Parry...

Parry (and by the same math Block and Dodge) is important, not because of the DPS that's avoided, but the gambled chance you parry/block/dodge one of the Murder-Dead-Kill moves that you generally can't avoid. DPS is countered by healers and general mitigation (defense & damage reduction abilities), but the real beauty of parry/block/dodge comes in taking the edge off the hits that make healers freak out.

Since there's no +defense stat, and evasion-based gear was eviscerated, the only way to hedge our bets is +parry.

The shite-eating grin you have after you dodge two mountain busters in a row is priceless. Too bad everyone else winds up dying when something that glorious happens. I'll gladly take a parry though.

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Originally Posted by Acala

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

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Having a strong HP pool is consistent, and helpful, but Item Level typically denotes HP, not the secondary stats. The point of this thread os debating 2ndary stats, not primary.
However, I have been sacrificing HP lately on easier content in favor of DPS accessories with great results. I have successfully tanked Titan Ex with a Co-tanking warrior, both of us in 30 Strength Spec points, and i90 Strength accessories. we BOTH were able to increase our damage output by 35% and our group killed Titan before his full arena bombs exploded. Neither of us died. Fight was entirely do-able with -780 HP from a typical max.

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Originally Posted by Pizzaparty7

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

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Nobody parrys 25% of the time, and were not talking aobut getting rid of 25% parry, were talking about getting rid of 1.74% Parry. Please be realistic with the thread, and true to live numbers.

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Originally Posted by Zourin

Parry (and by the same math Block and Dodge) is important, not because of the DPS that's avoided, but the gambled chance you parry/block/dodge one of the Murder-Dead-Kill moves that you generally can't avoid. DPS is countered by healers and general mitigation, but the real beauty of parry/block comes in taking the edge off the hits that make healers freak out.

The shite-eating grin you have after you dodge two mountain busters in a row is priceless. Too bad everyone else winds up dying when something that glorious happens.

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You have the absolute most valid point in the thread against my argument. You can't beat a raw 5K Damage totally mitigated by a Dodge, nor the 800 lessened damage from a good parry on those attacks.

However! I must submit to you that we have tools for those situations, and they are ALWAYS attacks that the fight is based around. Which means they are beyond predictable. Turn 6's attacks hit for a max of 3K damage, and they hit on a timer, which the healers will always be ready for unless it's the first time they encountered it. Realistically speaking, you can't heal Titan HM, or EXM properly the first time you ever go in, because it's a pattern fight, and until you know the pattern, only luck will guide you through safely.

Tanking well vs Tanking Luckily are 2 totally different things, and If your luck as a tank got you through a fight one week, it won't carry your entire group forever. At some point your healers need to learn when to time their Stone Skins and Adlos, or else you won't have a good time on true to life hard to win encounters.

Death Sentence is a perfect example here. If your healers can't deal with it consistently, you may as well stop fighting Twintania. No amount of added parry will make it any easier.

Can't use real parse numbers as they vary with RNG. Instead you need to use statistical chance. 25% was just for easy math. If your parry always reduces 25% of damage then the difference between 20% and 25% parry rate is 1.25% average mitigation. Therefore, reducing parry by 1.75% would result in around 0.4% more damage taken. That doesn't seem like much... Until it is. Sometimes that sliver of mitigation is the difference between catching a heal or not. I just don't see how increasing the damage output of a tank with a -20% damage penalty is worth it. If that smidgeon of damage is significant then so must equal parry. Especially for the lower hp paladin, block and parry smooth incoming damage and help avoid the tanked being spiked to death.

I could be wrong, but I've always followed the tanking axiom of mitigation first. Just my two cents

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Originally Posted by Pizzaparty7

Can't use real parse numbers as they vary with RNG. Instead you need to use statistical chance. 25% was just for easy math. If your parry always reduces 25% of damage then the difference between 20% and 25% parry rate is 1.25% average mitigation. Therefore, reducing parry by 1.75% would result in around 0.4% more damage taken. That doesn't seem like much... Until it is. Sometimes that sliver of mitigation is the difference between catching a heal or not. I just don't see how increasing the damage output of a tank with a -20% damage penalty is worth it. If that smidgeon of damage is significant then so must equal parry. Especially for the lower hp paladin, block and parry smooth incoming damage and help avoid the tanked being spiked to death.

