Is this truly wrong?

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Originally Posted by Dzian

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..

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I do agree that composition and skill with affect the percentile a player can reach, but I do strongly disagree with the statement that looking at a percentile is completely worthless too.

It's up to the individuals looking at the logs to see where they can improve and where they're doing well. A percentile gives that player two things: (1) a range of where they are in terms of skill level with the rest of the player base in the same content and (2) gives them a metric / goalpost to aim for.

Also, a 80th percentile player playing in a group that is a 20th percentile skill won't suddenly make their DPS bottom out at the 20th percentile. It'll dip, yes, but I don't believe it'll dip further than a +/-10 percentile range. That's still a sizable gap but it doesn't make things worthless. A highly skilled player will be able to make non-optimal conditions work for them and can adapt to optimize for the conditions they've been given.

Who gives a shit; it's Sigmascape normal. As far as I'm concerned, if you can actually do the mechs that automatically places you in 99th percentile. (I say this not knowing how fflogs works, nor do I care; it's mostly just a site for people looking to flaunt their e-peens anyway)

*grumbles at people still multi-wiping and abandoning O7N just earlier today*
*gave zero shits about how much damage myself or any of them were doing; doesn't even matter if you can't survive the fight*

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Originally Posted by Dzian

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

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The way you guys are saying things imply comp/kill time is all that factors when it comes to percentiles, which...Is not true at all.

This is from a O5S clear party that I helped yesterday. DPS wasn't very flattering and we didn't have meta comp. As can be seen here 3 people were into the orange/purple zone (even more props to the healers since we had deaths). First and foremost, player skill is the biggest factor when it comes to percentile. Secondly, I'd say it's gear, and then finally group/overall group performance.

Inconsistent groups may lead to deaths, and if you die certainly your percentile is going to be affected - on that end, I can definitely agree that bad PUGs can cause FFLogs to not have an accurate representation of your performance. But if you're pugging and the run is relatively clean for YOU(i.e no deaths, damage down debuffs caused by other people etc), then most of your performance relies entirely on yourself.

A player that can generally perform at a decent level on average is NOT going to have their numbers crushed due to external circumstances or comp alone.

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Originally Posted by Mayku

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 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.

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Well first, try not to be sad about it. It wasn't a good experience, but we all have to remember this is a game.

Second, the SCH saying he can do 2500 on WHM "easy" isn't really relevant if you are playing AST. AST personal DPS capability is a lot lower than WHM...but....

While it is true the group matters and also how much healing you do, as a main AST myself who does savage on it... 400 DPS is way way lower than you should be doing with the gear you have. Even if you heal a lot or have to eve raise sometimes you should still be hitting 1000+ at least.

Doing 400 means you weren't really putting in any effort to DPS much at all. Demon does have high consistent damage, but there are times where you can throw quite a bit of healer DPS at him when he isn't doing much.

Having 400 at the end while dying to enrage means you aren't utilizing the time you had to DPS effectively. People can do the same HPS as you while doing 1000 more DPS which is where the critique would come from about your 400 DPS: You can do the same HPS, but do way more than 400 DPS all at the same time.

If it is beyond your current skill at AST to do higher than that then I understand, but I would still encourage you to work at it to become more comfortable with it. When it comes to Savage you should be able to DPS more than that on healer. I would suggest practicing more at handling healing and DPS simultaneously to increase your overall experience and skill on AST and WHM.

Also for best results practice the ABC - Always Be Casting rule. If you waste GCDs by spending too much time without using any ability it can cost you a lot of HPS and DPS in general.

Disclaimer: This post has zero malice. I am simply trying to help and give a bit of advice.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Who gives a shit; it's Sigmascape normal.

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While the percentiles Kaiva mentioned were from Sigmascape normal, the worry about their DPS contribution and percentiles also applies to Savage. As they said in the OP, their 50th percentile in Normal Mode would be considered even worse in Savage, where personal DPS numbers are usually way higher.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

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.

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Firstly let me ask - do you use FFLogs? Do you know how to read it? All of its functions?

This is 100% inaccurate. It will be lower for sure, but it won't be "no where even close". I had plenty of purples where I had a team of 10th percentilers.

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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.

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This is also 100% incorrect. FFlogs can tell you all of that if you know where to look and how to read the logs.

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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...

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Every single one of these is captured in the logs and easily viewable.

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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.

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Easily identifiable in the logs.

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

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This is also 100% inaccurate. It would not take a 6.5k DPS MNK and make him do 3.25k DPS. Please refrain from spreading misinformation.

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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....

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Just because you don't know how to utilize a tool doesn't make it useless.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I do agree that composition and skill with affect the percentile a player can reach, but I do strongly disagree with the statement that looking at a percentile is completely worthless too.

It's up to the individuals looking at the logs to see where they can improve and where they're doing well. A percentile gives that player two things: (1) a range of where they are in terms of skill level with the rest of the player base in the same content and (2) gives them a metric / goalpost to aim for.

