With raiding culture comes the point of measuring different factors of a fight. Those can include routing, rotation optimization, and DPS. The use of parsers have been the norm for groups trying to do the hardest content in raiding. Parsing programs can help a great deal when used correctly and they can cause detriment if used incorrectly. Parsing has always been a double edged sword and will continue to be moving forward.

For this discussion, i’m going to be talking about end game raiding in Final Fantasy XIV. At the point of writing this, FFXIV is currently into it’s third major raid cycle. Starting with The Binding Coil of Bahamut, then Alexander, and currently now Omega. Each of the major raid cycles are divided up into 3 smaller parts. So at any given point, there are four instances that are being progressed through by the raidng community. Parsing has always been around for the progression of the content in FFXIV. I remember having it installed and using it back when The Binding Coil of Bahamut: Turn 5 was the bane of many people’s existences. The information that can be retrieved from parsing programs like Advanced Combat Tracker can be immensly invaluable to figuring out the fight and downing the boss.

Parsing, in my mind, should be used for figuring out what is happening and even a point to why things happened if the pull ran sour. You can use this information to find out a better cool-down rotation for all classes. You can clearly see where the damage taken spikes for tanks, what points the damage dealers can settle down and just push dps and cool-downs, and even point where there is a lot of raid-wide damage that is happening for the healers. All of this information can be invaluable when attempting these tougher fights.

What i’ve seen parsing turn into is a way for people to belittle people and make decisions just on dps numbers. This can be seen a lot with the use of FFLogs. Some people will not look at you if you don’t have a certain level (often stupidly high) of dps in a particular fight. While I agree that a person’s dps is part of the puzzle, there is also the mechanic piece as well. A common line that is said is, “You can’t do dps when you’re dead.” That’s exactly right. To not be dead means following mechanics that were implemented into the fight by the designers. It’s a combination of raid awareness, mechanic execution, and dps that should be evaluated, not just dps.

Another issue that i’ve seen arise is the focus on just increasing dps instead of doing mechanics. Dps is not the solution to everything and won’t solve all the problems. People just focus into their dps numbers and not into the greater picture of the raid and the raid group. With the obsession of big dps number has spawned a whole thing about buffing the hell out of a certain class just for a run so they can upload it to FFLogs and see themselves on the top of the leaderboard. Parsing in this sense is only causing more toxicity in the raiding community rather than helping.