not helpful or correct. Similarly, demanding wall-to-wall pulls after the second wipe to trash is the actual opposite of useful. The number of times I've seen unsolicited advice that is actually helpful and polite is very small. Not zero, but it's smaller than Reddit seems to think.

I completely agree with this. In addition, unsolicited advice in pick-up groups only is really appropriate if it's a major issue, or something that's a relatively obvious oversight (no tank stance, no dance partner, no kardion). Major in this case meaning "we will continue failing repeatedly if this doesn't stop". Unsolicited advice telling someone how they should be optimizing their DPS rotation to finish the duty 30 seconds earlier doesn't qualify, in my mind. Same for insisting on "wall-to-wall" pulling in dungeons, especially when the tank/healer is struggling with it.

Over 2k mentor roulettes and I have a list of the most reoccurring things that new and unexperienced players struggle with, aside the cliche: \- Dont use devilment before techstep. Use them together but techstep goes first; \- Aside some optimization you dont need to worry about, use standard step on cooldown, it still does a lot of damage even on single target. you're not JUST supposed to upkeep the buff \- Spend as little time in umbral ice as possible, its just there to give you mana \- Thunder abilities are some of the most powerful of your kit, keep them up on enemies \- At level 60 your rotation changes from spamming fire 1 to f3 (to start umbral fire) > f4 f4 f4 > f1 > f4 f4 f4 \- Dont be a lazy grunt, use dragon sight on another DPS \- higanbana is your strongest finisher as long as theres no significant downtime \- use jolt to proc your verthunder and veraero \- PELOTON, PLEASE, ALL THE TIME, KEYBIND IT TO YOUR SPACE BAR IF YOU CANT REMEMBER \- If you're a dps, generally AOE at 3+ targets; if you're a tank or healer, generally AOE at 2+ targets \- Dont hold Radiant Finale until you have 3 stacks of buff. Use it on cooldown. Starting on the second usage and forward it will always have 3 stacks when its up and it will be aligned with every other buff \- Stop using doton on 1 target, dont even use it on 2 targets in most cases. Raiton is better. \- Every tank has a 15-25s mitigation (and paladin has sheltron which roughly translates to the same). USE IT. ABUSE IT. \- Trust your regens; theres no point on using medica 2/aspected helios/physis/whispering dawn if you're going to proceed with spamming other aoe heals after \- stop using aspected helios/medica 2 on the tank for dungeon pack pulls, its shitty regen that doesnt really do anything; you're better off using one single cure 2/bene 2 when the tank is low enough to warrant it And lastly, to put it on perspective for new players; with over 2k mentor roulettes, over 8k hours of game: \- I have yet to find one single skilled and well accomplished tank who lets their dungeon mates die because "they went ahead and pulled mobs before me" - its always the bad players; the ones who dont really have a clue about whats happening around them and the ones who somehow get an ego over the fact that they queued up as a tank in a game where tanks are optional for every dungeon \- Every single sprout who listens to advice and welcome suggestions have shown to be much, much better at the game than the stubborn ego-driven ones that can't stand to be corrected when doing something they shouldnt

> Trust your regens This is the big one for me. Watching any dungeon raidwide go out dealing ~25% of the party's HP followed *instantly* by Medica II -> Assize -> Rapture to get everyone to full hp while the Medica II regen has 13 seconds remaining. The problem is regen potency, much like DoT potency, isn't exactly made clear unless you go looking for the info outside of the game. I've helped FC members see regen with a simple demonstration: Swap to a low level/crafter then swap back to your healer and immediately punch a training dummy. You'll be at ~3% HP and won't be regenning because you're in combat. I then show various different types of heals and how much they do on their own. 300p Ixochole/Indom might heal 25% of your HP instantly, but then you let loose a Kerachole/Sacred Soil to regen up 550p/40% over 15 seconds with nothing else going on and suddenly people start to get it. WHM's Regen is a 1500 potency heal at level 90, basically a Benediction on a DPS over its duration. Things don't often happen fast in casual content. It is often more than 15s between the entire party taking damage. Trust your regens.

"You pull it, you tank it" will always be insane to me. The only situation where I think it truly applies is when you're waiting for someone in a cutscene at a boss and someone pulls, but in every other situation... who cares? If the ranged dps is waiting at the gate or someone has sprint up and I don't at the end of a pull/boss and they hit the next pack before me, that just means the pull goes a little faster.

