What is parsing?

Hello i hear this a lot.

Is this something related to addons?

But arent addons against ToS? I am so confused.

Yeah it's related to a damage meter addon with which you can see the damage/heal you do and your group does. Speaking about it ingame and harassing people with it is a bannable offense not to mention that it is in general against the ToS. But as usual if you don't speak about it not much will happen but SE is enforcing their rules if people get reported for posting the numbers in group chat etc, even if a person asked you about it and you posted them in their request you most likely can get banned cause of this.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Yeah it's related to a damage meter addon with which you can see the damage/heal you do and your group does. Speaking about it ingame and harassing people with it is a bannable offense not to mention that it is in general against the ToS. But as usual if you don't speak about it not much will happen but SE is enforcing their rules if people get reported for posting the numbers in group chat etc, even if a person asked you about it and you posted them in their request you most likely can get banned cause of this.

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Ok ty ! <3 this seems make a lot of sense.

I noticed a lot of streamers use it too? Whats the general view about it? Isnt it like against ToS still?

Unimportant in 14. Absolutely all important in WoW.

It is against the ToS like any third party software but SE will probably never use anti cheat software etc. that searches through your programs, the reason why they are against this i don't know but FFXIV has no anti cheat software, that's why some bots use/used teleport hacks in the past and why stuff like mods/shaders/damage meters can't be detected by the game since it's client side software and the game doesn't read what you have open and what else interacts with the game as long as it doesn't affect data that is send back to the server. Still ofc it is against the ToS and SE gladly enforces these rules when someone reports you.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

It is against the ToS like any third party software but SE will probably never use anti cheat software etc. that searches through your programs, the reason why they are against this i don't know but FFXIV has no anti cheat software, that's why some bots use/used teleport hacks in the past and why stuff like mods/shaders/damage meters can't be detected by the game since it's client side software and the game doesn't read what you have open and what else interacts with the game as long as it doesn't affect data that is send back to the server. Still ofc it is against the ToS and SE gladly enforces these rules when someone reports you.

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Ok thank you :) This clears a lot of questions! I am glad SE enforces the rules! This gives me a lot of safety.

It’s for people who need a numerical read out, to tell them they are playing the game good or bad.

Don’t join the cult, it will just suck the joy out of you.

Put piety materia in all your dragoon gear and be happy that no one will really care!

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

It’s for people who need a numerical read out, to tell them they are playing the game good or bad.

Don’t join the cult, it will just suck the joy out of you.

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Yeah, who would want to know their performance in a progression based game.

All 3rd party programs are used under “Don’t ask, don’t tell”-policy. So unless some players are being obnoxiously obvious of its usage, SE will generally turn to blind eyes.

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Originally Posted by Velnora

Yeah, who would want to know their performance in a progression based game.

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You don’t need numbers to tell if you’re making progress or not. You either are, or are not. If you’re not dying and you’re hitting your proper rotation, odds are your performance is good.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

and you’re hitting your proper rotation

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and yet, that's something that a concerning amount of players can't seem to do :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Rinhi

and yet, that's something that a concerning amount of players can't seem to do :rolleyes:

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Unless they are purposely afking all simultaneously...How would you know that? You must use an addon to know they aren't doing well, no? 8) dumdum duum

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Originally Posted by Naaura

Unless they are purposely afking all simultaneously...How would you know that? You must use an addon to know they aren't doing well, no? 8) dumdum duum

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No. It's quite easy to tell when player(s) are underperforming with a quick glance at information available in-game. What is this thread anyway?

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

No. It's quite easy to tell when player(s) are underperforming with a quick glance at information available in-game. What is this thread anyway?

