Parsing unfair but okay?

[HyoMinPark]

I’m not sure why you think improvement without a parser is not possible, when it is. There are ways in game of measuring your general capabilities and dps against a boss without a parser. And from those, I have derived ways to improve.

What are these ways, if I may ask?

[Dracosavarian]

What are these ways, if I may ask?

A few things overall. I’ll try to be succinct due to my own time limits. It sadly won’t go over every detail and outright specifics.

I have a Co Tank that I work with explicitly on runs. He a warrior, I as Dark Knight. ( Used to anyways, really not happy with Drk at the moment and thus have abandoned it as protest. Until they fix it. Switching over to Gunbreaker until they do. ) But he and I operate on a near instinctive level. Whereas others need to communicate often, he and I just synchronize on runs like jaeger pilots and automatically do what is needed in concert with one another with next to no verbal communication. Sometimes it’s kind of scary. But we both use that as a tool to gauge how well we are doing in our fights. If something falls out of sync, we discuss it and go over the details. We both know each others class, so we observe one another and give constant feedback.

This is in addition to frequent communication, and planning with the team that I run with. We break down each others good points and weaknesses and provide feedback to each other, using various end game content as our active yard stick and the speed with which we tackle it.

An example I can use is Hades Ex, and the frequent checks the fight involves. If we as a group are able to burst him down to 3% hp in 1st phase in relatively short order without any echo or other benefits, we know our checks are on point, as is our rotations. We also communicate damage windows, etc to help. Eventually, you run with the same people enough, it kind of becomes second nature.

Another tool is Stone, Sky, Sea for Heavensward back in the day, or more common now, Circles of Answering and The Lawns. I use these to calculate and adjust my rotations for things, to see if I can shore anything up. It’s not the same as a boss fight directly, but ESO uses what is effectively the same method in their game with their own parsing dummies you can place in that games housing.

I’ll also go in solo on some bosses in ex trials ( used to do this a lot back in the day ) to push my limits and see whether I could solo the boss or not just by myself as Drk. And I would use various bosses as trials by fire to push myself and see what I could eke out.

That’s some, but not all of it. But it’s worked for me overall through the years.

[HyoMinPark]

A few things overall. I’ll try to be succinct due to my own time limits. It sadly won’t go over every detail and outright specifics.

I have a Co Tank that I work with explicitly on runs. He a warrior, I as Dark Knight. ( Used to anyways, really not happy with Drk at the moment and thus have abandoned it as protest. Until they fix it. ) But he and I operate on a near instinctive level. Whereas others need to communicate often, he and I just synchronize on runs like jaeger pilots and automatically do what is needed in concert with one another with next to no verbal communication. Sometimes it’s kind of scary. But we both use that as a tool to gauge how well we are doing in our fights. If something falls out of sync, we discuss it and go over the details. We both know each others class, so we observe one another and give constant feedback.

This is in addition to frequent communication, and planning with the team that I run with. We break down each others good points and weaknesses and provide feedback to each other, using various end game content as our active yard stick and the speed with which we tackle it.

While communication is great, as is discussing rotations, mitigation uses, etc., they don’t give you a metric to measure your performance. They don’t give you hard and fast numbers—at most you understand that you have met the minimum required to clear, or that using Reprisal here versus there was better with you and your co-tank. But they don’t tell you your damage threshold, which isn’t very high in most fights since they don’t have enrage timers. In others, like Extremes, they are very generous with their DPS checks, so even with a myriad of deaths, a group of half-way decent players can clear them.

Without, you don’t have a metric to determine if you are playing your role better or not. All you really have is “feelycraft”.

An example I can use is Hades Ex, and the frequent checks the fight involves. If we as a group are able to burst him down to 3% hp in 1st phase in relatively short order, we know our checks are on point, as is our rotations. We also communicate damage windows, etc to help. Eventually, you run with the same people enough, it kind of becomes second nature.

