Is this truly wrong?

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Raided, my dear. Raided. I am retired now and observe young whippersnappers getting cleaved in half from my veranda. :D
Was rather hilarious though: I went into Omega savage 5/6/7 the other day in order to help out. Apart from being rusty it was interesting how easily and quickly it all came back to me.
The difference between O6 and 7 gave me a good chuckle though. What a cliff. :D

But alas, after 8.5yrs of active raiding I am done with the "scheduled" gameplay thing. Helping out now and then, sure but planning evenings around raids, being there whether you really feel like playing or not because you people need you to progress ... naah. I rather poke away at my piano these days. :D

PS: Kudos for getting over your addiction!

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LOL that gave me a good chuckle :D I've felt like that as I've got older, "meh, let the younger ones have at it"..that and taking thousands of years to get off the floor from a kneeling position, with everything creaking :rolleyes: And thank you :)

As I am reading your posts Kaiva, I get the feeling that maybe a break from the game will help you to calm down a little.

I'm usually not someone to suggest this, as I probably love this game just as much as you do and can understand that not playing it, even though you want to, is much to ask.
But really, I get kind of worried when I read what you write..because you really sound sad and dissapointed at yourself. This clearly isn't healthy for you. :(

And in no way I am saying that you should just give up at getting better, because if you keep at it you will surely improve. You already have.
BUT there are so many things more important in life than a high dps output or big numbers on FFLogs.
Ingame, you are so focused on your numbers right now that it will be hard to keep away from it and just focus on something else, of course you can try it, but habits are hard to fight most of the time.

So taking a break for like...maybe a week or so might help you to clear your head from everything. And then, when you come back, you might have a different view on things :)
Always remember that your health is the most important thing. Don't stress yourself so much that you don't enjoy playing anymore.
As some people already wrote, it's a game, not a reallife job. ;)

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Originally Posted by Vidu

But at the end of the day: why do you let this ruin the fun for you?

Specially if you still manage to clear everything you want to clear.

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SSS doesnt have mechanics. SSS doesnt have party buff alignments.

It's piss easy to hit 6k on a dummy. Especially on Black Mage.

Bad raiders look only at the numbers of a log. You might see someone parse grey and think oh he's garbage. But look closer and see oh okay, he got hit by Intense Pain, and received no healing between that and Demonic Howl. The tank also ate Pain multiple times, but the DPS didn't, so we can assume the tank didnt move for Pain. Then look closer and see okay, he had no AST/BRD/NIN. Look closer and see he had to handle the mechanic due to party composition like disengaging for Siren, and he used Limit Break. That's a lot of downtime.

Also, FFLogs definitely needs a way to snapshot gear, or at the very least, ilvl. Posting a log in i340 is deathsentence.

Ignoring that, your logic isnt solid either. There are plenty of greys out there that *ARE* greys. I've seen nins that legitimately dont know how to TA. Others that think starting with TA before any GCDs is best. Players that have cleared god clown with every parse they've ever had as grey. Who is in their party? Golds and high purples. You arent managing to clear if you're those kinds of players. You're getting carried.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I might've typed too fast to realize what I was saying, but the 9th percentile is in Savage for most of those runs. The 50th percentile I recently obtained was in O8 Normal, and is, in my opinion, worse than what I was pulling last month on Savage fights because those are generally much harder. I have no idea what I pulled this week on O5, O6, and O7.

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Ah, I see. But if that's what you're doing then you're only making things harder for yourself. Savage and HM are different fights, they have the same base but savage does more damage and has more mechanics. You are comparing apples to oranges and wondering why you're faltering; you are using the correlation between savage and hm to determine your change in performance and you can't really do that. If you want to accurately test your performance then you need to test your performance on the same thing. If you're at 9% 2 weeks ago then run with a friend a few times in Savage to get your performance now. Doing what you're doing is basically guessing without any facts and as you've already stated, you're very hard on yourself therefore your guesses aren't going to be in your favor.

Honestly, even if all you've done is go up 5% in 2 weeks I'd call that successful training; in a limited timeframe you've shown improvement of your skills. Is a 5% increase your goal? Nope, nor would I suggest you should stop there if you aren't happy with it but it is proof that you're progressing, that you're improving. I don't want to dictate how you should play but I'd suggest that perfection should not be your goal, just steady improvement and aim for that 1-2% increase each week until you hit the 80th+ percentile. Aim for a goal that you know you can achieve, you'll feel better about it each week and some weeks you may even surprise yourself with higher improvements. Expecting 10% increases each week is only going to set yourself up for failure and make you feel worse.

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Originally Posted by Luin

SSS doesnt have mechanics. SSS doesnt have party buff alignments.
It's piss easy to hit 6k on a dummy. Especially on Black Mage.

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Yes, thats why I suggest SSS to figure out wether its someones rotation thats a problem or if its mechanics. (afaik SSS is also calculated without party buffs and the like in mind - its basically really telling you wether or not you know the "mechanics" or "rotation" of a class well enough and if you're geared enough to pull the DPS required)

An ice-mage will never beat the O7S-dummy, with or without mechanics.
If you clear it with ease though, you can now rest assured that you've got your job down and its infact more the fight you need to work on more.

Consdering all the factors that come into play with the numbers on fflgos - buffs from party-members, mechanic mess ups that werent your fault, no healing, getting picked for a mechanic that requires you to disengage, having to raise a healer to save the group etc. etc. - I'd say to get an idea wether or not you're doing fine on a ground level, SSS is the better option.

Ofc there are people getting carried and obviously thats bad - especially when those people dont strife to improve. But what good does it do to tell someone whos trying to improve "Yeah, you're just bad"? Instead of rather being like "Okay, check if you have your rotation down and wether or not thats the problem"?

My point is: Personally, I can go into fights with more ease after I've beaten SSS on that class, because I know that I'm capable of performing with that class in general.
For any numbers generated in that fight, I'm taking into account anything else that contributed to them. All with the knowledge, that my class-performance isnt the problem and that I only need to get the dance of this encounter down (and teach that AST that crit-buffs are for bards!)

