Why I Decided to Become an Elitist

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Personally speaking, I have cleared T13 here, and I still find WOW raids harder then this.

The Shadow Odyssey in Everquest II's raiding (and dungeon) content was probably the hardest content I have ever done in a game before. I don't think anything else really compares right now.

Its not telling you anything your chat log can't tell you or is not already displayed on the screen. And you aren't sniffing other players packets. You aren't hacking other people's pcs. You are only seeing data sent to you. And the only data that you can get from parsers that you can't get from reading your own screen that I'm aware of is individual dot damage since it is lumped together into a single # on screen (same deal with regeneration effects).

How much a monster hits you for? Really? It pops up in bold letters on screen and in chat. When my coil group wipes and we are at all confused, we very, very frequently review chat log to see what damage was dealt to whom and the timestamps with it to figure out what killed us.

Why the tank die? "Oh check at 8:22 guys, bahamut scored a crit auto attack between flare breaths and the adlo effect was listed after so the adlo was just late and an unlucky crit nail in the coffin" Mystery solved! All from you handy dandy chat log. True story. We did this ALL the time during progression.

The only advantage is if it does something beyond just recording log data (using incoming data to trigger a sound to call out moves automagically or other capabilities). The numbers themselves give you zero information not already available except for th aforementioned separation if dots and regeneration effects. Bare bones parsers are just glorified chat log recorders that break the ToS by poking at SE'S property (their files).

Lets pretend for a second that everything you said was 100% true.

If that is all true, how you say that is. Then why are peoples parses different?

Both players can run a program on the same fight and have different parses for each other.

Your not taking account factors, server lag, how close you are to people. What about Latency?

The program is not perfect, that is why its not good. Its good at recording your own DPS, however its not good at reading everyone else's DPS.

But you have not done any FF14 raiding or from the sounds of it WOW raiding as well, where is your personal experience coming from again?

Why bother? Iron-works gear is good. In World of Warcraft you can get gear doing raids that have no mechanics at all that are easier then World of Darkness.

I care about gear. Not raiding. If raiding gear becomes interesting and significantly better then I will care, until then who cares?

TSO was fun, because the raiding was harder then anything else and had gear that was significantly better then what you could get doing easier stuff. That is what made it fun.

You realize I said "What i've done" right? I really don't care what you've done.

[raelgun]

The Shadow Odyssey in Everquest II's raiding (and dungeon) content was probably the hardest content I have ever done in a game before. I don't think anything else really compares right now.

But you have not done any FF14 raiding or from the sounds of it WOW raiding as well, where is your personal experience coming from again?

[Cadmar]

Why would anyone not want to use a parser to try to better themselves? But maybe that is the underlying issue here. Maybe some people just don't want to get better. I will never understand that mentality but you see it every day in all aspects of life I suppose. The world needs ditch diggers after all.

[Izsha]

Why would anyone not want to use a parser to try to better themselves? But maybe that is the underlying issue here. Maybe some people just don't want to get better. I will never understand that mentality but you see it every day in all aspects of life I suppose. The world needs ditch diggers after all.

Because getting better makes it a 'job' and apparently it's impossible to have 'fun' and also actually try at the same time. You instantly grow a neckbeard and are teleport ed to your mom's basement surrounded by mountain dew and hot pockets if you even suggest bettering yourself in a silly game is compatible with fun.

[Purrfectstorm]

Because getting better makes it a 'job' and apparently it's impossible to have 'fun' and also actually try at the same time. You instantly grow a neckbeard and are teleport ed to your mom's basement surrounded by mountain dew and hot pockets if you even suggest bettering yourself in a silly game is compatible with fun.

LOL! This is great!

[Ashkendor]

If that is all true, how you say that is. Then why are peoples parses different?

Both players can run a program on the same fight and have different parses for each other.

Your not taking account factors, server lag, how close you are to people. What about Latency?

The program is not perfect, that is why its not good. Its good at recording your own DPS, however its not good at reading everyone else's DPS.

You can change settings on parsers to do things like stop recording if you don't hit the boss for x amount of seconds. So, say you have it set for 2 seconds. During any kind of downtime when the boss is untargetable or you have other mechanics going on that prevent you from hitting anything for that amount of time, the parser stops. Basically, it ends up giving you a falsely high reading for the overall encounter since you're completely discounting any downtime. Someone else may have it set to 30 seconds, which takes any downtime/mechanics into account in the parse. Theirs will be lower than yours. And yes, some parsers can't read DoT damage and such, which also changes it.

