Confessions of a Toxic Elitist

[Estelle9lives]

I love how some people are so quick to label FFlogs/Parsing "toxic" and "elitist" when those are legitimate tools that can be used as a great metric for personal improvement. It's like people can't take a second to look in the mirror before throwing out these labels, the epitome being someone saying a person deserves to be depressed. Really?

On topic, Kaiva, this happened with me when I started paying this game a little over 3 years ago, I started as a WAR, thought I was on a roll since dungeons were so easy and Ramuh Ex made me realize I absolutely sucked as a tank. I simply could not keep track of all the debuffs, swaps and mechanics I had to do, this is not even accounting I had no idea about DPS numbers back then. I believe I improved a lot over the last few years, and have been enjoying raiding ever since FCoB.

Regarding the numbers... Your logs aren't good, but they are also from a small sample pool (1 log for each fight) and like others have said, remember that when it comes to Savage it will compare you against people who are most likely raiders as well. I took the liberty of looking up your gear on the lodestone and I have noticed that you have a lot of slots that aren't melded, and several of your pieces are sub-optimal for SMN (Spell Speed for SMN = bad), both factors which have a heavy impact on your DPS. Outside from that you'd need to take a look on improving your active time (very low on that o5s kill) and your overall opener/rotation.

Other factors to consider are:
1 - You picked one of the most complex DPS classes to learn
2 - You haven't been playing SMN for long
3 - SMN may just not be for you, it happens (happened to me as well, I'm stil a mediocre WAR after all these years lmao)

So yeah, the veeeery first thing you need to do is make sure your gear is at the very least fully melded with materia VI. You can't have a baseline of where you're at with your current gear. Next thing that would be good is either looking up stuff about SMN online/on the DPS forums/on the Balance Discord, or finding someone who is good at SMN to coach you. We are on the same server, so feel free to add me if you ever need advice/help on current savage fights (I have cleared the tier) or advice regarding healer jobs (my main area). I also play stuff like DRG/PLD at an acceptable level.

[Zojha]

I love how some people are so quick to label FFlogs/Parsing "toxic" and "elitist" when those are legitimate tools that can be used as a great metric for personal improvement.

I'd like to note however that random parses are little more than a very, very broad hint.

I personally don't upload any logs and when I look myself up on my "main" (if you can call it that), I can score anywhere between the 99th percentile (lol Void Ark) to the 17th percentile (Cruise Chaser Savage). Other parses are scattered seemingly at random between those extremes.

That's not useful at all, neither for self-improvement nor for simply gauging where I stand. In order to make the parses useful, you first need to create a controlled environment, because a lot of factors beyond skill go into the raw DPS number, especially gear and comp. Well, or you just look at potency per second or something, but I'm not sure if FFlogs has that function anywhere. I couldn't find it at least.

[Estelle9lives]

I'd like to note...

I mostly agree with you, which is why I mentioned in my original post that Kaiva's sample pool is too small and there are gear problems. You can't really measure where you're standing in those conditions. Doing Savage with pugs will always result in more variable results compared to when you're in a static (specially if it's a solid one), but it's perfectly possible to get clean runs even with pugs to get a good metric.

And yes, I have noticed it is relatively easier to score higher percentile on easier content, like the 24 mans or Sigma NM, as there are a lot more casual players doing said content, and sometimes the classic AFK'ers get thrown in those pools too.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd like to note however that random parses are little more than a very, very broad hint.

I personally don't upload any logs and when I look myself up on my "main" (if you can call it that), I can score anywhere between the 99th percentile (lol Void Ark) to the 17th percentile (Cruise Chaser Savage). Other parses are scattered seemingly at random between those extremes.

That's not useful at all, neither for self-improvement nor for simply gauging where I stand. In order to make the parses useful, you first need to create a controlled environment, because a lot of factors beyond skill go into the raw DPS number, especially gear and comp. Well, or you just look at potency per second or something, but I'm not sure if FFlogs has that function anywhere. I couldn't find it at least.

The percentiles are certainly far from useful except in telling you what percentage of parses fell above or below you... which is itself hardly relevant. Heck, it seems a lot of people confuse their, say, 75% parse for their doing 75% of the highest parse for their class on the given encounter rather than merely above 74.9% of other players who've logged their parses.

It's why I've always insisted on, if an official parser were ever to be added, a relative potency metric by default, or at least as an obvious option, such that the effect of gear is at least greatly diminished and the RNG-based swing is omitted.

Once I'm near BiS, the percentiles are nice for signalling how much further yet I can push things, especially if able to influence the composition and encounter strategies, but until then -- and for the most part at any time -- the timelogs have always been my area of focus.