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I would like to know how one can tell if others are underperforming if you can tell how. I personally cant tell unless I can visually see that they are distracted and just not doing their rotation and following boss mechanics.
And this thread is about what is parsing because I kept hearing for years but I finally remembered to ask since it was mentioned earlier :)

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Originally Posted by Naaura

Unless they are purposely afking all simultaneously...How would you know that? You must use an addon to know they aren't doing well, no? 8) dumdum duum

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Actually it's pretty easy to tell without a parser just by observing other players, debuffs on the boss and how long a duty is taking.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

Actually it's pretty easy to tell without a parser just by observing other players, debuffs on the boss and how long a duty is taking.

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That stuff is normal paying attention to though no? So why do people need an addon then if it will risk them getting banned?

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Originally Posted by Naaura

That stuff is normal paying attention to though no? So why do people need an addon then if it will risk them getting banned?

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It's normal paying attention you say but you also just admitted to being unable to tell when someone is underperforming? Mmh...

Something that's useful is parsing and putting your numbers through xivanalysis to figure out what's going on and what to work on.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

It's normal paying attention you say but you also just admitted to being unable to tell when someone is underperforming? Mmh...

Something that's useful is parsing and putting your numbers through xivanalysis to figure out what's going on and what to work on.

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I cant tell number by number no! Of course not! :)

Normal environmental awareness, absolutely yes!

This seems like something that may keep the community quite divided if parsing is so important for progression...

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Originally Posted by Naaura

I cant tell number by number no! Of course not! :)

Normal environmental awareness, absolutely yes!

This seems like something that may keep the community quite divided if parsing is so important for progression...

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It's vital for min-maxing, which is one of the main appeal of harder content, and punishing people for using ACT in an innocent and positive manner would just kill the raiding scene, most of the negativity towards it comes from either people who don't want to be held accountable for slacking or people who are afraid of the toxicity it might bring in easier content.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

It's vital for min-maxing, which is one of the main appeal of harder content, and punishing people for using ACT in an innocent and positive manner would just kill the raiding scene, most of the negativity towards it comes from either people who don't want to be held accountable to slacking or people who are afraid of the toxicity it might bring in easier content.

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Yeah, absolutely. This already has been happening to WoW where the casual players have been completely deterred from doing normal content latest years and now look where the game is.

The addon does sound it has its usefulness if used with precaution in a progressive team to get the stuff you need.

Such a pity its in a such sensitive grey zone of the game where it has its good but absolutely against ToS. Leaving the players to risk and wonder if its worth it. Gameplay wise? Absolutely, if snitched on...Then its game over. :S

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Originally Posted by Naaura

Unless they are purposely afking all simultaneously...How would you know that? You must use an addon to know they aren't doing well, no? 8) dumdum duum

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red mages hardcasting spells such as verraise or verthunder (best when it's 2 rdm's hardcasting it simultaneously
healers afk-ing unless the tank takes a modicrum of damage and then they'll spam cure 1 or medica (mentor btw)
tanks not using mitigations unless they're at half health and then using all mitigations (also a mentor)
samurai or monks that don't have their buffs up at all etc etc

my friends use it to gauge their performances, to see if they have a decent grasp of the job they're currently playing and I really think that they'd never use it to put people down, instead, they'd probably use it to try and help people instead!
the addon just makes it easier for them to see the whole party's performance when they, say, wipe multiple times during easy trials because multiple people do next to no dps...

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Originally Posted by Naaura

Such a pity its in a such sensitive grey zone of the game where it has its good but absolutely against ToS. Leaving the players to risk and wonder if its worth it. Gameplay wise? Absolutely, if snitched on...Then its game over. :S

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acting like this isn't cute, fyi, it's pretty cringe
most of the people on this forum that argued for it have made multiple good points for it in the several threads we had about it, while the side against it's most frequent argument was 'muh toxic wow' 'muh harassing people' while the ignoring their own 'toxicity' that they showed again and again while arguing, like, case in point here, passive aggressively threatening people even if they haven't bothered anyone

you most likely didn't mean to come across like THAT with your post so I apologize for the tone of my post, but I'll let it stand because it's a valid point imo

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Originally Posted by Rinhi

my friends use it to gauge their performances, to see if they have a decent grasp of the job they're currently playing and I really think that they'd never use it to put people down, instead, they'd probably use it to try and help people instead!

