PLD theorycraft?

Howdy fellow tanks!

I've been building my paladin pretty much like this so far:
VIT>STR>ACC(till cap)>PARRY>DET>CRIT>SS

after searching for a while, I was able to find quite bit theorycrafting about war vs pld and alot of stuff about warriors, however I wasn't able to find what I was looking for.

I'd like to know if it's wise to go for parry as much as you can, or just get certain value? Any links for PLD theorycraft (2.38) would be much appriciated :)



-Rilla

Cut parry out entirely, they total mitigation it offers is so pathetically low it's essentially worthless (that is until we can stack stupidly high numbers of it).

In terms of damage dealt and heals need the War and Paly are basically the same before you think about the other stuff. So much of the War gearing stuff applies to Paladins as well. Specifically that parry sucks so take det and crit where you can and that at some point more HP isn't worth much and more strength is worth quite a lot. Though the additional strength isn't quite as powerful on paly since they lack unchained and the damage-penalty ignoring inner beast.

I'd argue that palys get even less from parry than wars do since they can block.

When Melded i70 Accessories was a thing, it worked amazing on PLD.

Because you could also get a bunch of the DEX stat and DEX increases both Parry and Block, which Paladin has access to, VS just Parry on Warrior.

As far as theory crafting for PLD, where Warrior can use Ruby accessories melded with VIT, on PLD you would use Iolite (DEX) melded with VIT.

I'm really hoping we get an accessory set like the Gryphoskin/Rosegold i70 - which had two primary stats (Maybe i110 Crafted?) - because then you can have STR,DEX, and meld the VIT.

Dex is sooooo bad. Worse increase in parry than parry points are.

But i90 crafted strength accessories are great. Get ruby and meld in vit, accuracy and det.
If you buy iolite you're dumb...there just isn't much else to say.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

As far as theory crafting for PLD, where Warrior can use Ruby accessories melded with VIT, on PLD you would use Iolite (DEX) melded with VIT.

I'm really hoping we get an accessory set like the Gryphoskin/Rosegold i70 - which had two primary stats (Maybe i110 Crafted?) - because then you can have STR,DEX, and meld the VIT.

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No, you'd use ruby w/VIT still as PLD, no tank ever considered gryphonskin for the DEX on it, even when they melded it with parrying and accuracy.

This is not what I had in mind. I'm looking for more solid evidence if parry isn't the way to go. I'd like you to back up your arguments with some parsers if possible. Also, why would parry be useless stat? It's migitation after all..

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Originally Posted by Rilla

This is not what I had in mind. I'm looking for more solid evidence if parry isn't the way to go. I'd like you to back up your arguments with some parsers if possible. Also, why would parry be useless stat? It's migitation after all..

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I think people exaggerate how much of a DPS increase crit/det are versus how much of a mitigation increase Parry is. The only benefit to stacking crit/det is that you know they are always going to be useful since you're always going to be doing damage, while parry only protects you from physical attacks. It's still just a question of whether you'd rather add a percentage point or two to your DPS, or a percentage point or two to your physical mitigation per second. From a pure tanking perspective, parry's probably the best choice since it's the only secondary stat that increases mitigation, but sort of like accuracy has a cap, there's a point where extra mitigation doesn't really make a substantial difference. It's just that with accuracy, it's a hard cap, while with mitigation, it depends a lot on how well your party knows the content you're playing.

Parry is not a worthwhile stat when "average mitigation" doesn't matter because "avarage damage taken" doesn't matter, base parry rate is already sufficient, and needing so much parry to give any return makes it not worth investing in.

As a tank, the only things that ever threaten your HP total are huge attacks like Mountain Buster, Death Sentence, Ravensbeak etc or a bunch of attacks from multiple enemies intended to be tanked separately (T7 Melusine+adds, T8 Avatar+Dread, T9 Boss+Ghost) or a big dungeon pull.

For these situations you never rely on your random mitigation (block or parry). You always pop an important cooldown like Rampart or Sentinel (or Inner Beast as WAR with some other cooldown additionally). Your healers cannot "underheal" in anticipation of a block or parry because you will die. Therefore when you parry or block you usually cause overhealing anyways. If you die from such a big hit due to not parrying or blocking it and you popped cooldowns, that's a fundamental problem that you and your healers must fix somehow by mitigating it better. Parry won't fix it.

Falling into the pitfall of "it's a mitigation stat, I'm a tank" is short-sighted.