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

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Quitting is easy, getting good is hard but remember the simple fact that you trying to get better is more than most people are willing to do. Keep at it and trust you'll get better over time, if you're not already doing it now try hitting a dummy a few hours out of your day while you're in que etc. Find one of your friends who can check your numbers because as of now you're only seeing the random runs where you might not of been at your best. Getting good doesn't happen over night its a journey, but do remember to have fun first and foremost.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

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Have you ever thought about tackling savage content with different classes? Summoner has a daunting rotation that very few can get right in every occassion, not to mention that u have to adjust said rotation on EVERY savage fight to get the most out of your spells, there are many more classes with easier rotations, id be happy to recommend a few based upon what you think you are the best at doing right now. :)

What also doesn't help with that is reading forum posts.

I usually play healers. A while a go I tried the O5S dummy with my ilvl 348 RDM and beat it with 0-2 seconds. I even failed it once because I accidentally pressed the wrong buttons. In the past I did the same with the O1S dummy and no matter how often I tried, I didn't get better than maybe 3 seconds faster or so.

And then there are posts by players who say (just an example) 5000 dps is very, very low and only bad players do so little dps. And there are posts by players who say they almost never play RDM and still can beat the O5S dummy with ilvl 330 with 20 seconds left on the timer.

I don't know at all if that's wrong or if it's normal, but it makes me feel so extremely bad that I only very rarely play a DPS anywhere.

In case it hasn't been said, logs are EXTREMELY reliant on equipment - especially weapon wise. I can guarantee you that by now, everyone in the 90% bracket have their ilvl 370-375 weapon, and are close to (if not) ilvl 370. And it makes a huge difference.

Also, you absolutely have to use pots. If you don't use pots, you'll struggle to break past 80%. Hell, even 70% is a struggle without pots sometimes.

And now for a somewhat minor variable you might not be aware of - padded runs. A ridiculous amount of people will end up with better parses than you, simply because the AST is giving them all the Balance cards, and stuff like that. But you don't have to worry about this if all you want is to get close to the 90s.

For starters, just focus on getting to ilvl 370. Get your weapon, and THEN try showing what you're capable of.

Well...I still think this is stupid, but i get the sense Kaiva simply won't let go of it, so some more tips.

In overwatch reddit, people often ask for a VOD, you could do that here. That means you go out, do a normal savage run, and record the whole run so experienced players can see it and give tips/critique play. Get a buddy to also parse the run for you, and post both in a place you trust people will give you balanced feedback on it, and go down the fight play by play. They will point out that you are lagging on your opener, or not pressing buttons enough, or tend to end deathflare or something too early or too late etc.

Also, pick one savage fight, and just do it nonstop for like a month in every situation. Do it till you are sick of the stupid thing, and you have gear for every class. Do it with pugs so you see everything that can go right or wrong with it. Forget the logs, just do the thing till you can do it in your dreams. I'd bet your parses would go up then.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

Gear, potions and padded runs

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Im sorry but the first two points are just false, logs are very reliant on player ability, not logs or potions, heres a good players alt who has an iLvl of 35x : Cherry Cordial, look her up wherever.

As for potions they make a difference but not that much, they do not make or break a parse, as for padded runs, they are few and inbetween, yes, they exist and it sucks, but they wont make nor break your percentiles, all they break are All Star points which almost nobody cares about.

Its mostly about player ability, thats the first and foremost hurdle for anyone that has low percentiles, saying its about gear, potions or padded runs.....those are just excuses, anyone can get purple with enough work and dedication, regardless of gear or whatever.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

The irony is that this all originally started from a friendly competition with a good RDM. I came up numbers wise about 500 short, which spurred me to try it again with SMN, thinking I was hot stuff...and came up even shorter. While I'm positive melds have a bit to do with it, it's more or less that since the last thread, I'm getting worse, even as I'm optimizing my rotations on SMN. I've started sticking with tanking - particularly learning WAR - because I just got too frustrated with trying to improve.

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The thing with that is that you came up 500 short, against a really good player who has more experience on RDM. There was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in your play that night. I know, I was healing it. :D

We have people of significantly varying skill levels in our little group, but some of them are really, really good. Comparing yourself to them is like grabbing a hockey stick and comparing yourself to a professional hockey player. If you can even keep up with them you're doing well, although it might not feel like it at the time. It's easy to lose perspective when you only play with people like that and start thinking you're worse than you actually are.

I look at it this way. You were doing 500 less than the other RDM. When we did it this week we didn't have you, and we had DF people doing 2500 less than that RDM instead who were also dying to mechanics that you were handling no problem. We would have greatly preferred to have you with us.

Have you got room for improvement? Sure. So do I! So does almost every single person in that group. Acknowledging that is perfectly healthy. But you're a better RDM than you think you are, and there's no shame in having a lower number than someone else when that number is still more than enough to carry your own weight.

(As others mentioned, we also didn't have a composition that was geared towards getting high parses. No AST, a BLM, two RDMs. That's going to affect the percentile number significantly and has no bearing on how well you play RDM at all. On top of that, it was normal. We don't care if you get orange numbers. We just want to get clears and hang out, and it's more fun to do that with you than without you.)

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Yes, thats why I suggest SSS to figure out wether its someones rotation thats a problem or if its mechanics. (afaik SSS is also calculated without party buffs and the like in mind - its basically really telling you wether or not you know the "mechanics" or "rotation" of a class well enough and if you're geared enough to pull the DPS required)

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Most SSS dummies are overtuned. Remember NIN SSS for Delta? Or MNK this patch? 5500dps to kill that dummy. (Sam was 5660 too!) It was nearly impossible to beat with 4.1's BiS even with pots and food, but plenty of low ilvl monks and sams went and cleared o8s regardless with much less than 5500dps for Clown on wk1. Alexander's SSS was also notoriously bad.

My point is without actually watching someone, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where the problem is, even with logs.

Edit - IMO SSS should be at least 5 minutes, preferably 9 minutes long. You shouldnt need to alter a proper raid rotation to fit more buffs in a 3 minute dummy fight, when there are no 3 minute fights. At the least it'd be a more accurate dummy.

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Originally Posted by Luin

Most SSS dummies are overtuned. Remember NIN SSS for Delta? Or MNK this patch? 5500dps to kill that dummy. (Sam was 5660 too!) It was nearly impossible to beat with 4.1's BiS even with pots and food, but plenty of low ilvl monks and sams went and cleared o8s regardless with much less than 5500dps for Clown on wk1. Alexander's SSS was also notoriously bad.

