Would you like an in-game parser?

[Legion88]

And how do you know the rotation is good? How do you know what you melded is good? How will you find out if what you want to meld is better or not? A parser outside of endgame.

Yeah, it isn't needed in leveling content. Hell you can play just fine without one period. But being able to compare yourself and track improvements outside endgame helps you know what you are doing when you do hit end game.

A parser in SSS or on dummies, there you can test your melds and rotation.
For casual and leveling content a performance ranking would be sufficient imo.

[DeaconMoore]

A parser in SSS or on dummies, there you can test your melds and rotation.
For casual and leveling content a performance ranking would be sufficient imo.

Ok, so I just did a dungeon and it told me I got an A- at the end. What exactly does that even mean though? How far off am I from an A or A+? Was I almost a B+? Was it just a lucky string of crits that one fight that pushed me there? How do I find out? Parser is how. A general ranking grade is just epeen stroking, it doesn't really tell you much. The actual numbers tell you what's going on.

[Legion88]

Ok, so I just did a dungeon and it told me I got an A- at the end. What exactly does that even mean though? How far off am I from an A or A+? Was I almost a B+? Was it just a lucky string of crits that one fight that pushed me there? How do I find out? Parser is how. A general ranking grade is just epeen stroking, it doesn't really tell you much. The actual numbers tell you what's going on.

Maybe you are right with your stand.
I can only talk from my pov and for the lower endgame it should be personal only.
So you can analyze your own performance without being able to judge others.
For preformed parties an option to make it a whole party parse would also be a good point.
I think this would be a good middleground we two can agree on.

For high endgame (Extreme, Savage and Ultimate) I think a parse needs no discussion, it's a must.
Not only to analyze your own performance also to analyze party synergies and weaknesses, especially in statics.

I just wanted to chime in on a few points here. The first being that leveling does nothing to teach you what your rotation is, there is no tutorial on how your job is supposed to function. If you are someone that doesn't look up guides on how a job is supposed to play or at the very least read the tooltips on your abilities, something that quite a few people already don't do given how often the topic of people not using aoe's in large trash pulls comes up, chances are they won't ever learn how their job is supposed to function or even play at a decent level because they can't be bothered doing any level of research because "It's their sub" and they will play how they wan't.


The second point is that practice dummies are a terrible and flawed metric to gauge someones overall performance. I'm talking about your ability to push the damage required on a fight on top of executing all the mechanics perfectly, since the dummy is just a stationary target where you have a time limit to do as much damage that is required to pass the enrage. The only way to accurately improve your performance on a fight to fight basis is by having a tool to measure how much damage your doing, what mistakes you made and what you could have done better, while you are progressing on the actual encounter itself aka a parser.

At the end of the day, we all have our own definition of what we view as relaxing and fun when we play mmos. I personally like having a tool that let's me see how much I'm contributing to the group, regardless of what level of content it is. While it may not be needed, there are those of us that get enjoyment out of playing our jobs as optimally as we can and even more rewarding when you are performing well alongside others. Cheers.

You see people not learning while leveling, reading tooltips or guides wont learn with a parser, because they don't care or can't be bothered.

For your second thought, dummies are a very good tool to memorize and practice your rotation, also to measure the performance of different meld settings. The application from dummy to the "real" fight has to be in the fight of course and I never denied this.

For your last point, yes, we have all our own definition, but nothing prevents you to play your job at highest performance without a live display of your parse or the parse of others.

[Selova]

snip.

There is a contradiction here. If someone can't be bothered to do 5 minutes worth of research on how their job plays, then no amount of practicing on a stationary dummy is going to help them improve. The only thing the SSS dummies do is let you know if you are capable of doing enough damage to beat the enrage, it's more of a tool geared towards PS4 players since they have no way of seeing how they are performing on a encounter other than word of mouth.


It also can't give you a accurate representation of differen't meld builds since it is incapable of tracking crits and damage modifiers, all of which a parser is capable of doing. I also never stated it prevented me from doing anything, just that i enjoy having a visual gauge of how im doing in comparison to others and what i can adjust to improve, that's it. Your apprehensiveness towards them seems to stem from some irrational level of fear of people constantly griefing you if SE was to implement their own parser, which is nothing more than conjecture. Even mmo's with their own parsers don't display the level of griefing that people assume would happen if FFXIV got it's own parsing tool. Cheers.

[Legion88]

snip

I don't know why you mix separate answers to seperate points together.
1. people who don't want to learn wont learn.
Next topic.
2. Dummies, not only SSS, are good to measure and compare different meldings. To measure you need a parser obviously.
Next topic.
3. It is nice that you want to improve yourself, but a live display wont help you, only an analyze and that can't be done live.

I don't fear any griefing. I've just the opinion that the advantage of parsing lies in the analyze afterwards and not in any kind of live display.
Live display can be useful but mostly it is not.

Snip

A performance ranking like fflogs can show you if you suck or have just a little room to improve without showing you specific numbers.

[MoroMurasaki]

I don't know why you mix separate answers to seperate points together.

