Quote Originally Posted by Yshnal View Post
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Why would the devs need to keep parsers in mind when balancing encounters? In every raid dating back to Second Coil (possibly even the original Binding Coils), parsers have been used. Why would developing an official one suddenly necessitate a need to take them into consideration? Handling and successfully clearing mechanics is not the question here – that’s totally on player and party skill to work together to clear them.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that I am representative of the average player who is starting to raid. Say everybody is clearing mechanics properly, we’re all hitting the boss, and the fight in general is going very smoothly. But you hit enrage at 20%. Then information comes out that I’m holding the party back because I’m hitting 4.9k – a grey parse. But I’ve done my rotation correctly. Yet it’s quite obvious that I’m the reason for the enrage. But how am I supposed to know this? I followed my rotation exactly from the guide for my job on TMP.

The answer? In a lot of cases, I won’t know unless I can see the data. I wouldn’t know that I’m having some weaving issues, causing me to miss GCDs. I wouldn’t know that one of my TAs missed because the boss turned at the absolute wrong moment. I wouldn’t know that hitting TCJ at the wrong moment would hurt my overall DPS more than just throwing it out there. Yet in real time during the actual fight, it looks like I did everything just fine. But if I did everything just fine, how can I still be the worst DPS in the group? Why am I still a grey parse?

Things like this are why I want a parser of some kind on the PS4. I’m essentially blind. And every party has the right to kick me based on my parse. And trust me, I have been completely locked out of groups the moment I join. Which means that unless I’m with my static on raid night, I cannot do any raiding unless I just happen to join a party that either doesn’t mind I’m grey parse or doesn’t care.

One bad DPS does matter when most players in endgame are sitting at or near min-ilvl. That speedrunning business – it mostly starts really becoming a thing after about week 4 or so when you essentially have a good chunk of your BiS gear.