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I absolutely love this.
Most of the time if I look like I am failing mechanics or something, is because I genuinely am struggling and I am still learning my job. Everytime I caught a mentor to try and point out the right direction, I always accepted it. More often than not, I completely missed out on a quest I had to do and wasn't even aware of!

I hope that FFXIV doesn't become dependent on the parsing addon and instead organically and intuitivelly evolves to work out for the players if they are doing well. Like a built in performance list without numbers but rather like "hey this player has been auto attacking only" in progression content. This way casual content doesn't get affected and newbs dont feel too scared!

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Originally Posted by Naaura

I absolutely love this.
Most of the time if I look like I am failing mechanics or something, is because I genuinely am struggling and I am still learning my job. Everytime I caught a mentor to try and point out the right direction, I always accepted it. More often than not, I completely missed out on a quest I had to do and wasn't even aware of!

I hope that FFXIV doesn't become dependent on the parsing addon and instead organically and intuitivelly evolves to work out for the players if they are doing well. Like a built in performance list without numbers but rather like "hey this player has been auto attacking only" in progression content. This way casual content doesn't get affected and newbs dont feel too scared!

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see, we're on the same page here, when I leveled up BLM the last weeks I've eaten quite a few mechanics, either knowingly or unknowingly, because I was struggling with the casting, moving and rotation part for the longest time

in an ideal world the game would have something like this, but we don't have an ideal world, instead we have plenty content where people don't have to do the bare minimum, or hell, where people can straight up do nothing, and the content will still get cleared - even if it took double the time and made the people that "carried" the bad player(s) feel bad (and once you've freestyle sam'd titania and were still by far the highest damaging dps according to your friend, you realize just HOW bad people can be - after we wiped the first time we, funnily enough, didn't wipe the second time because the other players in the party put a bit of effort into it :O)
many of the pro crowd were also in support of like a second hall of the novice thing, maybe something like a hall of the intermediate and a hall of expert that people have to clear at one point throughout their progression - or maybe make the job quests actually require them to do their job properly instead of allowing people to cheese through it or just turn it into... nothing by turning it to very easy
most of it is really just bad habits that they picked up or were even encouraged by others (including mentors) that could, imo, easily be changed if the game (or community :3) would require them to
but until then, you'll have people with multiple jobs at 80 and a mentor crown giving out bad advice, using cure 1 and medica in level 50+ content as if it's going out of style and never using any kind of DPS spells because that's what they learned

I have hope that Yoshi P will think of something genius again that will bring the best of both worlds about this conundrum so that both learners and progression groups can reap its benefits.

I was hesitant to ask this question first for its sensitive issue, but I am glad that people here are still wholesome ♥

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Originally Posted by Naaura

I would like to know how one can tell if others are underperforming if you can tell how. I personally cant tell unless I can visually see that they are distracted and just not doing their rotation and following boss mechanics.
And this thread is about what is parsing because I kept hearing for years but I finally remembered to ask since it was mentioned earlier :)

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If you never played said classes, chances are you’re stuck to wild guessing & probably something like: ”I just refreshed my Combust DoT, but then I see my SCH coheal does not refresh their Biolysis. I wonder if they forgot about it…”

If a player have experienced the firsthand gameplay & familiar enough, it is very easy to tell because all classes only has -one- way to play optimally. Obviously not everybody does the same rotation at 100% accuracy. But when one deviate 180° degree from said optimal rotation, their output becomes barely mediocre at best (see: Ice BLM)

Magical classes are the easiest to spot even when you’re not proficient with them. Hint: caster bar (Hardcaster RDM, Ice BLM, DoT-less/Ruin III SMN, overhealer/netflix healers)

Physical classes on the other hand requires -slightly- more observation & experience but can still be spotted without much effort. I.e 1-2-3 combo maniac, AoEless during big pulls, lv80 SAM in dungeon constantly sitting on 4th in enmity list, DoTless/Songless BRD, DNC without partners, paper cooldown-less tanks, PLD & DRK that has 10k MP 99% of time, DRG that never uses their plethora of buffs, 0 Trick Attack/Ninjutsu-less NIN, and many more.

