Is this truly wrong?

[SaitoHikari]

First of all, please read up on mathematics and assess the logging sites in order to understand how these percentiles are derived.

You will quickly notice that FFlogs does NOT take item level into account (for a long time WoWs logging sites also did not do that).
Next up, please realize that the top parses are done by people that AIM for parses and have the support of bored raidgroups that have everything on farm.

As such, unless you wear BiS and are in one of these groups it's virtually impossible to get a 95%+ log.

That being said: if we're not talking about wipe tries (long inactivity crashes your DPS) or a bloody novice stepping into a raid for the first time, 9% or even 50% is BAD. If you and your group play well and you are not too far behind gear wise, you should get some score around the 80% mark.

That being said: Remember that FF-XIV is a "mechanics first" game. It is rare that you are allowed to ignore a given mechanic, soak the damage in order to maximize output.

Pretty much this. This late into the raid tier, most people getting 90% or above either already have the tier on farm or are close to it. Either that, or they cleared the fight with an early performance so good that their Historical rating shows them as being at a high percentile for the time period that it was cleared, even though it would only be about 50-60th percentile today.

I'm largely in the latter category with my own O5S/O6S parses, hitting 98th/92nd percentile historical week 2 in ilvl 350 gear (as Bard). My parses since steadily fell due to being stuck on O7S for about 5 weeks (and thus falling behind in gear) and due to my lack of a static until very recently. It also doesn't help that Bard reliance on Dragoon is now so absurd that the mere presence of one contributes about 400-500 extra DPS for the Bard, which is something the developers really need to take a long, hard look at. I've only been able to climb back up to 96th/93rd this week with ilvl 360-370 gear. It took me too long to clear O7S and I've yet to clear O8S, but I have no delusions of ever breaking 90% on either fight.

I also have two historical 100 parses, for the last boss of Rabanastre and for Byakko EX, only because I had the highest recorded DPS of all Bards in the world for both fights during the first two days of release. A similar performance today would only count at around 80th-90th percentile.

https://www.fflogs.com/character/id/120007

There's always a lot of factors to consider, instead of taking the numbers at face value. It's kind of absurd that FFLogs does not have any way to record player ilvl. For instance, Bard is not only possibly the most gear-reliant of all the DPS, it is also by far the most reliant on party comp, due to the nature of how the critical hit stat works for them. No Dragoon and/or Scholar? You're not hitting 90+% this late into the raid tier.