Just realized something: FFXIV is a terrible DPS player's DREAM come true...

[RichardButte]

I recently switched from maining a healer to maining a DPS, and this just occurred to me: I went from a high pressure role, to a NO pressure role. I'll explain...

Unless you're in a static that runs a parser, a DPS player can be utterly horrible at their role yet never get called out for it.

Think about it...

1. No DPS meters so no one can see how bad they are.

2. If the DPS in a dungeon seems slow, they can (and WILL) blame the healer for not DPSing enough.

3. There's always at least one other DPS in the party with them to mitigate some of the blame. Do you have two middling DPS, or one amazing and one awful? You'll never know!

Seriously, healers get blamed for not keeping people alive. Tanks get blamed for not holding aggro.

But DPS continue getting off scott-free because no one can actually tell if they're to blame or not.

We have two roles in which players will be readily judged upon how well they perform (and chastised for making mistakes of any kind), and one where you absolutely CANNOT judge the player on the primary role they're supposed to be performing without admitting that you're running a forbidden 3rd party application! Just don't stand in the bad until they DIE, or pull mobs before the tank does and no one will ever know how bad they are.

And we wonder why no one wants to tank or heal and the queue times are so long...

PS. I don't claim to be a good DPS myself or anything, but I know for a fact that I'll never get called out for being a bad one...

EDIT: And before anyone else suggests that you can just "watch their rotations"...

1. You don't need to observe the rotations of a tank or a healer to know when they're failing to perform their roles adequately.

2. I have better things to do than watch another DPS player in an attempt to ascertain whether they're doing a good job: I have my OWN rotations, AoEs, HP bars, adds, etc to watch for.

3. Even if their rotation LOOKS on point, you'll have to inspect every DPS player to see if their gear happens to be garbage (whereas you'll notice right away if a tank/healer is wearing awful gear).

4. I've taken DPS classes I barely understand into dungeons many, MANY times in the past, and played horrendously. I still botch my MCH rotation fairly often. How many times have I been called out on it? Zero.

In fact, I'm guessing that most players are so worried about being accused of running a 3rd party parser that they're AFRAID to call a DPS out for playing badly.

Bottom line, none of this is a RELIABLE way to determine if a DPS is absolutely horrendous, and that's why DPS is an extremely low-pressure role while healer and tank are the opposite.

Determining if a tank or healer isn't performing is as easy as looking at HP bars. Determining if a DPS isn't performing is like a goddamn forensics investigation by comparison...

PS. I'm not trying to imply that all DPS players are bad, don't try, or anything of the sort, only that the game really doesn't do enough to help us tell a good DPS from a bad one. If two DPS both don't stand in the bad, determining which one of them was the weak link on the team requires either far more investigation that you have time for in a dungeon run or a 3rd party parser (which aren't officially supported in any capacity).