The Real Problem with Parsers

[Clarkamite]

Okay, but what if you can see your data during but not others'? You still can see your own data to know whether you need to pick up the pace during the fight, you just wouldn't be able to point it out to someone else, and I'd assume that if that someone else was capable of picking up the pace to adjust in mid-fight, they should be able to do it while being able to see their own data as well without being told.

This is funny you say this. Several months ago I posed this same idea. I certainly wasn't the first person to come up with this idea and judging by the number of times I see someone come into new parser debate threads and say, "How about this idea I had: Personal Parse," I wouldn't be the last. Its been pointed out that just a personal parse wouldn't be nearly as useful as one that can show all the numbers which I can agree with but I'm much more open and receptive to the personal parse. On a basic level, I'm mainly interested in my own numbers anyways so just the personal parse at least satisfies what I'm mostly after. It's only after I've perfected my own runs that I start worrying about other people performing.

I would rather have something over nothing so if my only option was personal parse or no parse, I'd take personal parse. I firmly believe the best option would be for SE to create the personal parse that has the option of displaying the numbers to others if you so choose. So at least we are like minded in this respect.

I'm sure there's someone out there who would argue against that but then I think at that point they're not necessarily right anymore. To be fair though, in certain content I'd rather see all of my teams numbers so that I could actually see how poorly they were performing and I know some of them wouldn't turn it on. There's a couple people in my static who routinely underperform and I'd much rather know about it than not know about it. So I guess there's always some argument to be had on this issue but I'd much rather have that middle ground then nothing at all.

EDIT: It's interesting I just thought of this. Having access to all the numbers in my group would allow me to more accurately fix problems that arise. For example, if I see that there's certain phases where a fellow DPS or a tank is just not putting out numbers, even though it's on them to fix it, my group is funny where there's some member who's just can't or won't perform well enough. Countless times we've had to step up and devise strategies as the DPS simply just to push the phase even quicker just so our OT doesn't have to tank another T9 add because he just isn't good at mitigating anything. I say this because having the numbers of say, our bard, and knowing he really really struggles with an important phase of the fight, rather than yell at him to "git gud" I'll just see what I'm at and pump out even more if I can. It's not really fair to me but that's just how our group has operated for the last two years and if we only had a personal parser, I wouldn't be able to see those numbers. Just food for thought I guess.