Also, a 80th percentile player playing in a group that is a 20th percentile skill won't suddenly make their DPS bottom out at the 20th percentile. It'll dip, yes, but I don't believe it'll dip further than a +/-10 percentile range. That's still a sizable gap but it doesn't make things worthless. A highly skilled player will be able to make non-optimal conditions work for them and can adapt to optimize for the conditions they've been given.

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Bingo.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

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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Don't stay away from fflogs. Use it as it was intended, compare your casts to someone better on the same class for the same content. Look at CPM, look at the number of specific actions performed, look at the timeline and compare that with your timeline. That's how you'll go from sub-par to average to excellent.

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Originally Posted by Llus

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Admittedly I don't use it to its full potential because I simply don't know how to do deep comparisons like that. I know how to look up how the timeline and stuff like that, but I don't know how to find, say, the number of casts of a certain skill versus the number of casts from another player. Unless I'm supposed to tally that up manually. In which case, I dunno if I can get dedicated enough to do that

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Originally Posted by JCharms

Fixed for correctness. :)

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Yeah, as a PS4 (pro) player. I am at the mercy of people uploading my runs, including the ones I may die cause the tank died and I got hate and ect... it's not a representation of my true power!! It doesn't even represent, nor hold my best runs.

All it means is some man loved his score that he uploaded it and I happen to be in that particular run, and my ilevel is low because I've been unlucky on drops. No way will my percentile will be close to the full I370 man with the 370 weapon and the great party setup. It's just a bad situation overall. I once did a 5.8K turn 2 run and beat the Sam... did that get uploaded? Hell no lol

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Admittedly I don't use it to its full potential because I simply don't know how to do deep comparisons like that. I know how to look up how the timeline and stuff like that, but I don't know how to find, say, the number of casts of a certain skill versus the number of casts from another player. Unless I'm supposed to tally that up manually. In which case, I dunno if I can get dedicated enough to do that

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A little bit above the timeline graphic, there are options for things like "Summary", "Damage Done", etc.. At the far right of that row there is an option for "Casts" that will show the total number of casts each team member has completed for that log. You can then click on individual party members to get a more detailed breakdown on number of casts per spell / ability / weapon skills they've used.

The biggest problem of FFlogs compare to Warcraftlogs is that there is no split by item level. So if you have two players with 350 ilvl and 370 ilvl and same skill, guess who ll have higher percentile.
The other problem is food/ pots are required if you want to push for top percentile as well.
The raid composition matters as well, for example, BRD without DRG buff and with DRG buff have completely different percentile.
Overall, the correct rotation and the uptime contribute the most to the percentile, but there is no need to be obsessed with purple/ orange parces as long as you can clear the encounter.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Admittedly I don't use it to its full potential because I simply don't know how to do deep comparisons like that. I know how to look up how the timeline and stuff like that, but I don't know how to find, say, the number of casts of a certain skill versus the number of casts from another player. Unless I'm supposed to tally that up manually. In which case, I dunno if I can get dedicated enough to do that

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Kaiva - see attached.
https://i.imgur.com/nqDDt6l.jpg

You can use FFlogs to directly compare against people by the URL. You can also ask FFLogs to directly compare you by setting parameters for it to find one.

If you are looking at a log in the top right there are buttons. Analyze is the default, but next to it, is compare. It gives pretty easy instructions on how to compare and then you can look at it like it was one combined log. For instance the image above shows you and I comparing casts.

Now granted, my static kills O6S about 2 minutes faster than you did (I grabbed a random old log to make a PLD to PLD comparison for illustration) so in order to make a more valid comparison I cut the last 2 minutes of your fight out by clicking on the graph and dragging right until the vertical dashed line (which signifies the end of my log).

As an exercise - strictly based off this data - what are some issues you see (on my side or yours)?

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

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Is that my most recent run? Oh, that was a really terrible run for me. I think I died once or twice. But comparison wise, I missed a lot of holy spirits, which I do know I tend to forget about in sword oath. Same with requiscast.

I know you're not focusing on SMN for the moment, but I was able to take a look at your gear on Lodestone Kaiva and I was wondering if it'd be okay to offer some suggestions on that. I think I might be able to help a little bit, if you're up for it.

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

I know you're not focusing on SMN for the moment, but I was able to take a look at your gear on Lodestone Kaiva and I was wondering if it'd be okay to offer some suggestions on that. I think I might be able to help a little bit, if you're up for it.

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Sure. Though to be honest, I haven't done any melding or upgrades to my gear since starting this thread. Lodestone's only showing me as SMN atm because I'm in Eureka, otherwise I'm on a tank or heal job. But, fire away.

I'd like to add, since we're on the topic of dissecting logs, that even a small increase in optimization can lead to rather substantial gains in percentile ranking.

For example, say two people were discussing a SAM rotation and discovered from their theory craft that if they made a small rotation change it would lead to an overall DPS gain of 2%. Assuming the SAM in question is a 40th percentile SAM, and using this SAM ranking here statistic, the 40th percentile SAM which has a DPS of 5,823.65 would go up to 5,940.12 DPS which is higher than a 50th percentile SAM DPS. A 2% gain resulted in a 10th percentile gain on the charts in this particular example.