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For my point thats actually even better, because, let me repeat this to you: Its about figuring out wether or not you've got enough knowledge and gear for that fight on the job you're trying the dummy with.
I'm not saying that killing the dummy means that you'll clear the fight.
Or that not killing the dummy means you wont clear the fight or wont do well enough in it.

We've already agreed on fflogs not being a real accurate representation of dps and performance either, at least not as long as you're only looking at rare numbers, because they dont take into account your gear, the party-buffs, how well you dealt with mechanics (that might require you to disengage the boss - for example in my static I'm doing Typhon in O6S. I'm the OT - not sure if our way is ideal, but its how we're doing and clearing the fight for a few weeks now. Works. But also means that I'll lose uptime on the boss), if a SMN/RDM raised someone (which might have saved the group - in my book a person who raises a healer is better than the person who pushs for more DPS, specially if the dead healer leads to a wipe) and so on.

So my whole point is to use the dummy in order to give yourself an idea if you're skill- and gear-wise ready for this content.
If you beat it with or if you're getting at least close to beating it (<5% left), you should be fine in general.
If you're not even getting close to that, you know something is wrong with your rotation or your gear and you can check for that.

On a very basic level I'd say bad parser can come from two things:
Not enough knowledge of the fight - or not good enough at the job (thats meant to include gear and skill).
SSS lets you test wether or not its the later.

I'm not really sure what your issue with the idea of testing that this way is, to be honest.
I've never claimed not beating a dummy means you're to bad for a fight - but I'd dare argue that not getting close to beating a dummy (>20% left) means you're probably not ready for a fight yet. From there you go anf igure out why - so: gear or skill?

I joined a group in the PF on Tuesday that wanted to do o5-7. Joined in with them on Discord. After we cleared o5, I asked if anyone was logging. I felt like I totally crushed it, never did a misclick and managed to nail my elusive jump/other jumps/sprint to keep uptime up time... yet when they read me my #s, I was only at 5k. I was heartbroken, because the week prior I got 4 new pieces of gear.

I simply said to the group, thats gotta be better. And they responded with something surprising.... "We cleared it, you didnt die or get grabbed, who cares"? Before I could reply.... another person in the discord said, "you did better than me and I have better gear, who cares"?... So then I asked "why are you logging"? and they just said they only cared about themselves, for personal benefit, and dont judge others so long as they are clearing

And thats when it dawned on me, no one really SHOULD care, unless you are way under par and/or dying (causing the group to not clear).

I feel like im a pretty good DRG. My logs wont tell you that because of percentiles and such, but I know the rotation, know the fights, have a positive attitude, and lear quick. The gear and numbers will come with time, but for the time being, as long as you are pulling your weight, the numbers shouldnt matter

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Originally Posted by Nhadaly

Im sorry but the first two points are just false, logs are very reliant on player ability

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Of course player ability factors into it but given 2 players of equal skill, the one with a significantly lower item level won't stand a chance. It is simple mathematics.
Yes, the gap isn't as ridonculous in XIV as it is in WoW but gear is still of paramount importance.

If you parse yourself as a 350 alt you won't stand any chance against a 370+ that knows what he is doing. Pretending otherwise is ignoring the truth.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

I simply said to the group, thats gotta be better. And they responded with something surprising.... "We cleared it, you didnt die or get grabbed, who cares"? Before I could reply.... another person in the discord said, "you did better than me and I have better gear, who cares"?... So then I asked "why are you logging"? and they just said they only cared about themselves, for personal benefit, and dont judge others so long as they are clearing

And thats when it dawned on me, no one really SHOULD care, unless you are way under par and/or dying (causing the group to not clear).

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Pretty much my stance. I look at the logs 95% in order to assess MY performance.
I only looked at others in depth when we somehow struggled to see whether I could pinpoint any issues and try to help.

Logs are a wonderful diagnostic tool once you get past the %ile / DPS E-peen contest.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

First of all, please read up on mathematics and assess the logging sites in order to understand how these percentiles are derived.

You will quickly notice that FFlogs does NOT take item level into account (for a long time WoWs logging sites also did not do that).
Next up, please realize that the top parses are done by people that AIM for parses and have the support of bored raidgroups that have everything on farm.

As such, unless you wear BiS and are in one of these groups it's virtually impossible to get a 95%+ log.

That being said: if we're not talking about wipe tries (long inactivity crashes your DPS) or a bloody novice stepping into a raid for the first time, 9% or even 50% is BAD. If you and your group play well and you are not too far behind gear wise, you should get some score around the 80% mark.

That being said: Remember that FF-XIV is a "mechanics first" game. It is rare that you are allowed to ignore a given mechanic, soak the damage in order to maximize output.

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Pretty much this. This late into the raid tier, most people getting 90% or above either already have the tier on farm or are close to it. Either that, or they cleared the fight with an early performance so good that their Historical rating shows them as being at a high percentile for the time period that it was cleared, even though it would only be about 50-60th percentile today.

I'm largely in the latter category with my own O5S/O6S parses, hitting 98th/92nd percentile historical week 2 in ilvl 350 gear (as Bard). My parses since steadily fell due to being stuck on O7S for about 5 weeks (and thus falling behind in gear) and due to my lack of a static until very recently. It also doesn't help that Bard reliance on Dragoon is now so absurd that the mere presence of one contributes about 400-500 extra DPS for the Bard, which is something the developers really need to take a long, hard look at. I've only been able to climb back up to 96th/93rd this week with ilvl 360-370 gear. It took me too long to clear O7S and I've yet to clear O8S, but I have no delusions of ever breaking 90% on either fight.

I also have two historical 100 parses, for the last boss of Rabanastre and for Byakko EX, only because I had the highest recorded DPS of all Bards in the world for both fights during the first two days of release. A similar performance today would only count at around 80th-90th percentile.

https://www.fflogs.com/character/id/120007

There's always a lot of factors to consider, instead of taking the numbers at face value. It's kind of absurd that FFLogs does not have any way to record player ilvl. For instance, Bard is not only possibly the most gear-reliant of all the DPS, it is also by far the most reliant on party comp, due to the nature of how the critical hit stat works for them. No Dragoon and/or Scholar? You're not hitting 90+% this late into the raid tier.

