Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

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Originally Posted by HeavensSword

(...)I only ask because in my experience there are many ways to prop up DPS numbers (duration of the fight, fudging mechanics in certain ways, etc.). Total damage and total uptime are usually what I care about.

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This. People like to see their DPS numbers and the competition is exciting because you can manipulate that numbers with all the tricks you exposed and more. That's the fun.

But, when I want to see efficiency, who's a good or a bad player or where my group is wrong, I definitely will go for Damage Done (or Dmg%) insted of DPS.

You are both confused. When endgame players compare DPS, almost everyone's using that as shorthand for a certain column in a popular, ah, "abacus assistant" labeled EncDPS (damage done / time of encounter). It's a common divisor. When you look at damage done, you are doing the same comparison with more digits and less consistency between attempts.

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Originally Posted by SunnyHirose

You are both confused. When endgame players compare DPS, almost everyone's using that as shorthand for a certain column in a popular, ah, "abacus assistant" labeled EncDPS (damage done / time of encounter). It's a common divisor. When you look at damage done, you are doing the same comparison with more digits and less consistency between attempts.

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I understand, once again I haven't done any parsing in this game and therefore haven't had the pleasure of using the "abacus assistant". My initial point was that in the past (other games) I've found players who incorrectly look at actual DPS numbers rather than the Average or Total for an encounter which greatly skews perceptions. Thanks for the clarification though.

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Originally Posted by SunnyHirose

You are both confused. When endgame players compare DPS, almost everyone's using that as shorthand for a certain column in a popular, ah, "abacus assistant" labeled EncDPS (damage done / time of encounter). It's a common divisor. When you look at damage done, you are doing the same comparison with more digits and less consistency between attempts.

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No, I'm not confused. I use ACT as well, and I'm pretty familiar with all the data that it provides. That beeing said, what I meant before is that some people care a lot with the DPS numbers solo. "I did xxx DPS on this Y Encounter". It's a beauty (or ugly) number, but it just say, as you already said, wich was your damage done / encounter duration. Nothing more.

If you want to analyse how efficiently is your Job, or your role in your group, or any further data, you need the whole package of information that people usully forget (I'm not talking about our theorycrafts, of course). It may cause the new players, who is not familiarized with this kind of data, try to acheiev the "numbers" instied to try to improve whichever they lack at the moment.

For myselfe, my static don't have a Ninja, we usually play with something like 160ms+ and my group simply don't care about the content anymore, so if I'm to improve, I need to analyse all the data I can "isolate". I mean, all that I know that is less related with the group performance. And for this kind of information, I usually prefer the Damage Done column, because I can compare how much my Dragoon contributes to the fight regardless, for exemple, of how much time we needed to kill certain boss.

I usually find my DPS lower than other Dragoons, but I found that my contribution to the boss kill, sometimes is even higher, because I'm to compensate someone's DPS or something. A person who only watch the EncDPS column may think that they are doing something wrong at all (like many new goons on this thread so far) but in fact, maybe they are beeing as good as anyone here, but they lack of good circunstances to improve THE NUMBER.

Total_Damage / Encounter_Time = encDPS

encDPS * Encounter_Time = Total_Damage

Total_Damage / encDPS = Encounter_Time.

encDPS is the exact same measurement, just compressed.

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Originally Posted by Dervy

Total_Damage / Encounter_Time = encDPS

encDPS * Encounter_Time = Total_Damage

Total_Damage / encDPS = Encounter_Time.

encDPS is the exact same measurement, just compressed.

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I know how to calculate the numbers Dervy ¬¬. It's about it's interpretations, that's what I want to focus. I can't count how much times I got to explain someone how to analyse his/her performance despite the EncDPS showed at miniparse. Already met a lot of skilled players (on their Jobs) that tought they were lame, and turned that they were pretty good players, but their strat/team just didn't cooperate with his/her potential, and the person was just trying to change rotations or gears. And same for some bad ones, caried on mechanics, making everyone do a lot of extra job on mechanics, just to parse higher EncDPS numbers to showoff.

And I'm not even talking exclusively about Final Fantasy.

It's not about all the experienced players on this thread. It's about the new ones, who often came here to seek some knowlege, and see so much importance beeing given to the EncDPS. Look at the last pages. We had pages of discussion only on random numbers until someone post real relevant data to be analysed, or even start to discuss about strategy.

