People advertising they're running Parsers

[Arrius]

I am not sure about the people who say that they use/want parsers to determine their performance, either.
The jobs aren't that complex, it's more about remembering their intended rotations and using common guidelines that overlap with each other job. On tanks and healers, it's more situational thing you need awareness for and the ability to look ahead.

If you play the jobs as intended, then you should not need a parser at all. Because that's as good as you can get.
The rest is practice to (re-)learn them.

[Menriq]

I am not sure about the people who say that they use/want parsers to determine their performance, either.
The jobs aren't that complex, it's more about remembering their intended rotations and using common guidelines that overlap with each other job. On tanks and healers, it's more situational thing you need awareness for and the ability to look ahead.

If you play the jobs as intended, then you should not need a parser at all. Because that's as good as you can get.
The rest is practice to (re-)learn them.

I would disagree. You might think you are playing the job as intended, but there could very well be ways to improve, thus negating your comment about as good as you can get. For example, on EX 1, there is a way to AoE all 4 adds. You might do this, whereas someone else will AoE, but only get 2 of them. Comparing yourself to others is a way keep improving. Now, if you want to talk about shaming people, etc., then that's a different conversation. But to say you don't need a parser to determine if you can improve I think is a pretty objectively false statement.

[Arrius]

I would disagree. You might think you are playing the job as intended, but there could very well be ways to improve, thus negating your comment about as good as you can get. For example, on EX 1, there is a way to AoE all 4 adds. You might do this, whereas someone else will AoE, but only get 2 of them. Comparing yourself to others is a way keep improving. Now, if you want to talk about shaming people, etc., then that's a different conversation. But to say you don't need a parser to determine if you can improve I think is a pretty objectively false statement.

I go against this.
Very specific encounters with very specific situations in them don't make a job perform itself 'better' in general. Dragoon Doomspike Line AoE combo might not be able to realiably hit those 4 adds, for instance, vs Monk Arm of the Destroyer combo, which hits everything around the player and is easier to do.

Same goes with those weird rotations that heavily depend on certain stat setups, which easily break once the corresponding job receives a change in balance. Which likely will happen in a .05 or .1 patch.

They are edge cases and only offer miniscule improvement vs the investment effort.

[Menriq]

I go against this.
Very specific encounters with very specific situations in them don't make a job perform itself 'better' in general. Dragoon Doomspike Line AoE combo might not be able to realiably hit those 4 adds, for instance, vs Monk Arm of the Destroyer combo, which hits everything around the player and is easier to do.

Same goes with those weird rotations that heavily depend on certain stat setups, which easily break once the corresponding job receives a change in balance. Which likely will happen in a 6.05 or .1 patch.

They are edge cases and only offer miniscule improvement vs the investment effort.

I probably wasn't clear, so my apologies. In the example I gave, I meant the same class. So for example, I can stand in a certain spot on BRD and hit all 4 adds at the same time. Another BRD might only hit 2 of them. It's a DPS gain to hold Apex Arrow at 100 gauge for the 2 minute burst, whereas someone might think using it at 100 is the intended way to play it. This goes back to using the parser to improve. I will often either go on Discord to see what tips / recommendations are on a fight by fight basis, but I will also compare my logs to those who are better to see what they are doing so I can improve myself.

[Arrius]

I probably wasn't clear, so my apologies. In the example I gave, I meant the same class. So for example, I can stand in a certain spot on BRD and hit all 4 adds at the same time. Another BRD might only hit 2 of them. It's a DPS gain to hold Apex Arrow at 100 gauge for the 2 minute burst, whereas someone might think using it at 100 is the intended way to play it. This goes back to using the parser to improve. I will often either go on Discord to see what tips / recommendations are on a fight by fight basis, but I will also compare my logs to those who are better to see what they are doing so I can improve myself.

I want to be believe this is more of a awareness thing and knowing how the boss and their mechanics work. If you really need a parser for that, then okay. Wished the feedback of the basic UI would be better on AoEs, but alas.

(Oddly, though, that the Bard gauge still is filling even when enemies are dead or cannot be targeted and you have nothing active on the field to apply dots to.)

[Menriq]

I want to be believe this is more of a awareness thing and knowing how the boss and their mechanics work. If you really need a parser for that, then okay. Wished the feedback of the basic UI would be better on AoEs, but alas.

(Oddly, though, that the Bard gauge still is filling even when enemies are dead or cannot be targeted and you have nothing active on the field to apply dots to.)

The Bard gauge isn't tied to DoT's, it's tied to songs. But if you want to ignore the AoE aspect from the parser (and thus the logs), that's fine. My point about knowing to hold Apex Arrow even when it's full is something you wouldn't normally think of unless there was a way to see numbers to figure out these things out.

[Saraide]

I am not sure about the people who say that they use/want parsers to determine their performance, either.
The jobs aren't that complex, it's more about remembering their intended rotations and using common guidelines that overlap with each other job. On tanks and healers, it's more situational thing you need awareness for and the ability to look ahead.

If you play the jobs as intended, then you should not need a parser at all. Because that's as good as you can get.
The rest is practice to (re-)learn them.

It's not technically needed to improve but it makes it a lot easier to find where exactly mistakes happened. This is often because of fight specific things and reviewing the logs will make it far easier to find what can be improved.