The main thing is a logical agrument: The real threats to tank survival in coil/endgame come from spike damage attacks. Most of the rest of tank damage is pretty trivial to heal and requires no mitigation. So while parry may reduce the total damage you take in an encounter it can't be what saves you from a spike attack or you're simply relying on luck to survive. Luck that happens at less than a 30% rate - so clears don't happen when you rely on it. It does not increase effective HP, it is purely an incidental bonus no one can count on.

I'm not against parry completely - adding strength is way more useful than changing a parry item to a det item (At the end of the day 150 parry is like 3% total average damage reduction. 150 det on a tank isn't going to up total party DPS by that much...but it will make for a large increase in your enmity!). If you wanted to meld Topaz with strength that'd arguably be better than ruby with vit, since Palys can get into TP trouble.
I suppose if you wanted dex for some reason you could do i90 accs with dex.vit.str. But a point of parry gives you more parry rate than dex does...and it does nothing to help DPS like determination would.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

As a tank, the only things that ever threaten your HP total are huge attacks like Mountain Buster, Death Sentence, Ravensbeak etc or a bunch of attacks from multiple enemies intended to be tanked separately (T7 Melusine+adds, T8 Avatar+Dread, T9 Boss+Ghost) or a big dungeon pull.

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Those things aren't really comparable. You're right that Parry doesn't really do anything for big single attacks, but parry's definitely worthwhile during a big dungeon pull or any time you're tanking multiple enemies, because that's where average damage dominates. That's also the sort of situation where extra DPS stats are the least worthwhile (at least as a PLD).

I think you're looking at it from the wrong direction. You don't stack parry because you're expecting a single parry to make the difference between life or death. You stack parry because the benefits of stacking DPS stats are extremely marginal for a tank in tanking stance, and parry decreases the amount of damage you take over time.

And a healer most certainly can underheal in anticipation of a block or parry. It's called staying in cleric stance and using abilities like stone skin, lustrate, benediction, regen, and so forth as the primary means to heal the tank rather than relying on cure/physick. If you take less damage over time, that becomes easier to do. Obviously they still need to top you off before big hits and that sort of thing, but it's not like there's zero benefit to increasing your mitigation over time as a tank.

If a parry or block made the difference, your healer is a goddamn robot.

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Originally Posted by Rilla

This is not what I had in mind. I'm looking for more solid evidence if parry isn't the way to go. I'd like you to back up your arguments with some parsers if possible. Also, why would parry be useless stat? It's migitation after all..

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Unfortunately all you'll really find on the subject is a debate, as others have said while parrying is a source of damage mitigation it only works on direct physical damage, it becomes completely useless vs mobs that do not have physical attacks (T2, ultima, avatar laser shower), and vs physical damage is unreliable at best. You will always be dealing damage while you will not always benefit from an increased parry rate, if it's a parry that stands between you and kissing the floor, you'll be looking at your healers, not the deities of RNG.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

Dex is sooooo bad. Worse increase in parry than parry points are.

But i90 crafted strength accessories are great. Get ruby and meld in vit, accuracy and det.
If you buy iolite you're dumb...there just isn't much else to say.

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I guess if you wanted to use DEX and didn't want the crit than the Topaz Rings with Parry would be a better choice.

Yeah, the Ruby accessories are great, as extra damage/enmity is always welcome even for PLD.

DEX for PLD is better than parry as you gain Block and Parry.

~0.066% per DEX into Block/Parry
~0.076% per Parry Stat into Parry

so about 4.5% extra block or parry. Also, block % is higher than parry % - and Block takes priority during frontal damage.

Not great but it's something. That's why I'm hoping we get new accessories with both stats, so you can have the extra damage, vit, and small % to Block/Parry.

I did some digging, from a guy on reddit that did tests it took about 2.6 DEX to equal 1 parry stat. I had DEX-melded some heavy wolfram, with 21 parry and 13 DEX on the helm it was effectively the equivalent of 25 or 26 parry.

Parry's not horrible for dungeon running though, more small hits you're taking the more it'll even out. But definitely for endgame content don't go out of your way for it.

And as far as DEX rings for PLD because of parry/block rate, STR boosts the damage lessened by those parries and blocks so that argument's a moot point. Do not wear DEX rings on PLD. The only time you'd consider DEX on accessories is if you were so keen on parry despite what everyone's said, that you'd get topaz accessories and meld STR, then DEX. Even ruby you'd meld VIT, then parry before you'd even consider DEX. Which, bringing it all back to "parry is a bad stat", you wouldn't.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

If a parry or block made the difference, your healer is a goddamn robot.

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A single parry, probably not. But many parries can add up, especially when the bulk of your healing is from HoTs or mitigation buffs rather than straight healing casts. Those little bits add up over time. You have to stop thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, and think about parry/block as a "critical defend". You wouldn't criticize a DPS for stacking crit because "If you're relying on a single crit to make the kill, you're doing it wrong." or something along those lines. You'd say "Is that the best way to increase your DPS?"

