noobish question from a new player

[Princeofravens]

At the core of what is expected of us as dps, is to pull as high dps as we can, and strive to improve on that dps. Playing in beta and for a few days now on live i have been unable to find any method of tracking damage output aside from the combat log and scrolling combat text mid fight, well these are all well and good i dont have the time to add up all those numbers to determine my dps. Ive also been told after inquiring in game that FFXIV does not support addons, although only one person bothered to reply to my question then in a whisper so maybe its false, part of why im here.

How do we as dps determine not only how well we are doing but if changes we are making are leading to improvement or not? Is there some kind of addon despite what i was told? do we use upload combat logs to 3rd party sites (similar to world of logs for WoW) to calculate our dps output? how is it that we acquire this information that is by nature critical to us as dps?

[Elvisan]

It really does not support addons, even tho I do believe there was something about addons in the future for the game on of the letters. Might be very wrong about that tho, so don't take it for granted.
I know there is one DPS meter that works with FFXIV and I'm sure you can just google it to find it, what I'm not sure about tho, is whether you can get banned for using it or not and whether it is safe or not, because it most definitely is a third party program. I would say don't use it, but that's just an opinion of mine.

Tho on a personal note, you should be able to tell how are you doing even without the exact numbers, even the mere flying text is good enough idnicator for that, unless you want to go "Aha, I did better damage than X and Y, noobs."

[Princeofravens]

although not as important at my current level, at higher levels its nice to have a solid number for dps then just watching random numbers go by... say as a lancer is it better to combo true > vorpral > then full thrust no matter boss orientation or does it provide better dps numbers to maintain the heavy thrust buff and then impulse drive from behind followed by disembowl and then chaos thrust... the numbers will look big flying my my screen either way, but which way is best? well theres no accurate way to tell watching scrolling combat text in the heat of battle. thus my question... im no elitist wanting to trash talk everyone worse then me, im just someone who wants to play my character to the fullest of my capabilities and to do that i need a method of gauging my performance

depending on what others say, and if its not against rules to use, ill look into it thanks

[Viridiana]

depending on what others say, and if its not against rules to use, ill look into it thanks

The devs have already commented saying that, while they can't officially support it, it's fine to use as long as it's not modifying the game in any way. As I'm not aware of any that modify the game at all (they just read memory/log output), all three parsers that I know of are okay to use. Those would be FFXIV APP, Logrep, and ACT.

[etl003]

assuming you are a lancer or a dragoon, you want this. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...otation-Reborn

read this and you wont really need to worry about your dps.

but i use ACT and ffxiv app.

[etl003]

and no, just doing the thrust combo on a boss is horrible. start with heavy thrust, go into impulse combo, phlebotomize, then thrust combo. keep your buffs up and debuffs up as much as possible along with dots (chaos thrust and phlebotomize)

and read the link i provided to find out the full rotation along with buffs and off global cooldown skills.

[Princeofravens]

thanks viri ill be sure to look them up later today

thanks for the link etl, i figured that was wrong when i typed it but it was just an example of why the meter would be useful but i do appreciate the class advice i will be looking at it later today as well