Tanks: parry becoming important?

Parry is a bad stat for so many reasons:

1) many mechanics cant be parried
2) totally random, does not help you when you need it to help
3) the amount of parry needed to increase your chance seems totally bonkers given early testing when 2.0 was launched

Other games have contended with this and resolved it:

1) For tanks, parry gives a secondary attribute. I.E 40 parry gives 40 crit as well for tanks, which given parry only applied while your actively tanking, goes a long way to not penalizing tanks as much when they go into an OT role.
2) Normalized Parry: What this means if that parry no longer is a percent chance to block; every class reduces damage taken on any parriable attack by an amount based off their parry value, with a maximum amount of parried damage in a rolling time frame.
3) Remove Parry and instead put in an attribute with a tanking value like Resolve or Tenacity; attributes which enhance the effects of tanking cd, self heals, and aggro generation.

All they would have to do to make Parry relevant is to make your counter with an auto attack. All of a sudden it has a more attractive stat weight since it provides offense and defense.

It would have synergy with Crit or Det, but it wouldn't not with Skill Speed.

Both WAR and DRK benefit from Skill Speed, ie more GCDs during Berkserk and IB being up quicker or more Siphoning Strikes for DRK. So there would be more play with how to personalize tanking.

The big problem is that PLD wouldn't get the same benefit since, I believe, Block checks come before Parry checks. Shield Swipe would have to get a solid rework or upgrade for there to be parity.

In some sense, it would make it easy for PLDs to ignore Parry and make an easy split between what gear the different tanks would ideally want, but PLDs don't really want skill speed either...so they would probably feel left out.

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Originally Posted by shao32

the day when parry takes magic damage then parry go to be nice stad, now i only use parry for autoattacks.

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First in the grand scheme no because very few worth while enemies auto attack with magic based moves. Second parry can parry magic but it is specific to the move for instance all Dark Magic spells that are not aoe can be parried they could since Hakkue Manor normal (Dark thunder, Dark fire, etc.). The ability to parry spells is something the devs turn on and off for balancing it seems. Similar to how War and Pld was able to survive a limit break in PVP because they would parry/block it.

But because the stat at it current levels can not be 100% the fact that a whm will cure for 2000 and you reduce 2000 > 1500 your still going to get cured for 2000 still doesn't give it worth even if it was magic dmg. Not that it is worthless, but there are alternatives which is why people don't care. If it was parry or nothing people would use parry.

Parry is a great stat when doing mass trash pulls. It's useless against single targets (boss fights).

So don't run a low-parry set when you're mass-pulling. Swap into your parry set please. A 130 Poetic tank with full-parry relic has over 570 parry rating, but swap out all the parry pieces and you will end up with only 370 or so, which will indeed make parry useless.

A WHM holy hitting that mass pull is better DPS than you can ever do with all the DPS gear you can ever have. Your job is to survive well enough to make those Holy casts happen.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Parry is a great stat when doing mass trash pulls. It's useless against single targets (boss fights).

So don't run a low-parry set when you're mass-pulling. Swap into your parry set please. A 130 Poetic tank with full-parry relic has over 570 parry rating, but swap out all the parry pieces and you will end up with only 370 or so, which will indeed make parry useless.

A WHM holy hitting that mass pull is better DPS than you can ever do with all the DPS gear you can ever have. Your job is to survive well enough to make those Holy casts happen.

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There's no need to have parry on mass trash pulls, as you can live through it and WHM's holy has stuns...so that right there kills off them having to worry about needing to heal you...

Only if you have enough firepower, mobs die fast and Holy stun is more than enough. But that doesn't happen all the time. :(

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Only if you have enough firepower, mobs die fast and Holy stun is more than enough. But that doesn't happen all the time. :(

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Even then parry is still bad. You are mitigating somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 damage per round with 8 mobs on you. (~580parry vs ~380parry) 200.......healers cant compensate for such a small return. Mobs also use abilities where parry is useless since you are dodging them. They can also be stunned as mentioned.

Parry in its current form is always bad.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

Only if you have enough firepower, mobs die fast and Holy stun is more than enough. But that doesn't happen all the time. :(

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If you don't have enough fire power or healing power to take out the group of mobs, why are you mass pulling in the first place? Because if you're really depending on parry to live through the damage while your DPS are slow killing, you really don't need to be mass pulling.

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

Even then parry is still bad. You are mitigating somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 damage per round with 8 mobs on you. (~580parry vs ~380parry) 200......

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How is the 200 damage per round calculated?

For gear at 580 parry you're looking at 31% parry rate with 26% damage reduction each parry. For 380 parry it's about 13% parry rate. Is increasing 17% chance to reduce physical damage by 26% a bad thing, when the alternatives are all dps stats?

It seems that the claim is that this damage reduction is something that doesn't cause additional healing stress so we might as well take the damage?

