Is this truly wrong?

[VanilleFang]

snip.

Kaiva was running Savage with PUGs. You can't expect orange in a PUG.

[Limonia]

In my experience - people with your issue simply aren't pushing buttons enough. Letting oGCDs sit off cooldown for extended periods of time, not pushing buttons quickly enough (2.5s GCD, but only pushing buttons every 3.3s or so), stuff like that.

I'm definitely pressing buttons early so they queue properly. I'm not optimizing enough when I have to dodge stuff, but when standing still I am not waiting 3 seconds to push the next button. It would be way too boring. I even hate it when people do that. I also try to use oGCDs as soon as possible. I'm not perfect with that, but hitting only one single oGCD like 1-2 seconds later than I should have shouldn't make me almost fail the dummy. I only use RDM in normal mode content and from what I've noticed I sometimes just press a wrong button. For example I wanted to press Impact or another proc and accidentally pressed Jolt. Or I accidentally press Verfire instead of Verstone, but I always notice that immediately. It doesn't happen so often and not when I'm really concentrating while trying to beat the dummy. But I still can only beat with max. 3 seconds left. And I don't know why. No matter how I practice, I can't improve as DPS.

[KaldeaSahaline]

snip.

Just looking at a random normal Kefka log from 3/1 on your RDM and comparing it to my static's RDM (on O8S kefka, but cut your log to the same time parameters to get as close a comparo as I can):

• You have almost 4 less CPM. Better said, you're pushing buttons ~12% less than you could be
• You also have 2 less enchanted melee combos than my RDM (and 2 less Holy/Flares as a result)
• You missed 2 acceleration casts
• You missed a verfire cast
• You missed 3 impact casts

Now, I'm not some RDM expert, nor is my static's RDM perfect (85th-94th percentile). I'm merely comparing your log as best I can to a better RDM's log based on things that could be similar.

Also - total ilvl can be very misleading, you may be 346-348, but what ilvl is your weapon/chest/legs (these are the ilvl that matter the most to actual throughput)? Is all of your gear melded? What is it melded with?

Hope this helps.

[Vahlnir]

When I got better my mistakes becomes a lot of noticeable and irritating so even though I am playing a lot better than before I end up feeling like I performed worse instead because of it

Everyone has their good days and bad days. Just can't let it get under your skin. Usually best to take a break when that happens and come back to it with a cool head.

[Llus]

A good portion of us here on the forums look actively seek to improve ourselves, whether its be min-maxing, figuring out optimal rotations, etc. After my thread in which I found out that I was, at best, a 9th percentile raider, I took some time to work on SMN and 'git gud'. Managed to hit that 50th percentile bracket...only in sigmascape normal, and it looks like I've just gotten worse as a player trying to get better. I'm not satisfied with being a 50th percentile player, because that's actually worse numbers wise amongst Savage raiders than what I was doing back when I started that toxic elitist thread.

Keep in mind, I still generally don't ask for my information to get uploaded - they just end up online (I usually check a few hours after my weekly runs).

Anybody in this rut get in that position where they feel like they just continually get worse? That they feel embarrassed enough that they feel that they don't belong on the same level as their peers who, admittedly, don't judge them or really care? Or maybe the nagging feeling that you will never be good enough to be on their level?

I'm kind of in that boat now, to the point that I've pretty much dropped DPS'ing entirely because I am incapable of keeping up with my peers. It's gotten to the point where I kinda shunned myself off because I feel like I don't belong with my peers anymore. This is more or less myself wondering if anybody is, or was, in that position. Or knew someone like this on the verge of...well, essentially calling it quits.

Quite often you're working on a new rotation you're just going to suck. The reason is that old habits and muscle memory tend to kick in during stressful situations, it's just a fact of human nature. Given that DPS rotations (for DPS, Tanks and Healers) are pretty strict, one panic moment where you miss aligning with raid buffs or completely bork your rotation will hurt your dps later in the fight and quite often very badly especially when you have to delay a burst window. The ONLY way to deal with this is getting your rotation in-grained as muscle memory. This doesn't mean practice your opener on a dummy, this means practice for 5-10 minutes straight on a dummy. Do that over and over again. Don't use the SSS dummies, use a level 1 dummy and keep going. Beyond that, going back into a savage fight you've already cleared is the only other way to get practice for your rotation AND timing for that specific fight. Instead of sitting on your clear for the week, join 0-1 chest groups, parse groups, fresh clear groups etc so you get the practice you need.

