Is this truly wrong?

[KaivaC]

Go do some stuff as RDM for a bit instead. It's a simpler class without pet damage or DOTS, so you can see if its your rotation, or if the parses aren't reflecting pet and DOT damage accurately. You should share all gear save for the weapon. You don't need to ply one class exclusively, mix it up then come back to it.

The irony is that this all originally started from a friendly competition with a good RDM. I came up numbers wise about 500 short, which spurred me to try it again with SMN, thinking I was hot stuff...and came up even shorter. While I'm positive melds have a bit to do with it, it's more or less that since the last thread, I'm getting worse, even as I'm optimizing my rotations on SMN. I've started sticking with tanking - particularly learning WAR - because I just got too frustrated with trying to improve.

If at the end of the day your hobby is making you unhappy or making itself unenjoyable, it's past time to step back and get some perspective on why you do what you do. Ask yourself several questions: are you able to clear the content that matters to you in a timely manner and without major mistakes? Are you focusing on the right thing? Are you having fun? The last one is the most important as this is a video game that is meant to be FUN.

You may be focusing too much on how other players perceive you and are making that the actual goal instead of personal aptitude. The only person you ever have to answer to in most things in life is yourself. As others have already said, the Best of the Best often only post their very best parses and omit the screw ups cause they want to look good. Personally I feel the people who make guides to help others reach higher skill levels are more deserving of attention but that's not the point.

As long as you are trying to make yourself better and enjoying it while you do so, that's all that matters. I parse for personal improvement, compare and contrast what I did one run versus another and where I can tweak for better results. And that makes me happy and I have fun with that without caring what other players think. Do I make mistakes in the process? Oh hell yes I do and I like to think I'm better for it because I don't take it too hard and instead learn from the experience.

tl;dr: if you aren't having fun while making yourself a better player, it's time to reevaluate your goals.

Yeah, for now, I'm avoiding all manner of DPS jobs in endgame content. I haven't cleared O7S because I got caught up with SMN. I can stand back and admit that recently, I just started caring more about hitting a certain percentile amongst the raider player base than actually clearing O7S and O8S. As for the other questions...I don't know. I can't really accurately answer them at this point in time - right now, I just trying to get WAR leveled up.

In my opinion, if you purchased the game to have fun, but you're not enjoying the fun, perhaps it's either time to step away or re-evaluate your desires within the game.

If you are inclined to continue, then I would say don't get discouraged for a long term. There will be days where you feel you're underperforming and there will be days where you are completely in sync with your kit and the fight and having a blast. The days when you are under performing, look into what you can do and keep improving.

Overall there are a few things you can do.
-Potentially consider changing jobs. I don't play DPS jobs at the highest tiers but my understanding is that SMN is a really complicated class and a lot of nuances to keep track of. This might not be for you so perhaps try something else.
-Pound the crap out of the training dummy until your "rotation" becomes muscle memory. I don't believe SMN really has a rotation but being able to think of your priorities on the fly will help you focus on other things in a fight.
-Do you understand the fights? A lot of optimizations revolves around understanding the fights. Everything is structured and being in position or being aware of where you'll need to be in the upcoming ten seconds will get you thinking about what you need to do to maintain DPS while doing mechanics.

A lot of players say DPS have the easiest time of the three roles and it's not entirely false. Out of all the responsibilities in the vast majority of content, DPS responsibility are light compared to healer and tanks. However, being able to play DPS at the highest tiers of proficiency is ridiculously hard. This is not to be discouraging but you're competing against people who have had years of fights pounded into them. Even though the kits have changed over the expansions, they need less time to adapt to the new style versus you picking it up fresh, considering you've joined the OF as of August 2017. These players also understand every nuance of their DPS kit and have the best gears available to them. It's an uphill battle, especially now that players are getting BiS'd out in week ten of the raid tier.

The fact that you have a drive to improve and want to continue to get better already makes you better than the vast majority of players. If the SMN kit is fun for you, then I say keep going at it and see what you can do. Keep going to improve, pound that dummy, participate in content, get the gear, and try to keep pushing that number upwards.

I enjoy SMN a lot, yes, and I pretty much have my rotation/priorities down as opposed to say, DRG or SAM or RDM. But as mentioned above, the problem currently is that I'm going backwards after learning the job more, not forward. It's something that really messes with me because SMN clicks with me. But Vanille mentioned that its common whilst in the middle of optimization, so we'll see...tanking I can do without hang ups unless it's DRK, so I've kinda just stuck to WAR and ignored everything else outside of roulettes for the time being.