How would an optional, official parser be toxic?

[HyoMinPark]

SO what you guys are telling me is that unless you are in relatively current gear, you are forced to assume your results are ok, based upon rotations and similar data? There is no hard and fast data that suggests 'ok, based on this sample in 3.0 24-man raids, it looks like a person in best gear at the time, can push out 'x' dps. Currently, in same iLevel gear, I'm pushing out 'y' dps. I wonder what I'm doing wrong for the gear and skills available to me at my level

...you are forced to guess?

I mean. I guess I could go out and put on iLevel180 gear as a dps, run a dungeon appropriate for that iLevel range, and see what I get? But again, how do I know that the number I got is accurate, if I have no sample data to base it off of?

If you consistently parse content and take note of your own gear or the gear of others, you can very easily tell when someone is falling behind. But that comes with familiarizing yourself with DPS trends. If you have a BLM in i370, they should be pushing 6,000 DPS easily, even breaking 7,000. If they’re at 4,000 though? That’s way too low. A BRD in i370 should be pushing 5,500 minimum; breaking 6,000 if they’re really good (and have the appropriate comp).

i180 is going to be skewed now since that’s from the previous expansion, all previous expansion content has been nerfed, and a lot of jobs do not have the same 60 rotation that they did in Heavensward. But we aren’t talking about damage in i180/level 60. We’re talking about the damage people should have in current Extremes and Savage content, which is level 70, i360/i370 minimum, and i380 is currently “standard” since not enough people have upgraded to i400 (the current cap).

I understand wanting benchmarks, but it doesn’t take much to see when someone is falling behind based on the gear they are wearing if you know what to look for.

[Penthea]

Not sure what your point is or what you're "correcting".

The part where you said "The only reason why we even know they did this is because of the parser." when you were stating some types of bad performance that could easily be spotted without a parser.

Regardless, only the people that were in that instance knows what the pld did. Everyone else can only look at the log and judge what happened, assuming there isn't any video of it. Same situation with the whm, it's difficult to make an accurate critique of what went wrong but the overuse of cure 1 and almost no usage of cure 2 shows that the whm spent most of their time healing in small amounts.

Not sure why you're saying it's difficult to say what went wrong when you said the paladin did shield lob spam, and the whm spammed cure 1. Shield lob has a pretty distinctive animation. You only need to look at the party ui to not only see the cure 1 spam but also the most likely very poor state of party hp.

Are you talking about randoms from df or a party attempting savage? Other than specific situations like someone failing a mechanic or the party keeps hitting enrage, most players won't notice what every individual is doing during any savage content because they are expecting everyone to somewhat know what they're doing instead of having to keep watch.

I'm talking in general. As a healer I'm always looking at the party ui so I can spot a lot of things pretty quickly such lack of buffs, lack of or poorly timed defensive cds, poor or incorrect choice in hardcasts, etc. The tanks in my fc can spot bad tanks super fast just by watching their skill animations. You might find it hard to believe but you can actually see visual signs of people not understanding their class without a parser.

I always pay attention to what my co-healer is doing as well, especially in pugs because some really don't know what they're doing. Maybe I'm weird for this but I'd rather try to carry a less skilled healer and try to get a kill, than waste time wiping because I didn't bother to adjust to the situation by ignoring what the party ui can tell me about them. And yes this does include savage in the rare times when we need to pug a healer.

Personally I feel parsers truly shine when people are trying to get the most out of their class or team. The results of small changes in stat weights, openers, alignment of party buffs, etc, can be incredibly difficult and often near-impossible to track adequately without a parser or fflogs. You can to some degree see changes with your own eyes but without a parser you can't see if a particular use of skills worked better on that pull because it is better or because the players were very lucky with crits and dh. To get the real truth from this you need something like a parser or fflogs.

[RuleofThree]

If you consistently parse content and take note of your own gear or the gear of others, you can very easily tell when someone is falling behind. But that comes with familiarizing yourself with DPS trends. If you have a BLM in i370, they should be pushing 6,000 DPS easily, even breaking 7,000. If they’re at 4,000 though? That’s way too low. A BRD in i370 should be pushing 5,500 minimum; breaking 6,000 if they’re really good (and have the appropriate comp).

i180 is going to be skewed now since that’s from the previous expansion, all previous expansion content has been nerfed, and a lot of jobs do not have the same 60 rotation that they did in Heavensward. But we aren’t talking about damage in i180/level 60. We’re talking about the damage people should have in current Extremes and Savage content, which is level 70, i360/i370 minimum, and i380 is currently “standard” since not enough people have upgraded to i400 (the current cap).

I understand wanting benchmarks, but it doesn’t take much to see when someone is falling behind based on the gear they are wearing if you know what to look for.

So while an official parcer in the game would undoubtably be a good 'learning tool.' It would be only for current content. The moment it becomes outdated content, no one cares anymore. While that may be useful for the modern raider, or for someone that is level 70 looking to get in to raiding...it's not useful at all for the person currently leveling. He gets to look at his dps in Say...Void Ark, and just assume it is good at this point in time, or go with what appearantly is being suggested, and not care until it is relevant...at level 70.