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Originally Posted by Nhadaly

Im sorry but the first two points are just false, logs are very reliant on player ability, not logs or potions, heres a good players alt who has an iLvl of 35x. . . .

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Of course player skill plays a huge role. But if you take two equally skilled players, 1 with full 350 and one with full 370 BiS, the 370 BiS will numerically perform better than the 350 player. With the tier being almost halfway over, more and more players have i370 with their 375 weapons, and take up the top percentiles. They raise the bar that others have to meet to get into the higher percentiles. And yes, some of those oranges are heavily padded to give people pretty front pages, but it is much harder for an individual to get higher percentile parses the later you get into a tier. Just because of sheer competition.

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Its mostly about player ability, thats the first and foremost hurdle for anyone that has low percentiles, saying its about gear, potions or padded runs.....those are just excuses, anyone can get purple with enough work and dedication, regardless of gear or whatever.

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Again, see above what I said about two equally skilled players in different gear and the discrepancy there will be between them. Some jobs are also heavily reliant on others (BRD/MCH on DRG), and will perform lower than an equally skilled player that has the necessary party comp: a 370 BRD without a DRG will have a lower parse than an equally skilled 370 BRD with a DRG. It's not just player skill that make logs, because a lot of top logs are padded to give pretty numbers, or completely optimized between the entire static to give those perfect runs.

I am an i363 BRD. My last parse on v6s was 52 percentile the night it was uploaded. The time before that (~2 weeks prior) was 90 percentile. The difference in DPS was 5087 (52) and 5752 (90). Why was my percentile so much lower?
-I'm competing against speed runs with BRDs who have their BiS
-I'm competing against optimization runs that Min-Max every GCD
-I also had no DRG, and no AST.

My kill time was actually shorter on the 52nd percentile run, but just the fact that I was competing against players with better gear, and BRDs that have a DRG (which is the biggest hit to a BRD's DPS--I can still get purples with no AST). I did nothing different: same food, same rotation, potted at the normal times, I even had 2 more 370 pieces in the 52nd run. But my lower percentile wasn't due to my lack in skill, but my group's lack of ideal circumstances for BRD and my lack in gear. At most, if I lacked a bit it was because it was the first time I had done V6S since my 90.

Not trying to toot my own horn or saying some god-tier BRD because I've never managed an orange (my highest is 94 on Exdeath), but I can get purples. My blue isn't due to my lack in ability, but other external reasons. They can add up more than you think.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

I'm largely in the latter category with my own O5S/O6S parses, hitting 98th/92nd percentile historical week 2 in ilvl 350 gear (as Bard). My parses since steadily fell due to being stuck on O7S for about 5 weeks and due to my lack of a static until very recently. It also doesn't help that Bard reliance on Dragoon is now so absurd that the mere presence of one contributes about 400-500 extra DPS for the Bard, which is something the developers really need to take a long, hard look at. I've only been able to climb back up to 96th/93rd this week with ilvl 360-370 gear. It took me too long to clear O7S and I've yet to clear O8S, but I have no delusions of ever breaking 90% on either fight.

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Saito knows the pain.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Keep in mind, I still generally don't ask for my information to get uploaded - they just end up online (I usually check a few hours after my weekly runs).

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I think what you really need to do is get in touch with a summoner on your server in the 80th+ percentile, and have them look over your logs. It's good to know that you're under-performing because you're not casting enough, or not prioritizing something, but it's even better to know exactly where the mistake happened and why, because it gives you something tangible to work with.

The 9% Phantom Train parse, for example, isn't really indicative of your overall performance. You parsed that low because you didn't use your AOE burst during the adds phase. While you spiked to around 8k there with dots and tri-bind, other summoners spiked to around 30-50k with deathflare/painflare/ahk morn. If you were to go back today with that knowledge you could easily parse much, much higher. A good summoner can point out things to boost your numbers even more, until eventually they become habit and you realize you have become a good summoner.

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Originally Posted by Nhadaly

Im sorry but the first two points are just false, logs are very reliant on player ability, not logs or potions

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Yes, logs are very reliant on player ability. As in, it doesn't matter if you're ilvl 371 BiS everything, perfect party comp, and chugging pots - if you don't play your class properly, your numbers are still going to end up sucking.

THAT SAID, if all you do is play your class properly, zero deaths, everything lined up, THE PERFECT RUN... if you're running crafted ilvl 350 items, don't use pots, and your party is like... 2 WAR, 2 WHM, 2 BLM, a SAM, and you're the extra DPS... Dude, you can come up with the best rotation in the whole server, you're still not getting close to 90 percentile. Not at this stage, months after the raid has come out. Look how close the brackets are currently. You might just barely break 80, but ask yourself... why bother? Using pots will easily give you the boost you need, assuming your rotations are on point.

And the extra 20 item levels do help A LOT. Stop pretending "it's all skill". Next thing we know, you'll want us to believe the easy DPS increase that comes from getting your ilvl 370 weapon is due to lucky crits. LMAO

Took some time over the last couple of days to just focus on actually playing the game. Not just to figure out how to get my deeps up, but just playing the game through beast tribes and dungeons like I used to do. Funny how different it feels as opposed to how I started playing when Delta dropped in that I solely logged to raid and have big numbers. Riyah suggested something a page or two ago, so I'm going to give that a try - have to figure out how to record video with my PS4 and then track down some summoners willing to give it a good look. As for the current raid, I've sort of got stuck on SMN because of O7S. I despise the missiles because of their hit boxes. I'm not sure what it is, but I just cannot dodge the missiles in that instance if I'm a melee. I usually go DRG with that, but I don't get nearly as upset over damage numbers on that class because it's a different style than what I'm used to and I jump potioned that without a complete understanding of the job.

About playing for others' approval...I don't really play to get outright approval, but I do feel as if I should be skilled enough that others I happen to join in raids can count on me. And I feel a big part of that is having a high percentile. But that's just how I view my own playstyle in Eorzea. It's not something I push on others.