Ask for your parses to get uploaded. fflogs is a great tool to replay and analyze a fight. Don't pay attention to your percentile so much, pay attention to your CPM, number of casts and damage per cast. For example, here's a comparison between your o1s run on SMN vs a 99th percentile SMN on the same fight: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/compa...pe=damage-done

if you compare their uptime with yours you'll see they're active 91% of the time on this fight (this is one of the worst fights for uptime in the current savage tier) vs your uptime of 85%. When doing this comparison, don't beat yourself up - simply ask yourself what are they doing to get 6% more uptime than you? Is there something that you could do to increase your uptime? Since you're on caster, the movement required in this fight is going to cuck you; so think about pre-positioning. Practice slide-casting so that you can pre-position for upcoming mechanics. You know that you could get the prey marker, so pre-position at max cast range so that if you get prey you're already close to where you need to be and you only lose the cast time of running forward instead of backward. Try to position yourself away from others before the whirlwind markers come out so you don't have to move to avoid overlapping. When putrid passengers come out be prepared with AoE burst, this is a HUGE dps increase and one of the easiest ways to improve your overall DPS for the fight and trust me, 99th percentile players pad their numbers on those adds - just look at the comparison between yourself and any 99th percentile SMN and you'll see the HUGE difference that padding makes.

Back to the comparison above, forgetting the padding and CPM, what skills is this other SMN using; how often are they used? Tamamo hits 81 ruin 3s during the fight vs your 70. If you're interrupting your casts for movement that's going to destroy those numbers. The next biggest loss I see is Ahk Morn, Tamamo hits 8 Ahk Morns vs your 4 and 9 death flares vs your 5. So what is it about their rotation that allows them to get so many more bursts than you? If you creep their log and click on timelines, you can see their rotation for the entire fight; every cast at every point. Then compare that with your own log and see what differs there. Use fflogs as a tool to help you figure out what you're doing wrong, what you're doing right and ways to improve. Getting frustrated because you can't get above 50th percentile is going to happen.

Right now, I'm a 70th percentile avg WAR. Does that mean every fight was great? Hell no, I suck bad until I learn the timings of each fight by heart. I still miss opportunities to improve my dps and miss or delay a burst window. I'm 9th percentile on god kefka, and while that upsets me; it doesn't make me want to give up cause I know with more practice me and my team will improve on that fight. Just know that with practice and patience that you will improve as well. The KEY to getting above 50th percentile is PRACTICE. Get back in there and do the fight as often as you can and you will improve.

[KaldeaSahaline]

Kaiva was running Savage with PUGs. You can't expect orange in a PUG.

Firstly, you can get oranges in a pug. It happens. Saying you can't expect it, sounds like you're saying it can't happen at all.

That aside - did I mention anywhere in my post about expecting an orange in a pug?

What you said was: "Unless you are in a static group that plays optimally I doubt you'll ever reach orange. I'm not even sure how likely high purple is. Don't beat yourself up about it."

The goal of my response to you was to show via examples that purples are easy enough to get in pugs if you have the job/encounter experience. I got them before I joined a static in both Deltascape and Sigmascape no problem.

edit - in hindsight I didn't specify that it was with PUGs, but with statics. That's my bad. I get my posts mixed up a lot. You may not have seen my previous posts. I pugged up to Kefka, before getting a static. I did the same thing with Deltascape (cleared O3S, before grabbing a static). Purples were acquired here.

[KaivaC]

I've fully converted over to WAR, so for the time being, my mains are tank/heals until I get that confidence I had during my elitist phase. I started back up raiding again last night, so we'll see how it goes. I dunno if I can stay away from fflogs...but I'm also not necessarily chasing deeps at the moment.