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Originally Posted by Seku

If you don't have enough fire power or healing power to take out the group of mobs, why are you mass pulling in the first place? Because if you're really depending on parry to live through the damage while your DPS are slow killing, you really don't need to be mass pulling.

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True, in the ideal situation we would have Holy stun for 9 seconds plus 6 seconds invulnerability, but sometimes the WHM stands too close or has to duck an AoE even before starting the first Holy cast---or may even cancel the cast and spam Cure 2 because your HP had just dived to 50% perhaps due to a few unlucky crits and no block/parry.

I mean in large pulls, my dps is negligible. Why should I give up survival stats for a tiny improvement to my already negligible dps?

The argument against parry had always been that "it's not significant". But in the case of large pulls, so is the dps (if not outright negligible). Between two bad options, why not choose the better one one that conforms to your role in the party?

Well, perhaps it would make sense for Warriors as Overpower has damage. But for Paladins who will be spamming Flash during that time anyway, and whose only AoE ability is one single potency 100+30/tick hit?

The only valid argument that could happen from this discussion is: Would the Det/Crit be worth it on the bosses vs the Parry on the trash?

If you want to make a Parry set for trash and a Det/Crit set for bosses, then I think you've taken speedrunning to a whole new level of min/max, but it would be the ideal way to go about it. If you have to choose one over the other, I personally think the increase of damage on bosses outweighs the possibility of damage maybe getting mitigated on trash.

However, we are talking about secondary stats here - either way you slice it, you're probably not helping by much whichever you choose.

Det/Crit does benefit WAR overall better on speedruns, though, due to the nature of how they AOE trash packs. PLD is just... take what you've got or min/max to the extreme.

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Originally Posted by Zfz

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Cool downs should be up anyway regardless if your healer has to move or not to give them time. A good whm will have bene ready for when your hp floors to bring you right back up to full health and a lestirate or w/e from sch. Because regardless of having 1 parry or 500 parry there will always be that chance you get "unlucky" with a few crits and no block/parry. And if Crit's are -really- a problem, you have awareness.

To your 2nd and 3rd lines. Because parry is pretty much playing as a redundant stat. You already have a lot of surviability and parry will rarely, if ever, be the deciding factor if you live or die. Det on the other hands brings better hate generation and Crit gives a chance to throw out more damage or cause or your AoE DoT to crit, thus generating more hate on the surrounding mob's due to a higher tick.

However depending on how things work out in heavensward, parry may become a thing or Det/crit is going to take over more since their giving tanks even more DPS options. Because yay to a dot off riot blade.

With the exception of determination, all the secondary stats are garbage and largely negligible. It really just comes down to which flavor of garbage you prefer.

Parry is better if you like the idea of maybe being able to take more of a beating. Crit is better if you like the idea of maybe doing more damage. Both give very poor returns, it's easier to balance things that way.

While nothing's confirmed yet to my knowledge... No, I wouldn't count on parry being made more "useful", at least, not in most players eyes anyways. The large consensus would only really see it as useful if there were gimmick skills available to tanks that triggered upon parry or played off it somehow.

Exhaustive list of situations parry is pretty sweet in:
*Pld speed running dungeons. (Swap to dps for boss).

Pld uses flash and riot blade so near zero dps anyway. Has a bunch mobs you can't hurt so turtle it up.

War is a hell no to parry. Maim unchained zerk, bloodbath, vengence overpower spam demands no parry here.

So yeah I got 1 spot parry is actually good. That's all I got.

if you're a paladin, you have quite a lot of defensive cooldowns to cycle that the demand for stacking parry isn't really mandatory. with the expansion, paladins will have a few new tools on their arsenal that further bolster their defensive prowess making parry even less desirable.

edit.. paladins do have good dexterity growth and there are no other direction for shield upgrades to go but forward. so yeah.. parry is still not a very good investment. what concerns me more is Clemency... While we have good natural MND growth, our gear doesn't give us the luxury of pushing it and to make matters worse, our weapon magic attack power is way behind that of casters/healers... which is undeniably reasonable. i do hope that our future gear will have have some MND in it.. not that i'm asking for healer level of MND but enough to make our heals not suck.

None of the stats are key except having enough VIT to survive one shots and STR for more damage; none of the other stats makes much noticeable difference. Don't see why parry should be getting special attention but I don't really care either way. Actually, maybe I should care. If parry is "buffed" than it would be doing more than the other 2ndary stats, which would cause unbalance.

I know, a lot of tanks are ignoring parry cuz it does next to nothing in favor of damage 2ndary stats (even though the exchange also does next to nothing) but you have to be careful of how much you buff it, cuz like I said, 2ndary stats in general tend to do little unless you can add on a lot. Also, the main reason why people are doing this is for the same reason why people go STR after they feel they have enough VIT.

The new changes if anything has made parry even less important. end of thread