Given the variety of responses that I read through this morning, maybe it's time for me to admit that I need to back off from raiding for a little while. Not sure how many of the responders saw my other thread about a similar subject, but this is my first MMO (in the sense that I've played beyond two weeks). Seems like there's some real concern about my health - I can say that I'm fine, just getting overwhelmed at what I personally viewed as failure on my part. Thanks for the words and thoughts...I'm just going to try to break away from FFLOGs and raiding for a week, see if that helps at all.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

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If you'd like to record something on the PS4, just press the Share button on the left of the touchpad and then push the Square button. That should generally record everything up to the last fifteen minutes of gameplay, or however much time went by since your last recording if you've recorded less than fifteen minutes ago. You can then find your video in the Capture Gallery app on the PS4 later, where you can trim down the video, copy it to a USB drive, etc. I've actually made a habit of recording my first clears on trials lately so I can go back and see how I've improved.

I'm glad you're taking time to cool off and try some other stuff though. The raids will always be there when you're ready. I could recommend maybe giving Eureka a whirl for now during your downtime. It's not the most thrilling content available, but once you're levelled up enough to start getting loot boxes from the fates there's actually some pretty decent stuff that can drop, like tier VI materias as well as cracked clusters (which can definitely be useful for raids later), and of course the mount and barding. Depending on your current gear, you may or may not benefit from the Relics on this tier but it'd probably be worth investing in, if not for them most likely going to be top raiding gear in the final relic tier then at least for the cool glamour. Personally, I feel like the SMN relic weapon and body gear probably has the best-balanced potential stats for SMN next to their respective Savage pieces, so I'd recommend at least considering those for your progression. There's, of course, plenty of other things you could try out too in the game if that's not your cup of tea. Whatever you choose to do, I hope it helps you relax and feel better about things.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I'm kind of in that boat now, to the point that I've pretty much dropped DPS'ing entirely because I am incapable of keeping up with my peers. It's gotten to the point where I kinda shunned myself off because I feel like I don't belong with my peers anymore. This is more or less myself wondering if anybody is, or was, in that position. Or knew someone like this on the verge of...well, essentially calling it quits.

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Self doubt, self loathing, self cannabalization and seeking to be a perfectionist and stressing over every second is one of the greatest downfalls of any player seeking to get better. I've seen and been in the situation before. Always staring at my numbers and getting mad at myself for doing less then I should be doing. Turns out a constant focus on my numbers was what the problem was.

What did I do? I learned to just let it all go. I learned to seek a sorta "zen" state in a fight. Where numbers don't exist at all, where hot bars and abilities and everything technical doesn't exist at all. Just natural instinct. When that side of me takes over, timers and everything technical is in the back of my mind. Muscle memory is enough to let me know whats ready and what isn't per cooldown systems. Numbers only exist at the end of the fight when the boss is down and the state of zen ends. Only then did I see improvement. Not to mention a healthier life and mental state too. No more stress or sleepless nights and when in this state. The rest of the party doesn't exist. They're only shadows so to speak.It's as if I'm the only one there. It helps me to not get annoyed at others performances and if a wipe happens it makes it easier to move past it and try again

Zen For the win!
http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screen...all/288987.jpg

Seek calm even as the world around you is collapsing and just do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjs2vPR19mQ

Hey Riyah are you still monitoring this thread? Do you use discord? Wanted to link up with you outside of the forums.

I don't raid (even though I would like to, I just have nobody that would want to take me) so I just assume that I'm mediocre at best: dependable but I can always improve, & don't make the healer's job more difficult by standing in poop.

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Originally Posted by Noshpan

I don't raid (even though I would like to, I just have nobody that would want to take me) so I just assume that I'm mediocre at best: dependable but at least I'm not making the healer's job more difficult by standing in poop.

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From personal experience, learning parties are common enough in the pf that you could pick up the fight. I have yet to be in a static myself. It wouldn't hurt to give it a try. I'm on mobile, so I dunno what server you're on, not if you're in the aether Datacentre, I can go in with you when I decide to raid again

I think it's really easy to say "You need to take a break lolz because video gaem is just a gaem!!!111" when someone is upset that they're trying to seek improvement and aren't finding any improvement. It's obviously not good to get super wound up over a game, but there's no harm in trying to get better at a game either. Just know that everyone starts somewhere, so don't beat yourself up too much over it.

Anyways, I decided to take a look at your logs, Kaiva, and I just wanted to point something out. A lot of these logs are fairly old, dating back to February/early March. So I'm not really sure how well you're doing currently but I'd like to echo what Shihen suggested. Have a SMN main look over your logs. I recently stumbled upon a good guide for SMN. I can see if I can dig it up somewhere in my 3000 billion Discord servers. It was by Aymeric's Waifu, who is a pretty dang good SMN. I recommend giving it a look over. I don't know many SMN things, unfortunately, but I do know that checking the following will prob help:

1. Gear. Keep in mind that percentile is based on you vs other people and other people might have more gear or, most importantly, a better weapon.

2. BiS is a thing. You might not be getting gear that has optimal substats for your jobs.

3. Melds, pots, food. They make a huge difference in terms of your numbers. Don't have gil for it? Find a friend that can make you pots and food. Materia is pretty easy to get with hunts nowadays.

4. "Padds". That's what my group's PLD calls any group of adds. Like I said, fflogs is you vs other people and if other people are padding on adds with AoE... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. Keep in mind that FFlogs is kind of... well, just don't take it too seriously. It has great tools to look up people's performance, but seeing as we're past week 10 of the tier, it's gotten to the point where people are pulling silly parse runs and racking up really high numbers for "the lulz" or whatnot (there are people paying statics gil to give them parse runs...). If you're looking to have good numbers to get into a static, then keep in mind any good static worth joining won't just look at percentiles at face value. They will investigate what happened and why those numbers are like that.

Anyways, keep at it and don't get discouraged!

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

If you are doing everything right, and you know for a fact you are, then everything else falls into place. The focus needs to be on yourself, not others. Don't compare, just do.

I used a parser in WoW for awhile since they are permitted there. It actually made me do worse because I was always watching my numbers compared to other people. When I deleted that addon and began to focus on my own skill and made sure I was doing what was required, I was better for it. Usually in the top 5 at the very least in most cases there.

Carried that mentality over to XIV and it has never led me astray, but I'm always looking to improve my rotations if I'm able.

