Observations on DPS in End Game

This topic briefly came up in another thread but I think should be its own discussion.

The Importance of Good DPS

Every fight is a DPS race in some way, shape or form. I'm not just talking Enrage timers either. There are many benefits to having higher DPS output.

• Higher DPS means a shorter fight. A shorter fight equates to less stress on healers' MP pools. It also means the party is at a lower risk of wiping because they have fewer hazards to deal with. If a fight is shortened from 8 minutes to 7 minutes, you can reasonably assume that they are only 7/8ths as likely to fail to a wipe-causing accident.
  
  
• Higher DPS also allows for you to push/skip phases. For example, Circle bombs into 5-way Landslide is a relatively common cause of accidental death at the end of Titan EX's heart phase. Having the DPS capacity to break the heart before the Landslide, or better yet before the circle bombs ends the phase and reduces the risk of people dying before post-heart.
  
  
• Higher DPS increases the party's chance of recovering from an accidental death or d/c. If the group is capable of meeting the smaller DPS checks throughout the fight despite being down one DPS, the group won't automatically fold to losing a member and can survive until the dead DPS is rezzed or simply finish the fight with seven.

Basically, higher DPS reduces the margin of error for the party. While there are a few isolated exceptions where too much DPS can potentially be a bad thing, generally a group with excess DPS is much more likely to succeed than a group with barely enough DPS to beat the encounter. Increasing your DPS allows you to win in situations where you'd normally lose. It's really that simple.

My Observations on DPS in End Game

This may all seem obvious and needless to say for some of us, particularly the demographic of players at an above-average skill level and play this game with an above-average level of intensity. However, based on my experiences and interactions with the FFXIV community, including PF groups, pre-made groups, static groups, and even similar MMORPG's other than FFXIV, I've made a few observations about DPS and people's attitudes towards it...

1. Players generally don't care enough about DPS output and don't realize/acknowledge how important it is to a party's success.

I find that the overall mentality amongst many DDs is "as long as I'm alive and dealing some degree of damage, this is enough to say that I'm adequately doing my job". This fallacious concept of DPS exists at both a conscious and subconscious level. People will argue that "dead DDs deal zero DPS", which is very true, but shouldn't the goal be to deal as much damage in addition to staying alive? Some DPS classes are very complex and have very high skill-caps, but to many players, the process of dealing damage devolves to simply staying alive and pressing some buttons. The intracacies of their job are completely missed due to their lack of understanding of their own role. This mentality is a misconception and is a barrier for DDs to improve themselves.

Also, the overall mentality amongst tanks is "DPS is not my responsibility. I'm a tank, not a DD. My damage sucks anyway, so why bother?" In my opinion, regardless of whether you're a Tank/DD/Healer, your ultimate job is to improve your party's chance to succeed. And to that end, tanks should not treat their DPS output as a residual side-effect of trying to hold aggro, but instead they should treat it as a major responsibility in addition to their primary duties: aggro management, damage mitigation, and the proper positioning of enemies. Tank DPS is important. Unfortunately, the vast majority of tanks don't feel that way. They don't put forth the effort into maximizing DPS and they don't recognize it as one of the dynamics of their role. Likewise, this mentality is a misconception and is a barrier for Tanks to improve themselves.

To a much lesser extent you could say the same applies for healers as well, but the game's design somewhat limits healers' ability to contribute damage, especially in Coil where low accuracy hinders the usefulness of healer DPS, but mostly because dealing damage will almost always come as a direct compromise to their ability to heal (MP cost and/or casting time). In any case, situations do exist where healers DPS is viable and the benefit that outweighs the cost. Great healers are able to identify these situations and take advantage.

2. Many players don't know how to increase their own DPS output often because they're not even aware that their DPS is in need of improvement.

PARSERS! How long did you think we could talk about DPS without using that word? Parsers compile and organize statistical data from your combat log and the game's memory. Strictly within the context of measuring DPS output, it tells you how much damage each player is dealing and how often each attack is being used. Parsers are a means to evaluate, learn, improve and gauge their progress.

Its importance and usefulness for the purpose of evaluation and self-improvement cannot be understated. Behind all the pretty sprites, flashy graphics and cool animations is a vast game of mathematics. Mastery of this game depends on understanding and applying math, and none of this is possible without access to numerical data.

Here is the problem:

Parsers are illegal and many people avoid using them because of this. The people who DO use them must be discreet about it, which drastically limits how the parsers can be used as well as its exposure to the community. Even if they weren't illegal, parsers are still often taboo and frowned upon in the community. Many people perceive parsers to be a catalyst for toxic behavior, which isn't completely untrue, but it doesn't mean that they can't be used constructively and responsibly. Some people see parse results as way for players to flex their epeen and compete with one another, when they should be cooperating with each other, but fail to see the value in players having a DPS metric to evaluate themselves and each other.

As a result, only a small percentage of players actually use parsers. An even smaller percentage of players actually know how to use them properly and are able to interpret the data as something more than "I'm a better player than this guy, but not as good as that guy". For everyone else, they are deprived of a means to evaluate, learn, improve themselves, as well as the people around them.

