Parry...

[ZDamned]

I was posting in a BiS list thread pre-2.2 and I found myself questioning the game a little when people were mentioning how Parry wasn't all it's cracked up to be.

SO! I did some testing in Turn 4 last night over and over and over again, and I found that with 620 Parry vs 504 Parry, I still took overall the same amount of damage.

Most of the testing was done with the Onion shield, however even when I changed to the Holy Shield Zenith, I still had a very strikingly similar number. (1-3K differences)

Can anyone shed some light on why this is?

Based on what I can conclude from my testing though, I would like to dispute almost every BiS list with this one:

(Weapon and Shield Wise Obviously the i115 is BiS, but this is a Progression list)

Sword - Burtgang
Shield - Noct Hoplon
Helm - Noct Circlet
Chest - Heavy High Allagan Coat
Gloves -High Allagan Gauntlets of Fending
Belt - High Allagan Belt of Fending
Legs - High Allagan Trousers of Fending
Boots - Noct Greaves
Neck - High Allagan Choker of Fending
Earring - Noct Earrings
Wrist - Noct Wristlets
Ring - Noct Ring
Ring - High Allagan Ring of Fending

This gives these stats assuming we don't need to be much higher than 510 Accuracy for Turn 9
The good news is, it's hard to not get the required accuracy this time around!
Accuracy: 518
Determination: 306
Crit: 445
Parry: 435
Skill Speed: 354

----EDIT---- MORE Testing and some results from Turn 7

Damage taken on Turn 7 169,119 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage taken on Turn 7 173,978 in Crit/Det Gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

Damage Dealt on Turn 7 64,879 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage Dealt on Turn 7 73,719 in Crit/Det gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

Gear list for my Results:

Crit/Determination Set: W/ HQ Buttons in a Blanket
Wave ShamShir
Wave Shield
High Allagan Circlet of Fending
Valor Surcoat
Heavy Allagan Gauntlets
Heroes Belt of Fending
Heavy Allagan Cuisses
Weathered Noct Greaves
Heroes Necklace of Fending
Tremor Earrings of Fending
Weathered Noct Wristlets
Heroes Ring of Fending
Vortex Ring of Fending

Stats: ilvl 93 W/ HQ Buttons in a Blanket
Strength - 371
Accuracy - 491
Critical Hit Rate - 401
Determination - 281
Parry - 449 (I'm editing my last post, I must have misread the number last night, I had way less parry than before. =P)
Defense - 762
Skill Speed - 406
Attack Power - 371 (I guess this just mirrors strength?)

Parry Set: W/ La Noscean Toast
Allagan Blade
Weathered Noct Hoplon
High Allagan Circlet of Fending
Valor Surcoat
Valor Gauntlets
Allagan Plate Belt
Valor Cuisses
Weathered Noct Greaves
Allagan Choker of Fending
Allagan Earrings of Fending
Weathered Noct Wristlets
Heroes Ring of Fending
Allagan Ring of Fending

Stats: ilvl 94 W/ HQ La Noscean Toast
Strength - 372
Accuracy - 512
Critical Hit Rate - 356
Determination - 235
Parry - 564
Defense - 762
Skill Speed - 382
Attack Power - 372

[Pizzaparty7]

Swap in more noct gear you'll find you can get more parry. Parry seems to improve chance to parry by 0.015% per point.

[ZDamned]

Swap in more noct gear you'll find you can get more parry. Parry seems to improve chance to parry by 0.015% per point.

The point of my list is to maximize Crit, and Determination instead of Parry, since Parry's mitigation is so minuscule, it basically doesn't help at all. So, in i90 Full parry gear, your sacrificing a LOT of DPS (15-20) for a 1.5% damage mitigation buff... It just doesn't make enough of a difference in the long run for healers MP.

If it were more like .15% per point, I would say go all out, but based on your number, why would you spend all the extra gear points for that minuscule amount of Mitigation?

