If parsing is needed to clear challenging content then why is it not in the game?

[Kosmos992k]

Yeah, just like how report cards are a crutch when you're in school. No wonder today's youth all eat paste. They should learn to stand, walk, and run on their own.

That's some pretty good hyperbole putting a parser on the same level as a school report card. Though to take your thought, a parser is more like a pointless pop quiz, your raid wide completion might be a close analog to a report card.

[SargentToughie]

That's some pretty good hyperbole putting a parser on the same level as a school report card. Though to take your thought, a parser is more like a pointless pop quiz, your raid wide completion might be a close analog to a report card.

Except that's exactly what it is. It's a measurement of how good you're performing at a given task, and giving it a grade. A parser might be more of a pointless pop quiz when people use it in faceroll DF dungeons, but it's an important tool for measuring raidwide contribution, figuring out where your weak links are, and where you can improve. Practically essential if you want to really take raiding seriously and not hold down your team.

That said, you can also complete fights by getting carried, especially in this cycle. I've seen a lot of people clear A12S just because they have time to bash their faces into it for days upon days on end, waiting for the team where they get lucky enough to have their slack picked up.

Saying that success is measured only by completion is like saying that you earned that A while you napped while the rest of your group pulled your slack and did your work for you. It's something that's really hard to appreciate if you don't raid, since 4 man dungeons don't have hard enrages or DPS checks.

[Kosmos992k]

Except that's exactly what it is. It's a measurement of how good you're performing at a given task

In this context, I believe that your report card is your completion of certain content. It varies from person to person in terms of what they want to do/play, but all a parser gives you is a number, it doesn't tell you how good of a player you are or how well you play the job and/or role you have. The most it can tell you is that in the specific conditions of the fight you parse, you executed your rotation with X% efficiency. It doesn't tell you how well you avoided avoidable damage, it doesn't tell you how well you did with a mechanic, or how well you did picking up or shedding adds, it doesn't tell you whether or not you were aware enough to see that one of your team mates needed help and you drew an enemy from them to help, etc, etc... All it is is a number. It falls very far short of helping you or anyone else actually get better at their job or role. It can give you bare numbers, but no nuance.

No DPS meter just like riding a car without speed meter. ^^;

This games is full of blind drivers but I have never seen a newbie/noob playing bad if they have parser.

An experienced driver can tell from the gear they are in and the pitch of the engine what their speed is, they can feel the car move and know if they have good traction, and a really good driver can tell simply by looking through the windshield roughly how fast they are going. Having a speedometer doesn't teach you how to drive, how to steer, brake, park, etc. Your speedometer doesn't teach you lane awareness, or to look in your mirrors, it doesn't navigate for you, or handle stop signs and traffic lights. Your speedometer can't teach cadence braking, or steering into a skid, how to handle ice or hydro-planing. A speedometer can be a useful tool, but it's a limited tool, and really not a major part of being a good driver. So, your analogy fails.

By all means people should improve their play, but a parser, damage meter, or log analysis or whatever other method can only tell you about one facet of what you need to do - damage output.

A parser is just a tool that you use to inflate your ego and tell others to 'git gud' with.

Similar to telling your mates at the pub that you got your Mustang up to 100 mph on the Motorway/Interstate/Autobahn. Ego inflation, bragging and telling your friends that they need to do the same in their cars...aka 'git gud'. Yep, you called it, absolutely.

[Dement]

The people that care are already using one. Or do you think that we need parsers for 4 man content suddenly?

Unfortunately, this is not a true statement. I raid and I care about my DPS; however, as I play on PS4 I do not have access to a parser without becoming a burden upon someone who has. I don't like wasting other people's time and asking them to sit there and feed me numbers seems like a waste that could easily be avoided if I was given the tools to do it myself.

A parser is just a tool that you use to inflate your ego and tell others to 'git gud' with.

By all means, let's completely ignore the legitimate uses a parser has. It is first and foremost a tool to determine DPS output and places of improvement when tight DPS checks need to be passed. To claim it has no value beyond e-peen is an absolutely ridiculous statement if you have ever done Savage content in this game.

