Using MaxDps is only optimal if you’re hitting a target dummy and even then it’s likely only 85% optimal. That number drops in any actual content.
Every single player who is doing Savage and above is learning their whole rotation down to every GCD and oGCD hit over 6 minutes, what their bis gear is at different specific GCD speeds, and information about bugs/interactions for their job from the Balance discord and are not just trialing and erroring learning their whole rotation from scratch. Anybody who is non-blind raiding are using strats made by other people. The only players that aren’t handed raid strats are the people who are doing blind prog.
The vast majority of FFXIV players are playing it because of the story and only engage with PvE content because thats the only way to see the story. Because of that, the vast majority of PvE content and rotations are made to be so brain dead easy in order to minimize the chance that a player is unable to play well enough to see the story to the point where as long as your tank and healer play somewhat ok it can be done. Only like 10% of FF14 players are doing hardcore PvE content. And there are still a large amount of players who use addons in PvE content, mainly ACT for a damage meter. FF14 is a better single player game than it is a MMO in reality.
That thing is that I’d say FF14 is 100% worse at teaching you the stuff that you need to know in order to succeed in hard content because about 90% of that information isn’t needed to get through the MSQ. You could get through the MSQ just by spamming your 1-2-3 combo if you wanted. Doing extremes and higher basically necessitates consuming hours upon hours of guides and the expectation when pugging is that you know the strats they are listing.
A new player wanting to go do a current extreme or get into savage is full on required to go to the Balance to understand how their Job even functions because the game doesn’t teach you any of it because it’s not necessary at all to get through the MSQ or any other story based content. The entirety of FF14’s challenging content is literally held up by prior knowlege gained from 3rd party sources.
The Hall of Novices also completely does nothing to teach you about AoE vs Single Target, how mitigation works, Role based Utility,
As of recent there are multiple kinds of swirlies that are visual distinct. You can differentiate different such as being able to tell what an damaging AoE is versus a Soak on a player.