I'm not saying parry's always absolutely the best secondary stat for tanks. I'm just saying that it's not as worthless as some people here are saying it is, and that there are times when it's significantly better than DPS stats (like, as I mentioned earlier, during big pulls in dungeons where there's zero benefit to increasing your DPS, and statistically, all the parries will add up to a significant amount of damage mitigated over a short period of time).

Parry is good when you speed run or undergear the content you doing.

as you gearing up, parry start to lose it usefulness. (T9 ilv110 max parry will mostly lead to Over Healing in most case.)
most end game healer that I saw will pre-cast heal so it hit the tank right after big atk. I never saw end game healer wait for tank to take big atk then decide which heal to cast.. just so they can use cure1 instead of Cure2 ;P

I have 438 parry on my PLD and will start working on Nuvos soon. I was wondering how much parry % or mitigation % will I get if I meld 44 parry?

My other option is going something like det/crit/acc. Will this affect my DPS or aggro by a noticeable amount?

I would love to hear from a guy who actually used those meld setup in coil 2.

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Originally Posted by dramamine

A single parry, probably not. But many parries can add up, especially when the bulk of your healing is from HoTs or mitigation buffs rather than straight healing casts. Those little bits add up over time. You have to stop thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, and think about parry/block as a "critical defend". You wouldn't criticize a DPS for stacking crit because "If you're relying on a single crit to make the kill, you're doing it wrong." or something along those lines. You'd say "Is that the best way to increase your DPS?"

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That is the worst logic...dps crits actually do more damage. Healing for more than is needed doesn't raise your tank's HP beyond its max.

And yes you do have to keep thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, because that's how healers learn a fight and learn what big hits to prepare for.

Thank you for the posts, it seems like this is not going anywhere, it's just another debate. It just feels so weird coming from another mmos where migitation/survival stats actually matter'd. Time to start collecting own data then :) And once again, thanks for the posts..

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Originally Posted by Rilla

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Because in a lot of other games it's just big constant damage.

In this game bosses have a small number of tank killers and a lot of filler.

Passive mitigation is great for consistent damage, but this game has very little.

As some examples in this game of tank killers:

Titan: Mountain Buster
Twintania: Death Sentence
Nael deus Darnus: Ravensbeak/Bahamut's Claw
Ramuh: Shock Strike

etc etc. Notice how we are always talking one or two moves. Because there are only one or two moves that actually matter in terms of mitigation, passive won't be worth any amount of itemization because unless it's 100% you can't guarantee it will happen when it needs to.

It is a bit weird to wrap your head around the fact that a stat that only shows up on tank gear is...useless for tanking. I hope you find the answers you're looking for.

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Originally Posted by Rilla

Thank you for the posts, it seems like this is not going anywhere, it's just another debate. It just feels so weird coming from another mmos where migitation/survival stats actually matter'd. Time to start collecting own data then :) And once again, thanks for the posts..

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You will feel that things are vague here in this game. If you are looking for an in-depth guide written by ciderhelm then you will be disappointed.

I don't mean that the whole game is a mystery, certainty some players have done a lot of work both here and on reddit.

That being said, many things are based on guesstimates, trial and error, and rounded numbers. Take some of what you read with a grain of salt.

Keep in mind that the game was released more than 1 year ago and there were no major class changes other than WAR and yet still some classes have grey areas that players cant put a solid number on.

PS. things were much worst in FF11.

The real truth is that, outside of crit on Scholar and Bard for procing's sake, the inapplicability of SpellSpeed for Summoner dots, and maybe certain skill-speed minimums, that secondaries hardly matter at all compared to primary stat gain.

And, when you compare them to each other, outside of minimizing accuracy to the cap, you can use pretty much whatever secondary to stack or not stack and do about the same DPS.
IMO that's not a bad thing for that to happen. Otherwise the "you don't have a det-stacked lancer? Don't want you" kind of stuff would happen.

The reason parry is bad is the base amount is plenty. Stacking it does little extra. I made a BiS party set that hit 543 parry used it one time and won't use it again.

The only secondary worth stacking is Det the rest just come with meeting the ACC cap.

PLD is

Enough HP to survive the battle (VIT)

Then hit the ACC cap

Then put as much STR as possible

Finally add Det

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

The reason parry is bad is the base amount is plenty. Stacking it does little extra. I made a BiS party set that hit 543 parry used it one time and won't use it again.

The only secondary worth stacking is Det the rest just come with meeting the ACC cap.