Another example - let's take some numbers from the other thread regarding how a BRD loses something in the realm of 500DPS if a DRG isn't in their party. Using these statistic would push a 10th percentile BRD to close to 50th percentile and a 50th percentile BRD to close to 90th percentile. 500 DPS is a net 9-10% DPS gain but leads to close to a 40th percentile increase.

Small things don't feel like much but you can see how quickly they can change your rankings looking at the above. Understanding what you can do to get those small performance optimizations will help you shoot up in the percentile ranking. And something like FFLogs can help you dissect what you can do to continue improving. Not every circumstance will be the same but you can gleam enough information from the depths of the logs to get at least some idea on which direction you should be pushing towards.

This example above also makes me realize why my personal MCH numbers in a DRG-less static during the 3.4 raid tier were so terrible.. *coughs quietly*

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Originally Posted by Estelle9lives

A player that can generally perform at a decent level on average is NOT going to have their numbers crushed due to external circumstances or comp alone.

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To emphasise this, I generally average high 80s to mid 90s. With a death this week in o6s, I still reached 62% A 25% penalty for 90 seconds is far harsher than a random Ninja messing up Trick Attack. Will you dip in a less optimized group? Of course, but you aren't going from 95% to 50%. Bard and Machinist, unfortunately, stand as the sole exception due to piercing.

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Originally Posted by Miste

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Thank you for your reply.
I usually do around 650- 800 dps but in that party I was the only one healing and raising, I cast all the time without downtime. (other than the pink color of O6S because it was my first time and was scared about it)
I am sorry but I really felt like the sch could have changed to dps and it would have been the same result.
My first goal is to keep ppl alive and buff them, I don't care to get in the fflog top 100 in DPS as healer.
I don't even have a parser because I was in first server static in FFXI and it burned my soul down.
I do look a bit FFlogs if someone parsed to see if I overhealed too much, but rarely I check the dps.

On the other day, I went with an other party, the healer was marvelous, we dpsed, we healed, we raised...we where never out of mp.(and I did again pink)
And we killed the O6S boss at 30% hp.
Sometimes the numbers change a lot if everyone does his basic job first and then think about FFlogs.
Also I do understand that me not being in a static but in random party makes each fight different each time.

Cool! Sorry, I'm at work so my reply was delayed a bit... I'm not an expert, but I'm mainly going off of advice from my static and things that I've read, so please bear with me. Anyway, what I'm noticing that a lot of your gear is pushing your spell speed. Now, for a BLM, spell speed is excellent. Even RDM enjoys a little boost to it. But for SMN... It's bad news. If my static leader's advice is anything to go off of, 1000 spell speed on a SMN is pretty much the absolute max a SMN can really support before it starts goofing things up with timing. In fact, you could probably get away with the bare minimum spell speed if you wanted to, but a couple pieces of gear with minor increases of it probably won't hurt as long as you stay under that 1000 threshold. Instead, the secondary stats you should look for as a priority are Crit > Direct > Det. You do want to keep upgrading to higher ilvl gear since INT is your main priority, but just be very wary the gear isn't pushing spell speed too high.

I believe we're about the same ilvl atm (359). I'm not positive that my gear is absolutely "ideal", but you can take a look on my Lodestone profile if you'd like to get an idea of what I've been going for, statwise. Of course, bearing in mind that you're still working on your melds, it looks like once you're able to flesh those out that'll also be close to an extra 350 point boost to spread out for your stats however you prefer. That's a pretty significant amount to work with, and should make a nice difference! Beyond that, I haven't seen how you play as SMN, so I can't really advise there. But hopefully the advice on gear that I've learned from my static helps a little bit!

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

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Well according to the logs, I am terrible at SMN haha.

Yeah, I don't meld towards spell speed, so I'm not sure how to counter that when the gear itself increases that particular stat. I do have enough clusters that I can push for crit...somebody did show me the kind of materia I should be going for right now, but without crafted gear to have additional meld slots, the prospect of breaking out of that percentile is not looking good right now. I just need to stop doing worse than what I've been doing.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

To emphasise this, I generally average high 80s to mid 90s. With a death this week in o6s, I still reached 62% A 25% penalty for 90 seconds is far harsher than a random Ninja messing up Trick Attack. Will you dip in a less optimized group? Of course, but you aren't going from 95% to 50%. Bard and Machinist, unfortunately, stand as the sole exception due to piercing.

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No entirely. Because if you change the jobs on that link to say monk

You see a very similar pattern where something like an 8-10% difference in damage will throw you up or down 40 percentiles in much the same way it does for a bard. Sam and blm are about the same..

It really doesn't take a lot of lost dps for any number of reasons to have a significant impact. Even being just a few points lower could put you down significantly.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

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Right, it's not so much your current melds you need to worry about rather than the caster gear you currently have that's boosting your spell speed. You just need to swap out for some different pieces and save the other things for your other casters. For example, a lot of your left-side gear could probably stand to be swapped with different pieces. Since you're working on Eureka, as long as you're sticking with the NM train and leveling steadily it shouldn't take long to upgrade your relic body gear. It'll be a slight decrease in INT, but the gain in other important secondary stats and the five materia slots should more than make up for it. I'd also recommend saving your mendacity tomes towards the 360 hand, legs, and feet gear, with a priority on the legs since the current leg piece you have adds a ton of spell speed. If you can snag a 370 belt from O5S, then that could help too, but I don't think it's as big a priority. Your right-side gear is probably fine for the most part, so I don't think you need to change much there for the time being. It may take a few weeks altogether to save the tomes for the pieces I recommended, unless you already have some in reserve, but I think you'll find it worth it. Ariyala's toolkit site is also nice for planning out your gear progression and what stats you can expect to get out of them.

