About Parsing

This page aims to give a brief overview of what parsing means, what its benefits are, and how to do it.

What is parsing?

To understand what "parsing" is, one must first understand how Final Fantasy XIV computes damage instances. Any action committed by you (whether it's movement or hitting a GCD) is sent to the server for processing. The server will then send back how much damage you dealt, alongside some other information (like whether it was a crit or not). The game client then parses this network packet and does a few things in response, depending on what happened (like adjusting your/the enemy's healthbar and showing floating damage values). It will also always show you a human-readable line of text in the battle log.

"Parsing" refers to the practice of running an external program called Advanced Combat Tracker (or ACT in short). This program acts similarly to a spy wiretap; since network packets can only be sent to specific computers and not specific applications, it can simply listen to whatever network traffic comes in, and if it's an FFXIV packet, it simply logs that network log line to a text file.

ACT can also do some rudimentary parsing itself, but most of the parsing is done by a website like fflogs. After uploading a raw log file to fflogs, the website dissects and categorizes each individual log line. In doing so, it can create detailed graphs about everyone's individual damage dealt and taken, death reports, status effects, and so on. Because ACT's resulting log file contains every single important event that happened in the fight, fflogs can recreate an accurate timeline of the entire pull. As such, it is an invaluable tool to learn what went wrong in each pull, as it may be difficult to tell, for instance, what someone died from in a fight where a lot of things happen.

Most people don't use fflogs to analyze individual pulls, however. Because most people clearing high-end content log their clears in some way, it allows the website to analyze everyone's Damage-Per-Second (DPS) in each clear pull and compare it to everyone else's logs. It then gives you a rating that tells you how well you executed your rotation compared to everyone else who has ever cleared the fight.

About DPS types

fflogs uses four different metrics to track someone's overall DPS during a fight: rDPS, aDPS, nDPS, and cDPS. They are distinguished by how they handle buffed damage, i.e. damage both given to others by your own party buffs and damage received from others through their party buffs.

* Single-target buffs like Dance Partner buffs or Astrologian cards are subtracted.

So which is "best"?

Each of these metrics have their own strengths and weaknesses.

rDPS

rDPS is overall considered the best to determine how someone ranks compared to others who have cleared the fight (see below) since it's the only metric that gauges how well you pushed your own buttons, without getting punished for others not pushing their buttons (including party buffs) well enough. It still has flaws though; for instance, it is completely detached from the 2 minute buff window and will actually give you a worse number if you held some of your cooldowns so you could use them all in the party-wide burst window, even if you ended up doing more damage by doing so than if you had used your cooldowns immediately outside of burst.

It's also problematic because it does not give you a flat number increase for hitting your party buffs at the right time. On the low end this means that if you use a party buff like Divination or Battle Litany and all your party members just stopped doing attacking, rDPS would treat this as if you hadn't used the buff at all. On the higher end, even if you have a party that uses their buttons but doesn't have good gear (and as a result less damage than a best-in-slot team), you'll get a lower rating even if you yourself are best-in-slot.

Dancers, Dragoons, and Astrologians are most affected by this as they not only have party-wide buffs but also single-target buffs. While these are removed from consideration for aDPS and cDPS, rDPS still considers them, and will punish you if the party member you chose for your buff isn't doing top damage. Even if they are in the top 1% of their job and doing top damage in your party, you'll still get significantly lower numbers if this job they're playing is, for instance, Machinist instead of Samurai or Black Mage.

aDPS

aDPS is a great metric because it takes burst alignment into account, thus "fixing" one of the problems of rDPS. If you pool your resources to put them all into the burst window instead of using them as soon as you can spend them, you will see an increase in numbers here (contrary to rDPS).

It does not, however, take into account your own party buffs, so you could never press them and see no aDPS decrease. This can actually be a good thing, as it means you are not dependent on your party members hitting their buttons well to see higher numbers, but it does mean that aDPS is not the best measure for how well you executed your rotation.

This does make it an excellent metric to gauge how much actual DPS you yourself contributed to the fight, and to beating the DPS check.

Note that, just like with cDPS, you do not get higher aDPS numbers if you happen to be an Astrologian's card target or a Dancer's or Dragoon's buff partner. This is good, because otherwise you would have to have one of each of these jobs in your party and partnering you in order to see the highest numbers. Even if you're playing a tank or healer.

nDPS

nDPS as essentially like rDPS, except you're not reliant on specific party constellations to maximize the amount of raid buffs you receive. Your nDPS will not increase from damage gained from raid buffs or damage others gained from you. This arguably makes it the best measurement for how well you executed your base rotation, but do be aware that it does not reward you for pooling resources into burst windows, nor does it punish you for ignoring your raid buff buttons.

cDPS

Before Endwalker, there was still one crucial DPS metric missing: a metric that included everything (except single-target buffs). That's what cDPS is. Your cDPS number increases both when players under the effect of your raid buffs hit their buttons well, and when you hit your buttons while under the effect of others' raid buffs. It's therefore a great metric to see how much damage you dealt in total, also taking into account burst alignment, but since it is heavily reliant on party constellation and competence it's not a great metric to rank people with.

HPS

A quick note on HPS (healing per second): while technically not a DPS metric, fflogs still ranks people based on HPS. However, HPS is not a good measure to compare players against, as your goal shouldn't be to maximize the amount of healing you do but rather to maximize the amount of damage you deal while still keeping the party alive. To get a good HPS parse, you would have to therefore completely grief your party by never hitting a single damage button and spamming unnecessary overheals all fight.

To gauge whether a healer is good or not, do not check their HPS or DPS metrics. They may have had to spend some GCDs to heal (which is a DPS loss) to keep the party alive. Instead, check the Deaths tab to see whether anyone died of damage, then check the Casts tab (or plug the healer's log into a tool like xivanalysis) to check whether they used their healing cooldowns effectively.

About Parse Percentage

Parse percentage (or "parse%") is a metric calculated by fflogs based on a given DPS metric (rDPS by default) during the course of a fight. For every fight, it describes the portion of players who did "worse" than you (i.e. had lower numbers than you) in their own parses and the portion that did "better" than you (i.e. had higher numbers). For instance, a parse percentage of 80% means that you did better than 80% of players in that DPS category, but it also means that 20% of all players who cleared the fight had higher numbers in that DPS category than you.

A parse of 100%, then, means that you did better than every other player who has ever cleared the fight.

But not really. fflogs locks in everyone's parse% each day and saves it as historical data, so you've really only beat every other player who has beat the fight until then. If someone comes along the next day and beats your number, you'll still keep your 100% regardless. They'll just get a 100% too.

On the contrary, a parse of 0% does not necessarily mean that you did worse than every other player out there, as fflogs rounds the percentage down rather than up. So instead of doing worse than every other player in history, you may instead have simply done worse than 99% of players.

Be aware, once again, that each DPS metric has its own strengths and flaws. Having a 100% rDPS ranking does not necessarily mean that you are the player who has ever cleared the fight, since it does not take into account burst alignment (which is an important skill to nurture). It may mean you simply did a great job while in a party with other great players.

by A'rhaeda Vhil (author)

23 September 2022 (last modified: 10 July 2023)