DPS Meter Usage?

[EveK]

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1. The most popular BLM guide openly has a DPS meter in its tutorial. By watching that am I cheating? Why doesn't SE remove it from the DPS forum if it is not allowed?

2. If you are in a FC whose members use one of these things, are you by proxy benefiting from it and thus have a competitive advantage over others? Should you leave that FC (which I've already done)? Is the "damage already done" though to your character's integrity?
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1. You can report such violations by clicking the little yellow triangle in the bottom left of the post.
2. Whether you choose to associate with such people or not is entirely your decision. Personally, I would also leave such a free company. This isn't because I'd feel I had gained any sort of advantage, though. On the contrary, I think people that use these more often than not are actually crippling themselves; the data they do present is erroneous in many ways. For one, whatever methodology they use to sniff numbers is incomplete; you always know more about your own damage than everyone else's. So the rather accurate running joke is that anyone using a DPS meter is just deluding themselves and reinforcing an unhealthy and inaccurate narcissism. (It's generally unwise to speak ill of any group of players, but since we've already established this behavior is very clearly against terms of service anyway, it seems alright to at least do a tiny bit of analysis as to why it's against the rules). Perhaps more importantly, the usage does a great deal of harm to the game itself. They're frankly the reason people can't do appropriate modifications to the user interface: the ongoing fear is that if any such modification ability is actually officially released, these damage parsers and their unhealthy and elitist mentality will immediately become the focus of the modding. Most importantly, though, any person's contribution is most definitely not so simple as the sum of their damage output. So even if this data were accurate, it fails to take into account everything that's actually going on. Is the idiot crazed with scoring the highest points on his parser even attacking the best target? Is he properly saving bursts of damage for when they're actually strategically needed despite the fact this actually decreases the overall output number? When applicable is he doing things like helping to interrupt key inductions with Sleep? Is he actually dodging appropriately, or is he effectively taking away MP (and DPS) from the healers in some idiotically zealous effort to make his number higher?

So, in summary, I think your "integrity" sounds fine.