BioWare, you're TORParse's only hope...

For some people... that IS their fun. To each their own

there is the part where you perform better when you min/max. so, if you want to run through the new nightmare content at a gear appropriate level, instead of pushing for the gear advantage, having the advantage of a min/maxed toon helps. winning against a boss that took a lot of time and effort to defeat is a lot more rewarding that winning against a boss that you could beat drunk and half asleep. that's the part that's fun.

if you have the feedback these programs provide, you know what's going on when you attack stuff. without that feedback, i just don't think you know what's going on. even if it's just curiosity. pvpers should be looking at this stuff as well as raiders. not necessarily while they're pvping, but fighting a training dummy for a bit and watching the combat log makes a difference. that helps you learn your rotation and priority. you can verify whether crit is more useful than power and stuff like that too. that's not min/maxing, that's just knowing your class.

and this is a prime reason why I'm against third party addons being allowed in SWTOR as replacement for in game UI and other quality of life developments.

because addon developer losing interest in maintaining an addon is very common.

I AM sad to see him go, especially since we also use torparse in our guild, and I do hope that someone will pick up the reigns.

Try to clear S&V Nightmare mode with a couple people doing only 1400 dps that claim to be doing 2600 dps. That is why these tools exist; to measure performance in order to clear the hardest raids. It's not only about min-maxing; it's about measuring players in order to find out why your raid group is wiping.

If you want to play through the la-la story-mode content you will never need to know how much dps or healing you are capable of, but since BW makes nightmare mode content, these tools have their place whether you feel they are neccessary or not.

TL;DR: if you are not an endgame raider who is trying to clear the nightmare modes, this thread is not for you.

There isn't too much you can't solo story-wise. The only three instances that stand out for a solo player are the bounty hunter mission on Dromund Kaas where everyone is shooting at eveyrone else, that's pretty ramndom unless you 'hack' the cinema or die, so that you're not a prioirty target when it starts. The only other hard ones I felt were freeing the Dread Masters on Belsavis and the avatar of Sel-Mekor on Voss. Boss are challenging damage dealers with dangerous AOE, so if you aren't putting out your best damage, they will kill a solo player. You don't need a meter, but if you're taking numbers, you can see they take at least over 1500 dps to clear before a quest-item geared healer/tank companion combo can survive them. Of ocurse you could brute force them with a helper friend or guildmate.

If you do any instances with enraging bosses or raids, you should be viewing combat logs to identify problems with wipes. Then again, if you were an active raider, you'd already being parsing in some form and wouldn't be arguing against meters.

also, the combat log tells you what's causing the damage you're taking. if you die, the thing that pops up in your chat could be like a 300 hit, but it was more likely some 30,000 shot right before that which really caused the damage. you can then figure how to avoid that damage, or at least tell the healer they should be paying attention at that point in the fight.

The problem isn't that TorParse was unique or even that someone else wont pick up the project or something similar, the problem is the implementation of broken/split logs and I think the time has come to acknowledge this as a failure. In a game that leans heavily on enrage mechanics and DPS checks, asking your player-base to subsist on incomplete information or shackle them to one particular solution is a horrible policy. Other parsing programs exist, some that are rather robust and easily adaptable, but all that are designed around the logical premise of a unified log. I propose that restoring the unified log or even implementing an in-house or even in-game parsing solution is critical unless it is your intention to completely shut out the progression players and theorycrafters who have remained loyal to the game. It's obvious that such a move would trigger more than a little complaining, but at the end of the day, I really believe the impact would be minimal. MMO Players are used to parsers and logs, weather they like them or not, and allowing us the freedom to find/build/use other solutions benefits everyone.

It is frustrating to see the BW does not want to get involved with projects that add value to the game, value other games already have.

Projects like MoX, TORParse, AskMrRobot, TORHead, SWTOR-Spy provide to the community functionality that should have already been provided by the company itself. We *do* need a web-based armoring, a searchable item database with all items available in the game, a list of all the abilities a Class / Advanced Class can acquire, a meaningful combat log parser. They are things that people in the community have proven that are doable with their limited resources and access to the game info, imagine how much easier it would for BW itself to provide such staff, if not already have them for internal use.

Heres an idea. a ingame parser like several games that have come out before your game.. just a thought.

I'd suggest having many people contribute small amounts. For instance, get 200 people who will pay $5 a year and you'll have $1000 a year - more than enough. I'll put up $5 a year once you hit 50%.