Parsers and statistics can and should have a huge impact on end-game FFXIV and the way players can approach the game. Unfortunately, because of these obstacles, they don't. In the end, average players are perpetually trapped in their own mediocrity. Can you really blame them?

This leads to my next point...

3. People have no incentive to increase their own DPS output because players are rarely held accountable for their performance in this area.

Now, I just want to point out that some players don't care about being the best player they can be. Not everybody plays this game at the same level of intensity as we do. This is fine and I respect that.

However, the nature of this game creates a double-standard where tanks and healers are required to perform but DPS is not. If a tank sucks, he will fail to manage aggro or not position properly and the group will criticize him for it. If a healer sucks, people will die from lack of healing and the group will criticize him for it. If DPS sucks, nobody knows because they don't have or can't talk about the statistical data to show it. Even if you were allowed to talk about it, remember: parsers are generally frowned upon by the average player and you have a good chance being considered as an elitist and a toxic member of the community. The end result: DDs are exempt from the stardard of play that the Tanks and Healers are held to. Unlike Tanks and Healers whose inadequacies are obvious, when a DD is incompetent at his class, this fact is hidden from everyone including the DD himself.

How is this fair? Can you not see how this would affect the enjoyment of Tanks and Healers who are actually trying to learn their class? In both video games and in the real world people are MUCH MUCH MUCH more open and receptive to criticism if they know that everyone else is being held to the same standard and that constructive criticism is a two-way street.

Criticism is not spread evenly amongst all players. The weight is put on half of them. Wait, did I say "half"? It's actually, much less than half as evidenced by DPS queue times, probably because nobody wants to play a class where they can't learn and improve on the same terms as DPS. It's a matter of fact: The lack of incentive for DPS to improve affects the willingness for everyone else to improve.

Conclusion

I've written a lot of words. What is my point? What am I trying to get out of this? To be honest, I guess I didn't really have a point. I just wanted to share my views and observations and see what other people had to say. But, I guess if there were points to take away from this:

• DD's: try to improve yourselves. When a party is trying to kill a boss, a very large percentage of problems can be solved with slightly better DPS. The reason people can sell Titan EX runs and easily kill him with six people is because their DPS is better. Our sell team doesn't have perfect players. We occasionally die to dumb shit too, but our DPS is just so good that our margin of error is huge. Your DPS is very valuable but nobody will encourage you to improve it because the general public is ignorant. You gotta do it yourself.
  
  
• Tanks should be conscious of their DPS too. It's often the difference between a good tank and a great tank. Tanks who do max damage are super rare and super valuable to their teams.
  
  
• Leaders of FC's and statics: It's your responsibility to make sure your party is functioning like a well-oiled machine, right? Then put more focus on improving your party's DPS. Again, a very large percentage of problems can be solved with slightly better DPS. The mark of a good leader is that he/she demands a lot and gets a lot from his/her players. Set the bar high for DPS, provide the encouragement and help to get your DPS higher, and pat yourself on the back when bosses die cleaner and easier.
  
  
• Get a parser, guys! Even if you're not a DD. It will do wonders for your own improvement and understanding of the game. Who cares if it's against the terms of service? If you're paranoid about it, just don't talk about it in game. Otherwise, don't be a dick about it and you'll be fine.
  
  
• If you really don't want to get a parser, at least have an open mind about it. Someone telling someone else their DPS is low is no different than someone telling a tank he needs to hold aggro better or he's not tanking the boss in the right spot. This whole notion that parse results are nothing but toxic epeen-meters has got to go.
  
  
• Goddammit everyone, just learn to play better. One of the most polarizing behaviors of MMO players is their obsession with loot. All players tend to spend a lot of energy focusing on their gear, reseraching/discussing upgrades, and figuring out what's best-in-slot, and yet some can't be bothered to learn how to improve their technique and better understand their own class. Technical play is a greater limiting factor to your DPS output than the quality of your gear. Shame on you for foaming at the mouth over the tiniest statistical upgrade when you're only doing 60% of what you're capable of because you don't care enough about improving your technique. Get your priorities straight!

A good well thought out arguement~

I just have a few problems with it~

in MOST dungeons and endgame content, if a dps is doing 70-80% of their potential damage the enemies will still die. A tank doing 70-80% of their potential in tanking will likely end up eating dirt and wiping the party.

As for parsers, first off they are illegal in this game~ second Ps3 players can't use them, so that line of "improvement" is out~

Telling people "L2PB!" because they aren't able to do 100% of what you think they're capable of is stupid~ any number of reasons could be holding them back. A disability that reduces their motorskills, a laggy connection so they're getting frequent hangtime on their commands or it's a new dungeon or method to them. All of these are legitimate reasons for not "pulling your weight" and besides, They've paid just as much to play this game as you all have~ Should they be excluded from endgame because they aren't "the elite of elites"?

