Observations on DPS in End Game

[ExiaQuanta]

keep in mind that melees DPS get shafted by AoE circles and that Grease Lightning most of the time will be lost if a boss jumps and comes bak down. It can be preserve but u will be pushing the time on your grease lightning. and to get it back you have to slowly build it back. While its good if a MNK can work with that but im pretty sure alot cant.

[Itseotle]

- Actually DRGs in general, they're almost all terrible

This is a sterotype that has lived long enough. Anyone can be bad. I see more bad BRDs than DRGs lately, but its all just opinion.

Oh but if a drg doesn't use heavy thrust, or a blm use thundercloud procs that'll wipe the party?

Yup. Won't kill those Conflags/Snakes/Dreadknights/Dreadnaughts/Knights/Gaols/Suparnas/Chiradas/Satins/Nails/ect fast enough without HT, resulting in wipe.

I really like the OPs post. It comes across as just a general nudge to do better, and he does have a point. But to the OP, that is the line, I believe, between casual and "not casual". A lot of people who have cleared the top tiers of content do perform the way you have described. This is a game that welcomes people who do only play at 70% efficiency, but those people cannot get themselves through the content, which imo is the dividing line. Just let people play the way they want to play. For those that do want to improve, this is a useful point of reading.

keep in mind that melees DPS get shafted by AoE circles and that Grease Lightning most of the time will be lost if a boss jumps and comes bak down. It can be preserve but u will be pushing the time on your grease lightning. and to get it back you have to slowly build it back. While its good if a MNK can work with that but im pretty sure alot cant.

This should not be used as a crutch. This sounds like your talking about Primals, and those fights are designed in a way that Monks (and any job) can clear them. If you are performing your job to the best of your ability, then it doesn't matter if you lose Greased Lightning. It is designed for you to do so, and that my friend is just part of what it means to truly optimize your DPS in those fights.

I still don't see how dps are not accountable for fights when Titan heart phase, ifrit ex nails, T4, T5 are all hard dps checks. If a raid wipes to any of the above mechanics, the fingers will be solely pointed to the dps. Maybe its not as obvious as a tank losing aggro or a healer not healing, but the collective dps has failed as a whole. And isn't there a saying like "you are only as good as your weakest member" or something like that.

This is entirely true, especially as more people start moving into Extreme mode primals (heck people still struggle with HM Titan). It is very easy to tell if the DPS are failing when you don't break Titan's Heart and everyones alive? That's the DPS to blame, and your right it might not be just one person which is why I feel the OP needs to add the following concept to his original post:

- Another responsibility of DPS is to coordinate with each other. This includes simple ideas like "who is using Limit Break and and what time?" to more complex ideas like cross-buffing for DPS increases. For example, as a BRD, should I be using Foe Requiem so the BLM can AoE harder, or Army's Paeon so the Warrior and Dragoon can AoE longer? Another relationship is Dragoon and Bard. As a DRG, is it more important to Disembowl the Bard's target, or focus on my own target? These concepts are more class-oriented but the general idea that you should coordinate with your fellow DPS is also very key to maximizing your class's potential, as well as your group's.

[whiskeybravo]

Nice write up Bokchoy! Good to know I am rare and valuable to my team XD

I like your idea on the confidential/shared in-game DPS meter, certainly seems like a reasonable way to implement it. If something like that was included from the early stages it would give players a means to gauge their improvements throughout the leveling process. By the time they get to end-game content they would probably be pretty familiar with min/max/average performances. I think if there was a little number up in the corner most people would push to see how high the number could go, this could encourage continuous improvement. That being said, you really wouldn't want a healer pushing their DPS, so maybe just make it an exclusive feature of DPS classes. Tanks could get something that displays threat gen on mobs, like an icon over the head or maybe another meter underneath the enemy healthbar that shows threat loss. Maybe something for healers that calculates a reaction time or overhealing. Not really sure on the tanks/healer stuff, just throwing out something so that maybe each type could have it's own type of "meter".

[illuminapanic]

I hate to say it and I do believe that people should be able to play the way they want to but the idea of it seems more toxic and non-beneficial to me. It just leads to ignorance and leaves people more open to being offended then backlashing at others. In a game where you have to rely on your teammates to do their best to assist you with a clear, helping your teammates by doing your best is also helping yourself. Like the OP has stated, doing your part results in faster clear times which results in less mechanics to work with and less overall group work. So if you "play the way I want to" and aren't performing up to par, you aren't helping the group OR yourself.

Sorry if this was off topic but in every thread there always comes to threads which say "let them play how they want to" and whenever I think of it, I don't see any good come from it.

[LordSliver]

OP I play as a DRG and my main issue with that class is getting the skills to go off as they should. When they don't it really does hurt a DRGs DPS. But thats not my biggest issue here on this game my biggest issue is that people are too quick to hit the Abandon Button on the first fail with 50-60+ minutes left on the clock. People don't care to try when they fail once and that I believe is the reason we see "bad players" in this game, because people don't try after they fail once or twice. They would rather quit the dungeon and complain they got a bad party when in truth they were probably the reason the dungeon failed.