PLD is

Enough HP to survive the battle (VIT)

Then hit the ACC cap

Then put as much STR as possible

Finally add Det

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This is something that I've been meaning to try. Although, at this point getting ilvl 90crafted accessories just doesn't feel smart as the 2.4 is around the corner. Will definedly get the next crafted accessories and see for my self. Propably have to reset my novus too, it's parry/acc atm :/

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Originally Posted by Rilla

This is something that I've been meaning to try. Although, at this point getting ilvl 90crafted accessories just doesn't feel smart as the 2.4 is around the corner. Will definedly get the next crafted accessories and see for my self. Propably have to reset my novus too, it's parry/acc atm :/

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I just redid my Nexus. Cost me 6mil to go from 23 parry to 23 det. :(

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Originally Posted by Rilla

This is something that I've been meaning to try. Although, at this point getting ilvl 90crafted accessories just doesn't feel smart as the 2.4 is around the corner. Will definedly get the next crafted accessories and see for my self. Propably have to reset my novus too, it's parry/acc atm :/

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they might delay the accessories just like how they did with i90 ones ;/ "i hope not" lol

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

I just redid my Nexus. Cost me 6mil to go from 23 parry to 23 det. :(

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Did you test DMG numbers on dummy after and before to see if it was worth it? because yesterday i swapped some gears around to see how much 31 DET boosts your AA and skill dmg and i was extremely dissapointed in results. With 31 DET my AA went up from 2 to 7 DMG max, sure it adds up in longrun but it still feels pretty damn meh. So CRIT might be best of all secondaries or all of them are equally bad.

I crunched the numbers and found that stacking Parry is more useful for Paladin than it is for Warrior. This tiddle is for a Pally using a 110 or 115 Kite Shield. If your:

Parry is around 600(~30% parry rate total)
110/115 Shield(~30% block rate)

Here, your chance of mitigating a physical attack is a function of the probability of either one of these things independently occurring(with the small caveat that both cannot occur at once and Block is checked before Parry as far as we know). When they're both about equal, it peaks at about a 41-42% chance of one of them proccing. That is significantly higher than a Warrior can reach even in a max Parry build. I personally consider 50% as the threshold at which Parry rate will actually matter in terms of how often it procs, and that's actually pleasantly close.

I just keep two different gear sets for DPS and "Tanking", I'm almost always wearing the dps accessories though and I also built my Novus with Det/Crit.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

I crunched the numbers and found that stacking Parry is more useful for Paladin than it is for Warrior.

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This makes no sense given that blocking happens before parrying. That reduces the value of a parry point considerably. (you've also done your math incorrectly unless you're using numbers other than the ones you posted).
If you have a 30% block rate and a 30% parry rate you're going to parry about 18% of the time (that is 30% of the unblocked 60%) for a total of a 48% chance to do some mitigation.

But 30% parry on a warrior means you're going to parry 30% of the time. So a point of parry on warrior is 1.7ish times as much mitigation as it is on a paladin with 30% block rate. Obviously this number changes with block rate, it it would always remain that parry does more for a warrior than a paladin.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Did you test DMG numbers on dummy after and before to see if it was worth it? because yesterday i swapped some gears around to see how much 31 DET boosts your AA and skill dmg and i was extremely dissapointed in results. With 31 DET my AA went up from 2 to 7 DMG max, sure it adds up in longrun but it still feels pretty damn meh. So CRIT might be best of all secondaries or all of them are equally bad.

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I did not test it. Nothing to really test. Is it worth it to use Det IVs to cap? Depends on your goals but it is without a doubt the best secondary.

All secondary's are pretty Meh which is why STR accessories make such a huge difference.

This is PLDs current BiS setup for everything except Savage coil. I am still missing HA legs but have everything else.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/O09P

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

This makes no sense given that blocking happens before parrying. That reduces the value of a parry point considerably. (you've also done your math incorrectly unless you're using numbers other than the ones you posted).
If you have a 30% block rate and a 30% parry rate you're going to parry about 18% of the time (that is 30% of the unblocked 60%) for a total of a 48% chance to do some mitigation.

But 30% parry on a warrior means you're going to parry 30% of the time. So a point of parry on warrior is 1.7ish times as much mitigation as it is on a paladin with 30% block rate. Obviously this number changes with block rate, it it would always remain that parry does more for a warrior than a paladin.

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The numbers I used were for a standard Binomial Distribution. If you test something with a 30% chance of success twice, the probability of exactly one succeeding is about 41%. The only difference here is that the chance of 2 successes is always 0.