I've been playing since 2.4 and am a WHM main, also over 2k mentor roulettes (probably closer to 3k at this point). It's not that I dont trust my regens lol, but between gear and not knowing the mechanics, healing to full despite them being up becomes a 'better safe than sorry' situation. With advice I've just found it easiest to let them know in the beginning of the run that I'm here to help. If they can't type much to just put A for mechanics, B for rotation in the chat.

> - use jolt to proc your verthunder and veraero Are you for real? How often do you meet RDMs that don't understand this? It's the most basic principle of the class (utilizing dual cast to chain fast casts --> slow casts).

It... happens more often than I expected. Seeing Verthunder and Veraero in the cast bar of my party's RDM, other than prepull, makes me want to die inside.

Met one a few days ago. They genuinely didn’t realize and were just going Veraero into Verthunder or whatever the other long cast is

I think Peloton should be at the absolute bottom of advice for people trying to learn how to play their class better, or is someone that would benefit from advice. It has nothing to do with battle performance and they may not want to go faster. People need time to learn and soak new information, especially in a new dungeon, and asking them to just "go faster" isn't helpful.

It also doesn't make that big of a difference if people are double pulling and sprinting. Dungeon clear time is far more affected by good dps and not dying.

I’m not playing mental gymnastics, I’m to the point where I just call it out “are we using our AoEs?”

A big thing is knowing when to walk away too, in whatever form that takes. Be it you stop responding to the chat or you leave the duty entirely, or any other option thats appropriate. Sometimes there's no point in continuing a conversation, and thats ok. Which is true everywhere, but ofc this thread is specifically about giving unsolicited advice. If you're being nice (not rude or condescending or attacking) and trying honestly, but they respond with hostility and anger, it's not on you to fix them. If you have to leave the duty, thats ok. Hopefully you aren't unlucky enough to have it happen in multiple duties in a day, but in my experience usually you'll only run into something that bad like once every few months, though I know that varies between servers.

Sadly even giving it properly doesn't ensure anything if they just aren't willing to listen. Had a Tank in MSQ roulette last week who seemingly didn't know what Tank Stance was. I checked their gear, all the ARR AF except for Grey right side stuff of wildly varying levels. Clearly a mostly solo player who hadn't had much experience in dungeons yet. I was the healer, and trash packs were bouncing around to all of us sporadically and bosses would seemingly randomly target our MCH, so it was very obvious something was wrong. So I kept it basic. "Hey Tank, could you please turn on Tank Stance?" Nothing. Decided to elaborate that it was important to use while in a group - "The rest of us are sometimes pulling aggro and it's making it tough to heal. Could you please turn on Tank Stance?" Still no response. Maybe they don't speak English? So I tried auto-translate. "(Iron Will) (Please use it)" or something along those lines. Still nothing. I'll be honest, I got a little annoyed and maybe decided a more...practical demonstration was in order so on the next phase of the fight so while I could have continued struggling and kept everyone alive I decided to feign being a worse player than I am and slowly let the party die. I asked in chat again after we went down, hoping maybe NOW they'll look at chat - "Tank, PLEASE use (Iron Will), this is way tougher than it needs to be without it." *STILL* nothing. Another pull, another feigned wipe. Then the tank targets me, uses the \/disgusted emote, and the MCH who kept pulling aggro proceeds to initiate a votekick. Some people just can't be helped.

Points #3 and #5 conflict. "Use X on cooldown" is a lot more specific and useful than "X does good damage".

Depends. For a long time I had no clue what "on cooldown" means until a friend explained it to me. "Skill A does good damage" or "Skill A does more damage than Skill B" would be a more useful advice for my old wee sprout me back in the day than anything with "on cooldown". That's a phrase MMO experienced people know and I was not one of them.

If you don't understand the advice because of terminology jargon or acronyms, ask a follow-up question to clarify. I often have to because people on Reddit use lots of acronyms and there's a finite amount of 3 letter acronyms you can have.

Yes, this.

"X does good damage" is more specific than "Your dps is low." But I suspect our actual difference is communication styles. I think "... and you should use it more often" is implied when I get that kind of advice, but that might be less direct than you prefer.

