Would you like an in-game parser?

[Launched]

How is a dummy going to remind you about those though? How is a dummy going to teach you to use or maintain anything while you're running around fighting groups of mobs?

How's it not going to help? If you can't keep BotD up until you run out of TP, or Enochian for 5 minutes on a dummy, you don't know your job well enough. Boss fights in dungeons are easy enough that apart from mechanics like frogs/dolls in Antitower, you shouldn't be away from the boss long enough to drop a buff. You learn your job on a dummy, then when you're learning actual fights you be careful with the timers (use Blizzard IV to reapply Enochian at 10s so you don't have to worry about mechanics, use Geirskogul when the BotD timer is closer to 30s than the 21s minimum). You don't just "forget" to use the buffs that are a huge part of the job at 60.

I mean I go in dungeons on Astro occasionally and one of the things I always seem to need to remember is which skill is my Esuna equivalent and where I put it on my hot bars.

But you apparently have all 3 healers at 60. Why don't the 3 Esuna skills all share the same hotkey? Same for other similar skills like Cure/Physick/Benific. I can't say I have any trouble remembering my hotkeys, and I have every job at 60 because I keep them consistent between jobs. My melee combos share the same skills. My caster DoTs do too. Buffs/debuffs are on the same keys on each job, and so are similar skills like Shroud of Saints and Luminiferous Aether.

[randysquirrel]

...you don't know your job well enough...use Blizzard IV to reapply Enochian at 10s so you don't have to worry about mechanics...

Sorry, but this is not good advice

[Reiryuu]

But you apparently have all 3 healers at 60. Why don't the 3 Esuna skills all share the same hotkey? Same for other similar skills like Cure/Physick/Benific. I can't say I have any trouble remembering my hotkeys, and I have every job at 60.

I know... this is probably going to amaze and totally make you go crazy: I don't use hotkeys very much. I dunno, I have fat fingers and sometimes I press the wrong keys so there are some things I prefer to do with the mouse. It's probably the reason I hate playing scholar. Once I ease back into how I have things set up, I get comfortable very quickly. But it takes a few mins my first time if I'm rusty.

[WeekendSoja]

How's it not going to help? If you can't keep BotD up until you run out of TP, or Enochian for 5 minutes on a dummy, you don't know your job well enough. Boss fights in dungeons are easy enough that apart from mechanics like frogs/dolls in Antitower, you shouldn't be away from the boss long enough to drop a buff. You learn your job on a dummy, then when you're learning actual fights you be careful with the timers (use Blizzard IV to reapply Enochian at 10s so you don't have to worry about mechanics, use Geirskogul when the BotD timer is closer to 30s than the 21s minimum). You don't just "forget" to use the buffs that are a huge part of the job at 60.


But you apparently have all 3 healers at 60. Why don't the 3 Esuna skills all share the same hotkey? Same for other similar skills like Cure/Physick/Benific. I can't say I have any trouble remembering my hotkeys, and I have every job at 60 because I keep them consistent between jobs. My melee combos share the same skills. My caster DoTs do too. Buffs/debuffs are on the same keys on each job, and so are similar skills like Shroud of Saints and Luminiferous Aether.

Man, this is the utter truth of this game. It is not rocket science but I feel like most of the posters in this topic treat the game as that, "Overly complicated" "So many skills I can't wrap my head around it" "Mechanics keep me moving so I can cast (BLM, SMN(?lol), MCH, and BRD)".

Every job in this game currently is literally a replica of another genre type. Like Launched said, he sets his hotbars for his healers to reflect the other two setups...makes hitting the most used buttons easier, some variation easily yes but its seriously common sense...

How does this relate to the use of a parser...

So, you've trained on the dummy and have committed to muscle memory you 6 button rotation, 5 cross class skill usage, 4-6 OGCD weave-ins...cool...now to apply this to an enemy that could move, change its position so you need to compensate and move yourself to hit your positional, vary your rotation to compensate the many differences that a boss battle can bring when doing EX primals or savage fights with random people from your server.

With a parser, you realize, "Hey, my damage is much lower than it was on the dummy...I wonder why...let me try that again and see if I can apply my practice in a different way to up my DPS." (Best case scenario...lol player base)

WIthout a parser, you condemn or are completely apathetic to the fact that things aren't going anywhere, "It can't be me...I mastered my rotation on the dummy...sure, when the boss flips off the screen for a moment it disrupts my combo but its nothing to worry about right?"

A lot of people are labeling this tool as something that is ammo to harass people, its something that the endgame community could really take advantage of to increase its numbers. People in general could use this tool to better themselves. But to a lot people its a loaded gun pointed at their head rather than a pencil and paper there to help with "hard math".

At this point the endgame community will continue to blacklist players who can't pull their weight in EX trials in fear that this person may join a PF farm of A5S and screw that up too.

[Voltyblast]

At this point the endgame community will continue to blacklist players who can't pull their weight in EX trials in fear that this person may join a PF farm of A5S and screw that up too.

Which is ironically a kind of abuse (needlessly blacklisting people for personal reasons). Sure it's not as bad as, saying, swearing or offending someone but it's an abuse of a feature that its main purpose was to help someone avoiding people who potentially harass or offend someone, not to ignore people who do bad dps "because we only need pros to beat this ginarmous boss". Any feature that is used in ways against its original intent IS abuse afterall.

And you kind of nailed it with a key word there: "Fear". I constantly see fear of abuse, fear toxicity, fear of harassment, while the truth is that "they are all in the game: you just don't notice it". We already have abusive players (housing exploits - get ready to run people!), we already have toxic people (those who won't allow people to join unless he/she's done this this and that), and we already have people harassing others (I was harassed for overpulling, but the tank wasn't pulling properly and instead blamed me. Plus it was AV)

I do agree that parser could be a tool to improve someone - as well as a tool to harass others - but I think that considering how many cases of harassments don't come from parser alone (actually it seems it's the least common cause of harassment), I still think that one day SE should let us give a try and see how it goes.

Worst that happens? They remove it, anti-parsers will be happy, pro-parsers will use their own version. Everyone's happy. More or less.