That said, I still think you're being too hard on yourself for those logs. You're still just starting out in the job, and like I said before, almost no one starts out being instantly good. I'd still like to encourage that you take some time now and then to practice your rotations, and brush up on some online guides for tips and tricks you might not have considered. I hope I'm not seeming like a pest, but I really do believe you can improve. Perhaps you can also get some practice in by doing some easier content that isn't liable to be parsed by anyone, like normal Byakko. That way you can get a feel for things with far less pressure, and you can continue to tank in savage until you feel comfortable to try again as SMN. Just be patient with yourself, and you'll get there in time.

This might have been said already but... you just need to educate yourself on the fundamentals of SMN. Never mind gear, ilvl, melds, etc. You need to grasp the foundations first, and use that as a platform to grow from there.

From looking at your Apr 4th log, it's clear that you have no knowledge of the SMN opener, or rotation, at all. So right away you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. Therefore my suggestion would be to: find and learn said/opener rotation from a guide (I recommend this one as a start: SMN Starter Kit), then practice over and over on a dummy until you can do it without much thought, and then go into content and test yourself there.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Is that my most recent run? Oh, that was a really terrible run for me. I think I died once or twice. But comparison wise, I missed a lot of holy spirits, which I do know I tend to forget about in sword oath. Same with requiscast.

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Nah it was from like Mid Feb. You didn't die at all. I chose it to make sure it was as close to a 1:1 comparison as possible (a tenet to ensure good log review).

Looking at it:

• You can see you have too many fast blades and that they don't align with your riot blades
• I didn't show it here, but I'd bet your Goring Blade uptime was a good bit lower than mine too, as evidenced by the fact you cast it less
• Your Riot Blades don't line up with your GB + RA casts
• You missed a staggering number of HS casts and Requiscat
• Poor usage of Sheltron -> Shield Swipe
• Sub-optimal defensive CD usage as well

Now I know that PLD isn't the job you're referencing, but I wanted to just paint a picture that a PLD is actually a pretty mechanically easy job to play, and there's a lot of mistakes here, that will absolutely translate to SMN, which is considerably more in-depth to do well with.

This is just comparing casts too. There's a lot more to look into, but this is a great place to start. To look into where you're missing things.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

No entirely. Because if you change the jobs on that link to say monk

You see a very similar pattern where something like an 8-10% difference in damage will throw you up or down 40 percentiles in much the same way it does for a bard. Sam and blm are about the same..

It really doesn't take a lot of lost dps for any number of reasons to have a significant impact. Even being just a few points lower could put you down significantly.

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Dzian - is there any reason you ignored my post to you a few pages back? I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to read it and respond. It's good for the community to make sure that we don't spread misinformation and I want to help clear up any misconceptions you might have.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Good points made

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Yea, I'm aware. Like I said before, 4.3k is probably the best I have ever been, and that's a crap log. Hence why I've essentially given up. I know I'm just absolute shite at the job, so rather than beat around the bush and create this false belief that I'll get better, I'm just cutting my losses. If I can't figure out how to play better...well, that just means this isn't for me.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Nah it was from like Mid Feb. You didn't die at all. I chose it to make sure it was as close to a 1:1 comparison as possible (a tenet to ensure good log review).

Looking at it:

• You can see you have too many fast blades and that they don't align with your riot blades
• I didn't show it here, but I'd bet your Goring Blade uptime was a good bit lower than mine too, as evidenced by the fact you cast it less
• Your Riot Blades don't line up with your GB + RA casts
• You missed a staggering number of HS casts and Requiscat
• Poor usage of Sheltron -> Shield Swipe
• Sub-optimal defensive CD usage as well

Now I know that PLD isn't the job you're referencing, but I wanted to just paint a picture that a PLD is actually a pretty mechanically easy job to play, and there's a lot of mistakes here, that will absolutely translate to SMN, which is considerably more in-depth to do well with.

This is just comparing casts too. There's a lot more to look into, but this is a great place to start. To look into where you're missing things.

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I went PLD because I didn't like the feel of DRK. It wasn't until recently in the last week or so when I actually tried that I started learning the important of lining up those buffs. I don't intend to master PLD, though, but from your analysis...yeah...nvm, you have a point. Too many mistakes on PLD on my end.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Dzian - is there any reason you ignored my post to you a few pages back? I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to read it and respond. It's good for the community to make sure that we don't spread misinformation and I want to help clear up any misconceptions you might have.

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missed it.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Firstly let me ask - do you use FFLogs? Do you know how to read it? All of its functions?

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From time to time and I would say i'm quite familiar with how it works

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

This is 100% inaccurate. It will be lower for sure, but it won't be "no where even close". I had plenty of purples where I had a team of 10th percentilers.

