An alternative to parsing?

[Slick7]

You have stone sea sky to check your basic rotation and gauge improvements in damage.

Easy enough. Just copy everything in the damage log into Excel and start calculating as you wouldn't want to attribute a dps change to a rotation change where in reality it just was luck with crits and direct hits on big potency skills, would you?
Or you'd just do a higher amount of SSS per rotation change and take the average. Very convenient. Sounds like it would really keep people in the game that like to improve their gameplay.

[KaivaC]

snip

Only problem that I see with this is uptime. The key fight that comes to mind particularly for melee is Byakko Ex, especially as one will not always have true north available to use. I would support some changes to SSS that mimic the fights that the dummy is representing, ideally, mechanics that don't exactly kill you, but affect your damage - with an increased timeframe, of course. As it is, I don't like SSS because some of the HP on them are overtuned. I have yet to beat a dummy for the current Savage tier, yet I can perform fine in actual Savage. SSS needs some key QoL improvements for it to be a good source of information. All it does is just inform you that your rotation is sound when you are in a pure burn phase and have zero mechanics to worry about.

[Sigma-Astra]

I have yet to beat a dummy for the current Savage tier, yet I can perform fine in actual Savage. SSS needs some key QoL improvements for it to be a good source of information. All it does is just inform you that your rotation is sound when you are in a pure burn phase and have zero mechanics to worry about.

This. Exactly just this. SSS isn't a good way to gauge a person's overall damage performance unless some QoL adjustments are made because there will literally never be a current fight where you can just blindly ignore mechanics and not once, ever move from a single spot. I could have the soundest BLM rotation known to man on a Savage dummy or even just a trial dummy.....and then reality will hit that mechanics beg to differ and I'm really playing DDR instead of Red Light, Green Light.

[thegreatonemal]

This. Exactly just this. SSS isn't a good way to gauge a person's overall damage performance unless some QoL adjustments are made because there will literally never be a current fight where you can just blindly ignore mechanics and not once, ever move from a single spot. I could have the soundest BLM rotation known to man on a Savage dummy or even just a trial dummy.....and then reality will hit that mechanics beg to differ and I'm really playing DDR instead of Red Light, Green Light.

That's not the purpose of SSS. The purpose of SSS is to test weather or not the rotation you are using is enough to pass the dps checks and contribute to damage in a boss situation.

[Slick7]

Should have put a 'attention sarcasm' sign in my post.
While I can understand some people don't like the competition that comes with fflogs the game _really_ does a poor job at giving feedback to your performance as dps.
The situation as it is now is perfectly acceptable with act being tolerated - unless you're playing on ps4.

So I guess some kind of ingame feedback on performance would be good - you could limit that to savage content and extreme primals to avoid conflicts.

[KaldeaSahaline]

What I will take issue with is if they decide to spout off about other's performance if it doesn't meet their unrealistic standards or expectations.

What if the standards are realistic is that ok? For instance - In a standard level 70 dungeon is doing more DPS than I did in HW is that a fair expectation? How about ARR? I've seen both cases doing less. How about doing more than a tank or healer? Is that fair expectations?

I'm never going to outparse someone who is in super awesome crazy gear. It won't happen.

You'd be surprised. Anecdotal examples:

1) I had some pug O3Ss where my co-tank did less damage despite being 30ivl higher without dying than I did @ i297 doing Susano EX in full time shield oath. In this example O3S - I did nearly double their damage with equivalent gear.

2) My brother was an ~i305 SAM who regularly out damaged other pug SAMs with nearly 20-25ilvl on him by well over 1k DPS.

3) At the beginning of SB, one of my BLM buddies regularly sustained 5K DPS over an entire dungeon run with low ilvl gear. Over half of my DF runs despite people having 40+ ilvl on my BLM buddy can't sustain that much, and often sustain significantly less.

And yet, even with that, i've had people make rude comments in dungeons about my DPS.

If we were on the same DC I'd run with you to give you an idea of where you're at, but sadly we're on opposite. If you truly don't have an idea, it's very possible that you're not doing as well as you think/could be.

My problem with parsers isn't that they are used, it's that they do not tell the whole story but many are acting like they are the only thing that matters. They do not show who is helping or missing mechanics, they do not show who is more concerned with the win. They only show numbers. Too many groups end up relying on this to the point I once had a sch offer to show me how awesome her parser data was when I suggested she should really not be casting broil with 4 dead teammates.

Context of story regarding broiling SCH and 4 dead teammates? What content, when, ilvl, and what was the result? wipe? clear? Did you have LB3 or near LB3?

Also do you have any examples of mechanics that a parser doesn't capture someone doing? From real fights in the current expansion. Would be helpful to understand your position better.

Just this morning, I went into V5S and our DPS was so low that we couldn't even kill the chimney. All of us asked if anybody was running a parse to find out who was not contributing enough so we could work on it together - and this was a PUG group.

Just in case you didn't know the best way to look into this - check the incoming damage to adds and see who did how much to them. The chimney dies in like 2-3 GCDs, so if you didn't have enough time to kill it, it means adds died WAY too slow.

If you're not familiar with how (doing this by memory so bear with me) - in ACT right there you can go to incoming damage and find the monster name right click on it and click lookup by combatant. It will give a breakdown of all incoming damage to that target. Really easy to identify who isn't contributing to the adds.

I have yet to beat a dummy for the current Savage tier, yet I can perform fine in actual Savage.

That's a strange thing to say. If you genuinely can't output enough DPS to clear the dummies, you're very likely getting carried to your clears. If everyone was in your exact position - would the boss still die?

[Sebazy]

That's a strange thing to say. If you genuinely can't output enough DPS to clear the dummies, you're very likely getting carried to your clears. If everyone was in your exact position - would the boss still die?

It's pretty common place for some jobs to be unable to clear their SSS dummy even in the hands of a world class progression player upon a new tier's release.

Agreed on the rest of the points though, playing to a high standard in terms of APM and rotation will frequently more than make up for any reasonable gear deficit in casual content and pugs when you're often up against people who simply aren't trying

[KaivaC]

That's a strange thing to say. If you genuinely can't output enough DPS to clear the dummies, you're very likely getting carried to your clears. If everyone was in your exact position - would the boss still die?

I'm being carried because I can't clear a dummy?

...that's not a comforting thought to have. :/

[Moogly]

I'm being carried because I can't clear a dummy?

...that's not a comforting thought to have. :/

That's the whole purpose of DPS checks.
Everybody is doing the mechanics perfectly OK, but the other DPS in the group will have to compensate for your lack of DPS for, e.g, not wipe on the enrage.
"Carried" is a little too much though... Carried would be rather you dying on the very first second of the fight and staying dead while the group is proceeding to clear the boss.
If you do mechanics right, clear the boss, but do not manage to clear the dummy it doesn't mean you were carried : it just means you have room to improve dps wise. As to how much room you can improve will depend on how much HP the dummy has left once the timer is up !

[KaivaC]

That's the whole purpose of DPS checks.
Everybody is doing the mechanics perfectly OK, but the other DPS in the group will have to compensate for your lack of DPS for, e.g, not wipe on the enrage.
"Carried" is a little too much though... Carried would be rather you dying on the very first second of the fight and staying dead while the group is proceeding to clear the boss.
If you do mechanics right, clear the boss, but do not manage to clear the dummy it doesn't mean you were carried : it just means you have room to improve dps wise. As to how much room you can improve will depend on how much HP the dummy has left once the timer is up !

Consistently in the 1% - 5% range, based on the last several times I've fought the v5s dummy.