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Originally Posted by Dunncan

It's not about all the experienced players on this thread. It's about the new ones, who often came here to seek some knowlege, and see so much importance beeing given to the EncDPS. Look at the last pages. We had pages of discussion only on random numbers until someone post real relevant data to be analysed, or even start to discuss about strategy.

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Not to veer off of what you just said but that is something that bugs me about this sub-forum. Most discussion is about stat weights, rotations, and inter-class balance theorizing - virtually no discussion on optimizing individual encounters with specific rotations, positioning, and CD manipulation that veers from a dummy CD rotation. In fact, I've seen people ask for help with these things and get berated for not figuring it out for themselves, when that kind of stuff is worth 1,000X the real world results over the discussion of if DET is worth .25 or .26 stat weight or the like. That's not a knock against the theory crafters' intent but it's true, strategy > the stat weights in FFXIV, and I don't think that gets exposed even 1/4 as much as it should be. The good players will often hide their CD usage and specific tricks because they think it's mundane to post such basic information, or would rather hide it because they don't want to get copied.

I think the last few times people asked for DRG tips in FCoB in this topic, I gave my extremely basic tips, when there are players who post here pulling way better numbers than my DRG alt's numbers with 20X the amount of time in there, but no one ever bothers to correct me or give more meaningful or advanced tips. Again this isn't a knock at anyone in any way, but I feel like that's more of what a topic like this should be.

Sorry, just a small rant. Carry on.

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Originally Posted by Dunncan

I can't count how much times I got to explain someone how to analyse his/her performance despite the EncDPS showed at miniparse.

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And what I'm telling you is that EncDPS and damage done are equally flawed metrics for the exact same reasons, because they are the same ratio between raid members. The person who you say is carried on mechanics will do more "damage done" as well as EncDPS; they are getting the privilege of doing more "damage done" out of a finite amount of damage there is to do.

Neither number is reasonably comparable between different raids doing different things.

("my friend" does not even have the encounter reset time lengthened over the default; my group does not speed run, so diagnostics on demand are much more pertinent than numbers for mirin' as far as I'm concerned. I make an effort to never claim a DPS number in anything but controlled, disclosed, and hopefully replicable conditions.)

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

The good players will often hide their CD usage and specific tricks because they think it's mundane to post such basic information, or would rather hide it because they don't want to get copied.

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I don't disagree that there isn't enough discussion on fight-specific stuff (like an old post explaining a rotation for AK trash packs or EMX's post on how to double DoT in Levi EX), but historically, most of the people who thought they had anything to hide about their super sekrit rotation turned out to be full of hot air anyway, and anything that's been worth sharing has been so sparse it gets buried under nonsense :)

Nawwwww I didn't mean to undermine you! Sorry if it sounded like that. It's just I personally see no difference between total damage output and encDPS. To me, it's the same numerical value.

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Originally Posted by Dunncan

Look at the last pages. We had pages of discussion only on random numbers until someone post real relevant data to be analysed, or even start to discuss about strategy.

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Yup, I agree completely. People should be posting parses more often, especially if they're going to make outlandish comments about their (or their friends) DPS, or if they feel their numbers are too low. Also, if they're afraid of getting "caught out", they can change the "YOU" to your in-game name in ACT, so it appears as if someone else is parsing you (or black out the names).

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Originally Posted by SunnyHirose

I don't disagree that there isn't enough discussion on fight-specific stuff (like an old post explaining a rotation for AK trash packs or EMX's post on how to double DoT in Levi EX),

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Or his DoT rotation on Ifrit EX, as another good example.

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Originally Posted by SunnyHirose

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Obviously - all statistics need to be taken in context and more data is always a good thing if you want to do comparisons (crit rate, damage breakdown, fight length, party members, RNG mechanics etc.)
encDPS is not perfect but provides a simple "at a glance" number for comparison, there isn't really any other better stat for it, it's perfectly valid to compare raids doing different things -obviously if your raid plays it safe it will be less, you are sacrificing kill speed/dps for safety. How much potential dps are we losing because of this strat? Is it worth it? Does this strategy mean we do more dps or not?

encDPS only measures encDPS, nothing else, don't try to take away more from it then what it is.