Quote Originally Posted by Ryel View Post
I think this is where you're misunderstanding.
In this example it's not a matter of the player making a conscious choice to play below the average Dragoon by 300 DPS it's the fact that they may not be fully aware they are doing so and the comparison by parser begins to illuminate any issues with their play. The issue is what the player believes to be their 100% might turn out isn't the case, that they weren't aware they were having issues or making mistakes.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Oh man, I thought my DPS should have been higher than that, I know I can do better than the last run, let's run it again!"

Seeing tangible feedback allows a player to evaluate themselves in an effort to improve, nobody is saying the parser is going to do the work for you but it will show you the results of the current attempt. If it was the case that every single player had full awareness of their mechanics executions and rotations on equal grounds and equal fields there would be very few poor players across the board, however this has proven to be not the case. This concept isn't even exclusive to the game it applies to everything.

in fact we have multiple sayings for it:

"Practice makes perfect"
"If at first you don't succeed, try again"

Getting feedback on how your rotation actually handles in live content versus the vacuum of a dummy parse is the only data that actually matters, because it's when it counts. You must have seen various comments in the DPS forums / reddit / anywhere of players asking others how they've gotten certain results or seen videos of people showing off opening rotations, speed kills etc because actual player skill is a factor not just the rotation on it's own.

Parse results are key feedback when it comes to refining your skill.



Nobody said this wasn't part of it, it's not like people are saying you'll look at parse results and instantly become a top tier player and never have to communicate with your party.

A lot of this conversation actually takes place when the party looks at the parser after a failed DPS check, sees they might need to squeeze in some more DPS in various areas and says:

"Okay guys what can we do here?"

This is usually followed by an analysis of what can be changed on everyone's end, things like: Where can a healer get in some more damage? What can the tanks do to help the DPS? etc etc

Party assessment has to start somewhere, having tangible results you can point to and say "we did this well versus this well" is a good starting point for improvement.



These are all things you evaluate and assess based on feedback.

No offense but you make comments that lead me to wonder if you've ever interacted with another person and i don't mean that as an insult.

Are you saying you've never come across a situation where one or a number of people were inspired or encouraged to perform better based on the results of their peers? You've never seen someone look at the class average of test results and think "man next time i want to get an A instead of the average of a C" while some are perfectly happy thinking "well everyone else got a C so i guess I'm not doing all that bad, so why bother trying any harder?"

In the case of a lack of a parser it's like taking a test with 300 people and instead of getting a grade back at all the professor just stands up and says "You all passed" or "Most of you passed, some of you failed, but I'm passing the entire class anyway because the majority of you did well enough that i don't care about the rest" it's like "Okay, well that's great and all but, I'd really like to know how i did on the test"

Of course this whole testing analogy is terrible to begin with because tests normally aren't dynamic and don't change questions during the exam nor are they effected by the actions or lack of actions of other people taking the test at the same time, that and when it comes to mathematics there usually isn't a physical component involved in taking a test (rotation, practice, etc).

However it's like you're trying to remove factors like motivation, practice, and a desire for improvement from the conversation as if they aren't very real reasons as to why some players get better and others don't. Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, the evidence (see: human history) speaks otherwise.

There are plenty of people who should be better at things that they do but they aren't, there are other people who get better at things when they have a form of measurement placed in front of them showing how well they should be doing and use it as a basis for improvement.

The argument isn't about improving the mathematics it's about improving the execution, which in turn is rewarded with better results.



Don't want to delve too deep into the challenger thing but the point wasn't to disprove the mathematics, but to illustrate there are factors beyond them.

When i say nobody saw it (a malfunction) coming i mean nobody saw the scope of the disaster coming. "This launch might backfire" and "Everyone on board is going to die" are two very different things.

Were there reports since the 70's of the O-ring flaws and the lack of data for various temperature ratings as well as the fact that this known issue hadn't been resolved? Yep.

Were there multiple warnings from the engineers that something could possibly go wrong and they weren't 100% on whether the launch would have gone as expected, with in fact data saying it might not at all? Yep.

