Please be well geared...

Oh. Carry on!

Agreed, same reason I get pissed off when people attack mobs i am fighting.

Everyone's an elitist and everyone's a troll. Welcome to the internet where words get used out of context continuously until they lose all meaning.

I'm sorry, but we obviously have different interpretations on what the word 'advice' means. When I talk about advice, its information passed on in a friendly manner with the intention to help someone where they may not be informed on a method that they may find easier. Stop trying to weasel your way around the argument and bring up stuff which is obviously irrelavent. Why would bashing count as advice?

Who said anything about judging lol. I look at someones gear and see that they have a lot of HP so I let them know they if they took it out and replaced it with power their toon would be much more effective for DPS or healing. It's not forcing anything on anyone, its merely giving them the option of following through and investigating what I was saying to them and perhaps improving their toon.

If they already knew they could do that and consciously chose to stack endurance, telling them that can be perceived as telling them their doing it wrong.

The point is that most people don't realise what they should be stacking to get the most out of their class. I said a few pages ago that I helped a full raid group with the gear slotting and they had no idea they were not doing it correctly, and were extremely grateful about the help. I don't just randomly PM someone saying, "Oh, your bad, your gear is all **** and wrong, do this.". If it's someone in my group I will whisper them and point it out nicely in an attempt to help them out if they weren't aware of what they had done.

You may do it that way, but not everyone is as discrete with unrequested advise. Just saying how it can be offensive, depends on how advise is given and how it is received.

I honestly don't get this. Neither of us ever said we force advice, we have both been very carefull about saying when and how we woudl give advice, a lot of people in this thread seem to have skipped over that. Sorry I know you do get it now but you were the last comment :P

But if you go and do something as a group and you are making a mistake (we all do it, I know I have) you will be given some advice, unusually in a polite and friendly manner. If you find that insulting think how the group you are with feel.

I have had a few times with players who joined my guild players who get insulted if you try and help them and then refuse to listen. This is actually very selfish of them as they are then ruining the game for more players.

If you do anything as a group activity, in real life or a game, people will give you advice. Some will be arses about it, most will not. Please listen if they do, you can always say afterwards, actually I disagree can we do it like this instead and most people will listen then have a discussion.

Exactly. I don't see what is so hard about this concept.

So because there are so many uneducated players out there with bad builds, it's your duty to tell them where they're going wrong because you assume their build is a mistake, and you assume that you know better, and you assume that they will be happy having received your advice.

Aside from the fact that making those assumption alone is, well, rude.

As I've already said in my previous point, if you allow the justification that it's ok to do that, everyone will have different standards of what they will give advice on. Evidenced by the reason this thread exists.

I don't know why the two of you are so defensive, I've not said anything about the way you personally conduct your conversations. I've given examples of how people will interpret "it's ok to tell someone what you think they're doing wrong, even if they haven't asked for your opinion"

Like I also already said, take this example to other things and it quickly falls down. Every time I see someone make a bad quality post, should I explain to them what they did wrong and how they should do it better? Tell every fat person I meet that they are fat and could do with losing a few pounds? And so on.