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There is a setting in the parser in WoW that tells it to only show it when it is not in combat. Everyone I know knows the setting is there. People who are annoyed or distracted by the parser in combat used it. I did.

And, while parsers are annoying when people flaunt them or use them to grief others, how else are you going to gauge your improvements or regressions? Beg others to parse for you and upload to a website every single time you want to see something?

I don't see a point in inconveniencing myself simply because I'm too lazy to set up the software in a way that wouldn't distract me during an encounter.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

From personal experience, learning parties are common enough in the pf that you could pick up the fight. I have yet to be in a static myself. It wouldn't hurt to give it a try. I'm on mobile, so I dunno what server you're on, not if you're in the aether Datacentre, I can go in with you when I decide to raid again

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I play on Primal data center & I must have great coincidental timing when I do check the PF I usually only see farm groups.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I enjoy SMN a lot, yes, and I pretty much have my rotation/priorities down as opposed to say, DRG or SAM or RDM.

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There are a couple of things you're forgetting. Gear makes a BIG if not HUGE difference.
When you have ilv 371, top food, top pots, get buffed up the wazoo, perfect party composition... yea it ain't that hard to make one perfect parse.
Does it mean it's reality? Hell no. Reality is, people make mistakes, people don't always have perfect stats, etc.
Never look at FFlogs assuming its reality. The other day i had a "top percentile raider" only interested in top DPS... ohhh boy did he let it be known he was a top percentile raider.
The guy was dead on the floor due to mechanics more than the first-timers.

So focused on damage, DAMAGE, DAMAGE!!!!! that he forgot the massive AOE going straight to his face...

If you're certain that you improved rotationally? have you considered that it might be the gear you're wearing? I'm no expert summoner, but I am someone whom knows Bard through-and-through.
If I drop an item with crit on it for something with skillspeed or det? I can see my damage take a nosedive. Might want to look into that direction :)

Most importantly; numbers are not an accurate representation of skill, I rather have someone with lower damage whom rarely fails mechanics than someone whom is top damage but failing repeatedly.
In the end it's more important to get the job done and have fun while doing so.

When I got better my mistakes becomes a lot of noticeable and irritating so even though I am playing a lot better than before I end up feeling like I performed worse instead because of it

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Originally Posted by Vidu

You really need to take fflogs with a grain of salt - those arent always totally "accurate" statistics. I actually just had a conversation with my boyfriend about this - he mains a BLM and explained to me that a lot of those higher BLM-numbers arent an accurate reflection of BLM-dps, because, for example, they come from runs in which the whole group optimised for that BLM (aka: ASTs feeding the BLM balance-cards and stuff like that - basically something that wouldnt happen in a real run.

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How many parses would you say are "inaccurate" due to cheesing/padding? I.e. how many BLM parses total, and how many you suspect/confirmed are cheese and it's impact on percentiles. I'd be curious to see your analysis.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

Unless you are in a static group that plays optimally I doubt you'll ever reach orange. I'm not even sure how likely high purple is. Don't beat yourself up about it.

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While orange ever eludes me in this game, I've been comfortably sitting at high purples without BIS throughout Delta/Sigma (current ilvl ~356). My statics were not the best players, in fact, far from it. I mean hell, I still have 340 pants from Delta, and a 350 head piece from normal, and 360 boots from tomes. I did just finally get my O8S weapon though so should see an improvement next week.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Simply clearing OS8 period likely means I'm able to perform at a higher level then the majority of players, but people aren't satisfied with that and have demanded that I show them my logs before they queue for some reason.

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Since your logs are hidden I cannot offer any insight. I can safely agree that on average, given the fact that you have cleared would likely mean you're better than most, but I wouldn't take that bet when I have 20 other people who have view-able logs and have cleared as well looking for a party/static.

For all we know you could have bought a clear and didn't want people to see you've only cleared it once, or that you were carried, etc.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

As such, unless you wear BiS and are in one of these groups it's virtually impossible to get a 95%+ log.

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Yo it's Wreck.

Copy paste from above:
While orange ever eludes me in this game, I've been comfortably sitting at high purples without BIS throughout Delta/Sigma (current ilvl ~356). My statics were not the best players, in fact, far from it. I mean hell, I still have 340 pants from Delta, and a 350 head piece from normal, and 360 boots from tomes. I did just finally get my O8S weapon though so should see an improvement next week.

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Originally Posted by Mayku

I had that feeling 3 days ago, I went for my weekly o6s in PF and we wiped over & over again on 1% .

I was Ast and a Mch who parsed complained I did 400dps when the sch did 2000dps, he said he could do 2500dps "easy" as a whm.

I told him I did most of the heals, buff everyone with cards + did pink mechanic that I wasn't use to (but didn't failed). That I am ok to try to dps more but that every time 5 dps died on instant death mech to max their dps, and it should give us the 1% missing.

I left sad, I am a healer I want to first heal, do mech, then buff, then dps...
A friend went to FFlogs and saw that I did 91% of the heals with less overheals than the sch.

How many times did I see ppl not buffing up pt's, not helping raising, not using CD's, not avoiding aoe's...Just for their parses. Is that being good at their job?

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I went to fflogs to look for the parse in question (the one your friend claimed he reviewed), but I can't find any indication it is there. I only saw one log with a MCH, and you didn't have a SCH in that party and it was O5S.

The few parties where you had a SCH, you were consistently outhealed by them and they overhealed less. Also - you actually have a log recorded where a WHM did almost 3k DPS (whether it was easy or not, is an entirely other topic). He did ~5x your raw damage, whereas you only did ~2x his raw healing. Accounting for cards lessens this by some factor though.

Now - assuming the run you mentioned exists somewhere and I'm just an idiot and blind, your DPS wasn't the issue you wiped. If you had 5 DPS dead, that's the issue, clean and clear.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

snip

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Kaiva - rule # 1 don't compare results from one content form to another. That's stupid.

Rule #2 getting a different percentile isn't a good/bad thing inherently. You need to analyze the actual changes week to week. Make sure you only ever compare fight length to fight length. Look at your CPM, your debuff/buff uptimes, and your raw damage done. Look for variances and analyze why they're different. Then apply the knowledge gained into understanding your percentiles.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

What also doesn't help with that is reading forum posts.