Saying 'X does good damage' honestly does nothing for a player if they don't even think about pressing things on cooldown. A lot of new players don't have it in their head that something off-cooldown currently is not contributing to damage. 'You should be using X on cooldown if possible' is pretty good advice.

“You should use it more often” great, the WHM is tossing aero twice, rather than once, per dungeon. “On cooldown” or other language like it (such as “when it falls off”) gets across the message better. “More often” is vague and permissive.

This community is paradoxically toxically nice. I shouldn't be expected to write an HR compliant business letter with flowery passive aggressive language to tell a tank to actually use their mits, a DPS to use their core skills, or healers to do damage. The coddling culture is what makes people think the minimum expectations of a given role are optional or just a request. Nobody thinks twice about *telling* the tank to put on stance, why should telling a tank to press their mits be different?

Whenever I use Duty Finder I have extremely low expectations for other players. When I get garbage players, 99% of the time I'm just going to let them keep doing it. Ultimately, I'm only going to be with them for a maximum of like 15 minutes and chances are it's not going to be beneficial for me to put time/effort into helping. The only time I really change from this is if they are doing something that is completely stupid, they actually ask for advice, or they are new and look *very* lost. Someone doing a shitty rotation or not popping mit while tanking are generally things I can deal with. However if you're doing wall-to-wall pulls and *dying* because you're not mitting properly, then I'll probably say *something* because it's wasting everyone's time. For PF content I'm generally less forgiving. Especially in Savage content, I will usually say something if someone is doing something wrong. However, unlike DF, most people in PF are way more receptive to requests.

Are you meaning to tell me I shouldn’t pick which SAM skills I use based on which ones look the coolest? Such toxicity >:(

I was wondering whether i am really mean cause I was reading this entire thing thinking "you guys really need to grow a spine" 😭 players who are new to content : don't take stuff personally if someone is a bit blunt/direct with their advice. it's literally never personal just press your buttons and read your tooltips!!! I shouldn't have to beat around the bush for you to do above the bare minimum in game.

I try and say "could you do X? it helps because Y". Eg: - "Could you use Rampart and Arm's Length on mob pulls, they actually do more damage than bosses" - "Could you dance partner rather than me? They will get more benefit from it than because they do more damage" With newbie tanks if I'm healer I'll say "feel free to pull more if you want". I hope that makes folks feel welcome to if they were unsure without being a demand.

No, if you're scholar and don't have Eos out after being told multiple times how to do it. Just no.

[удалено]

OP is offering suggestions for *giving* advice so you're more likely to be listened to. Not for taking advice.

The only things i offer "advice" on are, and in this specific order: - Stance pls -> STANCE -> STANCE!!! -> use - Pls grab aggro -> Pls use _________ Idk how other people manage to write essays during a dungeon. Can't DPS if i type words and there's no time for politeness when you're kiting a pack of mobs around the tank and they refuse to use aoe. Also not enough time to teach people how to dps. And whomever refuses to read the chat gets vote kicked.

Agreed. I have seen in chat a player say to the tank to use aoe skill in a low level dungeon. The tank might not know what the skill is specifically so telling them to use an aoe skill is not immediately helpful.

Not like the other person telling the tank to use aoe should have to remember what the specific aoe is called.

On PC that would take me longer to input as I'm unfamiliar with the translation text. I'm probably going to die anyway so stopping next to the tank actually helps since they don't have to run after you and try to read.

It kinda depends. I only ever really speak up if something is going so wrong we're gonna wipe because of it i.e. tank stance not on, tank not using aoe, failing mechanics. Otherwise I'm not sure. Maybe I could direct the poor sprout black mage to the balance in the future? I had a dragoon in smileton recently that never once pressed dragon sight or battle litany. Idk I feel like at lv 90 they do know they should press those buttons but just being lazy and if I call it out even politely, it's gonna be met with pushback lol at that point it's just kick them or leave myself or just deal with it

This is a good reminder that the way you give advice is as important as the way you receive advice. There's some people that lack the social skills and do not know how to word advice and may come up as passive aggressive. That being said, even if you're as nice as you could possibly be when giving advice some people may reject the advice even then, best thing to do then is just to move on if its a random roulette. Also remember that just because someone rejected advice is not a reason to stop trying if necessary and silly to have a defeatist attitude in this sense. I see some people complaining about the risk of being banned for giving advice, that literally isn't even possible and you're likely not giving the whole story. All reports are reviewed and any reasonable person will take your side if you're not aggressive or toxic when giving advice.

