In this objection I’d like to point out argumentation flaws of players argueing that the tops of the DPS rankings is an inherent value of DD-players skill.
I highly value warcraftlogs, simulationcraft and details a handy tools to pin point struggles in encounters, the data bases, and theory crafts to find innovative and refined solutions to on-going problems. This results in a broad understanding of encounters as a multilayered phenomena where individual optimizations and very niche class advantages light up the progression to the most efficient gameplay.
The most efficient gameplay from the damage dealer perspective is often seen as being on top of the meters as a direct indicator for their function in the encounter. Some may go even further as an obeisance to players skill. Meanwhile I do not doubt that the team effort to carry through package is an inherent indicator of skill, I’d like to extract the team quality and look on the parsing individual as so many of us do. This withholds a flaw of reason that the manipulation of environment is an indicator of individual players skill. For many parts it streamlines and trivializes the gameplay. This often occurs when you actively misplay the encounter mechanics to maximize the dps like bombing adds which are designed to be cc’t, kited, tanked aside, or even added beforehand. Once players have the gear to power through an encounter, they tend to negate mechanics for logs. “Power through” often streamlines into the basic rotation, 1-button AoE spamming without dynamical target switchting. It trivializes what has been referred to the indicator of player skill in the first place.
Why do I think that such players in imply players skill when referring to parses? Well, because I often hear that lower parcing players are “sh*t at the game” (while disregarding other factors). This leads to hilarious moments of idiosyncrasy when damage dealers actively ignore void zones, dispel-mechanics and there-like for the uptime of their one-macro-damage-rotation within full concious of a reasoning mind. They actively manipulate the environment at the group setups, extraordinary consumables, addons, macros, or even exploits of entire boss mechanics till there is close to no mistake possible. On top of this, high parsing is referred to individual skill afterwards. I cannot more disregard this than I already do due to what they have done is to eliminate struggles which requires skill to overcome.
In my mind, such players undermine the premise that parses indicate players skill but they refer to it as if it would be equal.
Side note: I do not struggle myself in performing parses, but I highly disregard the ignorance and exploiting of game mechanics as a reference to skill.
I wouldn’t say that high parses are a direct indication of player skill, because as you say, players often ignore mechanics to increase their parses. I have often played with people who got high parses but at they same time they are also the same people that die the most during progression because of their ignorance of mechanics and/or risky min-maxing.
On the contrary, I would argue that consistently low parses can be a good indication for a lack of player skill. Because good players should be able to parse decently high while still doing mechanics.
I totally vibe with you on that one. Logs and parses are good for competition and adjustmend of gameplay but the focus solely on a specific part of the logs fosters a gameplay of very bad manners over all.
Edit: Parses are a significant value for skill but simply not the only one. Going for a 100% parse often requires cheesy strategies or crit luck on top of otherwise solid gameplay. My whole point is the turning point of actively playing worse over all just for the last percentiles.
100% this, me and the guy I tank with got 100% healing parses on our tanks on mythic sludge, but we were on purpose standing in his shouts etc so we could take more damage to self heal. Parses need to be taken with a pinch of salt. If your in grey there is normally a problem, but in the 40-70% range is normally acceptable. Anything in 80+ range i all ways feel the people are going out their way for parses and missing some mechanics to do that.
For mythic I’d say that’s more like 95+, and even then more like only the high 90s. Everyone is doing mechanics on progress if you’re a guild who clears the raid past a certain pace, and doing incredible damage to boot.
Where that is less the case is fights where additional damage actively hampers progress, things like SLG where there is only a certain amount of damage to go around and you let the classes who do that damage most efficiently shine.
Something like Destroyer though? 40-70 might kill the boss but I certainly wouldn’t call it acceptable.
Guess other bit is depends who is doing what in what fight. For mythic SLG my DPS parse on my tank is lower then some other tanks, but i keep tanking the boss during the intermission phases which has -% on them whilst the other tank is doing AoE dmg on adds. Parses dont show stuff like that. There will be other examples for DPSers etc with similar outcomes
Ye, which is why I said fights like SLG are certainly exceptions. As is Sire where the only part of the fight with any progression relevance quickly becomes P3.
But it should be expected that players are capable of doing close to optimal damage whilst carrying out a majority of fight mechanics. “I did bad damage because I was doing mechanics” is not a valid justification, unless that mechanic is deliberately not doing damage.
Warcraftloggs are joke,People getting 5 buffs from priests, how can you compete with that? It is super easy to get Legendary loggs but It requires Rng, Overall good raid dps, ignoring mechanics etc. I know what im talking about back in Cata i used to do top 10 EU dps on my warrior. Theese days i ignore it i have no 5 priests to back up my sorry butt. If loggs stopped counting that priest buff than it would be even playing field.