Dragoons: A Rotation Reborn

[Sleigh]

After merging those encounters the total encounter time will be calculated as the total time of encounter 1 + total time of encounter 2, thus resulting in 4:12 min, which is not exactly the same as 4:30 which will in turn be resulting in higher EncDPS. Now imagine a fight with even more and/or longer downtimes et voila, there's your way to bolster DPS.

This is exactly how it works under default settings. The downtime is simply not part of the duration, it is a blank spot in the parse and isn't counted once people stop doing actions. Depending on how much downtime you have, culling can skew your results wildly from group to group, or from your result to your result (IE normally your group does nothing for 30 seconds in a phase, but in one particular pull there are huge heals needed for a large portion of that - you may do nothing different, but your healers will be doing stuff and adding total time to the parse and your DPS will tank, which isn't quite a fair comparison to your other pulls).

Merging your parse, or using the All section, will not calculate the downtime if it applies, since the culling makes it effectively shut off your parse until someone starts doing relevant actions. That's why I'm a fan of one big parse, downtime included - you get consistency, one flat universal standard which gives an undeniably accurate total DPS. That being said, culling for sure has its use in telling who's doing what in particular phase, who's not picking up the slack, who's not saving CDs, which jobs stink at certain sections, etc, which can be just as important as total DPS.