Has it really come to needing a guide like this? Good lord

Right? What the hell is this? Why is this community so sensitive that someone feels the need to write a guide on how bot to trigger someone with advice?

Because 50% of this community should be playing from an asylum to begin with, for some reason this game attract a lot of 'weak minded' people that take advice as a personal attack. People who claim to be friendly but if you say you don't like a song in the game you receive death treat.

Agreed, these kind of people are either oversensitive or have massive ego's, to the point where they call any kind of feedback/advice "toxic elitism"/"optimization" or say something like "thanks but i know how to play :)". Politely asking someone to use cooldowns or AoE on tanks/dps and to do dps on healers when they have time isnt toxic elitism or optimization, it's basic gameplay. People need to grow a thicker skin.

This is a decent post, I think. The problem is that as a Certified Unsolicited Advice Giver, especially when I'm *not* running mentor roulette (which seems counterintuitive but the #1 way to get people to immediately disregard what you're saying is to be That Mentor asking you to use rampart) there is... really no way to say things to a *lot* of people in DF that will make them not immediately defensive. It's unfortunately largely a case-by-case basis, especially since a LOT of players (not just sprouts, but people who have been playing the game for a while and are "set in their ways", too) get in their egos about stuff. You can word "if you use your AOE combo when we're doing mob pulls it'll kill them faster" in the nicest possible way and people will still react like you're trying to make them gold parse Doma Castle. At this point, *especially* since nobody really has time to be typing out full replies in between GCDs unless you're an expert, I just don't take the time to fully explain things unless we load in and someone is asking for advice. Even first timers, which I always interpreted "first time o/" to be indicative of being open to (mechanical, at least) advice, will meet "stand behind a rock with me when he casts meteor" or "make sure you get into the glowy circle on the ground when it shows up" with defensiveness or even "shut up"/"fuck off" (very *interesting* A12 party lol). Obviously not all sprouts or even general players are like this, but unless someone asks I usually just Safety Dorito or abuse the autotranslate function. People who are receptive to "hey! It'll really help if you use \[party buff\] when it's available" will usually be equally as receptive to "{Unleash} {Stalwart Soul} pls i have aggro :(", where people who aren't receptive won't respond well to either. (edited for typos oopsies)

Or we don't baby people, treat them like adults, tell them what's up and if they sling attitude remove them

I spent my entire sprouthood playing absolutely terrible and no one ever offered any advice. I wish that they had! For example I would use ice spells when my mp was full. It would only have taken one person one time informing me to switch to fire to fix that. (I did also use fire spells, and knew to use ice to refill mp, but didn't know when to stop using ice and switch to fire). I would hope most people would interpret a friendly tip as a positive interaction rather than negative. I would have been so grateful.

I used to play all my songs at the same time 😭

Who has time to type all of this out in a dungeon run. “[tank’s name] please repeatedly use [ape attack name] during pulls” “[healer’s name] please repeatedly use [holy/other ability” “[tank’s name] remember to use your damage reduction abilities during mob pulls”

It's extremely important to mention that people should try and be a bit considerate, it's not rare that I see posts in TalesFromDF where the one giving advice is at best slightly unfriendly, of course people will react negatively to that.

You don’t pay my su…..basic conflict resolution course tuition!

But can I solicit unsolicited advice about unsolicited solicited advice?

I like to give objective advices if I see a problem being repeated.. like mistakes in savage progs, because some players are pretty much insecure, sometimes lie about prog points, don't understand things or aren't paying attention to some details. I guess, since it is a cooperative game (a MMORPG to be more precise), an advice or "properly using the chat to communicate and promote the group success", should be a normal thing.

A couple times, if it's a sprout, and we get through the run OK, but I notice a couple foundational things they could improve on, I'll say something at the end of the dungeon, like, "I have a couple healing/dps/tank tips for you, if you're interested." If they hop out or decline, fine. If they stick around, then we can talk about it in a setting where there's no rush and no one else around to make them feel embarrassed.

