After 7+ Months, Astrope! Experiences And Thoughts From A Jp (elemental) Mentor

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Hello! I recently got Astrope and I saw that post couple days back of another Mentor from Primal DC getting Astrope, so I figured I should share my data and experience from Elemental DC as well. For those interested I'm from Typhon. I think my data is pretty accurate due to the long patch intervals leading to few new duties. Since I started recording in late April I believe there's only been the addition of Eden's Verse, NieR Alliance Raids, and 2 dungeons (Anamnesis Anyder and The Heroes' Gauntlet). It's been such a long journey - I did Mentor Roulette almost daily and it's been incredibly taxing. Before anything else I'd just like to thank my FC and friends for putting up with my rants and salt - without them I probably would've gone mad or gave up LOL.



Limsa - Where it all began

Data


Alright so...let's get data out of the way first. Here are my records: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LuYowignN1cmrwm4V2TkwuOUN_QcOxWQEQC8VxT5XM4/edit?usp=sharing . I only started recording from my 137th clear onwards, and since I got Astrope before 2000 duties recorded while being relatively near it, I decided to just continue queuing past #2000 to get nicer percentages. I recorded every duty queued - both successes and failures (abandons), and the time recorded is to the nearest half-minute. My 2000th MR was The Final Steps of Faith, which I found very fitting and poetic. Also, I thought it'd be interesting to see if certain roles get certain duties more than others so I queued as all roles - Tank: Gunbreaker, Healer: Astrologian, Magic DPS: Summoner, Ranged Physical DPS: Dancer, Melee DPS: Samurai. 250 times for Tank/Healer, 500 times for each DPS role. You can check out the duty distribution for yourself in the link above! Note that I mostly queued during peak hours - 7pm-1am GMT+8, and counted Urth's Fount as an Extreme trial.

Tank MR is basically either dungeons or Extreme trials - If I see an 8-man duty for Tank MR it's most likely (72.5%) an Extreme trial. Healer MR is M(SQ) Roulette in disguise - Probably because healers level faster just queuing dungeons, so MSQ roulette lacks healers? I queued into 260 Extreme trials in total with 197 successes (75.8% success rate), and I've cleared each Extreme trial from ARR to Stormblood at least once except for Susano Ex (never encountered), Seiryu Ex (never encountered either), and Sephirot Ex (5 encounters, 5 abandons :(). I spent a total of 259 hours within Mentor Roulette duties and 226 days from when I started recording to my last Mentor Roulette.



Sea of Clouds @ Sunset

The Elemental DC MR Experience


Synced Extremes

From my observations, most that queue Mentor Roulette have cleared the current Savage tier at the time and generally know how to do all Extreme trials synced. I don't remember having any mentor straight up leave after seeing an Extreme trial, but I feel like there's an implicit understanding amongst the mentors that if a clear is nowhere in sight, there will be a vote abandon at 15. Failing which and if the party is really hopeless, if someone is willing to take the penalty, they'll just leave and the others will follow. However, most players that queue Extreme trials directly in Duty Finder know what to do or just need a little guidance, so clear rates are pretty decent. I will say that I personally will just leave before the 15 minutes is up if I see red flags like the tank chain pulling after wipes despite not knowing what to do or folks being disruptive while I'm trying to explain stuff. Also, mentors don't usually teach the fight's mechanics for a couple of reasons.

Language: Although Elemental DC has the highest E population amongst all JP DCs, the vast majority are still J players. So naturally, language would be an issue for J mentors in an E party and vice versa. Thankfully I'm able to (roughly) converse in Japanese and with the help of Google Translate for certain words, I'm usually able to get the message across to J players. However, I've not seen another mentor that can converse in both English and Japanese so that's probably a big reason why usually stuff isn't explained.

Fight complexity: This is partially linked to language, since the harder the fight, the more complicated the mechanics become for translation to either language. If you have a simple fight like Ultima Ex, the only instructions needed are just "Non-healers pop the balls even if you will die" and "Tank swap on 4 debuff stacks" - simple. But if you have something like Sephirot Ex, there is quite a lot of stuff first-timers need to be aware of, assuming they enter blind. So instead of explaining to the few blind first-timers, it's generally expected and assumed that you have studied the fight yourself before you queued instead of wasting everyone else's time inside the duty. That said, a good portion of players (usually sprouts) that enter fights blind don't listen to instructions or advice anyway so...

For ARR Extremes, usually unless the Tank/Healers are clueless, just throw a couple of Echo stacks onto the party and it's a clear. However, this probably led to players underestimating the difficulty of Extreme trials and they get a rude awakening in Heavensward Extremes with duties like Nidhogg and Sephirot Ex. No amount of Echo stacks is going to salvage a bad nails phase in Nidhogg, or help survive physical/magic vulnerability up in Sephirot. Afterwards in Stormblood Extremes, players generally know that Extremes are not something you go into unprepared, so clear rates go way up (I always cry inside when I queue into Rathalos Ex as a healer though).



Normal duties

Nothing much to say here, just like how nothing much is usually said during duties apart from the standard greetings. Generally folks are competent in duties, but you'll still get the occasional pure heals healer and non-AoE dps even in lvl80 dungeons. After trying (and failing) to get them to use their abilities, eventually you just learn to bite the bullet and suffer silently through the duty.



