Quote Originally Posted by Penthea View Post
To be fair you can easily catch a lot of stuff like that just from watching the players and your ui.

If you know a class you'll recognise skill animations, especially anything flashy. You can see on the enemy targets if they're missing dots or debuffs they normally should have with the current classes in the fight. You can see on your own buffs if you're lacking a party buff that should be there. You can look at the party ui to see if the tank uses defensive cds. It's especially easy to see what a caster is doing because you can see hardcasts in the party ui. You don't need a parser to see if the whm is spamming cure 1.

Of course having a parser makes it easier to spot these things in a more indepth manner, and it can show you things you maybe didn't see at the time. But let's not suggest that parsers are the only way of seeing whether someone is pressing the right buttons or not, because that is simply not true.
Give this a try in Savage. You're almost guaranteed to mess up yourself or get killed because things happen quickly enough you aren't going to catch everything unless it's blatantly obvious. Furthermore, most people don't have intimate knowledge of jobs they don't consistently play nor should they. I only need to know the basics of Black Mage and that it can deal upwards of 7,000 DPS. I won't be able to tell said Black Mage is doing 4,500 DPS as I'll only notice the boss taking much longer to die or we're seeing a mechanic we could otherwise phase. A parse highlights precise who is holding the group back. Depending on the group, they may be able and/or willing to offer some advice, but that shouldn't be expected in a farm party where you're expected to know the fight and your rotation.