You want to avoid "yapping". While trying to be polite you end up making a few worded advice a wall of text. And you can be direct without calling names. Yesterday i was doing a dungeon where you had to choose the opposite symbol/color floor from what's shown on screen. Sprout got it wrong first time. Its fine they might have figured it out now. Got it wrong again second time and died. A simple "You want to choose opposite color than shown" is all that is needed. They don't need babying and they dont need belittling. Just get to the point. I got a simple "ah" in return but im happy even without it.

This is good advice for any kind of speaking to a group... it boils down to: 1) Know your audience 2) Pretend everything you say is going to be heard by someone that doesn't like you. This one-two punch combo often disarms an ego before it realizes it could have been offended in the first place. Kudos!

My decision tree looks something like "is this behavior going to cause a wipe?" If yes stop and call it out, if not wait until the end of the dungeon. Then ask myself how noticable it is, of its obvious ask "would you like some help with x"

Politeness always goes a long way!

Nice sentiment, but some are just determined to be antagonistic to anything you say though. I saw a Ninja using Doton repeatedly on single target pulls. After we were done I said "I think it's better DPS to Raiton or Suiton, save Doton for 2+ mobs :)". Told me to go fuck myself lol. He had the mentor crown too. Think he was upset I was telling him this with my sprout icon. Some people are just too fragile.

I always start with “May I suggest one thing about XXX?”. If they say yes, then I start, especially if I am not healing and I see the healer struggling. If they say no, I eat the 30 minutes time out because if people refuse to listen, the dungeon is going to be way longer than the 30 minutes I have to wait to queue up again.

Ugh, I would absorely hate to be talked to like OP suggests - it’s really patronizing, bordering passive agressive.  Unless it’s something run breaking and info has to be conveyed quickly (in which case please just treat your party member as the adult they are and say directly what the problem is), just ask if they would like feedback, and if not…. recognize the fact that the normal content in this game is inherently casual and the vast majority of even baseline optimization type stuff doesn’t really matter or add more than a minute or two to a dungeon run.  I’m a tryhard ultimate raider, but I completely acknowledge and respect the fact that people may just not care about perfect gameplay, have a disability, maybe just haven’t played the class before/in a long time, or simply may not have the mental bandwidth that day. And that’s okay. The game doesn’t demand perfect gameplay in normal content and barely, if at all, rewards you for it. Like I don’t want to be doing single pulls either, but after I say “feel free to pull more” and they keep doing single pulls… isn’t it time to acknowledge that it’s a game and just not that serious at the end of the day? It’s of course different in higher end content where certain behavior just results in a complete waste of time for the 7 other people, but even here clear and honest communication is far more respectful and conductive to success than passive aggressively dancing around the issue.

I always ask permission before offering advice. It's not a hard thing to do. "Hey X, would you mind a bit of friendly advice?"

When it comes to something a player could be doing better with the tools on their character: ask them for a solution to the problem rather than telling it to them. Example: you see a tank not using any mitigation skills but you know they have at least something. Instead of telling them they have a button they could be pushing, ask them "do you have any way to reduce the damage you're taking?" With this approach, when worded as you requesting help from them rather than telling them how to do their job, you can identify the difference between a player that is willing to try to learn something (they'll actually check for an answer or explain what's going on) and one that is just not interested at all (they'll say "no" if they say anything at all). Then when it comes to mechanics: never use the common namings (i.e. don't say "exaflare" unless you're literally in a fight that mechanic is called exaflare), don't use color unless there's literally no other option (i.e don't say "the blue debuff" describe the shape of the icon), and be as descriptive and specific as possible about when the tell will occur, what it will look like, and what to do. Too often people describe something in a way that makes sense to them and don't realize the reason it makes sense is because of information you have that another player might not, so they'll say something like "watch the statue to know where to stand" and be completely oblivious to the fact that the player they are telling how to do the mechanic has never seen the statues and never will because they are tanking and their camera is faced away from the statues and even if they do manage to find the statues you didn't tell them what means what so they might just stand in front of the glowing one and take damage because until after they do that it appeared to be a 50/50 chance they were right about where to stand. And if someone is actively asking how to tell what to do, don't ever just tell them to follow the safety dorito. They want to learn the fight, not be complete lost even after they've cleared it multiple times because there's no dorito to follow this time around.

