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My only real problem with parsers is I tend to party with people who play for fun. When we get a parser in the party, they tend to try to over-prove themselves, and kill people or themselves. As a result, they begin to insult and demean players because of their poor performance, and lack of team play.

And as a tank, I have on more than one occasion let people like that die. Not to be mean, or to teach them a lesson, but to restore balance to the party, and not get the mage deaded.

Parsers work for some (and I do party with parsing groups as well), but for others it does not. It can actually be a hindrance. But, at the end of the day, it is a sign of elite play. Take it as an insult or complement, but it really is that more organized parties will use a parser. They are also the people that min/max, and typically have different gearsets for different fights (we will see if that works with 14). And will be the first to tell you if a piece of gear is even one point short of what the expectations are (anyone remember the cut-off for Int on the garuda fight for Blms? There were quite a few groups that swore by a specific value I don't even remember now).

My only real concern is, as a tank, parsers always look down on mitigation tanks. So, I will see how that works out for me. All I know is that I will be somewhere between the worst DD and the most aggressive healer for damage dealt, and I should be collectively higher than everyone in the party for damage sustained.

Healing can be monitored as well. It depends on what type of metrics are available and if a parser is programed to watch for them.

The thing with parsers is the hard core are always going to love them: they prove unto themselves their value by illuminating a players output. To those that don't give a positive rats *** about being the "best" or just want to play the game for fun, parsers drip down and cloud the water. If you're fighting a raid boss, you're in a progression guild, or a really hardcore static, parsing data isn't something you should necessarily care about: you're playing in that end game world. If you're a random in a dungeon and the party isn't failing, parsing isn't something you should have to think about. The issue is when the raid-type folks start in on the "fun in a dungeon" folks and start telling them how "bad" they are.

People see the tool as being bad because of this, when it's not. It's the people using them like idiots. If you're going to parse, or be super hard core, you can't shove your playstyle and ethos down random people's throats. If you're in a progression raid group, you can't expect not to have your performance monitored. Hell, I would recommend if you're in a raid group you already are monitoring your performance. The tool itself isn't bad, they can be very helpful, however people can be self-important egotists and very unhelpful.

I believe the overall point is, some people are jerks, and the complaints about parsers are just that there are jerks who use them to be jerks. But the same person who is going to use a parser and berate people in leveling dungeons is the same person who is going to be a jerk regardless. We're not moving fast enough, we're not moving in the right order, your gear sucks, whatever it is, it's going to be a cliche kind of attack.

On the other end of the spectrum you get the theorycrafters and class leads out there who you don't hear from, that use it properly. You might very well be able to tell what your rotation should be based on tooltips by eyeballing it. And for most content you might be perfectly right. But for a group that wants to beat hard modes, that wants to challenge content before out-gearing it through other means, parsers are wonderful tools that tell you things you can't eyeball. Can you eyeball diminishing returns on stats? Can you eyeball at what point hit rating affects different spells effectiveness differently? Maybe once you're above a certain gear level cross class DoTs become useless for you, but if you learned up to that point that they were useful, how could you tell what that point is?

These are the things people do who use the tools correctly, and because they're not in dungeons yelling at people, you might not notice them doing their thing. You might think the only people who use them yell at people, and that's not true.

After this thread I vote we get "can of worms" smiley to compliment the "beating the dead horse" smiley.

In raid teams it's usually easier to help the person improve than it is to train someone new in your group's tactics.

Your statement doesn't really make sense. An endgame group probably wouldn't have said newbie to begin with, so that's a completely moot point. Most endgame groups do the content as a group to learn it together, so it's rare that they'd just bring in some new player who doesn't understand the fight mechanics. I also completely disagree that they will always kick the weakest link rather than teach them. I've been in many shells where players were mentored on how to improve, brought on practice runs, shown where to go on the web to learn the best info, guided to youtube walkthroughs etc instead of just being booted for someone better. Honestly, if that's what you think endgame has to be, I think your very misguided. Certainly that can and does happen, but it's not an absolute like you seem to think it is.