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In many cases it actually really will be quite a significant impact. if you look at this if you took a 99th percentile player and put him in a random pug or group of 10% players. it's not to unreasonable to suggest that for one reason or another that players dps might be 10% lower. as a result of party compostion buffs usage or even things like player positions causing a few missed gcds. yet that 10% would result in that 99th percentile player ending up right down near 60... which is no where close to 99..

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

This is also 100% incorrect. FFlogs can tell you all of that if you know where to look and how to read the logs. Every single one of these is captured in the logs and easily viewable.

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Ok here I might actually not know something... I'm pretty sure though ACT and thus fflogs doesn't track position or movement and almost certainly cannot log where in an arena an aoe or telegraph is going to hit. nor can fflogs tell you I had to move because the sch was 1 step to my right or something like that ... if I am wrong and it can show this information then please do show me where...

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

This is also 100% inaccurate. It would not take a 6.5k DPS MNK and make him do 3.25k DPS. Please refrain from spreading misinformation.

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ok perhaps bad phrasing. it shouldn't drop a 6k monk to 3k. but it could quite easily drop an 80th percentile player down to the 40th or something similar thus slashing there performance ranking quite significantly..

I'm also not disputing that things like buffs and trick attacks aren't viewable in the logs. what I said was that how they're used in a fight can have a very significant impact on your performance. and thus a good chunk of what makes a players damage in the x% is down to the rest of the party and not actually down to them selves... a party that uses buffs and cooldowns more optimally could easily push your dps up by 8-10% for example. and in most cases that's enough to fly up the percentiles....

I think i'm quite clued with how logs works even if I don't use it regularly... so many things can affect your numbers that it creates an innacurate reading. I could for example play my samurai perfectially in the most optimal way and be the most skilled sam in the game (I'm not) but my sam being I350 instead of i370 for example might is gonna really impact my numbers. and no amount of player skill will ever compensate...

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

Yea, I'm aware. Like I said before, 4.3k is probably the best I have ever been, and that's a crap log. Hence why I've essentially given up. I know I'm just absolute shite at the job, so rather than beat around the bush and create this false belief that I'll get better, I'm just cutting my losses. If I can't figure out how to play better...well, that just means this isn't for me.

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If you've read guides, learned/practiced the opener repeatedly only to then struggle to transfer it into content while handling mechanics then that's one thing. However, if you're just completely winging it, just randomly pressing buttons, with no rhyme or reason behind your decisions, then of course your logs are going to be bad. There is information out there on how to play the Job and get better, but if all you're going to do is just claim you won't get better without even trying then you're not doing yourself any favours. With that mentality, your issues won't just apply to SMN but just about any Job in XIV.

if you went from 9th percentile for 50th, that's pretty awesome.

You don't need to be like 70+ to be considered "good". Yes the elite players are there, but even being 25+ should still be a decent player.

Especially because percentiles don't necessarily account for differences in ilvl and materia. The elite players have a lot of the best gear now because they've exchanged savage books for upgrades. If you're still doing normals, there will be a big gap just from ilvl alone.

Additionally your team members make a difference too. Your logs are also affected by whether your teammates use things to boost raidwide dps. If you're pugging, you don't know what else you're getting and if other players aren't making effective use of their raidwide boosters, your dps in logs will suffer. If your team members die and you have to adjust in any way (maybe taking on a mech they were supposed to do, or having to spend a gcd/ogcd doing a rez or using a self-heal, anything that you have to deviate from), your logs will be affected.

To illustrate these changes, I'm going to link to my profile:
https://www.fflogs.com/character/id/...s=51&compare=1

See how my Feb 19th run my historical % is 25 (green), whereas if it was ranked today it'd be 15 (gray)? That's because as players have gotten stronger via ilvl, the numbers expected to rank become higher.

See how my April 8th and 10th runs are lower than March 27th? That's because of a change in party members, so I have to adjust more.

Also one fight doesn't illustrate other fight's percentiles. compare the above log (o5s) to my o7s wipes from just yesterday:
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/wB1M7...pe=damage-done
And I suddenly went from being a 50-70 percentile player to a 12th percentile player.

Everything affects your logs. Don't compare yourself to other people too much and don't compare cross-fights. Don't try to assume that your 50 in normal would lead to a far less ranking in Savage.

Compare yourself to your own numbers for the same fight. If you want to know how you'd do in Savage (and treat each fight separately), get logs for that fight.

And most importantly, don't be too harsh on yourself. As long as you are learning the mechs, reading up on rotation every once in a while, and keeping your gear as up to date as you can, then you're doing it right. If you're really worried, you could also go on youtube and look up the fight + your job name + POV.

example: o5s SMN POV

There's usually someone that will have the fight you're doing in the same job you're doing. Slow it down, study it (try to get their name and check their logs too), and if you think they're ok and you play similarly, then you're ok too.

When you do look at other player logs
don't get hung up on percentiles. You want to learn from other players, not feel inferior (or superior) to them.

