How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[HyoMinPark]

So I've been thinking about this alot, reading other posts in here and the like, and one thing kept being brought up that no one seems to question: A tool for parsing can be used as a learning tool. I agree, as a whole, I mean, you'd have to come up with some compelling argument to try to say that information - no matter how it was gotten - (in this case parsing) isn't useful in some way to help better yourself. The problem I am having is this: how is it a learning tool? I mean yea, it has the numbers, but the numbers mean nothing when left by their own. I did some looking around on fflogs (as well as I could anyway, I don't know anyone specifically to look up, and evidently I have nothing logged on there) to see if I can find something...but came up short.

So the question is: How can this be a learning tool, when there seems to be nothing to compare the evidence with? Say for example, we get an official parsing tool...that's neat, but how is one going to know they are doing good or bad? What is the benchmark for dps for a dps in iLevel 180 gear? A tank in iLevel 260 gear? I can see how that would be useful, cause then I can take my numbers and put it to a benchmark...but as it stands now..I see nothing...just a bunch of useless numbers that people in current gear doing current content are proud to have public. If this parsing tool was to be official and public for all...well...not everyone is 70th level in alpha savage gear.

Not everyone participating in Savage is full i400 in full Savage gear either; the tier just started.

A parser has to be used in conjunction with another analysis tool in order for someone to effectively learn with it (outside of seeing their numbers compared to other similarly geared individuals and thinking “that seems kind of low... I wonder why”). You also have to be able to read and understand the data within FFLogs to understand what it’s trying to tell you, as well as have the motivation and open-mindedness to improve.

FFLogs is just one example, but there’s a new xivanalysis tool that was developed by people to specifically address optimization for specific jobs, and it’s used in conjunction with a parser and an upload to FFLogs. I was toying around with it last night actually, looking at my groups weekly Chaos clear. Sadly, BRD is currently not supported, but every other job we had was (PLD, WAR, MNK, DRG, MCH, SCH, AST).

For each one, it provided a checklist of things one should look out for with regards to optimizing rotations: for example, the PLD analysis addressed how many FoF windows only had 0~1 Goring Blade applications within their window as opposed to 2 applications, which is what one should aim for; it also had information about Holy Spirit usage. AST has checklists for the amount of Draws/Sleeve Draws they missed within the encounter. DRG has Blood of the Dragon uptime analysis, and Nastrond optimization.

All jobs have a standard timeline mapping out the skills they used (and showing when they overlap with raid buffs or when they come off cooldown), and they also address things like triple-weaving, and tell you exactly where you weaved and what you weaved; that is along with a message stating to avoid weaving more than 2 oGCDs within a GCD window.

With regards to DPS per item level, there is currently no way to determine this save for historical data, which in and of itself will probably not always be that accurate. These first few weeks are when most raiders are in i380 crafter/normal mode gear, so they could be used as a benchmark for i380. But this will skew in the future because statics/individuals that progress faster will gear up faster (provided RNG is kind to them with drop), widening the gap between i380 and i400.

What would be useful would be if FFLogs would consider things like your current gear with regards to rankings, but that is not a function it currently offers, and I am not sure how the developers of the site would go about implementing it. It is not something that I am against, but it is also not something I have an easy answer to with regards to implementation.

I also think that FFLogs should go back to filtering out DPS with Balance and DPS without Balance like they had in Creator back when Balance was +20% for a naked one, +10% for AOE, and +30% for Enhanced. That way you get more of a raw number, and not a Balance-fed number—even though it fairly easy to tell when someone was fed Balances if you know where to look for the information. At that point, you can use the rDPS calculator to determine how much damage Balance gave them, and subtract that from their total DPS to find out what their actual damage would be like sans Balance feeding.