Proudest moment: Mentor Roulette #313 - Thornmarch (Extreme) as Gunbreaker

I guided 7 (mostly blind) first-timers with a mix of both J and E players through Mog King Ex and the sense of achievement and pride was undescribable. I actually felt like I had made a difference(?) and that my efforts actually paid off. Having to constantly switch between Japanese and English during the fight was quite a challenge though, but the hard part about Mog King Ex isn't the instructions - it's the execution. So to make things as simple as possible I just told everyone not to use any damage-over-time abilities (to avoid early kills), and to only attack moogles I marked (aggro list makes keeping track of health and marking moogles easy). Since they were actually learning and paying attention I decided to see it through the entire way and we finally got a clear after ~45 minutes! Of course being a tank for that duty helped a lot since half of the issue with positioning is already settled.



Worst moment: My one and only normal duty abandon - Cinder Drift as Summoner

There was a premade of 5 players (2 Tanks, 2 Healers, 1 DPS) and all were entering the duty blind. I tried my best to tell them what to do and where to go, but they were clearly having their own fun just wiping multiple times to every mechanic and their DPS was being particularly disruptive. Placing a marker on my head for them to follow during dashes didn't work well either since they just wouldn't follow. I still remember what the DPS said - "I couldn't follow because I'm dead", but he died due to the dashes by being miles away from me when the dashes started... By some miracle we reached phase two, but even then they were still not listening so we wiped to even the raidwide AoE from the giant meteor falling. After 35 minutes and 10+ wipes I was ready to just leave even if the vote abandon failed but thankfully it did. My morale and motivation really hit rock bottom after that and never fully recovered. If you want to go in blind, fine, but for the love of Eorzea please listen and take things seriously if you aren't in a full premade party.



Extreme trials in Mentor Roulette?

I believe many folks have an issue with Extreme trials being in Mentor Roulette - sprouts don't like unhelpful mentors, mentors don't like inexperienced sprouts etc. At first I was of the opinion that Extreme trials should be removed from Mentor Roulette as well, but now I don't oppose to Extreme trials being in Mentor Roulette. Having Extreme trials in Mentor Roulette allows newer players to experience high-end content without having to reach the latest expansion where all the action is happening. Within Elemental DC at least, people regularly queue for past expansions' Extreme trials (I assume for fun) - The average wait time shown as a DPS for most Extreme trials (pre-Shadowbringers) is less than 20 minutes during peak hours. The average ARR Extreme party is generally competent enough to carry 1 or 2 first-timers without much issue (can't say the same for Heavensward/Stormblood Extreme trials though). Even if it ends in an abandon or failure, players would hopefully learn that Extreme trials are a huge step up from their normal dungeons/trials and hopefully prepare before their next Extreme trial. Spending time now for newcomers to learn a valuable lesson and for the endgame community to benefit from better players in the future? Fine by me.



Shirogane - My house!

Issues


Average minimum ilvl

The current way SE handles minimum ilvl is currently being taken advantage of. It was a step in the right direction when they finally introduced minimum ilvl for dungeons, but they're using *average* minimum ilvl. I'm pretty sure it's present in NA and EU DCs as well, where people will get cheap accessories to boost their ilvl while being severely undergeared for the other slots. Seeing people in Shadowbringers dungeons equipping Stormblood weapons or wearing Scaevan gear in Amaurot boosted by Neo-Ishgardian accessories is quite disappointing, though I will say that this issue is rare and thus probably not worth the time implementing it. But it's clear from that lvl5 quest that SE is able to do individual gear slot checks, so why not use it?



Story mode Titania and Innocence have no minimum ilvl

I didn't realise this myself until I saw this Dancer in Titania Normal using lvl60 gear. After that I tried queuing for Titania with nothing but my weapon, and it worked! I get that this is probably to discourage Trial Roulette ilvl cheese but when you see people with lvl60-67 weapons in Titania and even Innocence, it just feels really *really* bad. Then again it's rare, and the best solution I can think of is having an additional minimum ilvl check before queuing in Duty Finder depending on the level of the job you're queuing with.



I hope SE eventually implements something to address these (Christmas present please?) since responses I've gotten so far from those players is basically either silence or "The game allows it, so why are you complaining?"



Eulmore @ Night

End


If you've read through the entire post, thank you for your patience! I didn't originally mean for it to be this long but I guess I just had more things to say than I thought I had. I'm considering posting this to FFXIV's official forums as well to hopefully get some attention to the issues if possible, or just to share the data.

Tips for fellow mentors

  • For Extreme trials, keep instructions as simple as possible - Typing a long story is nice, but being more direct is generally more effective
  • Take breaks often - Don't lose your sanity. It's a marathon, not a sprint!
  • Try your best to help others in normal duties even if they may respond unkindly - At least you can hold your head up high and said you tried!
  • Try and behave appropriately when wearing the crown so people's image of mentors will (hopefully) improve. Don't avoid the crown just because of bad impressions - wear it and aim to improve the attitude towards mentors!

Tips for newcomers

  • Do your job quests regularly! - It gives free gear and your important skills
  • Please don't be unresponsive in chat - You'll make a mentor's (mine at least) day if they try to help you and you respond positively!
  • If you meet a bad mentor, please know that we aren't all like that! Even better - aim to become one yourself and be the change you want to see!

Feel free to ask me any questions regarding Mentor Roulette or just Elemental DC in general, and I'll try my best to answer! All the best to those still trying for Astrope - don't give up and stay helpful!

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