Basically people don't bother to research and optimise their rotations. I've seen all sorts of crap including:

- BLMs who spam Fire III > Transpose > DO nothing until full MP > Repeat (Quite a few of these actually)
- SMNs who let DoTs fall off for up to a minute at a time
- SMNs who don't use DoTs at all
- MNKs who just stay on one direction and don't switch between flank/rear at all. Might have worked somewhat in 2.0, not anymore.
- MNKs who constantly let GL fall off, even on bosses which stand still the entire fight
- A DRG who used nothing but Full Thrust over and over
- Actually DRGs in general, they're almost all terrible
- Probably loads more I can't recall

A lot of these people have managed to scrape through some of the endgame content just by overgearing it and being carried by others, but I get the feeling they're in for a grim couple of months wiping horribly to Twintania (even with the echo buff) trying to even get to try Turn 6 (which they can't overgear).

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

in MOST dungeons and endgame content, if a dps is doing 70-80% of their potential damage the enemies will still die.

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Now, maybe, but only because they all overgear the content. If they go into 2.2 on Leviathan Ex or Turn 6 with their i90 gear (probably equivalent to doing current coil in darklight) only doing 70% of their damage then they're simply not going to clear it.

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

in MOST dungeons and endgame content, if a dps is doing 70-80% of their potential damage the enemies will still die. A tank doing 70-80% of their potential in tanking will likely end up eating dirt and wiping the party.

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Again, dealing excess amounts DPS reduces your margin of error. 70-80% of damage potential is enough to kill anything in the game. Especially since most of us are overgeared for the content we're clearing. That's if everything else is going perfectly, which isn't always the case. Why do you think EX Titan groups fold when one person dies? Why do you think i90 parties can't beat Twintania without 5 DPS?

Anyway, how do you define "70-80% of potential in tanking?" 70-80% of threat generation? 70-80% of HP pool? 70-80% of damage output? Anyway, I don't understand what you mean by that, but whatever you meant by that, I can't see how it can be both relevant and correct.

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As for parsers, first off they are illegal in this game~ second Ps3 players can't use them, so that line of "improvement" is out~

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I agree on both counts. They are illegal. PS3 players can't use them. For those who can use them, they're pretty damn useful. For those who can't, sorry.

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Telling people "L2PB!" because they aren't able to do 100% of what you think they're capable of is stupid~ any number of reasons could be holding them back. A disability that reduces their motorskills, a laggy connection so they're getting frequent hangtime on their commands or it's a new dungeon or method to them. All of these are legitimate reasons for not "pulling your weight" and besides, They've paid just as much to play this game as you all have~ Should they be excluded from endgame because they aren't "the elite of elites"?

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Is it really stupid? A person with a disability, laggy connection, or lack of experience is NOT entitled to victory by virtue of his handicap. THAT is stupid. While these may be legitimate reasons to you for someone not pulling their weight, Titan EX does not give a flying fuck about your disability, laggy connection, or lack of experience. Landslides will still knock you off the platform. You still need to X damage in 10 minutes to kill him. You still have to heal the damage he puts out. The conditions of victory and defeat are set by the designers of and the boss fight. You either pass or fail. It's black and white. That's the way it should be.

Paying the same amount as someone else for a video game does not entitle you to the same level of progression as they have. That's preposterous. I can't believe you even brought that up.

So if a Paladin doesn't use flash as a part of their aggro rotation, they will eat dirt and wipe the party. Gotcha.

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Originally Posted by bokchoykn

So if a Paladin doesn't use flash as a part of their aggro rotation, they will eat dirt and wipe the party. Gotcha.

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Oh but if a drg doesn't use heavy thrust, or a blm use thundercloud procs that'll wipe the party?

I've seen tanks in endgame content that are constantly on the verge of losing aggro during bosses~ but we can't blame the tank if aggro is lost and that causes a wipe right? Poor tanks~ We'll blame the dps who were giving it 100% like you wanted~

I think a distinction between playing to a class's optimal potential and playing to an individual's skill cap
potential needs to be made here. While I would strongly agree that it would behoove every player to play to the best of his/her ability, it would be impossible to accurately ascertain someone's potential (especially strangers from df or pf).

For every player that finds keeping several dots and debuffs with 100% uptime, using all offensive cooldowns the second it's off cooldown, weaving in off gcd skills between gcds while simultaneously maintaining optimal positioning and avoiding all the crap on the ground child's play, I assure you there will be others who find it physically impossible to do so. This can be due to any number of reasons the previous poster mentioned (reflexes, brain lag, latency, rl distractions etc).

It's akin to telling you to learn to play an fps correctly, which means headshotting 100% of the time. If you can't you're bad.

tldr If a random dps does not live up to your "standards", but is trying his hardest and done all he could (read rotations, practice on dummy) How will you label him then?

All I have to say really to this is that sometimes since I play as DPS the most, is that some scenarios I will focus on damage above all else. If I need to clench some extra damage and the fight is getting tougher for whatever reason and Healers are wearing out and Tanks are looking weak, I'll find a spot to bunker down in and let whatever hits me hit me besides OHKO moves and the like. At that point I won't help other people, dodge as many attacks, or really worry about anything besides the main target. If it's me and one or two others alive, I'll ignore all the people dying and try and finish it myself.