Casual contents don’t see much importance because they are made to be as faceroll as it can be—it’s intentional. But you definitely can spot those ‘oopsies’ & ultimately, feel the difference. It’s somewhat scary how mere 4 players being fairly decent at what they’re doing can easily melt a dungeon run.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

You don’t need numbers to tell if you’re making progress or not. You either are, or are not. If you’re not dying and you’re hitting your proper rotation, odds are your performance is good.

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You did it. You actually wrote the most asinine thing I've ever read on this godforsaken dumpsterfire of a forum.

Imagine being so dumb that you think being able to see your numbers is unimportant for advancing as a player.

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Originally Posted by FusionSamurai

You did it. You actually wrote the most asinine thing I've ever read on this godforsaken dumpsterfire of a forum.

Imagine being so dumb that you think being able to see your numbers is unimportant for advancing as a player.

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I don't need to see my numbers to know if I'm getting better. I'm already aware if my rotation could improve, where I messed up my rotation, or where I messed up on the fight that hurt my dps. Get enough experience and that comes naturally.

well this thread is about to be a coaster very soon

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I don't need to see my numbers to know if I'm getting better.

I'm already aware if my rotation could improve, where I messed up my rotation, or where I messed up on the fight that hurt my dps. Get enough experience and that comes naturally.

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Uh....yes, you do. You can understand and recognize when you make large mistakes, but if you want to go into the larger parts of improvement, you absolutely need numbers.

Good luck figuring out if you are doing awful black mage damage without numbers. "ME DO BIG FIRE IV NUMBER ME DO BIG DAMAGE UNGABUNGA", despite actual dps being below ranged physical

It is probably also nice for those who gather information to compare the different jobs to each other. To bring up which job needs a buff or nerf. R.I.P. my beloved bard...

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Originally Posted by Naaura

I have hope that Yoshi P will think of something genius again that will bring the best of both worlds about this conundrum so that both learners and progression groups can reap its benefits.

I was hesitant to ask this question first for its sensitive issue, but I am glad that people here are still wholesome ♥

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This thread's already descending into dark places so I hope my post won't be lost, but I'll try to explain it all - some have already answered but a few points could be more complete, so.

1. These days there is really only 1 parser, but under SE's policies, we can discuss them in the general sense but naming the specific app/how to get it/etc is a no-no. It's most basic function is to measure damage and other statistics of other party members, but in truth these days it is more of a "mod platform" and people make many tools to enhance gameplay/information available. For example, you can look at the buffs and debuffs a person had, and the healing and damage they received leading up to a death. Or it can be used for noncombat stuff like collating and aggregating marketboard data, UI things like providing job gauge alternates, and so on.

2. There's also others that aren't really built around combat at all, for example if you acquire a stalker and the blacklist isn't cutting it and the GMs won't take action (a story that, alas, isn't so uncommon), there's a blacklist upgrade available. There's also clothing, graphical and hairstyle mods and so on. For example if you see a reddit screenshot of a pose or outfit not in game, that's probably mods at work.

3. All of these are forbidden. So the safest way the play is to not use any of them. But in practice, you have to talk about it in game for SE to care/take notice, most of the time. And the way the TOS is worded - and Yoshi-P himself noted during a live letter - technically even Discord is against the FF14 TOS. But obviously SE isn't going to ban everyone using Discord. So we're forever stuck in this weird grey area.

4. Back to parsing specifically - there's a fair few people here on the forums frothing at the mouth and dreaming of the day that SE takes more active enforcement. But it's not going to happen - it's so necessary that the raid community would largely die off without it, as the game lacks in-game feedback about performance and fights are designed around tight DPS checks, among other things. There's been many suggestions to improve the status quo, such as limited authorization of addons or adding better in-game feedback tools, but SE has continually refused to budge.