There are many aspects to why people don't play as good as you listed and the main reason is because people unreasonably hit the Abandon Button on the first wipe. People arent trying to improve themselves after the first wipe or second wipe, they just quit.

[Fendred]

Basically people don't bother to research and optimise their rotations.

I recall trying to research my class on the internet and I realized that there were a lot of conflicting opinions on how to optimize one's dps as well as out of date documents. It isn't like trying to research a rotation for World of Warcraft where it was very easy to find a good guide simply because of the game's massive popularity. MMOs aren't quite like that anymore.

They should really not be trying to create rotations in this day and age. I'm all for having a variety of abilities that do different things, but the dps choices should be very obvious.

[skaterger]

I recall trying to research my class on the internet and I realized that there were a lot of conflicting opinions on how to optimize one's dps as well as out of date documents. It isn't like trying to research a rotation for World of Warcraft where it was very easy to find a good guide simply because of the game's massive popularity. MMOs aren't quite like that anymore.

They should really not be trying to create rotations in this day and age. I'm all for having a variety of abilities that do different things, but the dps choices should be very obvious.

I can't really agree with this sort of mindset. May I know what class you were researching with that had many conflicting opinions on their rotation? Afaik, all 5 dps classes are fairly consistent in their rotations, with the possible exception of monk having side-only, back-only or side-back movement dps. But even so, the rotations have a few governing principles that all non-mmo newbies should possess

1) Keeping uptime on dots and debuffs on enemy as much as possible
2) Using offensive cooldowns as much as possible and as soon as its off cooldown
2) Weaving off gcd cooldowns into your normal 2.5 sec gcd rotations
3) Correct positioning during skills and right order of skills used to maximize damage

In cases like whether fracture are useful for dragoon or whether to open with thunder 2 or 3 with blm, yes there are many opinions on this but you need to realize that these are the players who min max and its not going to affect your dps by a significant amount whether you choose to use it or not. People who are doing sub dps as OP is talking about usually have much more major problems like spamming full thrust or casting blizzard for 90% of the fight to conserve mana.

I think a large part of what keeps a game interesting is that there are still certain unknowns or variables in the game. This keeps players interested and discussions alive as to the optimum rotations, skill tree, gear choices etc. If there is only 1 build or a cookie cutter build, then everything becomes homogenized and becomes nothing more than everyone mindlessly button mashing. This was what led me to leaving some other games and I personally do not hope SE goes down this route.

[Viridiana]

This is all well and good within the context of a grp of people playing together regularly but what if used in DF and PF which do you think would be the more likely scenario?

1) Point out to the newbie the inaccuracies in his rotation and help him overcome it
2) Humiliate him, kick him out of party or leave party?

My point being, if its a straight up dps check and who isn't pulling their weight, its not hard to tell at all. The threat meter, while not 100% accurate can be used as a rough gauge.

Now imagine this expended to the duty finder in CT where there are 24 players. People were already abusing the ready check and vote abandon system? Can you imagine the fiasco if a parser was introduced?

I can only really vouch for myself, in that I'd point out how to fix his rotation, probably a bit more bluntly than necessary but without calling names or anything. The people in my FC would likely do the same, and probably even be nicer about it. That said, the vast majority of the players are not people I can vouch for, and I know that an unfortunate number of them would do #2. On the other hand, #2 is harassment, which is a bannable offense, and I know that the GMs act on these things. I would almost be willing to deal with the stupid if it meant that we could clean up some of the more toxic members of the community. Especially if it means I can go to CT without being bombarded with childish infighting.

[illuminapanic]

I can't really agree with this sort of mindset. May I know what class you were researching with that had many conflicting opinions on their rotation? Afaik, all 5 dps classes are fairly consistent in their rotations, with the possible exception of monk having side-only, back-only or side-back movement dps. But even so, the rotations have a few governing principles that all non-mmo newbies should possess

1) Keeping uptime on dots and debuffs on enemy as much as possible
2) Using offensive cooldowns as much as possible and as soon as its off cooldown
2) Weaving off gcd cooldowns into your normal 2.5 sec gcd rotations
3) Correct positioning during skills and right order of skills used to maximize damage

I agree with this person. I like to believe that I am an above average player on most of my classes and all I had to do was come to the dps section on the forums to look up people's tips/advice on certain classes. They really aren't hard to find at all and a lot of skilled players give their input, with proven data, on what to adjust which is then edited on the main threads.

People who are doing sub dps as OP is talking about usually have much more major problems like spamming full thrust or casting blizzard for 90% of the fight to conserve mana.

It's funny because I joined a DF Titan HM as my War one time and we never got past heart phase. I was trying to eyeball the situation as to see what was wrong and I noticed that our Smn was not only eating every single avoidable damage, but he only casting ruin1. He didn't have his pet out and didn't cast any dots. Although he may not be the sole factor of us not progressing past heart, he was a major factor of the failure.