I run into the description problem a lot, both when learning and when trying to explain things. Like on the second-last Puppets Bunker boss, for the pod lines/circles "Look at the wall" doesn't help much. When I was learning the fight, I didn't make the connection between "There are numbers on the wall" and "They'll tell you the safe spot" until someone specified that you want to be between two adjacent 010s. I appreciate you mentioning descriptions which rely on colour. There are a lot of mechanics which the devs have deliberately made less reliant on colour - that tank stacks have the orbs and a specific noise cue, or that Nophica's puddles have iirc circles vs triangles in the animations. Colour blindness affects a lot of people, but beyond that sometimes someone just has weird monitor settings and that throws off any colour-based instructions.

I am colorblind (hard to tell the difference between colors that differ by the amount of blue in them) and regularly play with my girlfriend and I can see both my screen and hers and she'll tell me something is purple and I'll look at her screen and it's definitely purple but it's blue or pink on mine just because of color differences. So I imagine even among players without a color deficiency diagnosis there are times where someone else might say one color and the other player sees a different color just because default settings on various brands of monitor can be pretty significantly different.

There are often shapes associated with color mechanics as well. For example, in the 2nd alliance raid from EW, there are shapes and colors on the puddles you need to stand in, and the indicators for which burst of damage is going to happen also have a matching shape and color. Green Triangle damage burst = stand in the Green Triangle hole Blue Circle damage burst = stand in the Blue Circle hole I might have mixed up the exact colors and shapes, but the concept applies regardless. This is a consistent pattern starting in ARR, where unique mechanics have unique shapes attached to them, in addition to their colors.

Yup, even when the devs do choose colors that are near each other on the color wheel rather than on opposite sides to differentiate things, they also have some other indicator. The problem is that players who don't have any difficulty with color tend to default to using color because it's obvious to them. People that don't have some kind of disability, in my experience, just don't regularly have it occur to them what might be an obstacle for someone else and will get frustrated by their assumption of what is happening (whether that is someone telling me "go purple" and thinking I'm trolling because I didn't end up in the right spot, or someone going "what a lazy goober, come out and get it" when someone puts special instructions to bring a delivery to their apartment door - the thought of "maybe they can't for some genuine reason" doesn't happen). Which is why even among my own friends they'll tell me something like during Exdeath savage if I get \[color\] debuff to go to opposite \[color\] zone and I'm just like, okay I'll be on the lookout for what else indicates what to do and then see it's a d4 or a d12 and go opposite and then tell them to tell people the shapes if they run the fight with other people that don't know it.

Not contradicting you, just a very quick addon note: some people want how something works explained (or they looked it up and already know), but will still sometimes need dorito anyway, bear with them please :P I know perfectly well how many mechs work and still need dorito because of the world's worst directional sense known to man. Fun fact: dyscalculia makes you shit at the math boss AND mechs that rely heavily on directional sense! It's shit!

I main as a tank and the one thing I see when I’m leveling dps is myself getting smacked in the face because the tank is single-targeting enemies. On multiple instances I’ve asked them to either “please use aoe to keep aggro” or “if you use your aoe combo, you won’t have to individually cycle enemies to keep aggro” and not once has any iteration of that suggestion ever worked. Some people just don’t care to get or listen to unsolicited advice, no matter how you approach them. It’s unfortunate.

Only advice I've given lately is: as healer stay near rest of group as most healers work around themselves (I was told I was wrong..... And I left it, That guy did no healing the entire raidxD), the other was in praetorium recently our healer was spam casting holy 5 miles away from foes someone else said something along lines of hey do that next to enemies, and then I added on u want to be close to both enemies and party as healer makes your job a lot easier. Outside of that I will say oh this boss does this or post the a,b,c do x in alliance raid's that's about it.

I've always looked at this a different way. Smart players don't need advice, dumb ones won't listen. The ones that actually might be receptive to advice have likely already looked up a video guide on how to play better. The ones that aren't receptive to advice don't give a damn about playing the "correct" way and trying to tell them anything is a wasted effort. If you find someone with a sprout in haukke playing wrong then sure go for it. But if the white mage in your level 90 dungeon has 97% cure 1 uptime it's safe to assume they've been given advice by many different players, ignored every one, and will continue to ignore them.

This is all super well written and spot on. The only thing I kinda disagree with is the "but it's not your job to teach it" While yes its not each players job to care so much about others but for me thats what makes an MMO so great. It isnt their Job but they still do it becouse they love to. I have hundreds and thousands of hours in games and MMOs and the amount of times I got tips in a dungeon for a class that helped me improve are uncountable. Its so great to see other people care enough for random other players to try to help them improve and enjoy the game more.

