So this game has dps checks but we can't talk about our dps in game?

[Atelier-Bagur]

None of the tools are required for the fight. And, in truth, a parser isn't going to help with the fight. But it can be extremely valuable for analyzing where a fight went wrong.

If you are consistently hitting enrage on a fight -- i.e., you did not do enough damage to the boss to kill it in the time allotted for a pull -- then somewhere, the damage isn't adding up. Now, often this can be people screwing up mechanics; a damage down debuff for failing a mechanic means, unsurprisingly, that you do less damage, and if you didn't get a damage down and just died... well, dead players do no damage (and rezzed players do less damage).

But if you aren't having deaths and you're still hitting enrage, you need more damage from somewhere. Maybe everyone in the party is a bit below-par on DPS, and if one or two people really pick up their game they can make up for that. Maybe the party is mostly doing average/acceptable DPS, but there's one person who's barely moving the needle on their DPS meter at all. Not only can a log as generated by something like ACT help figure out "okay, why don't we have the damage for enrage?", it can also be put into a timeline analyzer that can say things like "this player is blowing their burst phase outside of where all the raid buffs are aligned; shifting it two seconds later will give a measurable increase in their DPS".

When I wanted to improve as a player in endgame content, it was absolutely invaluable to be able not only to feed my logs into an analysis tool like that to see what I was doing wrong, but to compare my logs with some of the top parses for folks playing the same job. I could see "Oh, they're doing this... I wonder why..." and then look at it more and then some nuance of how my job and that fight's timeline interacted would become clear. And I'd do that much better on my next run.

So, they aren't necessary to perform the fight, but they can sure be really useful to look at a fight afterwards and go "Okay, but... why didn't we clear?" or "Okay, how can we do better next time?"

You keep ignoring the fact that I keep saying that parsing is a thing in this game and that its fine. What I dont like is pushing it as a requirement tool to gatekeep players from doing end game content. This is why its not "official" because seriously lets face it, so many people will use it to make crappy excuses or bar players whom want to raid. Its part of the common ugly side of human nature. Yes we cant police everything we do but this is why I keep stating that we already have a compromise in that SE doesnt regulate it. Keep parsing to only the hardcore groups whom care about their own max performance. But Its not a big enough shared mentality for it to be warranted into the main game.

[HappyHubris]

You keep ignoring the fact that I keep saying that parsing is a thing in this game and that its fine. What I dont like is pushing it as a requirement tool to gatekeep players from doing end game content. This is why its not "official" because seriously lets face it, so many people will use it to make crappy excuses or bar players whom want to raid. Its part of the common ugly side of human nature. Yes we cant police everything we do but this is why I keep stating that we already have a compromise in that SE doesnt regulate it. Keep parsing to only the hardcore groups whom care about their own max performance. But Its not a big enough shared mentality for it to be warranted into the main game.

Why is "helping the group to complete the content" gatekeeping? It's not like gatekeeping based on age, race, or creed - anyone can put time into playing better.

It's not fair for a group to wipe over and over and waste time b/c players aren't willing to learn anything about playing their class well. FFXIV is deceptive in that a strong rotation isn't necessarily intuitive, and people can be playing badly without realizing it. If someone's not weaving oGCDs or whatever they're going to hurt the fun of the people they're partying with.