Suppose you could call it Tunnel Vision, I just see it as "well I need to get this done now or never, screw whoever can't keep up."

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Originally Posted by illuminapanic

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I can agree with you on this definitely. The 2.5 sec gcd definitely trivializes the game somewhat. Maybe the rotation that I described is what I do personally, or at least what I strive to do. But still from what the op seems to be describing, it seems to be a fairly high level of play (selling ex primal runs) I reckon at least has to have every player at 85-90% of the class potential. And even though I don't have a lvl 50 dragoon yet, I believe it is not as simple as just HT, ID and Dis, to really max dps you need to time all your buffs with bfb and IR (power surge, life surge, plem, leg sweep, inv, jumps in that 20 sec window). I had to work it out at the start but now it becomes second nature for me. All I'm saying is that it might not work that way for everybody.

Let me give you an example from Wow (since I only started ff14 a month ago and played wow >5 yrs). There was this female healer in my guild who played a holy priest and the husband played a tank. We raided 10 man from BC to cata and for the most part of her journey as a healer, she was a terrible healer. She literally could not multitask. (If she had to move she could not heal, if she had to heal she could not move,she would always forget to heal the tank, shield the tank use cooldowns and basically have tunnel vision healing.) We tried every ways and means to help her and even had a gathering where we watched her play and told her what to do while we watched. She just could not heal to save her life but you could see she was really trying. I would imagine she would die a gruesome death if she tried titan hm in ffxiv. This is what I am saying. Not everyone has the same skill cap and it is arguably unfair to generalize everyone that does not meet your defined standard as bad when you have no idea of their background or playstyle.

And if you think blm can't screw up, obviously you have not played blm enough. I can't count the number of times I was 5 mana short of a swiftcast flare or 10 mana short of a blizzard 3 and I stand there looking like an idiot waiting for a transpose tick. Or maybe Im just "Bad" :P

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Originally Posted by illuminapanic

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I didn't say that using parsers to compete with each other is a bad thing. I do it all the time. It's fun taunting your friend when you outparse him, and being taunted when he outparses you. It's fun and it drives you to do better.

I was only making a point that some people dislike parsers because they think its only purpose to to create a DPS contest. They don't see the other purposes and benefits of parsers and that's why they think they're pointless.

The rest of your post accurately describes what I'm trying to say. Thank you!

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Originally Posted by illuminapanic

I'm sorry but you sound like a really mad person. While I don't agree 100% with the OP, I think you both are misinterpreting each other but you are just being a dick about it.

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Yup, I actually tempered my original first response to this thread quite a bit~ it was their decision to equate "ability to do x/y/z" with "the game doesn't give a fuck, why should I? I'll be an elitist bitch" that pissed me off sufficiently to no longer care how I came across~

The issue here is players do not accommodate for anything when it comes to this game. Its hard to queue up for these endgame fights and PF is usually full people looking for people that know the fight not anyone that is learning the fight. So sometimes people just can't find groups that are willing to work with them and if the group fails, instead of trying to figure a way to make the fight work several more times people are hold hostage to that abandon button. People vote to abandon dungeons like it is their job, it really is ridiculous the lack of trying people do in this game.

You wanna complain about DPS and other classes not pulling their weight well look at how easily people choose to abandon a dungeon on the first wipe with 60+ minutes still on the clock, plenty of time to fix everyones mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

Yup, I actually tempered my original first response to this thread quite a bit~ it was their decision to equate "ability to do x/y/z" with "the game doesn't give a fuck, why should I? I'll be an elitist bitch" that pissed me off sufficiently to no longer care how I came across~

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Way to misinterpret everything I've said and then put words into my mouth.

A few weeks ago, one of my static members ran a parser for our coil run. Our DPS has always been good/great but once he announced scores everyone dug in and unzipped their pants to show how big their DPS was. It was the sloppiest run we ever did (mostly because our bard didn't ballad and missed High voltages) but it was also our fastest. Fun times. :D

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Originally Posted by bokchoykn

Way to misinterpret everything I've said and then put words into my mouth.

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Coming from little miss "lets misinterpret everything I said in my first response" that rings fairly hollow~

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

Coming from little miss "lets misinterpret everything I said in my first response" that rings fairly hollow~

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I dunno if it's because English isn't your first language, but I have a hard time grasping what you are trying to say and you obviously have a hard time grasping what I'm trying to say. I still don't really get your point at all.

The OP is about improving your play and the barriers that prevent players from doing so.

It has nothing to do with forcing everyone to play the game at a higher level of intensity than they want to. If you are a casual player and aren't concerned with playing the game at a higher level, that's great. This topic might not pertain to you and it might concern or interest you at all, which is fine by me.

It has nothing to do with shifting blame from tanks to DPS. It's about the double-standard that exists where Tanks and healers must learn their class to satisfy their teammates and DPS generally doesn't.