Even so, this isn’t giving you a metric to measure performance. It is telling you that you have met the bare minimum required. Depending on when you’re attempting Hades EX would also depend on how much of this is attributed to skill and how much is attributed to simply outgearing him and rofl-stomping him. It’s not a decent metric to measure personal performance or your level of skill. While skill is measured as more than just a pretty number, the number is still just as important as communication and proper toolkit usage. They all go hand-in-hand.

Another tool is Stone, Sky, Sea for Heavensward back in the day, or more common now, Circles of Answering and The Lawns. I use these to calculate and adjust my rotations for things, to see if I can shore anything up. It’s not the same as a boss fight directly, but ESO uses what is effectively the same method in their game with their own parsing dummies you can place in that games housing.

SSS and the like are flawed. In Stormblood and Shadowbringers, there were dummies present for some jobs where they straight up could not kill them in the time allotted despite having a near-perfect rotation. Versus the actual fights where the jobs had no problem performing at an average or even above average standard. In SB, it was common to see the physical ranged lack the personal damage to kill the dummies—BRD especially since so much of its damage could be skewed by piercing resistance down and snapshotting critical hit buffs for more Repertoire procs. The RNG nature of the job worked against it for the SSS striking dummies, yet it was considered insanely strong by the end of the expansion and highly valued in groups.

I’ll also go in solo on some bosses in ex trials ( used to do this a lot back in the day ) to push my limits and see whether I could solo the boss or not just by myself as Drk. And I would use various bosses as trials by fire to push myself and see what I could eke out.

If you mean soloing old EX bosses, that is also meaningless. What use is soloing ARR or HW primals as a level 60, 70, 80 or 90 job? It doesn’t tell you how well you’re performing. I could duo ARR extremes with a friend back in HW on DRK. That didn’t tell me that I was performing DRK at any sort of decent level—all it told me was that I was overtuned for the boss I was currently fighting, and that worked to my advantage. It gave me no information on if the rotation I was using was optimal or not; if I was maximizing my oGCD usages; if I had used my mitigations correctly; if I was even doing decent damage for my item level. It told me none of that. It’s not a good metric.

Even being in a group for current EXs won’t tell you that. Despite what some people think. I always think back to when I once was kicked from a Tsukuyomi EX “farm” party by a SAM and DRG pair. I died due to lack of healing, and remained dead on the floor for a full minute before I was raised. And I was still ahead of both the SAM and DRG in damage by about 1,000 DPS—as a BRD. After we proceeded to wipe, another person commented that they didn’t think we had the damage to clear—and I was blamed for that because I died. Not the DRG or the SAM, who automatically assumed that just because they didn’t die and were melee DPS that they were doing more than me, the BRD. Except that wasn’t the case. How do I know? Well, a parser told me that. Unfortunately, I was unable to defend myself and just had to take the blame in silence.

That’s some, but not all of it. But it’s worked for me overall through the years.

Unfortunately, your methods yield no hard and fast metric of your performance. Just because you can string the buttons together as they light up doesn’t mean that you are actually performing well. You will never know your true individual performance without a parser because this game does not give any indication that you are doing well or doing poorly. Especially in content that’s just a war of attrition. The best it gives is for bosses that enrage—but even that won’t pinpoint the blame. It says there isn’t enough damage, but it doesn’t point to the source.

Without clearly knowing what you are doing wrong, you cannot improve as much as you think.

[Dracosavarian]

Snip

We are going to have to agree to disagree. These methods have worked for me for years now. Since Heavensward and even the painful days of the raids and all of its problems back then.

You asked me and I gave you my methods. Whilst they may not work for how you desire to run things, and clearly you don’t agree with them at all, they have worked for me, and by using these methods I am not breaking the TOS.

Nor have I had any issues really clearing any of the content I wish to approach.



Ultimately, this is a game. I have zero desire to to turn it into a job and use all of these extra tools that break TOS to scrutinize things when I just want to play and do the end game runs with my friends, when I have done just fine over the years without them using my own methods and the tools the game itself gives me.

