Quote Originally Posted by Ryel View Post
Others have given comparable examples of how this works but since you asked me I'll answer as well.

A parser giving you a 1245 will not tell you to when use BoTD by itself, in fact nobody would look at it that way anyway as that's a prime example of not correctly reading the information.

There's a large difference between doing the calculations when it comes to the potency of skills etc to create the perfect rotation before hand, practicing it ad nauseam on a striking dummy and then actually performing the rotation successfully in live content with the variables that are boss moves and other party members.

When players use the term "improving their rotation" they don't mean that the parser is suddenly going to start spitting out increased damage and adding chunks of DPS, they also don't mean it's going to provide a brand new step by step rotation that couldn't have been done on paper prior to the fight.

What they do mean however is that a person parsing their performance in live content can look at other examples to get an idea of how well they should be performing in a fight and contrary to what you may believe there are many players out there that simply do not know this.

Your example with the two Dragoons doesn't really make any sense in the context of this conversation.

Saying "well this Dragoon did 1300 DPS why didn't you!!!!??" is not the same as someone asking "Can someone tell me what the average DPS of a DRG in this fight is around my ilvl and stats? I'd like to know how much i should be doing." this is where someone can respond with "Well the average burst assuming you're doing your rotation right is usually around 1300-1400 DPS in the first phase give or take with a sustained afterwards of around 1000-1200-ish for the rest of the fight but various factors can change that obviously" this gives that Dragoon something to shoot for when evaluating their own performance.

If That DRG looks at the parser and sees they're only doing 800 burst at the start and start dropping down to 600 sustained they obviously know they are doing something incorrectly but they may have to look at and evaluate their performance to see where they went wrong. Maybe they weren't mechanically fast enough? Maybe they need to adjust their positioning and the way they avoid boss telegraphs in order to maximize their DPS up-time which should be common sense but you'd be surprised how many players don't realize how much stepping away from the boss for an extra GCD or not dodging properly can impact their DPS, they may think it's just 20 points here and there when in reality you could end up dropping a few hundred points instead, which doesn't sound like much until it keeps happening over time and you wipe at 1%, a parser will show you this when you compare the data from multiple attempts.

As for things like BoTD, GL, etc that yes should have 100% up-time, historically there have been many cases of a party doing either too much or two little DPS causing awkward phase transitions where it falls off. It's not about when you activate it but entirely about where you might have to alter your rotation to extend it, the number of times I've heard "Damn i lost GL, Enochian, BoTD, etc" because of an awkward phase are too numerous to count over two years of content ranging from Ex primals that are notorious for lots of jumps when pushed (see: Leviathan, Ifrit, Titan, Garuda) or bosses that you need to come near full stop on DPS so that you don't wipe the party (Melusine, Nael, Bahamut) a parser doesn't change the math in any way, but it does show you your performance counting the variable that is live play.
Why do you need to know (example here) that you are performing below the average dragoon by 300 dps before (completely arbitrary value) you decide you need to play correctly. If you are playing at 100%, not missing any GCD or positionals and performing the standard burst at the dps check, then there is NOTHING you can do to improve your DPS, other than rely on random variables. If you know you are not playing at 100% (that is, you are missing some GCDs, your cooldowns were not aligned for the dps check, you missed positionals) then you already know, without seeing any value that you are performing subpar and you can improve.
(Example incoming)
It's like saying that if you miss bunch of positionals (due to tack positioning) in equal concentration it's okay if you are only "30 DPS" below the average. But what if the average Dragoon also doesn't clear the fight, due to them not being good players (not exactly a stretch here). All of the slower groups who don't form their strategy uses the same meta strategy and positions the boss in the same terrible way because they saw some guide video of doing it that way.

But instead of actually solving the problem (telling your tank that the boss positioning needs to change, regardless of how they saw the tank do it on the video so you can do your positionals) you are content because you are only 2% behind the average. you knew for a fact that you can easily improve your dps by doing something so fundamental, but were willing to accept being subpar is okay as long as everyone is also subpar. This reasoning is why there is a large gap between the average player, and player who have cleared the raid tier. And guess what? If you want a parser, it's probably because you intend on clearing the raid tier.

The fact that you were doing 300 behind average even if your rotation was optimal (as in, your damage cannot improve) might stem from the fact that you were using a 170 weapon. The parser will say the same thing, but you will now ask around what other dragoons do instead of seeing, "Obviously, this is already striking dummy burst rotation. It can't be improved mathematically, it must be the 10 points of weapon damage I am missing". If you're not doing perfect striking dummy burst rotation, then you already know (without a parser) that you can improve your DPS and exactly how to improve your DPS.
(Example based on example incoming)
It's like saying you are taking an engineering class of 300 people.
->
The average grade is a C and your grade is a C. You then come to the conclusion that your are doing it right.
->
The average grade is a D and your grade is a C. You then come to the conclusion that you are doing it right and also don't need to work any harder because you are already better than average.
->The average is a B and your grade is a C. You then come to the conclusion that you should should spend another hour a week to review your notes before exams because you are slightly below average.

The issue is that none of these scenarios are correct. Knowledge of what others are doing should not have influenced your decisions to do better or not do better. If your grade was a C you know from the start that you need to improve because you haven't hit the maximum (A+). Similarly, Even if you didn't have knowledge of the numerical value of your grade, you know that you missed some test questions and you can always improve until thew point that you have perfect accuracy on every topic.

Quote Originally Posted by Ryel View Post
Funny that you say this, because we don't rely entirely on the math when building things like spaceships we extensively test and re-test every single part down to the bolt before we conduct a launch and even then there are times when we get it wrong or something happens that we cannot foresee that wasn't taken into account. It could be as simple as human error or something entirely beyond the scope of our predictions, you can look up the space shuttle challenger and see how even though everything in the math was probably correct a simple O-ring malfunction can cause disastrous results that defied their predictions and nobody saw coming, sure we know exactly what happened now, but that's because we were able to asses and analyze the data after the fact.

Additionally while we might not reinvent the wheel, we've surely innovated it about a billion (not an actual number) times to suit our various needs, from the materials we construct it with to altering it's form, changing things from the draft board in response to live feedback is exactly how we make progress.
The amount of misinformation is disturbing. The challenger had a defect that was known to occur ahead of time due to weather conditions (physics at play here). The shuttle was launched due to scheduling constraints, leading to the situation that it had to be launched that day, or some time in the following year. This was a classic example of management ignoring engineering information that was known as result of equations beforehand before the launch. If nothing else, this further augments the point. "Well, the math could be wrong and the seal on the rings don't break" was the "flawed" argument here. It would be in your best interest not to discuss what you have not clue about.