[Llus]

I've fully converted over to WAR, so for the time being, my mains are tank/heals until I get that confidence I had during my elitist phase. I started back up raiding again last night, so we'll see how it goes. I dunno if I can stay away from fflogs...but I'm also not necessarily chasing deeps at the moment.

Don't stay away from fflogs. Use it as it was intended, compare your casts to someone better on the same class for the same content. Look at CPM, look at the number of specific actions performed, look at the timeline and compare that with your timeline. That's how you'll go from sub-par to average to excellent.

[Dzian]

The issue is that a good portion of what makes a difference between one percentile and another isn't the player it's the party... You can take a take for example the 100th percentile player and put him in a group of randoms and his performance will be no where even close to that 100th percentile.

There's so many things that fflogs doesn't tell you that can have a significant impact on your performance. And a lot of them can be as simple as which direction is the boss facing or where is the boss being tanked?. A badly positioned boss might mean you have 10% less uptime. A boss thats constantly being turned might cost you a significant amount of positional bonuses.

A party member that's stood right next to you might then force you to move and lose cast time where if he was in a better position you wouldn't have to move... lost gcds..

Badly stacked ground aoes can make the difference between taking 2 steps to get out of or taking 7 or 8.. lost gcds.

That player with the stack marker forcing everyone to move away from the boss to stack on him instead of him running to the group on the boss.. more lost gcds

There are quite literally an almost endless number of things that can really impact performance none of which are ever represented in fflogs...

Then you have things like other party members and how well they use there buffs. Is chain start being applies with foe and trick attack muliplying the damage boosts quite heavily or are they all being used sporadically at random intervals.

All of these things might slash your performance in half and there's absolutely nothing you can do to control it.

Player percentiles are essentially worthless. Because it's generally the entire group that makes that number what it is. You could take a 10th percentile player put hi in a 100th percentile group and guarantee he'll do better even if he plays exactly the same....

And like I said at the start. Take a 100th player put him in a 10th group and his performance will be nowhere close..

[Ghishlain]

The issue is that a good portion of what makes a difference between one percentile and another isn't the player it's the party... You can take a take for example the 100th percentile player and put him in a group of randoms and his performance will be no where even close to that 100th percentile.

There's so many things that fflogs doesn't tell you that can have a significant impact on your performance. And a lot of them can be as simple as which direction is the boss facing or where is the boss being tanked?. A badly positioned boss might mean you have 10% less uptime. A boss thats constantly being turned might cost you a significant amount of positional bonuses.

A party member that's stood right next to you might then force you to move and lose cast time where if he was in a better position you wouldn't have to move... lost gcds..

Badly stacked ground aoes can make the difference between taking 2 steps to get out of or taking 7 or 8.. lost gcds.

That player with the stack marker forcing everyone to move away from the boss to stack on him instead of him running to the group on the boss.. more lost gcds

There are quite literally an almost endless number of things that can really impact performance none of which are ever represented in fflogs...

Then you have things like other party members and how well they use there buffs. Is chain start being applies with foe and trick attack muliplying the damage boosts quite heavily or are they all being used sporadically at random intervals.

All of these things might slash your performance in half and there's absolutely nothing you can do to control it.

Player percentiles are essentially worthless. Because it's generally the entire group that makes that number what it is. You could take a 10th percentile player put hi in a 100th percentile group and guarantee he'll do better even if he plays exactly the same....

And like I said at the start. Take a 100th player put him in a 10th group and his performance will be nowhere close..

I do agree that composition and skill with affect the percentile a player can reach, but I do strongly disagree with the statement that looking at a percentile is completely worthless too.

It's up to the individuals looking at the logs to see where they can improve and where they're doing well. A percentile gives that player two things: (1) a range of where they are in terms of skill level with the rest of the player base in the same content and (2) gives them a metric / goalpost to aim for.

Also, a 80th percentile player playing in a group that is a 20th percentile skill won't suddenly make their DPS bottom out at the 20th percentile. It'll dip, yes, but I don't believe it'll dip further than a +/-10 percentile range. That's still a sizable gap but it doesn't make things worthless. A highly skilled player will be able to make non-optimal conditions work for them and can adapt to optimize for the conditions they've been given.