Quote Originally Posted by Darkplanet View Post
and well i'll offer my suggestion to better the striking dummy system: instead of "kill this in a certain amount of time" you could simply switch it to it times how long you took to kill the dummy. you killed it in 1 min 30 seconds, well then you try a few different things and oh you killed it in 1 min 20 seconds this time, you can see that you improved. Would that be satisfactory for people? it could avoid all the numbers while giving you an indication of dps improvement.
Except killing the dummy 10 seconds faster on a random attempt doesn't necessarily mean you improved. It could just mean you had a lucky string of crits, direct hits, procs, etc. for a change. That's why a striking dummy is never the answer. It's not going to tell you why you ended up killing it faster that one attempt.

A parser will break down all the information and let you know if it was just that lucky string or if there was something else at work to increase your damage. Maybe you managed buff uptime better while getting the same number of crits as you usually do - that would be a true sign of improvement.

If you can't see the full breakdown of the numbers, you don't know what changed. As long as fights are tied to timers, those numbers are important.

There's also a lot more to a fight than just dealing damage. Parsers will track the other information as well.

Parser are not a bad thing. They're an excellent tool when it comes to improving your play. Taking them away because some people choose to use them the wrong way doesn't benefit anyone in a game where the numbers are important because you're limited by a timer.