I usually play healers. A while a go I tried the O5S dummy with my ilvl 348 RDM and beat it with 0-2 seconds. I even failed it once because I accidentally pressed the wrong buttons. In the past I did the same with the O1S dummy and no matter how often I tried, I didn't get better than maybe 3 seconds faster or so.

And then there are posts by players who say (just an example) 5000 dps is very, very low and only bad players do so little dps. And there are posts by players who say they almost never play RDM and still can beat the O5S dummy with ilvl 330 with 20 seconds left on the timer.

I don't know at all if that's wrong or if it's normal, but it makes me feel so extremely bad that I only very rarely play a DPS anywhere.

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In my experience - people with your issue simply aren't pushing buttons enough. Letting oGCDs sit off cooldown for extended periods of time, not pushing buttons quickly enough (2.5s GCD, but only pushing buttons every 3.3s or so), stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

And now for a somewhat minor variable you might not be aware of - padded runs. A ridiculous amount of people will end up with better parses than you, simply because the AST is giving them all the Balance cards, and stuff like that.

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copy paste from above:
How many parses make up a "ridiculous number of people" due to cheesing/padding? I.e. how many parses total, and how many you suspect/confirmed are cheese and it's impact on percentiles. I'd be curious to see your analysis and how you arrived at the data point.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

I joined a group in the PF on Tuesday that wanted to do o5-7. Joined in with them on Discord. After we cleared o5, I asked if anyone was logging. I felt like I totally crushed it, never did a misclick and managed to nail my elusive jump/other jumps/sprint to keep uptime up time... yet when they read me my #s, I was only at 5k. I was heartbroken, because the week prior I got 4 new pieces of gear.

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I saw 4.7k lol, not 5k :)

That said, that's like what our DRG does, and he's a fairly average player. That said, if you're upset about ~50th percentile don't be. It's a great spot to start improving from. You're right smack in the middle of the upper echelon of the playerbase. Not a bad spot to be.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Of course player ability factors into it but given 2 players of equal skill, the one with a significantly lower item level won't stand a chance. It is simple mathematics.
Yes, the gap isn't as ridonculous in XIV as it is in WoW but gear is still of paramount importance.

If you parse yourself as a 350 alt you won't stand any chance against a 370+ that knows what he is doing. Pretending otherwise is ignoring the truth.

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As a percentage the numbers aren't that different between games. I've tested 2 different fully melded sets and saw about a 25% difference in throughput between them. At the time I had compared the #1 log of my spec in WoW against my clear (he had roughly 15 ilvl on me), and it was a bout a 22% differential.

While FF14 may have "smaller base numbers", the percentage differential is pretty similar between savage and mythic and those without.

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Originally Posted by Nerael

I rather have someone with lower damage whom rarely fails mechanics than someone whom is top damage but failing repeatedly.
In the end it's more important to get the job done and have fun while doing so.

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This is a common misconception. It is impossible to consistently fail mechanics and be the top DPS. Failing mechanics gets you killed, or wiped, thus lower DPS. Top players will do both mechanics and DPS.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

snip.

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Kaiva was running Savage with PUGs. You can't expect orange in a PUG.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

A good portion of us here on the forums look actively seek to improve ourselves, whether its be min-maxing, figuring out optimal rotations, etc. After my thread in which I found out that I was, at best, a 9th percentile raider, I took some time to work on SMN and 'git gud'. Managed to hit that 50th percentile bracket...only in sigmascape normal, and it looks like I've just gotten worse as a player trying to get better. I'm not satisfied with being a 50th percentile player, because that's actually worse numbers wise amongst Savage raiders than what I was doing back when I started that toxic elitist thread.

Keep in mind, I still generally don't ask for my information to get uploaded - they just end up online (I usually check a few hours after my weekly runs).

Anybody in this rut get in that position where they feel like they just continually get worse? That they feel embarrassed enough that they feel that they don't belong on the same level as their peers who, admittedly, don't judge them or really care? Or maybe the nagging feeling that you will never be good enough to be on their level?

I'm kind of in that boat now, to the point that I've pretty much dropped DPS'ing entirely because I am incapable of keeping up with my peers. It's gotten to the point where I kinda shunned myself off because I feel like I don't belong with my peers anymore. This is more or less myself wondering if anybody is, or was, in that position. Or knew someone like this on the verge of...well, essentially calling it quits.

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Quite often you're working on a new rotation you're just going to suck. The reason is that old habits and muscle memory tend to kick in during stressful situations, it's just a fact of human nature. Given that DPS rotations (for DPS, Tanks and Healers) are pretty strict, one panic moment where you miss aligning with raid buffs or completely bork your rotation will hurt your dps later in the fight and quite often very badly especially when you have to delay a burst window. The ONLY way to deal with this is getting your rotation in-grained as muscle memory. This doesn't mean practice your opener on a dummy, this means practice for 5-10 minutes straight on a dummy. Do that over and over again. Don't use the SSS dummies, use a level 1 dummy and keep going. Beyond that, going back into a savage fight you've already cleared is the only other way to get practice for your rotation AND timing for that specific fight. Instead of sitting on your clear for the week, join 0-1 chest groups, parse groups, fresh clear groups etc so you get the practice you need.

Ask for your parses to get uploaded. fflogs is a great tool to replay and analyze a fight. Don't pay attention to your percentile so much, pay attention to your CPM, number of casts and damage per cast. For example, here's a comparison between your o1s run on SMN vs a 99th percentile SMN on the same fight: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/compa...pe=damage-done

if you compare their uptime with yours you'll see they're active 91% of the time on this fight (this is one of the worst fights for uptime in the current savage tier) vs your uptime of 85%. When doing this comparison, don't beat yourself up - simply ask yourself what are they doing to get 6% more uptime than you? Is there something that you could do to increase your uptime? Since you're on caster, the movement required in this fight is going to cuck you; so think about pre-positioning. Practice slide-casting so that you can pre-position for upcoming mechanics. You know that you could get the prey marker, so pre-position at max cast range so that if you get prey you're already close to where you need to be and you only lose the cast time of running forward instead of backward. Try to position yourself away from others before the whirlwind markers come out so you don't have to move to avoid overlapping. When putrid passengers come out be prepared with AoE burst, this is a HUGE dps increase and one of the easiest ways to improve your overall DPS for the fight and trust me, 99th percentile players pad their numbers on those adds - just look at the comparison between yourself and any 99th percentile SMN and you'll see the HUGE difference that padding makes.