Because getting better makes it a 'job' and apparently it's impossible to have 'fun' and also actually try at the same time. You instantly grow a neckbeard and are teleport ed to your mom's basement surrounded by mountain dew and hot pockets if you even suggest bettering yourself in a silly game is compatible with fun.

Yeah... I really don't get this mentality. I enjoy being good at what I do.

Maybe some people enjoy mediocrity? *shrugs*

[Callinon]

Because getting better makes it a 'job' and apparently it's impossible to have 'fun' and also actually try at the same time. You instantly grow a neckbeard and are teleport ed to your mom's basement surrounded by mountain dew and hot pockets if you even suggest bettering yourself in a silly game is compatible with fun.

For me, personally, I have more fun when I know I'm doing well.

Parsers help me do better than I'd do without them.

Parsers make the game more fun for me.

[Intaki]

The world needs ditch diggers after all.

If anyone was wondering why the term elitist tends to get thrown at raiders so much, it's because of this.

[AlexionSkylark]

But you have not done any FF14 raiding or from the sounds of it WOW raiding as well, where is your personal experience coming from again?

long-time World of Warcraft player and raider here, from 1.11 up to the launch of Siege of Orgrimmar. Raiding since Ulduar, Leading groups since Icecrown Citadel.

I've done raids in WoW for a very long time, tho not much on heroic (now mythic). lead 2 groups through WOTLK and Pandaria (Cataclysm was a bit of a downtime for me), and came here because Draenor killed my expectations of a less horde-centric WoW (I never liked the overall theme of the horde, visual and otherwise). in FF I'm leading a static on T9, so you could say I did a somewhat big chunk of content in both games, albeit not EVERYTHING.

And I can tell you, raids here are not EASIER, they are DIFFERENT. the shorter GCD (for those not in the know, WoW's GCD is only 1 second short) and increased randomness of WoW's boss fights may give the perception of "harder" content, but in the end all the other side of the fence demands more than here is more button mashing. You can argue that dealing with mechanics with more button mashing is harder than with less button mashing, but I say raids here demand MUCH more split-second attention and moving than WoW raids. Not to mention WoW raids in general allow for a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher margin for error than FF14's raids, specially if we're talking about 25-men raiding.

Many coil turns only grant a clear with FLAWLESS EXECUTION from every member (Twint*cough* *cough*nia), there are very few WoW boss fights like that. I've seen many, MANY clears back in the WoW days where the boss would fall with 3 or 4 people alive. On FF14? not even one. Also, the quantity of "fire" to move out on FF14 is VERY SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER than on WoW. Also, 99% of the playerbase who does raids there use Deadly Boss Mods, which is plain right CHEATING compared to how we raid here. And don't even get me started on World of Logs. (that one I actually miss)

Now, if you're comparing to Heroic Raiding (now called Mythic), the right comparison would be to (Savage) Coil. Heroic (now Mythic) raiding in WoW is mostly like their regular (now Heroic) counterparts, with a higher gear check (since they're meant to be done by people fully decked in regular mode gear), with the addition of a few (not many) mechanics, in MOST CASES. Sure, there's cases like the Lich King and Ragnaros, where the challenge curve from regular to heroic is very steep, and maybe those 2 are harder than T9 savage on full i110 w/ 115 weapon gear, but those cases are exceptions. Also, OK, I gotta hand it to Blizzard, their skill in encounter design is unmatched, even by SE. But they had 10 years to hone their skills (the encounter design team at Blizz is the same since WoW's launch), while FF14 has barely 2 years of age. In time, I believe we'll be some very interesting fights.

Anyhow, my point is: WoW and FF14 are 2 different games, with 2 different skillsets needed to be a good raider. There's no "easier" and "harder" game, there.

[Elmeron]

The kind elitists I hate are the ones who give up on a group after literally one wipe and vote abandon. These aren't elitists, they are assholes who think they are above it all, and that just because they aren't new to the duty or the duties mechanics, that everyone around them should also not be new, and should be able to perfect the duty on-the-go, right away, or get out! That kind of mentality that some players seem to have really irks me.

These type of people are not better. They are not in anyway "above" others. They are rude losers, plain and simple.

I am one of those players who refuses to watch video guides or read them online. I like learning mechanics in-game, I can usually adapt to the situation fast. I need that hand one experience vs. reading or watching a guide that will do absolutely nothing for me. I will learn the mechanics by playing, and if I can force some social activity out of the mostly anti-social community that largely makes up this game, then I say good. Maybe I've helped a poor soul not to be such an emo-wannabe and to talk to other players, cuz you know, it's fun.