I could be wrong, but I've always followed the tanking axiom of mitigation first. Just my two cents

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I don't think you are wrong in the slightest, But your 0.4% example is totalling 620 damage on my highest damage taken Turn 4 run. Thats less than a Cleric Stance cure 1 from an i90 White Mage. Again, I was in my 620 Parry total set with food, when I took that much damage. Which albeit anecdotal, works against the mitigation mantra. =P

I was gonna gear toward parry at first but stop when i found out that parry only work on Physical damage... (this was when the game release). so to me, trading 1.74 % chance of parry Physical damage for more dps is working. Tank might not do a lot of damage but he/she the only one who can stay on boss 95% of the time.

Try tanking Levi EX and tell me you dont wish you do more damage>< (PRO Group exclude !!><) our group is avg i90 and we beating the enrage by 20 sec or less T_T. especially, when your DPS die at toward the end. T_T

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Originally Posted by Pizzaparty7

That doesn't seem like much... Until it is. Sometimes that sliver of mitigation is the difference between catching a heal or not.

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That "sliver of mitigation" is derived from an arbitrarily large number of attempts. It's not going to be a make or break an individual instance of an attack because it's an absolutely miniscule increase in chance of it occurring. Parry is a mean mitigation contributor, which means that its value only appears over an extended period of time. In practical terms, it's more like saying that you're going to require 1.25% less healing over time than it is saying that you're going to survive that burst hit more effectively.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

That "sliver of mitigation" is derived from an arbitrarily large number of attempts. It's not going to be a make or break an individual instance of an attack because it's an absolutely miniscule increase in chance of it occurring. Parry is a mean mitigation contributor, which means that its value only appears over an extended period of time. In practical terms, it's more like saying that you're going to require 1.25% less healing over time than it is saying that you're going to survive that burst hit more effectively.

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This is exactly the point i'm trying to get across. Thanks for wording it in such a concise way.

Just because you may not parry a lot in a fight doesn't mean you won't always. When tanking a boss like twin with slow predictable hits, parry isn't amazing. When tanking a pile of guys like turn 4, it really adds up quick. I see the argument that extra dps from the tank may help push ahead of enrage timers but really that just says your dd group is undergeared or not performing in the encounter. Just because you can beat Levi ex doesn't mean you aren't below the level it is tuned for.

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Originally Posted by ZDamned

However! I must submit to you that we have tools for those situations, and they are ALWAYS attacks that the fight is based around. Which means they are beyond predictable. Turn 6's attacks hit for a max of 3K damage, and they hit on a timer, which the healers will always be ready for unless it's the first time they encountered it. Realistically speaking, you can't heal Titan HM, or EXM properly the first time you ever go in, because it's a pattern fight, and until you know the pattern, only luck will guide you through safely.

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What you have described is "damage per second", really, and yes, it's handled by experienced healers in a choreographed fight, not the tank (aside from popping cooldowns, so at a minimum it's a cooperative effort). Rotational burst damage is just spiky dps in the long haul. Dodge/Parry/Block is the chance that the healer gets a momentary reprieve to tend to other party members unless they're precasting (risky if the heal is a fraction early)

That said, the OP isn't terribly far off the mark. Increases in Parry offer minimal differences in tanking ability to the magnitude of percents of percents, so there is very, very little difference between most gears within the same tier (other than crafted, which bears a marked lack of Parry). i90 gear vs i80 gear, there won't be a measurable difference in parry rate so much as a difference in max HP and general armor mitigation which will play a more vital role. SE's 'standardization' of stats generally means that even if you stack parry as high as it goes, you aren't irreplaceable by another tank.