The Guild Counsel: Why I learned to love the parse

Guild leaders have lots of tools at their disposal, but there's one that's misunderstood and neglected much more than others — the poor, poor, parser. If scarlet letters were handed out to guild utilities, this one would be definitely be sporting one. It's the source of much drama, tons of resentment, and lots of potential embarrassment, yet it's probably one of the most valuable resources for those who organize and run raids.

In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll take a look at why parsers aren't as evil as they're made out to be, and examine how they can be used to make your guild more tight-knit and efficient.

Number Crunching

The biggest complaint with parsers is that they're used to evaluate a player's worth. Everything is calculated into a nice neat number, and if you're score isn't high enough, you end up sitting the bench with the guitar-playing slacker from the credit commercials. And when used that way, parsers really aren't helpful. If you're a guild leader and you're basing decisions strictly on things dps parses and GearScore, you're missing the big picture, and it will catch up with you later on.

Why is it good?

Having said that, I am a firm believer in the use of parsers, and I can't imagine running a guild today without one. I rely on two great programs when it comes to parsing logs — Advanced Combat Tracker, and more recently, Guild Connect. Both are player-created programs that use log files to parse out pretty much anything that you can imagine. They're both designed for EQII, although ACT has been modified to be used in several other games, including Vanguard, Age of Conan, and more recently, RIFT. While I have used them to look at individual and raid-wide damage, they're far more useful in helping understand raid encounters in order to devise a workable strategy for the guild.

A glorified egg timer

People will argue vehemently against parsers because they consider it a crutch, or even a cheat. But it's really no different than an egg timer, which was my first blush with raid parsing. Our guild was in Ssra and our raid leader was hitting a macro to call us in and out of AEs, carefully monitored using an old egg timer. Each time an AE landed, he'd punch in 60 seconds and call us back in. It was tedious, but it sure was better than trying to guess when it was due, or worse, standing there and eating up the AE. Timers were so handy that someone eventually even made a mod that kept time for you right on the window. I used to have multiple timers running, but I had to set each one up by hand and adjust them constantly.

Parsers are quite a bit more sophisticated than those simple timers we used, but I don't consider it a crutch at all. Fights are often designed now around parsers and 3rd party tools, so choosing not to use them is like choosing to drive a bus with no steering wheel. You're making it unnecessarily hard on yourself and your raid if you go without it.

What did you damage and when did you damage it?

Another great use of parsers is in finding out whether your raiders are really paying attention and doing what you say. We've all had nights where a certain fight leaves you scratching your head, and I had one in particular that stood out. We were fighting a dragon that spawned tiny, yet dangerous, adds every 20%. They didn't hit hard, but they AE'd a stun, so the raid needed to switch over to them in order to take them down fast and also slow the damage on the dragon in order to avoid multiple sets of adds at the same time. About a half hour later and after several wipes, we called it a night, and I made a beeline to the parser to figure out what went wrong. Sure enough, I could immediately see that we had a handful of raiders who went on autopilot and continued to nuke the heck out of the dragon instead of switching over. Suffice it to say, our next night went a lot better thanks to a little pep talk with a few people.

It also helped on a fight that required us to only use single-target damage. We struggled with the fight, and sure enough, I could look over the parse and see exactly which AE spells were being cast, and who the culprits were. I rattled off the list of AE nukes that I spotted in ACT the next night, and everyone got a chuckle because it was pretty obvious which trigger happy casters were guilty. Going forward, we had much smoother fights because people tightened things up and avoided making the same mistakes.

More with less

Maybe I'm growing more impatient with age, but long raids with tons of attempts are not my cup of tea. Our guild only raided a couple of nights a week, but we probably made faster progress than some guilds that raided five or six nights a week. More hardcore guilds got through content faster, but they also spent a lot more time raiding, and it took them many more attempts to finally get through a fight.

Parsers helped us get more done in less time, because I could look over a fight and pull out all the key information about what had happened in our attempts. I could see what types of damage the mob did, how often AEs triggered, and even whether it was directional or not. I could look over text logs and see whether a certain phrase that a boss said actually foreshadowed a particular type of damage or effect. I could tell if AEs were interruptable, or whether jousting could help the raid avoid damage.

I used to tell the raid that every new fight was like learning a new dance. You have to learn the steps first and then work on executing them. Many raiding guilds emphasize dps, to the point that they overlook certain aspects of a fight completely, and actually end up making it harder for themselves in the end. It's why sometimes, a guild can suddenly stumble on a mob that they had in farm mode for months, because they never really mastered the fight in the first place.

Using parsers is valuable because it allows a raid leader to look at a fight and then devise a strategy that matches the strengths of the raid force. That can actually change from night to night, and what worked on Monday might not work on Wednesday. With a good parse program, and a leader who uses it correctly, even casual guilds can walk away from a tough fight with a bag full of loot and lots of high fives to boot.

Do you have a guild problem that you just can't seem to resolve? Have a guild issue that you'd like to discuss? Every week, Karen Bryan takes on reader questions about guild management right here in The Guild Counsel column. She'll offer advice, give practical tips, and even provide a shoulder to lean on for those who are taking up the challenging task of running a guild.