Here are things that helped me in using fflogs to make myself a better player:
1 - Casts tab: active % and CPM
Active % = how much you're hitting your GCDs. Ideally you want to be 90+%, but heavy-mech fights might be 85%. If you're learning a fight, it might be 70%. If you're under 70 consistently, and other players in your job are not, that's an issue with not hitting buttons enough.

One example of that is when dodging. Casters sometimes forget to keep attacking while dodging. That's when that Instant Ruin really helps out.

CPM - casts per minute (make sure you compare to the SAME job)
That's how many skills you use. 2 players could have the same active % and drasticially different CPM depending on how many oGCDs are used.
Having a lot less CPM usually means a rotation problem when it comes to weaving in ogcds.

2 - Debuffs tab (change to "Enemies")
Find your dots, see what the uptime is. See other player's uptime. Ideally you want to be as close to 100% as possible, but mechs can influence that (for example o5 has a whole section of not being able to target the boss. Can't keep uptime on something that's not nearby, so the uptime is always lower in o5 than other fights)

3 - Casts tab again, click on your name
Compare how much you used your skills. If you see a drastically different number of used skills compared to someone else, that's usually a rotation issue.

4 - Replay
If you find a player whose stats you like, use the Replay feature and see what skills they used in real time!

For you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgjBnChIi4U
(that's o5S SMN, the player in the video is a top player)

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/4yxTt...=7&view=replay
Same player as the above video, for the same fight. Pick "Bronch Osaur" on the bottom right. Then click "Play" on the bottom left.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...y0TrCa0qg/edit
Summoner guide

Opener choice 1: http://ffxivrotations.com/1980 (sicfrit non-pet swap)
Opener choice 2: http://ffxivrotations.com/1dnq (bahamut)
Opener choice 3: http://ffxivrotations.com/197t (pet swap bahamut)
Bahamut non-opener rotation: http://ffxivrotations.com/197n

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

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Okay...there just comes a point where even I just get tired of hearing how much I suck. I am aware of it. Said it multiple times. I inspected my logs and looked at what I did. It definitely is in no way optimized, true. Nor is it anywhere close to being good enough to say I'm an average player. But I did look and I did comparison to some others. But suggesting that I don't know a thing about SMN is incredibly unfair to say. It was suggested that I start out with Garuda-Egi, and then Painflare into double Fester to quickly gain my DWT as my opener. That's what I did. Perhaps it is because you are a much better SMN than I am at the moment, but I do not 'know nothing' about SMN.

@feliaiko Sorry...I shouldn't have snapped out like that, especially when you probably were just trying to help. If you are still watching this thread, I'm open to listening. My suggested opener has been to start with Garuda and build up Aether stacks as fast as possible, then swiftcasting Ifrit and going into DWT. I was also under the impression that when I'm on the rotation when Bahamut is available, to not use any of my oGCDs until I actually summon Bahamut, then start hitting them in order to get as many Wyrmwaves as I can, while making sure to always get off two Ahk Morns.

@squintina I'll take a look at that when I go back to SMN. I'm kinda in a ...funk where I dunno if I'm a decent player or not.

Personally dislike these melodramatic threads. This circus has lasted long enough, don't you think? This feels like a soap opera where the initial deemed great player has fallen from grace once found out and is now on his way to redemption. There is plenty information out there already for Summoner, probably the most detailed. Look at good SMN PoVs in slow motion, make notes yourself. Must be honest with you though. If after some effort you can't break the 9th percentile, it's probably just you not able to process information fast enough to make it work.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do better and worrying about the impact you have on your static members that are better than you. I was in a similar situation and I was able to improve myself. I've mained Monk, BLM, SCH, Ninja and Dragoon, and I did a good job on all of them. But personally if I were a 9th percentile player that is having a hard time overcoming that barrier, I would quit my static as most of them are 80 plus percentile players.

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Originally Posted by Starflake

Personally dislike these melodramatic threads. This circus has lasted long enough, don't you think? This feels like a soap opera where the initial deemed great player has fallen from grace once found out and is now on his way to redemption. There is plenty information out there already for Summoner, probably the most detailed. Look at good SMN PoVs in slow motion, make notes yourself. Must be honest with you though. If after some effort you can't break the 9th percentile, it's probably just you not able to process information fast enough to make it work.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do better and worrying about the impact you have on your static members that are better than you. I was in a similar situation and I was able to improve myself. I've mained Monk, BLM, SCH, Ninja and Dragoon, and I did a good job on all of them. But personally if I were a 9th percentile player that is having a hard time overcoming that barrier, I would quit my static as most of them are 80 plus percentile players.

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Personally I dislike these self-brag replies. The spotlight doesn't always have to be on you, you know? This feels like your whole first paragraph is there so that the part about how great you are has a tenuous tie to being contextually appropriate. There are plenty of places to brag about how well you do, you could even make your own thread about it. Start a Youtube channel maybe. I hope you're better at SMN than you are at grammar. Honestly though if you have to put others down to feel good about yourself maybe you have bigger problems than optimizing your dps?