Also, you're looking at things wrong. If you concede that a Paladin who stacks Parry will top off at over a 40% chance to mitigate a given attack and a Warrior will top off at less than that, how can it possibly be conceived that Parry is benefiting the Paladin less than a Warrior? It's a matter of tiers. The question we are looking to answer is "If I stack Parry, how often will I mitigate an attack?" For a Warrior, each point of Parry is always worth the same amount to what I would call "passive mitigation". For a Paladin, each point is worth less than for a Warrior, but their base rate is so high that their maximum rate is higher as a result. Therefore, they always benefit from Parry in relation to their passive mitigation more than a Warrior who has an equal amount.

Remember, the closer you can get to a 50% mitigation rate, the less you can just pray for RNG. If we can ever hit the point where we're statistically more likely to mitigate an attack than not to, Parry will start to matter more. Stacking Parry gets Paladin closer to this threshold than Warrior by a longshot. That's why it's more useful.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

That is the worst logic...dps crits actually do more damage. Healing for more than is needed doesn't raise your tank's HP beyond its max.

And yes you do have to keep thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, because that's how healers learn a fight and learn what big hits to prepare for.

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(sorry about waiting so long to respond, internet issues... Comcast sucks)

I think you're still missing my point. You're arguing that parry/block isn't reliable enough for huge hits, which I'd agree with, that's a stupid reason to stack parry/block. I'm arguing that parry's utility is that it reduces the amount of damage you take over time, especially in cases where you're getting hit frequently by lots of attacks. Your HP ticking down slower means that heals that don't depend on Mind like regen/medica II (if they are cast before switching to cleric stance), a fairy, benediction, lustrate, stone skin, and so forth are made more effective, reducing how often a healer has to resort to mind-based heals.

As I and other people have pointed out, all of the secondary stats kind of suck in this game, and increasing your mitigation is generally only useful to a point that depends on the content you're doing and how well you and the rest of your party know their class/the content, so parry's usefulness has it's limits. I'm just trying to point out that it's not anywhere near as useless as some people make it out to be.

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Originally Posted by dramamine

I think you're still missing my point. You're arguing that parry/block isn't reliable enough for huge hits, which I'd agree with, that's a stupid reason to stack parry/block. I'm arguing that parry's utility is that it reduces the amount of damage you take over time, especially in cases where you're getting hit frequently by lots of attacks. Your HP ticking down slower means that heals that don't depend on Mind like regen/medica II (if they are cast before switching to cleric stance), a fairy, benediction, lustrate, stone skin, and so forth are made more effective, reducing how often a healer has to resort to mind-based heals.

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The damage you take over time doesn't really matter. It's handled by a "healer autoattack". Furthermore it pays to have a non-parry set in any case, since you can find yourself tanking mobs where parry quite literally does nothing (Leviathan head, Ramuh, T1+2 ADS) or when you are not tanking for extended periods of time.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

The damage you take over time doesn't really matter. It's handled by a "healer autoattack". Furthermore it pays to have a non-parry set in any case, since you can find yourself tanking mobs where parry quite literally does nothing (Leviathan head, Ramuh, T1+2 ADS) or when you are not tanking for extended periods of time.

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Oh, I agree on your second point. I've got sets with STR jewelry and VIT jewelry, and if I ever collect enough alternate max-level gear to make it worth while to do a separate Parry/Vit and DPS/Vit set, I'll do that too.

But to respond to your first point, I was just trying to get across the fact that parry's the only secondary stat that you can stack to improve the reliability of the "healer autoattack", and people who say it's worthless seem to forget that.

I currently have 635 parry with food at i110 on my PLD. When I was doing my nexus light grind there were plenty of plds with det gear who couldnt take hate off me. So yeah, I dont think Det helps that much

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Originally Posted by Lynneth

I currently have 635 parry with food at i110 on my PLD. When I was doing my nexus light grind there were plenty of plds with det gear who couldnt take hate off me. So yeah, I dont think Det helps that much

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And your parry is doing nothing. Typically Det geared tanks know what they are doing and weren't trying to pull hate :p

Det craps on parry. I had a 643 parry build on PLD. It's in the trash.

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

And your parry is doing nothing. Typically Det geared tanks know what they are doing and weren't trying to pull hate :p

Det craps on parry. I had a 643 parry build on PLD. It's in the trash.

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No they dont, they stay in shield oath and spam hate combos till they realize they cant take hate, then give up. Mostly talking about PLDs here.
They fare no better because of that extra 31 det.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

No they dont, they stay in shield oath and spam hate combos till they realize they cant take hate, then give up. Mostly talking about PLDs here.
They fare no better because of that extra 31 det.

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Could they just be bads?