SE's most difinitive statement yet on parsers

[Krr]

The most 'difinitive' statement 'yet'? The fact that you can get banned for using a parser is news so old it remembers what this game was like when the hardmode Primals actually gave what people considered weapon upgrades.

Officially, do not use a parser. Officially also, however, Square-enix will not violate your user privacy to scan your computer for 'illegal programs' and detects cheating by applications that send data rather than the fact that they read what the client already knows. So, the only way to get caught using a parser is if you're completely transparent about your need to judge someone else by a number attached to their character.

The material effect of the 'no parser' ruling and the methods used to enforce it is that players are unable to mandate their use for participation, and use them as open judgement tools or ways to overtly harass others.

Unofficially: People are using parsers because Square gives us terrible, terrible ways to monitor our DPS performance in any metric other than 'enrage timer didn't go off'. This makes it extremely difficult to engage in any meaningful self improvement, much less research potential good priorities or rotations or rules of thumb without vague and opaque wishy-washy theorycraft, especially with the opacity of many game mechanics.

A good example: I *still* meet Dragoons who do t6 and beyond and have several pieces of High Allagan and think that they should skip Chaos Thrust as long as someone else is applying Disembowel, because the net potency of DoTs and their mechanics in general aren't explained properly ingame.