I come into the game to relax with what little time my life affords me, and have fun with my friends and enjoy the game with them, and help them get mounts or beat end game content. That is my focus, and I am going to stick to that

[SaberMaxwell]

But it isn't "turning it into a job," for some optimization is the game. It's fair for you to stick with what you find fun, and I wish all power to you in improving how you see fit. Remember though that the topic of the thread itself is about parsing in endgame. Not dungeons, not normal trials, not even normal raids, but extreme and up. The kind of content where, if you're gonna group up with people, you want to make sure you're all likeminded and like-abled enough to handle the goals of the group itself. This isn't about going into Sastasha and yelling at greenleafs.

[Dracosavarian]

But it isn't "turning it into a job," for some optimization is the game. It's fair for you to stick with what you find fun, but remember the topic of the thread itself is about parsing in endgame. Not dungeons, not normal trials, not even normal raids, but extreme and up. The kind of content where, if you're gonna group up with people, you want to make sure you're all likeminded and like-abled enough to handle the goals of the group itself.

For me, it is. Be it as you may choose to not view it as such, I do. And that’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. I just know myself really well, and I don’t wish to return to that rabbit hole that I visited in ESO or other games.

The only reason why I got involved with this thread is because an individual was taunted as not reading the TOS. When the TOS clearly states, it’s against the rules. And I chose to correct that.

I don’t mind the extra debate, nor do I begrudge people their opinion. But parsing is not, and should not, in my opinion, be required. Nor should it be used as a gatekeeping tool. Not all groups do that, but some do.

I’m more interested in the character of a person in comparison to the numbers they can pump out. A parse log won’t tell me if they are decent human being or someone I’d rather not play with. I would rather that be the yardstick by which individuals are measured, it it comes to that.

Folks are free to do what they want. But the inherent risks should be acknowledged and understood and not simply brushed off as “ SE won’t do anything. “ Been around too long to know contrary to that way of thinking.


They may not ever do anything. Then again, they may change their mind down the road. I just choose to not use it and involve myself with the tools the game avails me.

[HyoMinPark]

We are going to have to agree to disagree. These methods have worked for me for years now. Since Heavensward and even the painful days of the raids and all of its problems back then.

You asked me and I gave you my methods. Whilst they may not work for how you desire to run things, and clearly you don’t agree with them at all, they have worked for me, and by using these methods I am not breaking the TOS.

Nor have I had any issues really clearing any of the content I wish to approach.



Ultimately, this is a game. I have zero desire to to turn it into a job and use all of these extra tools that break TOS to scrutinize things when I just want to play and do the end game runs with my friends, when I have done just fine over the years without them using my own methods and the tools the game itself gives me.

I come into the game to relax with what little time my life affords me, and have fun with my friends and enjoy the game with them, and help them get mounts or beat end game content. That is my focus, and I am going to stick to that

And this is the flawed argument that these threads always dissolve into: for some, optimization and playing well and using parsers to improve themselves isn’t a job. It’s their idea of fun. It’s disdainful to see that so many resort to using this argument at the end of the line as if it carries any sort of weight to it.

All I have said is that your methods don’t yield the results that you think they do. If you find them enjoyable, it’s one thing. But to imply that they work as well as or better than a parser is flawed.

If this works for you, then that’s fine. But this thread was made by someone who wants to join a high-end static that has set requirements and criteria and expectations of its joiners. Instead of advocating that they look for a static more in line with their own goals, it has instead dissolved into a thread bickering about how parsers are against the ToS, how they gatekeep Savage, those who use them seek only to turn the game into a part-time or full-time job, and they should be reported on-sight as if they were some sort of toxic blight on the community. And again, I say, “GCBTW, indeed”.

I don’t mind the extra debate, nor do I begrudge people their opinion. But parsing is not, and should not, in my opinion, be required. Nor should it be used as a gatekeeping tool. Not all groups do that, but some do.