Back to the comparison above, forgetting the padding and CPM, what skills is this other SMN using; how often are they used? Tamamo hits 81 ruin 3s during the fight vs your 70. If you're interrupting your casts for movement that's going to destroy those numbers. The next biggest loss I see is Ahk Morn, Tamamo hits 8 Ahk Morns vs your 4 and 9 death flares vs your 5. So what is it about their rotation that allows them to get so many more bursts than you? If you creep their log and click on timelines, you can see their rotation for the entire fight; every cast at every point. Then compare that with your own log and see what differs there. Use fflogs as a tool to help you figure out what you're doing wrong, what you're doing right and ways to improve. Getting frustrated because you can't get above 50th percentile is going to happen.

Right now, I'm a 70th percentile avg WAR. Does that mean every fight was great? Hell no, I suck bad until I learn the timings of each fight by heart. I still miss opportunities to improve my dps and miss or delay a burst window. I'm 9th percentile on god kefka, and while that upsets me; it doesn't make me want to give up cause I know with more practice me and my team will improve on that fight. Just know that with practice and patience that you will improve as well. The KEY to getting above 50th percentile is PRACTICE. Get back in there and do the fight as often as you can and you will improve.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

Kaiva was running Savage with PUGs. You can't expect orange in a PUG.

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Firstly, you can get oranges in a pug. It happens. Saying you can't expect it, sounds like you're saying it can't happen at all.

That aside - did I mention anywhere in my post about expecting an orange in a pug?

What you said was: "Unless you are in a static group that plays optimally I doubt you'll ever reach orange. I'm not even sure how likely high purple is. Don't beat yourself up about it."

The goal of my response to you was to show via examples that purples are easy enough to get in pugs if you have the job/encounter experience. I got them before I joined a static in both Deltascape and Sigmascape no problem.

edit - in hindsight I didn't specify that it was with PUGs, but with statics. That's my bad. I get my posts mixed up a lot. You may not have seen my previous posts. I pugged up to Kefka, before getting a static. I did the same thing with Deltascape (cleared O3S, before grabbing a static). Purples were acquired here.

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Originally Posted by AppleJinx

When I got better my mistakes becomes a lot of noticeable and irritating so even though I am playing a lot better than before I end up feeling like I performed worse instead because of it

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Everyone has their good days and bad days. Just can't let it get under your skin. Usually best to take a break when that happens and come back to it with a cool head.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

In my experience - people with your issue simply aren't pushing buttons enough. Letting oGCDs sit off cooldown for extended periods of time, not pushing buttons quickly enough (2.5s GCD, but only pushing buttons every 3.3s or so), stuff like that.

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I'm definitely pressing buttons early so they queue properly. I'm not optimizing enough when I have to dodge stuff, but when standing still I am not waiting 3 seconds to push the next button. It would be way too boring. I even hate it when people do that. I also try to use oGCDs as soon as possible. I'm not perfect with that, but hitting only one single oGCD like 1-2 seconds later than I should have shouldn't make me almost fail the dummy. I only use RDM in normal mode content and from what I've noticed I sometimes just press a wrong button. For example I wanted to press Impact or another proc and accidentally pressed Jolt. Or I accidentally press Verfire instead of Verstone, but I always notice that immediately. It doesn't happen so often and not when I'm really concentrating while trying to beat the dummy. But I still can only beat with max. 3 seconds left. And I don't know why. No matter how I practice, I can't improve as DPS.

I've fully converted over to WAR, so for the time being, my mains are tank/heals until I get that confidence I had during my elitist phase. I started back up raiding again last night, so we'll see how it goes. I dunno if I can stay away from fflogs...but I'm also not necessarily chasing deeps at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

snip.

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Just looking at a random normal Kefka log from 3/1 on your RDM and comparing it to my static's RDM (on O8S kefka, but cut your log to the same time parameters to get as close a comparo as I can):

• You have almost 4 less CPM. Better said, you're pushing buttons ~12% less than you could be
• You also have 2 less enchanted melee combos than my RDM (and 2 less Holy/Flares as a result)
• You missed 2 acceleration casts
• You missed a verfire cast
• You missed 3 impact casts

Now, I'm not some RDM expert, nor is my static's RDM perfect (85th-94th percentile). I'm merely comparing your log as best I can to a better RDM's log based on things that could be similar.

Also - total ilvl can be very misleading, you may be 346-348, but what ilvl is your weapon/chest/legs (these are the ilvl that matter the most to actual throughput)? Is all of your gear melded? What is it melded with?

Hope this helps.

The issue is that a good portion of what makes a difference between one percentile and another isn't the player it's the party... You can take a take for example the 100th percentile player and put him in a group of randoms and his performance will be no where even close to that 100th percentile.

There's so many things that fflogs doesn't tell you that can have a significant impact on your performance. And a lot of them can be as simple as which direction is the boss facing or where is the boss being tanked?. A badly positioned boss might mean you have 10% less uptime. A boss thats constantly being turned might cost you a significant amount of positional bonuses.

A party member that's stood right next to you might then force you to move and lose cast time where if he was in a better position you wouldn't have to move... lost gcds..

Badly stacked ground aoes can make the difference between taking 2 steps to get out of or taking 7 or 8.. lost gcds.

That player with the stack marker forcing everyone to move away from the boss to stack on him instead of him running to the group on the boss.. more lost gcds

There are quite literally an almost endless number of things that can really impact performance none of which are ever represented in fflogs...

Then you have things like other party members and how well they use there buffs. Is chain start being applies with foe and trick attack muliplying the damage boosts quite heavily or are they all being used sporadically at random intervals.

All of these things might slash your performance in half and there's absolutely nothing you can do to control it.

Player percentiles are essentially worthless. Because it's generally the entire group that makes that number what it is. You could take a 10th percentile player put hi in a 100th percentile group and guarantee he'll do better even if he plays exactly the same....

And like I said at the start. Take a 100th player put him in a 10th group and his performance will be nowhere close..