There is nothing wrong with being good at the game and wanting to help others improve or worrying about how others perform when it might have a direct impact on your own gameplay. I've been in similar situations and managed to offer helpful advice and encouragement without sounding like I'm only talking for the sake of spreading the news of how good I am. I do a good job on a bunch of classes, not that that's relavent to the conversation at all. But if I were unable to read a thread about someone feeling insecure without responding in a rude, condescending and demeaning way I would probably stop responding on the forums at all since most people I know are decent human beings with empathy and a conscience.

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Honestly I usually hate these sorts of replies that copy sentence-by-sentence but I think this might be the most appropriate way to highlight the rampant disrespect in this post. For real though dude, grats on those purples. If I knew all it took to be a god of like 5 classes was callous disregard for the feelings of others I would have been clearing Ultimate months ago.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Honestly I usually hate these sorts of replies that copy sentence-by-sentence but I think this might be the most appropriate way to highlight the rampant disrespect in this post. For real though dude, grats on those purples. If I knew all it took to be a god of like 5 classes was callous disregard for the feelings of others I would have been clearing Ultimate months ago.

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Yup. Sometimes it's best to just keep quiet and stay at the sidelines. Otherwise you get other raiders coming in to look over the logs to see if someone is actually justified in being a dunce.

I looked over their logs myself, and as it turns out, they're actually quite the example of what others in this thread say when you shouldn't care about percentiles this late into the raid tier unless you're fully best in slotted yourself and actually have a static, because otherwise there's no real way to compete with those that are BiS + doing 'parse runs' to pad their numbers. And I say this as someone who actually has two 100 historical percentile parses in the past, and scored 98 on Doom Train week 2, as a Bard in pug parties.

This guy happens to be in a static that somehow has a Dragoon but no consistent BRD/MCH. The usual raid team will have the Dragoon use their tether for the BRD/MCH for their opener, and then cycle to other party members depending on burst alignment/overall DPS.

However, the logs reveal that probably due to said lack of consistent DRG/MCH, the DRG in his static is exclusively catering to him with the tether in every single run I bothered to check - one advantage the vast majority of Ninjas won't have in normal clear runs. Even in the few recorded runs with other party members scoring higher overall numbers, the DRG is still exclusively throwing the tether on him.

(And now everyone's going to look over my logs, which aren't the best, but I'm just doing whatever I can with whoever I go with.)

Still though, the guy still has a point, general jerkwad reply notwithstanding. Kaiva, I get the impression that you attached some kind of persona to your forum presence, and it's bled onto what you think your performance should be, which spiraled into what's happening in this thread now. Self-reflection is good, but don't expect to get good overnight, especially with a job with as many buttons to press as Summoner does. A lot of the top tier Bards and Summoners have been playing and raiding as those jobs since Heavensward, if not even earlier than that. Right now, you are probably fighting muscle memory/trying to adhere to a comfort zone. It may take months, but you will know when you've made progress when things start melting around you and everything feels as if you've done it all out of pure instinct.

You can't improve if you give up, though.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Snip

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Then you misread my intentions which is of course understandable as I can see where you are coming from. I am not trying to put anyone down, I am here to provide some perspective. If you are truly struggling to beat 9th percentile after actually trying, then to me, it seems like the issue is with the player himself and one should just accept that they're not that great. Has nothing to do with me being a decent player. I don't consider myself to be hot shit, I just have a mindset for self improvement. I've been helpful plenty of times in the game itself. Having done 2000 mentor roulettes I took the job seriously and I like to think I did something for this community. Sorry you read this as me attempting to brag. The sole thing I wanted to get across is that you can only improve as much as you can and you can only go as far. Nice shot at claiming linguistic superiority while claiming one should regard the feelings of others. English is not my first language.

As for the Dragon Sight tether, the only reason I get it currently is because according to Xiv logs app, DS, in fact scales the highest when put on me, even in opener as I burst for 13k in my opener at times. The BRD we currently have is a static member that replaces our old BRD (undergeared atm and not experienced on the class), who also did not output my amount of damage and did not use DS as to the extend that I did (although marginally). There are also logs where I did not receive DS and got great logs. I also have no AST for my best logs and we are a weekly clear raiding group, so we don't optimize. It's cool that you wish to look at logs, I've nothing to hide. I see myself as a capable player, which is all I want to be.

But please, don't confuse my own experience as someone who used to be a bad player as an excuse to brag on how I am now. I am a good Ninja, but not a great one. I don't think I'll ever be a great one and that's fine. I think I'm at my personal limit and that is what I was trying to convey. If you're doing so horribly after trying, you will most likely never be what you have in mind (Kaiva).

That's it for me in here, though. If you feel like you can't improve any further, or that the goals you have set for yourself are too high, then there is no shame about lowering them.

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Originally Posted by Starflake

Then you misread my intentions which is of course understandable as I can see where you are coming from. I am not trying to put anyone down, I am here to provide some perspective.

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I think the problem was your opener, which I have quoted below.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Starflake

Personally dislike these melodramatic threads. This circus has lasted long enough, don't you think? This feels like a soap opera where the initial deemed great player has fallen from grace once found out and is now on his way to redemption.