Seems to me if you want to advocate using a parser as an official learning tool...it should be useful for all levels not just current savage or extremes. Granted, I'm sure only the elitest of the elite care what dps output is at level 45, but I'd say by Alexander Savage - and the iLevel there about - having benchmarks that say 'alright, in around this iLevel area, 'x' job should be pushing around 3,000dps.' This way you are knowing whether or not the best you can be at that iLevel rather than just hoping you are doing it right, and checking when you are 70.

[Daibunnie]

The part where you said "The only reason why we even know they did this is because of the parser." when you were stating some types of bad performance that could easily be spotted without a parser.


Not sure why you're saying it's difficult to say what went wrong when you said the paladin did shield lob spam, and the whm spammed cure 1. Shield lob has a pretty distinctive animation. You only need to look at the party ui to not only see the cure 1 spam but also the most likely very poor state of party hp.

Both of those examples were gotten from someone posting the logs of those individuals. The pld spamming shield lob was gotten from another persons ranting which matched up with what the log displayed. And unless you're actually in that instance with that player, yes, it is difficult to judge what happened just by someone's story.

[KaivaC]

snip

Not sure what warranted my posts being deleted, but *shrug*

It can still be useful, though not relevant because the focus at present is on current endgame. That's how it has always been, to my knowledge. Doesn't mean that it still won't have its uses in below-70 content.

[Penthea]

Both of those examples were gotten from someone posting the logs of those individuals. The pld spamming shield lob was gotten from another persons ranting which matched up with what the log displayed. And unless you're actually in that instance with that player, yes, it is difficult to judge what happened just by someone's story.

Well that's my point...if you're in the instance you are in the position to witness the shield lob spam. I have come across plds that do this and I didn't need a parser to tell me about it. I simply saw it and proceeded to eyeroll

I am not saying you can spot all signs of bad performance with observational skills. I did say in a previous post that some mistakes are too subtle to catch or that you maybe don't have the time to glance at what others are doing. I'm just trying to dispel this myth that you need a parser to spot anything that is wrong with how someone is using their class.

I don't consider using the party ui or being familiar with spell animations to be able to spot bad players to be extraordinary. Honestly thought that would be common, especially among healers, but apparently it's not. Personal observational skills as well as class knowledge are just more tools, in addition to parsers, to access a situation. I mean the game gives us all these visual effects to tell us what is happening...why not use them if we can?

[KaivaC]

snip

When I posted that comment, I really was just checking to see if my deleted posts were a precursor to something else...had not been expecting a large reply, if I could be honest. I don't know about others, but from my experiences, nobody really cares so long as you have some basic competence in stuff like dungeons. From the many players that I have played with, parsing becomes a factor in endgame because what you are doing matters there a lot. With people still pushing towards ilvl400, a single DPS right now can be the difference between clearing and a wipe. For previous SB raids, a good portion of the players that you'll run into doing this content out-gear the fights.

And yes, I'll add some to your ending sentence - while parse tools are nice to see where you are at and how you are doing, I find them useful only when it comes to endgame, because that's where it matters the most, in my opinion. If I didn't raid, I generally would not care about numbers - I'm somewhere around average, maybe slightly less than average, but still competent enough in whatever job I happen to be on at the time.

[RuleofThree]

When I posted that comment, I really was just checking to see if my deleted posts were a precursor to something else...had not been expecting a large reply, if I could be honest. I don't know about others, but from my experiences, nobody really cares so long as you have some basic competence in stuff like dungeons. From the many players that I have played with, parsing becomes a factor in endgame because what you are doing matters there a lot. With people still pushing towards ilvl400, a single DPS right now can be the difference between clearing and a wipe. For previous SB raids, a good portion of the players that you'll run into doing this content out-gear the fights.

And yes, I'll add some to your ending sentence - while parse tools are nice to see where you are at and how you are doing, I find them useful only when it comes to endgame, because that's where it matters the most, in my opinion. If I didn't raid, I generally would not care about numbers - I'm somewhere around average, maybe slightly less than average, but still competent enough in whatever job I happen to be on at the time.

Just to clarify, I don't mean to call you out specifically, I used the term 'you' loosely to include everyone else.

[KaivaC]

Just to clarify, I don't mean to call you out specifically, I used the term 'you' loosely to include everyone else.

Oh I know. No worries.

[LalaRu]

SSS only tells me that my rotation vs a mechanic free environment where I can camp the dummy's rear and flank for the whole duration of the timer is good enough. It fails to tell me anything else that could help me improve my uptime for a particular fight. It doesn't help me identify my downtimes and it doesn't help me clearly calculate how much damage I'm during the opener of my rotation and hereafter. And that's just the top three things I can think right off the top of my head.

How is this not getting through people who keep saying "SSS is good enough"?

You are asking things that if even a game parser were existing, it surely does not give you. If you really are asking in game a parser with all that, your only answer is "NO". And you need deal with it.

SSS tells just you have the numbers to reach the kill and it is only a starting point to pass before starting the real fight. All the mechanics handling and everything else, you just have to do the real thing.