You've misinterpreted the meaning of my post in a way that offends you.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

tldr If a random dps does not live up to your "standards", but is trying his hardest and done all he could (read rotations, practice on dummy) How will you label him then?

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If the effort is there, I respect that. Even if the effort is not there (because not everyone cares about being skilled at this video game) I even respect that too. I don't expect all players to be pros. Some will never be good enough to defeat Titan HM without a carry, etc... That's perfectly fine.

The entire point of the post is that the road to improvement, for the ones who wish to travel it, has many barriers set by the nature of the game and the ignorance of the community.

• The importance of DPS output is underrated, even by DD themselves, thus reducing players' incentive from improving this facet of their play.
  
• Without third party parsers, the game does very little to facilitate the improvement of DPS output.
  
• DDs are not held to the same standard as Tanks or Healers, further reducing their incentive to improve.

My intended message is to break these barriers by:

• Understanding and acknowledging the importance of DPS and incorporating it into your play.
  
• Utilizing the available tools that can facilitate the improvement of DPS, and do it in such a way that won't risk getting you banned.
  
• Holding yourself and your teammates to a higher standard, regardless of role. In a constructive way, of course.

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

Oh but if a drg doesn't use heavy thrust, or a blm use thundercloud procs that'll wipe the party?

I've seen tanks in endgame content that are constantly on the verge of losing aggro during bosses~ but we can't blame the tank if aggro is lost and that causes a wipe right? Poor tanks~ We'll blame the dps who were giving it 100% like you wanted~

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I'm trying to find the part in any of bokchoykn's posts where it says tanks or healers should be without blame.

If a tank can't hold threat, that's a very big problem. If they can't survive, that's a very big problem. If a healer can't keep people (who aren't screwing up) alive, that's a very big problem.

The difference is that those are all also very visible problems. The threat meter is right there. The tank's buffs are visible and everyone can see their HP. Everyone can see when a healer is or isn't casting, and can see HP bars drop and rise. You can tell when those two roles are performing at least well enough, even if you're not familiar with the jobs.

You can't tell with DPS without external tools. Unless you know the job(s) really well yourself and are watching them almost as much as your own stuff. I know MNK well enough to have a general idea of what buttons a MNK is pushing if I have time to pay attention. But I've honestly got no clue about the other DPS classes, and there's no way I've got time to keep an eye on all of them to see who's the weak link just from what's going on in the game. The threat meter kind of helps, but some classes have threat drops, and if they're split on different targets, it's not that useful. All you've really got is whether or not stuff is dying fast enough.

The nature of the game already holds tanks and healers accountable enough. Good players will always want to improve regardless of their role. But DPS just don't have nearly that level of visible accountability.

The stigma against accountability (for all roles) could use some weakening. It's just that that stigma already isn't nearly as strong when it comes to tanks or healers. You don't have to worry about being told how to improve in either of those roles; you screw up, you'll hear about it.

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

I can kinda see where you are going with parsers, but the fact is most of the player community has not progressed to a point where parsers are necessary imho. Do you really think you need a parser for wp, ak ct or any of the hm dungeons? If SE decides to include parsers as a feature in the game, its just going to grief more players than it benefits. And serious raiders who are challenging end game content are going to get parsers one way or another, regardless of whether its allowed by SE or not.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

I can kinda see where you are going with parsers, but the fact is most of the player community has not progressed to a point where parsers are necessary imho. Do you really think you need a parser for wp, ak ct or any of the hm dungeons? If SE decides to include parsers as a feature in the game, its just going to grief more players than it benefits. And serious raiders who are challenging end game content are going to get parsers one way or another, regardless of whether its allowed by SE or not.

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Except that I could fail Titan heart phase over and over again. Without a parser, I'm not going to be able to see who's playing sub-par and causing the group to fail. You can say that the group is only as good as its weakest member, but how fair is it to then deny the group one of the primary tools they can use to improve themselves?

As far as needing it for AK. . .I've seen some pretty poor dps in there. Fights where we wiped to the first boss because DPS couldn't kill the golems fast enough to even really damage the boss itself. Fights where the Wall just pushes us inexorably toward the back of the room. Fights where we finish as a fifth Catastrophe is being cast. These are all times that I would've loved to be able to tell the DPS what they were doing wrong, but it's somewhat beyond my ability to catch everything that my teammates are doing while simultaneously running all over the arena contending with mechanics.

And honestly, the idea that people don't need parsers purely because they're still on easy content seems odd to me. The easy content should be building you toward the harder content, in the same way that leveling up builds you to the level 50 content. Letting people get by with lousy rotations and having no tool to correct them with just means that when they get to difficult content they have to forget everything they know about their class and completely relearn it. I don't know about you, but I'd rather learn BLM in WP where I won't often have to move than learn it while also trying to learn Titan Extreme. . .