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I think had you not included this in your original post, it wouldn't have been a problem. The rest of it was good information, but I think by starting with that you made your post appear extremely sharp and hostile. I'm the same with pretty much any DPS. I can pass by in dungeons, but raiding with it (and by that I mean anything other than the 24-mans or hard mode trials), and I know I'd crumble. Wouldn't be good enough to pass.

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Originally Posted by Coratanni

I main heals. As long as I know the fight mechanics, I am good at my role enough for savage. I am not good enough for the same, as a dps. Never have been, never will be. Too many variables as to why.

Remember that this is a game. An escape. Dont treat it like a job or that it is life and death. You will only make yourself, and others around you miserable.

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I mean. You're not 'good enough' to prog or get past Kefka Savage without dpsing on a healer as well really.

DPS checks have only gotten worse in specific situations, kind of demanding healer dps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

@feliaiko Sorry...I shouldn't have snapped out like that, especially when you probably were just trying to help. If you are still watching this thread, I'm open to listening. My suggested opener has been to start with Garuda and build up Aether stacks as fast as possible, then swiftcasting Ifrit and going into DWT. I was also under the impression that when I'm on the rotation when Bahamut is available, to not use any of my oGCDs until I actually summon Bahamut, then start hitting them in order to get as many Wyrmwaves as I can, while making sure to always get off two Ahk Morns.

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You're meant to SC Ifrit after your first GCD (excluding pre-pull Ruin III) and then build towards the first DWT. As for Bahamut, you want to wait until you have 3 AF stacks ready and Tri-D is 13s away from coming off CD. While waiting you just do stuff like manually refresh DoTs, weave oGCDs (except Rouse; you hold that until after Bahamut phase), and Ruin III spam.

Like I mentioned earlier, there's a start-up guide for SMN that I highly recommend you check out. I know someone else put up Tsundere's Guide, but I'd personally stay away from it until you gain a better handle of the fundamentals first. I've linked it again below:

SMN Starter Guide

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I went PLD because I didn't like the feel of DRK. It wasn't until recently in the last week or so when I actually tried that I started learning the important of lining up those buffs. I don't intend to master PLD, though, but from your analysis...yeah...nvm, you have a point. Too many mistakes on PLD on my end.

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Looking at it the wrong way.

It's not about how many mistakes, it's about how much room for improvement. Focus on that and it'll be more rewarding.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

In many cases it actually really will be quite a significant impact. if you look at this if you took a 99th percentile player and put him in a random pug or group of 10% players. it's not to unreasonable to suggest that for one reason or another that players dps might be 10% lower. as a result of party compostion buffs usage or even things like player positions causing a few missed gcds. yet that 10% would result in that 99th percentile player ending up right down near 60... which is no where close to 99..

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I already gave you a personal example of me getting good parses with lower scored teammates. Here's a random MNK I plucked as another example.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/wJvMA...ne&graph=false

Yes it obviously has an impact, but it isn't as large as you imply. Good players will adjust and still put out great DPS regardless of their teammates.

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Ok here I might actually not know something... I'm pretty sure though ACT and thus fflogs doesn't track position or movement and almost certainly cannot log where in an arena an aoe or telegraph is going to hit. nor can fflogs tell you I had to move because the sch was 1 step to my right or something like that ... if I am wrong and it can show this information then please do show me where...

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Check the replay feature. It uses position data to recreate the fight in real time. You can see where the MT is (so which direction boss is facing) who is standing near who (so SCH was crowding you) and run it against timelines of abilities to see when telegraphs are out and where they'd be placed (based on people reacting and moving, or can be run against the incoming damage and see who got hit).

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I think i'm quite clued with how logs works even if I don't use it regularly... so many things can affect your numbers that it creates an innacurate reading. I could for example play my samurai perfectially in the most optimal way and be the most skilled sam in the game (I'm not) but my sam being I350 instead of i370 for example might is gonna really impact my numbers. and no amount of player skill will ever compensate...

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I would take a 99th percentile i350 SAM ANYDAY over the garbage SAMs in PF.

Further Example - my younger brother (a consistent top 5 world fury war in WoW), came back to the game briefly because he wanted to try out SAM. At ~i300 in Susano EX, he was putting out double the second highest DPS of people who were nearly 15 ilvl higher than him. It took average skilled nearly i330 SAMs to finally match his output that he did as a fresh 70.

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Originally Posted by Squintina

Everything affects your logs. Don't compare yourself to other people too much and don't compare cross-fights. Don't try to assume that your 50 in normal would lead to a far less ranking in Savage.

Compare yourself to your own numbers for the same fight. If you want to know how you'd do in Savage (and treat each fight separately), get logs for that fight.

When you do look at other player logs
don't get hung up on percentiles. You want to learn from other players, not feel inferior (or superior) to them.

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I wish I could upvote this more. Great insight and good tips.

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Originally Posted by KaldeaSahaline

Looking at it the wrong way.

grr can't edit it, not sure if my net (work) or the forums are crapping out

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Its alright...I get where you're coming from. That was back then, though. As a tank, high deeps are not my priority. And honestly, at present, I'm not as concerned with percentiles, because I've been stuck on V7S for a long time - longer than this thread has existed. It's just getting to the point where all I care about now is finding a party where I'm not one of 3 people still alive before Virus.