Parsers make you stupid

[SQBoard]

Yoshi P himself has stated he understands the importance of parsers and they've posted world first clear videos/screens with parser overlays.

It's basically a DADT situation with parsers where they're technically not allowed but everyone knows people are using them and are fine with it as long as it isn't abused.

Can't find a verifiable source where he said he was "fine" with parser use, but i have seen a video where he mentions that he "knows" there are people out there using parsers and if you use it you should be discrete about it.

ZAM Yoshida Interview (6:04)

However, his very first comment on the subject was that officially outside tools are not allowed.

And it's good to point out that, yoshida is not the one that enforces corporate policies. I think he was talking as a fellow gamer, giving parser users a favor to not brag or abuse it. He repeats that as a dev, external tools are not allowed.

Side note: He also mentions that he believes parsers do not give too much of an advantage and it depends mostly on the player's skill. Take that as you will.

[Bishop81]

Can't find a verifiable source where he said he was "fine" with parser use, but i have seen a video where he mentions that he "knows" there are people out there using parsers and if you use it you should be discrete about it.

ZAM Yoshida Interview (6:04)

However, his very first comment on the subject was that officially outside tools are not allowed.

And it's good to point out that, yoshida is not the one that enforces corporate policies. I think he was talking as a fellow gamer, giving parser users a favor to not brag or abuse it. He repeats that as a dev, external tools are not allowed.

...

In general, he (i.e. SE) reserves the right to ban your butt if you use parsers.

Seriously, can't people just clear raids without parsers? Why do you need that clutch?

[AdamFyi]

Seriously, can't people just clear raids without parsers? Why do you need that clutch?

Simple; you can. Parsers do not provide any sort of significant advantage against those who don't use them. A lot of players use it to gauge the party's performance in an encounter, or to see how well they can hold themselves up during the encounter.

Problem is that some encounters do not allow you to turtle through the fight, as evident with the many enrage timers in a lot of the encounters. Having your party wipe to an encounter due to lack of damage output is easy to see, but as to who or what is causing it - you would need to take a few to go through the battle logs and calculate everything by hand. Parsers just compile the data to make it easier to see.

Unless, of course, you would rather sift through the battle logs; then by all means do so. As a PS4 player myself, I would love to have an official parser to gauge my own performance. I really don't care about other people's output, with the exception of high-end encounters like savage and extreme primals. I want to know how well I'm doing without needing to bother other people to gauge my performance. :u

[Bishop81]

Problem is that some encounters do not allow you to turtle through the fight, as evident with the many enrage timers in a lot of the eencounters. Having your party wipe to an encounter due to lack of damage output is easy to see, but as to who or what is causing it - you would need to take a few to go through the battle logs and calculate everything by hand. Parsers just compile the data to make it easier to see.

/start rant; no offense, just needed to get it off my chest (edit: not necessarily targeted at you)

What do you do with that data? Compare it with the rest of your teammates? What will that prove? You failed the encounter because your raid DPS wasn't high enough.

What are you going to do? Come to the forums and QQ that your DPS is 1% lower than the top DPS in your group and beg for buffs? Great, just great, we need more of that. Ever thought that different Jobs might have different DPS in different situations because *grasp* they have different mechanics? Or are you one of those that insist that everyone has to output the same DPS in all situations? Homogeneous classes. Is that what you want?

To quote Ghostcrawler,

If the WoW devs read this, how likely would it be for them to agree? http://t.co/CIM3r2TTrL
I never felt like all classes had to be equal in all things. Can't someone just be better at burst AE? (OccupyGStreet)

Does Blizzard worry most about dps balance as raid tiers open, and not that much about balance as ppl start farming the tier?
Can't speak for it now, but when I was there, we worried more about new content than farmed content balance. (OccupyGStreet)
The idea being that a low performing spec might get sat on a new boss, but unlikely when stuff was on farm. (OccupyGStreet)
At some point we as a community started worrying about an individual's "right" to high DPS rather than the DPS of the entire raid. (OccupyGStreet)
Rather than "Did we beat the boss?" it became "Did I beat my warlock friend?" (OccupyGStreet)

DPS check will be overcome with time anyway as you get better gear. Is it really necessary to kill yourself over it? It's a video game.

/end rant

[KaijinRhada]

It's a diagnostic tool. If you know approximately the average and top end of the spectrum of DPS, it allows you to more accurately aim for it if that's what you're looking for and to see where others stand in relation to their job's averages and top ends. You don't need it, but it certainly helps if you want precision. Just like in any other game, not every one will run one and not everyone will care. Those of us that use it use it for the purpose of refining our rotations and priorities. In group play, we can see where and who needs to tighten it up. I won't expect it from PuGs, but only with like minded players, which is what statics are for.

[AdamFyi]

/end rant

Please keep it civilized. Let's not resort to personal attacks, m'kay? It paints a bad picture of yourself.