The groups that do have specific goals in mind—who are you, me, or anyone else to dictate what that static does? It isn’t any of our business what the raid leader and the raid group decide are criteria for joining their group, just like it isn’t our business what a PF leader designates as criteria to join their PF.

I’m more interested in the character of a person in comparison to the numbers they can pump out. A parse log won’t tell me if they are decent human being or someone I’d rather not play with. I would rather that be the yardstick by which individuals are measured, it it comes to that.

As are a lot of raid leads. I have raided some astoundingly awesome and skilled players—unfortunately, they have also had astoundingly bad attitudes, and I no longer associate with them. A lot of groups will take a purple parsing individual with a positive and constructive attitude over an orange player that treats their raid mates like trash. Just because a group advocates a minimum skill level doesn’t mean they will ignore players that are horrible people.

Folks are free to do what they want. But the inherent risks should be acknowledged and understood and not simply brushed off as “ SE won’t so anything. “ Been around too long to know contrary to that way of thinking.

They may not ever do anything. Then again, they may change their mind down the road. I just choose to not use it and involve myself with the tools the game avails me.

SE won’t do anything. They have ample opportunity to ban parsers and their use, and actually enforce their ToS. But they do not. They know what will happen if they do. Even if they managed to figure out a way to cause ACT and FFLogs to no longer interact with the game, someone else will just come up with another workaround. It would be a never-ending battle, so they choose to just look the other way. And have for years.

[Dracosavarian]

And this is the flawed argument that these threads always dissolve into: for some, optimization and playing well and using parsers to improve themselves isn’t a job. It’s their idea of fun. It’s disdainful to see that so many resort to using this argument at the end of the line as if it carries any sort of weight to it.

All I have said is that your methods don’t yield the results that you think they do. If you find them enjoyable, it’s one thing. But to imply that they work as well as or better than a parser is flawed.

If this works for you, then that’s fine. But this thread was made by someone who wants to join a high-end static that has set requirements and criteria and expectations of its joiners. Instead of advocating that they look for a static more in line with their own goals, it has instead dissolved into a thread bickering about how parsers are against the ToS, how they gatekeep Savage, those who use them seek only to turn the game into a part-time or full-time job, and they should be reported on-sight as if they were some sort of toxic blight on the community. And again, I say, “GCBTW, indeed”.

Unfortunately, yes, they often do. That inevitably cannot be helped. Individuals will often disagree when it comes to stuff like this. But I have not once stated that an individual is to be reported for parsing use.

If folks want to use it. Fine. I just feel common sense decency should follow with that use.

That, and understanding the risks involved.

I wish you well. Try and have a Happy New Years.

[VirusOnline]

The groups that do have specific goals in mind—who are you, me, or anyone else to dictate what that static does? It isn’t any of our business what the raid leader and the raid group decide are criteria for joining their group, just like it isn’t our business what a PF leader designates as criteria to join their PF.

Honestly, this is the only reply required for the OP.
Part of the culture of the game says "and you get a minion, and you get a minion, and we all get a minionnnnn". This type of content is FFA. The rules of joining and who gets what and at what cost etc is set by the game.
But when another player can actively exclude you from content you want to do ? How dare they. Savage is a part of the game that can't truly be moderated in terms of who gets to join and why. Party lead/static lead sets the rules and requirements.

But the solution is simple:
Don't like parse party ? Go join another or make your own PF.
Don't like a static who wants to know you can perform ? Go look for one that doesn't care or require proof, or go make your own and you'll quickly find out why some statics have minimum requirements to join.
Ah, but one of the biggest issues is that most people don't want to lead. Understandable. Well, better yourself or go look for a group that is more your lane.

Not meeting the requirements for PF and Static groups is usually a "it's not us, it's you" issue.
It's easier to blame parsers than to look in the mirror.

[Skyclaw726]

I don't think I have ever seen a parse advertised in PF and no group I have raided with has requested logs or anything.