Any chance of an official data parser so we can test our character builds?

[Peregrine]

theres a difference between 10% of people with third party programs and etc saying you suck look at the parse, and it being an official part of the game.
parse doesnt speak to a lot of intangibles, like hate management, damage avoided (there are actually a lot of skills that you can avoid positionally) debuffs etc, putting a parse is officially telling people these are the factors on which you should judge yourself, and we encourage you and other people to judge each other, thats why we have this tool built in to the game.

Its a pretty bad idea.

But...they are factors by which you should judge yourself and others. If this is a stock race and we're all driving the same cars, that's great too. I like the idea of judging performance strictly by gameplay. But this isn't a stock racing genre. People have different stats and different builds. There will always be differences that need more appropriate tools of comparison than biased subjectivity, otherwise you get discriminatory ignorance and fanboyist loyalism.

You're straight up talking about feedback relating to your effectiveness as a fighter and a mage. So many people play all those "intangibles" you mention wrong because they're not getting feedback on their performance compared to others except when some elitist blows up on them.

Give them the parser. Just knowing their DPS is lower than their friend will raise it. Seeing that their attacks hit for less than the same lancer with no loss in accuracy improves their game--maybe they have too much accuracy on.

When you let 10% of the population walk all over you by shunning the tools they spend time with to get better, it's no surprise that they beat your contribution to the party by 15% and are mad at your performance. You can't beat someone by 15% if they're not doing more than one thing wrong, either in terms of gear or how they play the job. Not even caring how you're doing is the first wrong thing, and it makes a player at least 5% down already.

Just running parsers and seeing your performance makes your performance go up. So much moreso in this game than in XI where your playstyle determines your effectiveness as a fighter more than in XI, and a SE-developed tool could tell you all of that information.

It should not be a tool used by the elitie to forge their elitism over a community that doesn't have the information. Give all players that information. Who are the marauders and conjurers who aren't interested in how they're doing? Give them a fishing pole!

Parse data raises player knowledge about the world they live in and the job they play.
Parse data raises player performance just by reviewing them.
They add reason and sensibility to a world otherwise run by bias and ignorance.
That they will be used by players anyway isn't even an argument to add them officially. They should be added officially because they're beneficial tools that players want.