One of the reasons people don't use/talk parsers is that even if you just make a thread about it, you are pretty much instantly labeled as an elitist jerk and you have to defend yourself to no end (as seen here) even if your point was just to help out players to get better, which is ultimately what they most likely want.

Only way to get around this is by covering your sentences with sugar in such way not even the most "moral casual elitist" will be offended. So next time, try to start every sentence with: "In my opinion...", "I think...", "I might be wrong...", "In my experience...", etc...

Good luck!

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

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Back when I played Wow, someone in the raid would post dmg done/dps from recount into raid chat. After the raid, officers would also briefly analyze different parameters (dmg taken, number of times a particular skill is used etc) for boss fights and if someone wasn't performing up to expectations, they would pm them to have a chat about it. This is what I call constructive use of parsers. If SE can incorporate something like this into ffxiv I would be totally receptive of it as it would help fcs and statics so much for progression fights.

This is all well and good within the context of a grp of people playing together regularly but what if used in DF and PF which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

My point being, if its a straight up dps check and who isn't pulling their weight, its not hard to tell at all. The threat meter, while not 100% accurate can be used as a rough gauge.

Now imagine this expended to the duty finder in CT where there are 24 players. People were already abusing the ready check and vote abandon system? Can you imagine the fiasco if a parser was introduced?

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Originally Posted by skaterger

...which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

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Hmm...based on my own experiences over the last decade, I'll go with number 1. Nah...who am I kidding. Number two all the way.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

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I thought about what the game would be like if the game had a built-in parser, and I'm inclined to agree with you that the disadvantages would outweigh the benefits. Players would be more accountable and in turn play would improve, but at the same time, it would also facilitate toxic behavior like the stuff that you've mentioned. It would probably have a negative impact on casual players, creating an atmosphere of paranoia and toxicity.

Then I think about new/learning and unskilled tanks. Their performance is already constantly exposed to the rest of the group, just like a DD's would be if the game had a built-in parser. Except instead of low numbers, he also looks like a complete idiot when he screws up tanking. That's probably why tanks are so scarce. But I digress.

The OP was more directed at probably the upper 25% (guessing) of the game's players (in terms of skill, progression and intensity) who are actually doing end-game stuff that requires a higher standard of play.

If I was to implement an in-game parser in FFXIV, the data would be private and confidential to the specific player using it, with the option to share with teammates with the click of a button. If a teammate chooses to share with you, you can see his total damage dealt, how many of each skill he used, how many auto-attacks he landed, his critical hit rate, etc... just like you could see your own.

BTW: Threat meter is a bad way to show damage contribution. Quelling Strikes and Elusive Jump exist. Monks don't have any threat-management abilities. Plus, there are AoE situations and adds in every fight, while threat meter only shows the threat on each individual target. You can't tell who's carrying their weight on Ifrit EX nails using a threat meter.

I've done the EX fights enough times to tell when people aren't pulling their weight. I play the majority of classes so I know what to expect from them.

Picking out who is just there for a carry is the hard part for DPS though.
Like Titan EX with a full I85 group and Titan gets three MB off before jumping. I don't like to see more than 1 MB with a group that geared. But at 3 there is an obvious issue.

I've seen more parties fall apart due to not knowing where the exact issue is. Aside from Obvious Tank and Healer issues. Being able to see others output and allowing a chance to improve before replacing has saved more parties I've been in than ones it has ruined. (Actually, immediate intervention has worked much better than waiting until frustration sets in)

I think a DPS tool would be helpful if it worked like the rest of the voting tools. Everyone should vote if they want it to be displayed and majority dictates.

I wonder what the effect would be if there were content with individual mechanical consequences for low DPS. Fights where DPS below a certain threshold get knocked around and/or called out by the boss, some kind of mechanic that makes it clear Joe Schmoe needs to work a bit harder. Make the accountability visible, direct, instead of just a vague lack of stuff dying or phases not ending fast enough, without making it an explicit number. Wouldn't have to be every fight, either. Just a roadblock here and there that makes people have to figure it out so they reach a minimum capability threshold.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

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Yeah, it's pretty easy to see when the collective DPS is good or bad. It's impossible to see it on an individual level without a parser.

I've done a TON of Titan EX PF's (to help people and out of boredom), and so many times I'll see someone at 150 DPS criticizing the PLD's positioning or the ripping on the BRD for dying to plumes. I want to say to him "do you realize that you're not pulling your weight either? the tank will eventually get it and the BRD will eventually be more careful, but your DPS will always be low."

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Originally Posted by bokchoykn

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Ditto about the threat meter. I don't parse for every fight so its the only available real time approximation on who is pulling their weight or not. Its still useful for some fights though. Like you can see the threat meter on conflags to see which dps is slow to switch to conflag (if you are dying to fast conflags).

I'm curious though, if parsers are already being run in the background *hush hush*, then why the insistance it be made an in-game feature that all players have access to? It seems that this would cause more grief than anything else. If the point was to help the player improve, then having it run in game or in the background would make no difference. The information is still the same where you get it from.