1. people who don't want to learn wont learn.
Next topic.
2. Dummies, not only SSS, are good to measure and compare different meldings. To measure you need a parser obviously.
Next topic.
3. It is nice that you want to improve yourself, but a live display wont help you, only an analyze and that can't be done live.

I don't fear any griefing. I've just the opinion that the advantage of parsing lies in the analyze afterwards and not in any kind of live display.
Live display can be useful but mostly it is not.

A performance ranking like fflogs can show you if you suck or have just a little room to improve without showing you specific numbers.

Bolded for emphasis.

Your opinion is, in my opinion, completely nonsensical and wrong.

See how that works? We can all cast aside each other's opinions in favor of our own but that is living in an echochamber where we never learn.

I see what you're saying but I don't understand how you've come to that conclusion and so I'll ask - why is a live display useless? To me it's going to give you realtime feedback for fine tuning your damage instead of having to pick through a log looking for a specific moment to see what you did. If you know before the first Tidal Wave in Shin EX you're normally at X DPS with your normal rotation but then you swap it up and suddenly hit Y DPS... how is that useless? You've recieved validation that making this change in your rotation helped your DPS by whatever amount and could even apply that new info to the rest of that encounter instead of having to wait until the end of the fight to find out how your change played out overall... if the change is even visible over an entire encounter of data.

So again- here is why I don't understand your point, care to defend this position?

[Legion88]

Snip

Opinion versus opinion. I know usually this cancels each other, because noone looks into the opinion and "wastes" a second thought about it, because it opposes mine.

Can you validate Y DPS doesn't come from party composition, unusual buffs, DH/Crit luck, buff food?
You will only know if you compare both/multiple parses and analyze them.

Live display can be useful but mostly it is not.

It gives hints but it is no validation.

[Fhaerron]

Yes so I can measure myself easier / better.

One of the reasons I like to play MMO's is because you get better, your ilvl goes up and I always strive to become a better player, increase my skill, part of that is also increasing the amount of damage I deal regardless the fact that I'm a tank, we deal damage too and I always strive to take the maximum out of it.
At least we have ACT but an official in-game parser would be easier (and maybe more accurate), like there's not really an open API where the addons can take info from (which is also the reason why there are basically no addons for this game)?

I don't really see why this is a problem, is there something wrong with me for liking to improve myself and like having a number to show my DPS and how much it goes higher as my ilvl and my skill to play the job better improves?

Repost of what I said many pages back,

I read a lot of the new comments and I still fail to see why parser is a bad thing.

I'm a filthy casual myself, I'm not pro, I can't play 24/7 no I haven't cleared ultimate bahamuth. But does all that mean I'm not allowed to improve myself (Parser provides a Real time number you can easily follow in fights).
I don't care how fast I can kill that target dummy, I care how much I can do on a boss in a real fight where I'm also required to do mechanics and where I just can't stand still in one spot and mash my buttons.
When other players with same job and same ilvl are doing that much more then me, then I know something is wrong and I need to improve somewhere. Parser is easy to track this.
It's not about being able or not being able to kill the boss, it's about being able to do your 'normal DPS' based on your gear and skill.

I will never be able to do the same as the pro's or the guys that raid 24/7, but I'm always trying my best and keep improving over time.. that's how I like to play.

Is there really something wrong with this?

[Selova]

snip.

Do you enjoy contradicting yourself constantly or something? You say dummies are good to measure and compare differen't meld builds while at the same time admitting that in order to accurately measure said builds you need a parser? Make up your mind. I have no idea what you are even saying on point 3, you can't know if you need to improve or what you are doing wrong unless you have a tool that can "analyze" what you are doing wrong and how to correct it, aka a parser. You pounding away on a dummy with the incorrect rotation isn't going to do anything to help you improve, because a dummy doesn't provide the data to let you know what wen't wrong or how to correct it.

I'm getting the impression that you don't fully understand what a parser actually does. You keep saying things like "analyze afterwards"....what are you using to analyze exactly? You have no way of knowing what you are doing wrong or what mistakes you made if you don't have a accurate tool that tells you what wen't wrong and where.

You also say that a "live display" of a parser/combat log can be useful, but mostly isn't? Wrong. It's useful in nearly all areas of self improvement, you just don't like the negative stigma associated with people potentially calling you out, which doesn't happen nearly as often as most of the anti-parsing crowd claims it does. You also clearly don't understand how FFlogs works either if you think it has nothing to do with numbers lol. Cheers.

[DeaconMoore]

Maybe you are right with your stand.
I can only talk from my pov and for the lower endgame it should be personal only.
So you can analyze your own performance without being able to judge others.

See, that's kind of a catch 22. While you can with a personal parser see your own improvements, much like the previously mentioned grading system how do you know what you're doing is actually really good or not? You only have your own data to compare it with. Without being able to see others data too you really have nothing to compare your own performance against. Naturally you'll assume you're awesome. None of us like to think we suck, but that doesn't mean you're not lagging behind the pack. You'll only know that if you're able to see others as well as your own data.

Making judgments isn't inherently evil. It's how you act when you make a judgment that determines whether or not you're a jerk.