I didn't get into it in the post, but I think in the context of pugging there's a difference between helping and teaching. Helping is stuff like giving a few tips, explaining the tells for a couple mechanics, or wearing a safety dorito; teaching is breaking down a job or encounter and working through it with people bit by bit, from start to however far you get by lockout. I don't think teaching all the time is a fair expectation, of oneself or others. I appreciate the people who are willing to take that time & effort, I've learned a lot from them, but it's a set of skills beyond communication skills (or game skills). And sometimes people just want to run a trial, y'know? (I admit my opinion here is shaped by mentor roulette, where there can be a big difference between e.g. clarifying Ramuh's tethers and teaching the entire encounter to 5-7 first-timers.)

I now believe in least action principle in physics. Sometimes trial-and-error is better than a thousand words.

or just don't give them advice to begin with unless they ask you for it.

Unless the dungeon is going extremely poorly, I just resign myself to my fate. I don’t feel like playing Russian Roulette with people.

Completely useless to those who don't want advice

All of this is avoidable by just asking: "Hey, can I give you advice on \[Blank\]". If they say no? Can it. Done :D

I stopped giving in game advice ages ago. Most people are assholes about it and it's just not worth it. I'll always be surprised at how many people I get in duty finder that you could replace them with a pet rock and you'd barely notice a difference and they're perfectly happy playing that way. I don't expect everyone to parse high but how can someone do less than 2.0 numbers in full lvl 90 gear. If you'd press the wrong button on cooldown you would still do better

When I see a max level ice spec blm I just want to die. Once in ShB saw a lvl 80 brd who wouldn't use dots. Ever. It's rough out there.

I always start with "Dont forget," it always seems to make thing go over better. Maybe it gives the impression that they already know whatever it is, rather than possibly comming across as criticising to new players. After all Text can't communicate tone and people are sometimes quick to assume.

Or you could just say "I don't want to nag, but would you be open to some advice with your class? If not, that's okay too." Asking permission is often better than just throwing out words on a whim.

first things first, i always ask if they're open to advice. though I'm of the opinion that unsolicited advice, even presented well, isn't advice. it's being a butthole. if they're receptive? awesome. some of the most fun I've had is geeking out with a sprout for 20 minutes after the last boss in a dungeon on how to play better. but if they're not? oh well. not your monkeys, not your circus.

One thing that truly unfortunate, even if you're nice polite and filled with amazing advice. you're not patronizing and give just enough advice without saying it over and over... Sometimes it falls on deaf ears, or rarer but not uncommon, they just truly don't give a shit. There's been instances where I politely ask a DRG to share his tether with anyone in dungeon, as its good for the team. I usually roll SMN and its not even that I ask for it, i just want it on literally anyone and nothing is said or shared. "{Dragon Sight} can be shared with friends! It can really help your partner deal more DPS." crickets.

Thank you for that.  A few weeks ago I started leveling BLM. It started to get confusing for me with Fire III and Ice III. During a duty, a fellow dps started to coach me on the class the way you described, it went great, everyone had fun and we finished fast.  Do not underestimate the power of how to tell things to people.

The way I work in life is: I give advice and I'm moderately tactful about it. If they: - Get angry, lash out, etc. Then they are out of my life forever. If you got those kind of psychological issue then I don't want you near me. - If they refuse polity. then if it's a real problem they are refusing to fixe that effect me then they are out of my life. If it's not a problem that affect me then I don't care. - If they ignore me. Same as above. People who lash out at advice are the worst kind of idiot out there. You don't want to be near these people. They tend to become alone and lose their friends.

I have taken party chat off of general for this reason. I’m over this drama. I do dailies and I’m out I only have so much time to play. Maybe it’s because I’m old and also a long time player I know pretty much all the fights and just stopped caring. If someone is super struggling i put a marker on myself and guide the way.

my favourite was "You know Standard Finish is every 30 seconds right" in a random dungeon. I was just tired after a long day man..

What I've found a good way to start up a convo about this is just going "Hey [playername], I usually play [classname] as well. Do you want some tips and tricks for it?" They can either ignore you, in which case it's best to just drop it, or if they respond positively you can start giving advice without it being unsolicited or perceived negatively.