Why do so many people FAIL at dps.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You can't say the game doesn't tell you how to play. It does a fairly good job at showing you how without straight up playing the game for you. Time to find a better excuse for chronic-underperformers.

Honestly, I would argue it doesn't. The game shows the bear essentials to help you through the MSQ, provided you bother to read skill descriptions, however it does not offer any means of showcasing optimal gameplay. For instance, my friend was legitimately thrilled when she reached Heavensward and had a White Mage quest that actually focused on healing instead of her DPS. As a Monk myself, I basically face tank everything in the MS with not even the slightest concern for positionals, which in any raid or dungeon setting would be utterly moronic.

A better means of progression would be to make job quests force players to actually properly utilize their job. Say for Monk, one of the quests spawns adds that automatically target Widargelt only, but take no damage whatsoever unless you hit positionals. Another quest could make it so DoTs do significantly higher damage for that fight, necessitating their use in order to win. Basically, make players do the things needed to improve without it being too daunting.

Of course, much fault still falls onto players who are simply too damn lazy to read guides or watch them on youtube.

[Klamor]

snip

So, you just proved how the game shows you how to play, and then downplayed it by basically saying that it only does so if the player puts forth some effort on their own. Reading the tooltips is the fundamental way to learn how skills chain together. Every job (as far as I can remember; it's been a couple years since I leveled them) has a nice little help window that describes how the intricacies of the job operates.

Monk help tells you about Greased Lightning
Black Mage help tells you about Astral Fire and Umbral Ice
Ninja help tells you about your Mudras

I'm speaking off the cuff here, so forgive me if I don't capture all the ways the game tells you how and what to do in order to be a decent player. The tooltips specifically show how utilizing positionals will net you higher potency attacks and other additional effects. The game highlights and makes sparkle the next ability that is an option for your current ability chain. For Monk, I know that you have a couple paths and that you have to weave your abilities together following buff timers and such. Figuring that out isn't nearly as difficult as people make it seem to be. We're not arguing that people aren't topping charts with the world's best opener and such. But if you were a Monk in my party and you were using Fists of Earth instead of Fists of Fire, and your response to being questioned was "I do what I want" I'd feel the urge to quickly remove you from my party. Claiming ignorance that one didn't know which buff increased their damage is a shallow excuse at that.

This is like a Dark Knight refusing to use Darkside because it "makes [his] MP drain too fast" as if that isn't the whole mechanic to that skill, and the effective use of it is what makes a Dark Knight, a Dark Knight.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

While the descriptions are helpful, without anyway to gauge the numerical result, it can lead to misinterpretation. In fairness, Dragoon is probably a better example due to how specific its rotation can be. You have to remember this game is designed to entirely new MMO players who aren't going to be as accustom to the grind and research needed to optimize their job. That said, I didn't mean to downplay it per se, just that directly forcing players into scenarios where they had to learn rotations and whatnot would be a better guide for job quests than "go here and fight this thing." Would also be more fun, in my opinion at least. I've always wished the open world portion of the game didn't let you slack off so much, but that's just me.

A lot of this would be mitigated if people at parser of their own DPS, but only they could see it.