Did the higher-ups ignore or not receive this feedback at all this based on a combination of launch scheduling and others feeling they were safe enough to do so anyway? Yep.

And did it quite literally explode in their faces? Oh yeah.

Had they known for 100% what the results would have been would they have done it anyway? /shrug who knows?

My point primarily is that while a rotation says you should be performing in one way (with a degree of variance) a player's skill and practice comes in to play when seeing if these results line up.

I'm also not entirely sure why you seem so hostile over this either.
Self awareness and raid awareness are required skills for raiding. The discussing of parsers outside of a raid environment makes no sense. We assume that anyone who would benefit from using a parser has the minimum requirements. Adding a parser to the game will not add any more people that would not have raided otherwise. Anyone who would use a parser for a raid thus already knows how to play their class, had self awareness and raid awareness. There simply isn't a such thing as a person (i.e. who raids) who isn't aware that they are making mistakes. If they do, then they do not belong in a group which depends on them to do their job.

That aside...
It will help you if you actually quote the proverb correctly. It's not "practice makes perfect". It's "practice makes permanent". There also is no raid in the game that doesn't operate on a script. That means that there will be no variation from fight to fight aside from who gets targeted by AOEs or mechanics or spawn location of adds or mechanics. And even those are not random, just chosen out of a possible set of configurations (such as laser positions, knight positions, add positions in AS3). When you go into a fight recognizing that it a dummy until mechanics appear, then you will realize that you will perform the same rotation as you do on the dummy, or at least, that is the goal.

Now instead of going off topic with talks about space shuttles (I gave the example as a proof of concept for physics, not sure why it diverged) I'll one again make a few points clear. A parser will not tell you what you are doing wrong. A parser will not tell you why your dps is different from the next guy's. Do you honestly think that top groups think that when they went to AS3 the first week that there was something wrong with their rotations and if they just try stuff out side of the optimal rotation they will get higher dps? No. They knew that they were already doing optimal rotations and didn't meet the dps check. So they needed gear. No coincidence that there were no clears of AS3 until people could buy Esoteric weapons.

But here's the surprise. They didn't need the parser to tell them they weren't passing the dps check. The only use of the parser in their fights was just to check if they were missing (dubious, you can see if you are missing by looking at the screen). After they passed the accuracy cap, then they treat every fight like a dummy, where you pause to do mechanics. Parsers aren't meant to be used by people going into dungeons, or trials, or anything of that nature. Parser only have a place in raids, where people of self awareness, who already know the fundamentals of the game, need to know the accuracy caps of fights. Then they use the data to tell others, "hey here's the cap and here's our clear time and raid dps".

And no, you don't need a parser to determine the raid dps required to pass fights. You just divide the Boss's HP (summed with add's HP) by the enrage time (or mechanic timer). Then, before you even go in the fight, you have your dummy DPS for your party and will know if you will pass the fight based on your gear. And fight's aren't tuned with healer DPS so that's all extra.

There aren't any mechanics in the current raid tier which require you do do anything except move or attack. So to maximize your dps for every encounter, you just have to move when you need to (for movement mechanics) and attack nearly 100% of the time. If you are doing this, then there's nothing a parser can do to help you because you are already doing the maximum capabilities of the class. If you are not, then parser will not help you either. You already know what you need to do before reading how poorly you did. If each player just plays each fight like they are racing for world first clears, then you will realize that each player will always do the maximum possible.

On the other hand, there are people who claim the parser can help with rotations. Knowing how to play your class is the minimum requirement to raid. There is no one raiding who doesn't know their optimal rotation. The parser is not for this group of people. You don't learn your optimal rotation by using a parser either. You either do the work yourself or read someone else's work for "highest mathematically possible PPS rotation". Then you whack a dummy to see if you can do it. If you realize you are making mistakes, then you fix them. If you can't do it (physically), then you should evaluate yourself and decide whether you should play in a group environment. And in both cases, you didn't need a parser.

I'm pro-parser btw, but I don't support reasons that are completely wrong.