Btw, thanks for keeping this discussion civil. And also, there seems to be a thread in GD about parsing too you might want to check it out.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

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I don't think there is a huge problem with how things are now: Parsers are third-party, used by those who want to use them. I'm not necessarily advocating for an in-game parser to be implemented. If one was to be implemented or if the game allowed for custom UI mods, I would welcome it with open arms, but I don't think the issue is the absence of an in-game parser.

I think the major issue is that players are ignorant about DPS. The problem lies within the community and culture of MMO's where (outside of the most competitive and skilled players) maximizing damage output isn't considered important, parsers are considered poison, and there is no incentive to improve.

keep in mind that melees DPS get shafted by AoE circles and that Grease Lightning most of the time will be lost if a boss jumps and comes bak down. It can be preserve but u will be pushing the time on your grease lightning. and to get it back you have to slowly build it back. While its good if a MNK can work with that but im pretty sure alot cant.

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Originally Posted by Alkimi

- Actually DRGs in general, they're almost all terrible

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This is a sterotype that has lived long enough. Anyone can be bad. I see more bad BRDs than DRGs lately, but its all just opinion.

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Originally Posted by Rein-Yagami

Oh but if a drg doesn't use heavy thrust, or a blm use thundercloud procs that'll wipe the party?

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Yup. Won't kill those Conflags/Snakes/Dreadknights/Dreadnaughts/Knights/Gaols/Suparnas/Chiradas/Satins/Nails/ect fast enough without HT, resulting in wipe.

I really like the OPs post. It comes across as just a general nudge to do better, and he does have a point. But to the OP, that is the line, I believe, between casual and "not casual". A lot of people who have cleared the top tiers of content do perform the way you have described. This is a game that welcomes people who do only play at 70% efficiency, but those people cannot get themselves through the content, which imo is the dividing line. Just let people play the way they want to play. For those that do want to improve, this is a useful point of reading.

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Originally Posted by ExiaQuanta

keep in mind that melees DPS get shafted by AoE circles and that Grease Lightning most of the time will be lost if a boss jumps and comes bak down. It can be preserve but u will be pushing the time on your grease lightning. and to get it back you have to slowly build it back. While its good if a MNK can work with that but im pretty sure alot cant.

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This should not be used as a crutch. This sounds like your talking about Primals, and those fights are designed in a way that Monks (and any job) can clear them. If you are performing your job to the best of your ability, then it doesn't matter if you lose Greased Lightning. It is designed for you to do so, and that my friend is just part of what it means to truly optimize your DPS in those fights.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

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This is entirely true, especially as more people start moving into Extreme mode primals (heck people still struggle with HM Titan). It is very easy to tell if the DPS are failing when you don't break Titan's Heart and everyones alive? That's the DPS to blame, and your right it might not be just one person which is why I feel the OP needs to add the following concept to his original post:

- Another responsibility of DPS is to coordinate with each other. This includes simple ideas like "who is using Limit Break and and what time?" to more complex ideas like cross-buffing for DPS increases. For example, as a BRD, should I be using Foe Requiem so the BLM can AoE harder, or Army's Paeon so the Warrior and Dragoon can AoE longer? Another relationship is Dragoon and Bard. As a DRG, is it more important to Disembowl the Bard's target, or focus on my own target? These concepts are more class-oriented but the general idea that you should coordinate with your fellow DPS is also very key to maximizing your class's potential, as well as your group's.

Nice write up Bokchoy! Good to know I am rare and valuable to my team XD

I like your idea on the confidential/shared in-game DPS meter, certainly seems like a reasonable way to implement it. If something like that was included from the early stages it would give players a means to gauge their improvements throughout the leveling process. By the time they get to end-game content they would probably be pretty familiar with min/max/average performances. I think if there was a little number up in the corner most people would push to see how high the number could go, this could encourage continuous improvement. That being said, you really wouldn't want a healer pushing their DPS, so maybe just make it an exclusive feature of DPS classes. Tanks could get something that displays threat gen on mobs, like an icon over the head or maybe another meter underneath the enemy healthbar that shows threat loss. Maybe something for healers that calculates a reaction time or overhealing. Not really sure on the tanks/healer stuff, just throwing out something so that maybe each type could have it's own type of "meter".

I hate to say it and I do believe that people should be able to play the way they want to but the idea of it seems more toxic and non-beneficial to me. It just leads to ignorance and leaves people more open to being offended then backlashing at others. In a game where you have to rely on your teammates to do their best to assist you with a clear, helping your teammates by doing your best is also helping yourself. Like the OP has stated, doing your part results in faster clear times which results in less mechanics to work with and less overall group work. So if you "play the way I want to" and aren't performing up to par, you aren't helping the group OR yourself.

Sorry if this was off topic but in every thread there always comes to threads which say "let them play how they want to" and whenever I think of it, I don't see any good come from it.