In this context, I believe that your report card is your completion of certain content. It varies from person to person in terms of what they want to do/play, but all a parser gives you is a number, it doesn't tell you how good of a player you are or how well you play the job and/or role you have. The most it can tell you is that in the specific conditions of the fight you parse, you executed your rotation with X% efficiency. It doesn't tell you how well you avoided avoidable damage, it doesn't tell you how well you did with a mechanic, or how well you did picking up or shedding adds, it doesn't tell you whether or not you were aware enough to see that one of your team mates needed help and you drew an enemy from them to help, etc, etc... All it is is a number. It falls very far short of helping you or anyone else actually get better at their job or role. It can give you bare numbers, but no nuance.

While you are absolutely right that it is just a number, they are the only numbers which we cannot readily measure. Standing in avoidable damage is easily identifiable. Failed mechanics lead to heavy damage or wipes and are, thus, easily identifiable. Handling adds in proper manner commensurate with your role is again easily identifiable. etc. etc. I can readily observe and determine all of these things as I work through a fight and improve to perform all of these tasks. Without pouring over the battle log with a calculator for 30 minutes, I cannot tell you the % efficiency which I performed my rotation while meeting the other metrics. With DPS checks and enrage timers, this is absolutely a metric of successfully clearing a fight. It cannot be argued that efficiency in performing rotations for ALL party members has 0 bearings on clearing.

DPS checks are their own mechanics. If I move during the full stop mechanic of A10S, I have visual feedback of an attack hitting me as well as my health immediately dropping and possibly death to inform me that I failed that mechanic. If I constantly wipe my group to DPS checks by underperforming, it is much much more difficult to determine that I am the cause with absolutely 0 feedback other than the whole group wipes. As I've seen this argument play out so often, I presume that the response will be "it's everyone's job to perform the DPS check, if you're underperforming then it's up to the group to make up the slack" which is true; however, that's a carry and is likely worse than a failed DPS check as it gives me positive reinforcement that my DPS was good enough when in actuality my DPS wasn't good enough but several of my teammates were overperforming... as I move forward, I will eventually hit more and more walls of DPS whom are not capable of covering up my errors. However, since I have that previous reinforcement that I CAN meet DPS checks, I am less likely to identify myself as the cause of my own inability to progress. This can just as easily lead to people lashing out at their party members as a parser can.

[SargentToughie]

Snip.

The fact that you talk about parsers not being a measurement of how people do their jobs proves to me that you know nothing about what it means to raid in this game, or partake in fights that actually have challenge to them. If you fail a mechanic in a fight even in Alex Normal, fights where where parsers actually matter, you die or your team wipes, full stop. There is no other measurement for that. Avoidable damage becomes 1-shots, failed mechanics become raid wipes. Those are easily measured, those can easily be identified, you can see those. The challenge of savage isn't how many mechanics you can ignore or how much damage you do, but how many 1-shots you can avoid in a given timeframe in order to clear the battle, while outputting maximum damage.

The measurement which we do not have readily available is how much damage you're doing, while also performing your other roles and mechanics. These aren't something you can just ignore or slip beyond, even in EX primals which are pretty trivial as far as high end battles go. You'll understand if you ever actually get to any of those encounters, it's not something that can be readily understood until you've sen it with your own two eyes. Even in The Vault, whenever you run it, it becomes pretty obvious when people are messing up mechanics. This isn't a matter of putting DPS above all, this is a matter of reading out how well you're performing at a given role, while taking all other things into consideration.

Simply put, in most 8 man level 60 content, the only content in the game in which parsers actually do anything that matters, there is no way to 'inflate' your parse by ignoring mechanics, because ignoring mechanics kills you. Again, it's really hard to understand until you've reached max level, or partaken in those battles yourself. I'd ask that you please abstain from arguing on behalf of content that you do not understand, and have not seen for yourself.