5. But lastly, it's worth noting that SE has lately started to, in very limited circumstances, accept evidence from outside the game. Namely when a streamer or reddit community harasses other players, or pictures of nude mods are found. So, even showing that oneself uses a mod or addon outside the game is not completely safe.

I hope this is a fairly a comprehensive answer?

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

You don’t need numbers to tell if you’re making progress or not. You either are, or are not. If you’re not dying and you’re hitting your proper rotation, odds are your performance is good.

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Or your team mates are carrying you through said content. When I'm within the top ten on Warrior in something like Paradigm's Breach. Suffice it to say, people aren't "hitting your proper rotation."

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I don't need to see my numbers to know if I'm getting better. I'm already aware if my rotation could improve, where I messed up my rotation, or where I messed up on the fight that hurt my dps. Get enough experience and that comes naturally.

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You do realize that rotation you're using is made through a parser, yes? So even at face value, you're indirectly benefiting from a parser.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Or your team mates are carrying you through said content. When I'm within the top ten on Warrior in something like Paradigm's Breach. Suffice it to say, people aren't "hitting your proper rotation."



You do realize that rotation you're using is made through a parser, yes? So even at face value, you're indirectly benefiting from a parser.

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Shhhhhh, the sheep will riot.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

It’s for people who need a numerical read out, to tell them they are playing the game good or bad.

Don’t join the cult, it will just suck the joy out of you.

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You honestly think that it doesn't help ones performance? Really?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Or your team mates are carrying you through said content. When I'm within the top ten on Warrior in something like Paradigm's Breach. Suffice it to say, people aren't "hitting your proper rotation."



You do realize that rotation you're using is made through a parser, yes? So even at face value, you're indirectly benefiting from a parser.

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Yes! Wait...what? Let us be fair here, i learned my rotation from the game not from some parser. But yes i guess for some people it's too hard to press 1-2-3 (etc.) without a addon or rotation guide. Jokes aside there are some valid arguments for damage meters, you don't have to make stuff up lol.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

Yes! Wait...what? Let us be fair here, i learned my rotation from the game not from some parser. But yes i guess for some people it's too hard to press 1-2-3 (etc.) without a addon or rotation guide. Jokes aside there are some valid arguments for damage meters, you don't have to make stuff up lol.

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But have you ever searched up a guide for your job or your character on fflogs before?
If not, how would you know that the rotation you're doing is correct? Because the game teaches absolutely nothing and gives no feedback, which is why a lot of people, unbeknownst to them, aren't exactly stellar.

I wonder, because I see a lot of players claiming they know what they're doing when they're not using crucial parts of their kits.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

But have you ever searched up a guide for your job or your character on fflogs before?
If not, how would you know that the rotation you're doing is correct? Because the game teaches absolutely nothing and gives no feedback, which is why a lot of people, unbeknownst to them, aren't exactly stellar.

I wonder, because I see a lot of players claiming they know what they're doing when they're not using crucial parts of their kits.

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The game teaches you everything you have to know. Heck how do you think the people who made the guides found out? Throug some visions from hydaelyn and yoshi p after they smoked too much? And how did stuff worked before damage meters were a thing? Guess in ancient times people never did their rotations right. The really linear job design of FFXIV isn't really rocketscience.

I can see how guides are useful to many players but heck saying the rotations exist just because of some damage meter and everyone using a jobs rotation in the right way does that cause of these guides/damage meters is a really really bold statement.

Here we go again...

Parsing can be very helpful for personal improvement!

Sadly a lot of people don't feel the need to improve themselves. That's fine in most content imho.

But I dislike the mindset those people have, just as I dislike the people that try and blame dps, or the lack thereof for all things wrong in this game.

However, playerbase is broad enough that everyone can find like-minded people and hey, those can play the game however they want ^^