Why do so many people FAIL at dps.

[Ayuhra]

Honestly the concern over my DPS and lack thereof has caused me to abandon the endgame of FFXIV altogether. I mess around on alts sometimes and have finally figured out how to Parse myself on them so maybe I will dive back into Gale and soon.

For BLM the timers are hard for me to get used to. I have a NIN alt who plays pretty well and SMN seems cool but I know they get a metric crap ton of buttons later.

So, speaking as the terrible DPS of the sort the OP is talking about here are my issues.

1. No in game feedback. As a BLM I eat aggro so I don't think the threat meters are accurate. Especially since I am using Quelling Strikes a lot.
2. Lack of in game meters means nobody else can see my DPS. It's easy to get into a lazy mindset and I don't like it when I do that either it's just...so easy. Who'd know?
3. If anyone calls me out on low DPS someone else in the group will tell them to step off.
4. The DPS classes in this game are FACTUALLY much, much harder to master than they are in any other game, or at least in any other high profile MMO. Part of this is because encounters are balanced around mastery and not just competence. The Enrage Timers are unreal.
5. ...The other part of that is that the DPS classes have a stupifying number of buttons. Using myself as a metric, BLM would be comfortable without timers, NIN is pushing it, I doubt I could handle Dragoon. I have nerve damage in my hands that reduces my physical range of motion. That did not keep me from doing high numbers on Mythic Garrosh in Mists of Pandaria (pre ability purge) but it keeps me from doing high numbers here.
6. The last part of that is many jobs, if they misfire something (like my Enochian), they may suffer for as long as 30 seconds with low numbers and have difficulty regaining momentum at all. This game can, at times, be unforgiving of human error.
7. If you are coming in from another MMO the long global cooldown is a throw-off. I understand it was implemented to make rotations more forgiving but to me it is actually more tricky. It is easier to just forget what you are doing if you are waiting on the GCD compared to firing off abilities and having them go off constantly (this is why I like NIN, it's fast). Honestly since this is a server-dictated live state game having a shorter GCD might cause more classes to suffer lag like NIN does. I am not saying I want this changed, I am just saying it's hard getting used to if you play other games.

On top of all of this the leveling experience, while harder than in other games (especially World of Warcraft), is still doable without knowing exactly what you're doing. In fact it is impossible to know how well you will do in endgame due to so many classes being changed mechanically in Heavensward. I was good at BLM until Enochian became a thing and it is now at the very core of my rotation. Everything I do revolves around it.