--Edit for math!

So I added up my set vs the current BiS Parry set.
Mine gives +117 Parry, which based on the 0.015 number equals 1.755 Parry Chance
The BIS Gives +233 Parry, which based on the same number is 3.495 Parry Chance

This difference being 1.74% more Parrying in the BIS list. But that 1.74% Comes at a Price of.....
-50 Crit Rating
-60 Determination
-25 Accuracy
+44 Skill Speed (yay?)

Personally, I'd take the 50 Crit, and 60 Det, while freeing up more food options. then the 1.74 % chance to mitigate 23% Damage.

[Kitru]

I did some testing in Turn 4 last night over and over and over again, and I found that with 620 Parry vs 504 Parry, I still took overall the same amount of damage.

Unless each of those fights lasted the exact same amount of time and you were being attacked by the exact same number of enemies each time for the exact same amount of time, looking at overall damage taken for the length of the fight isn't going to be an accurate judge of mitigation. Even DtPS isn't entirely reliable because there isn't a constant amount of pre-mitigation DPS due to variations in target uptime and number of attacks within a given run. If you want to get an accurate gauge, you need to get some controlled circumstances, like finding a nice big NPC to wail on you for 10 minutes while getting healed by a friend. Any other test is going to be questionable because the number of attacks thrown at you isn't controlled.

[Pizzaparty7]

DPS? As a tank? Your job is threat and survival. Enmity modifiers remove the need for raw DPS threat. Parry, as miniscule as it seems, is survival. Every point of damage you negate via parry is 1 less HP that has to be healed. If a DD dies, they can be raised. If you die, likely a wipe happens. Parry > dps imo.

[Kitru]

DPS? As a tank? Your job is threat and survival.

His point is that (according to what he saw) Parry rating doesn't contribute appreciably to survivability, effectively being wasted itemization. If it's really wasted itemization, you're better off optimizing for damage as opposed to parry since, even if it's not your primary job as a tank, you're still contributing damage. Just because it's not your primary job doesn't mean that you shouldn't be looking for ways to optimize performance in your secondary functions.

[ZDamned]

Thank you Kitru. =)

If we look at a general concensus of the same exact fight over and over again, you can generalize the amount of average damage taken, and generally, I'm able to notice that I just don't mitigate any noticeable amount of damage with a full on Parry set.

I tended to take between 153-157K Damage each fight.
Between 2 healers, and the time fights last, (5.5-6 Minutes) I just don't think that worst case scenario, 4000 Damage over the course of 6 minutes, (66.7 DtPS) if worth dropping so much more damage and Crit rating.

Mind you though, my lowest damage taken was with Crit Determination gear, and NOT with the max Parry gear.

Also, I understand that it's not perfect testing, however it is true to raid testing. IE: Testing in relevant content.
I will be testing on Turn 6 tonight, however that fight is unfortunately not a good representative, due to tank swapping, along with the way mechanics happen to work out.

[ZDamned]

DPS? As a tank? Your job is threat and survival. Enmity modifiers remove the need for raw DPS threat. Parry, as miniscule as it seems, is survival. Every point of damage you negate via parry is 1 less HP that has to be healed. If a DD dies, they can be raised. If you die, likely a wipe happens. Parry > dps imo.

I just want to point out to you, that out of 100 hits, with rounded up odds, you are mitigating 23% damage two times more. with max parry gear, at the cost of 60 Determination, and 50 Crit rating. The speed of the encounter droppping off by up to 30 seconds will mitigate FAR greater damage that that supposed 2 extra Parried attack you could get. Mind you, Main Tank Damage is constant, since you almost never need to stop attacking the boss.

[Acala]

we should also all stat str since there is no reason to fall below ~420 hp or whatever 30 vit gives...

[Pizzaparty7]

If you parry 25% of the time for 25% mitigation, that is 6.25% average damage mitigated. How is that benefit trivial?