With that out of the way, data is data. It's useful to know how the group is doing. Skilled players can throw out good damage while doing mechanics. It's nice to know, but it isn't completely necessary. Plus it's not that hard to say, "Sorry if my damage output was bad, [mechanic] is making it quite troublesome."

So i ask you whom shuns the use, what are you going to do if your group does not meet the damage check? How would you address the situation? Not trying to out you or anything, I'm just curious.

[Bishop81]

Please keep it civilized. Let's not resort to personal attacks, m'kay? It paints a bad picture of yourself.

With that out of the way, data is data. It's useful to know how the group is doing. Skilled players can throw out good damage while doing mechanics. It's nice to know, but it isn't completely necessary. Plus it's not that hard to say, "Sorry if my damage output was bad, [mechanic] is making it quite troublesome."

So i ask you whom shuns the use, what are you going to do if your group does not meet the damage check?

Ask I have stated, it was a rant. Although I was replying to you, it isn't necessarily targeted at you. Again, as I said, I just had to get it off my chest.

As for what happens if the group doesn't meet the damage check? Everyone go and try to improve as much as they can. Over time, gear will nerf the difficulty of the encounter anyway.

[Krylo]

Snip

Firstly, Ghostcrawler's quotes are dumb. The DPS of the entire raid = every single person's DPS added up. The reason communities care about if a class can't reach the same DPS as other classes of the same type is, well:

What do you do with that data?

Use it to fix the problem.

In the case of an underperforming player this can mean either fixing them or dropping them, depending on the cut throatness of any specific static and how quickly/easily they learn. In the case of an underperforming class it means not taking that class.

It's not an 'individual's right to DPS', it's an 'individual's right to be included'. Raid DPS is everyone's DPS added together, and pretending that individual class DPS isn't an important part of that is pants on head retarded. It's like saying in 2+2=4 that the 2s are unimportant. Just so long as you have 4 at the end, what does it matter if you're 1+3 or 0+4, but if you 4s exist, why would anyone bring 0 or 1? Even 3s? Everyone would stack the classes capable of 4, and get 4+4=8 and finish the fight twice as fast, push phases faster, avoid mechanics, reduce healing stress, etc. Make everything much easier.

Unless those underperforming classes have enough utility to increase raid DPS by as much as, or more than, you lose by taking them, they're never going to be taken, because the end result IS what matters. Beating the raid--and beating it cleanly and quickly. The individual cogs are important for getting it done but if a cog doesn't work? You replace it or fix it.

And, as the post above me has pointed out: It's not new. People did it before parsers. It was just more of a pain in the ass as you needed to know every class's rotation, watch all of them while doing your own thing, and read the battle log and math it out, just to be sure, on the games that had them. And a lot of the time, the people who thought they knew? Didn't. Just like you get arrogant people in FFXIV telling people to do incredibly wrong things now and again. They were in these old games and it was really much more difficult to counter them.

And as for the competition bit: This has been around since before parsers. Since before the trinity. Since before there were even graphics. This has been around since before there were even internet games. People who play anything together do this--they compete for points. And friendly competition improves over all ability. If you're always top DPS it's easy to stagnate, but if your friend is nipping at your heels or passing you, and ribbing you about it? That's reason to get better. And as you get better, that gives your friend reason to get better too, and keep up. It gives you a 'rival' to compete with and hone yourself against.

This is why you have friendly team competition in LotA on the Atomos boss. If everyone's trying to burn faster than the other groups instead of 'just get through it', everyone is burning harder. The entire raid finishes faster. And everyone has more fun.

That's not a problem. It's a perfectly healthy and normal method of human interaction AND a good way to improve.

[Bishop81]

Firstly, Ghostcrawler's quotes are dumb. The DPS of the entire raid = every single person's DPS added up. The reason communities care about if a class can't reach the same DPS as other classes of the same type is, well:

Use it to fix the problem.

In the case of an underperforming player this can mean either fixing them or dropping them, depending on the cut throatness of any specific static and how quickly/easily they learn. In the case of an underperforming class it means not taking that class.

I think you are missing the point of the quote. But whatever.

So you admit you are a "ruthless" player that will drop anyone if they don't help you progress. Is that the kind of community SE wants to encourage? YoshiP plays WoW, he has seen first hand just how out of control it can get with player demands over DPS deltas and the way players treat one another.

[Krylo]

I think you are missing the point of the quote. But whatever.

So you admit you are a "ruthless" player that will drop anyone if they don't help you progress. Is that the kind of community SE wants to encourage? YoshiP plays WoW, he has seen first hand just how out of control it can get with player demands over DPS deltas and the way players treat one another.

Go back and read the rest. I hit the wrong button when I tried to cut so I couldn't just paste it and it took me a minute to type it all back out.