OP I play as a DRG and my main issue with that class is getting the skills to go off as they should. When they don't it really does hurt a DRGs DPS. But thats not my biggest issue here on this game my biggest issue is that people are too quick to hit the Abandon Button on the first fail with 50-60+ minutes left on the clock. People don't care to try when they fail once and that I believe is the reason we see "bad players" in this game, because people don't try after they fail once or twice. They would rather quit the dungeon and complain they got a bad party when in truth they were probably the reason the dungeon failed.

There are many aspects to why people don't play as good as you listed and the main reason is because people unreasonably hit the Abandon Button on the first wipe. People arent trying to improve themselves after the first wipe or second wipe, they just quit.

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Originally Posted by Alkimi

Basically people don't bother to research and optimise their rotations.

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I recall trying to research my class on the internet and I realized that there were a lot of conflicting opinions on how to optimize one's dps as well as out of date documents. It isn't like trying to research a rotation for World of Warcraft where it was very easy to find a good guide simply because of the game's massive popularity. MMOs aren't quite like that anymore.

They should really not be trying to create rotations in this day and age. I'm all for having a variety of abilities that do different things, but the dps choices should be very obvious.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

I recall trying to research my class on the internet and I realized that there were a lot of conflicting opinions on how to optimize one's dps as well as out of date documents. It isn't like trying to research a rotation for World of Warcraft where it was very easy to find a good guide simply because of the game's massive popularity. MMOs aren't quite like that anymore.

They should really not be trying to create rotations in this day and age. I'm all for having a variety of abilities that do different things, but the dps choices should be very obvious.

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I can't really agree with this sort of mindset. May I know what class you were researching with that had many conflicting opinions on their rotation? Afaik, all 5 dps classes are fairly consistent in their rotations, with the possible exception of monk having side-only, back-only or side-back movement dps. But even so, the rotations have a few governing principles that all non-mmo newbies should possess

1) Keeping uptime on dots and debuffs on enemy as much as possible
2) Using offensive cooldowns as much as possible and as soon as its off cooldown
2) Weaving off gcd cooldowns into your normal 2.5 sec gcd rotations
3) Correct positioning during skills and right order of skills used to maximize damage

In cases like whether fracture are useful for dragoon or whether to open with thunder 2 or 3 with blm, yes there are many opinions on this but you need to realize that these are the players who min max and its not going to affect your dps by a significant amount whether you choose to use it or not. People who are doing sub dps as OP is talking about usually have much more major problems like spamming full thrust or casting blizzard for 90% of the fight to conserve mana.

I think a large part of what keeps a game interesting is that there are still certain unknowns or variables in the game. This keeps players interested and discussions alive as to the optimum rotations, skill tree, gear choices etc. If there is only 1 build or a cookie cutter build, then everything becomes homogenized and becomes nothing more than everyone mindlessly button mashing. This was what led me to leaving some other games and I personally do not hope SE goes down this route.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

This is all well and good within the context of a grp of people playing together regularly but what if used in DF and PF which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

My point being, if its a straight up dps check and who isn't pulling their weight, its not hard to tell at all. The threat meter, while not 100% accurate can be used as a rough gauge.

Now imagine this expended to the duty finder in CT where there are 24 players. People were already abusing the ready check and vote abandon system? Can you imagine the fiasco if a parser was introduced?

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I can only really vouch for myself, in that I'd point out how to fix his rotation, probably a bit more bluntly than necessary but without calling names or anything. The people in my FC would likely do the same, and probably even be nicer about it. That said, the vast majority of the players are not people I can vouch for, and I know that an unfortunate number of them would do #2. On the other hand, #2 is harassment, which is a bannable offense, and I know that the GMs act on these things. I would almost be willing to deal with the stupid if it meant that we could clean up some of the more toxic members of the community. Especially if it means I can go to CT without being bombarded with childish infighting.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

I can't really agree with this sort of mindset. May I know what class you were researching with that had many conflicting opinions on their rotation? Afaik, all 5 dps classes are fairly consistent in their rotations, with the possible exception of monk having side-only, back-only or side-back movement dps. But even so, the rotations have a few governing principles that all non-mmo newbies should possess

1) Keeping uptime on dots and debuffs on enemy as much as possible
2) Using offensive cooldowns as much as possible and as soon as its off cooldown
2) Weaving off gcd cooldowns into your normal 2.5 sec gcd rotations
3) Correct positioning during skills and right order of skills used to maximize damage

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I agree with this person. I like to believe that I am an above average player on most of my classes and all I had to do was come to the dps section on the forums to look up people's tips/advice on certain classes. They really aren't hard to find at all and a lot of skilled players give their input, with proven data, on what to adjust which is then edited on the main threads.

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Originally Posted by skaterger

People who are doing sub dps as OP is talking about usually have much more major problems like spamming full thrust or casting blizzard for 90% of the fight to conserve mana.

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It's funny because I joined a DF Titan HM as my War one time and we never got past heart phase. I was trying to eyeball the situation as to see what was wrong and I noticed that our Smn was not only eating every single avoidable damage, but he only casting ruin1. He didn't have his pet out and didn't cast any dots. Although he may not be the sole factor of us not progressing past heart, he was a major factor of the failure.