So Parry is great in t10-12.

Okay, so not 'great.' It still suffers from terrible scaling, is checked secondary to shield blocks, and all the other downsides that make it famously considered to be crap.

However.
I can't speak for t13 itself because we have yet to clear the second-to-last turn, but every other aspect of final coil thusfar has been designed in the ideal way to make parry MORE useful - nonstop high-damage attacks instead of large massive hits. Revelation in t12 and a few other high-burst mechanics are the rarity, not the norm.

What are your thoughts?

The act of parry itself was always useful. The stat scaling is the problem.

I agree, Parry is a nice and useful skill (31% DM, yes please), but seeing that it is only for AAs and Physical attacks sucks.

Anyways, are you stating that a majority of the fights, for tanks, are short, bursts of mitigatiable damage?

Real question though: I want to know if YOUR healers know the difference. I see a many PLDs with Relic weapons with Parry and ACC... I think you see where I am going with this.

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Originally Posted by Ellatrix

The act of parry itself was always useful. The stat scaling is the problem.

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Tank forum post of the year.

Tanks definitely get rocked by non-mega attacks in T11, I can see Parry being good (or more useful than normal I should say). T10 however, it still seemed like the standard "boss barely outdamages Regen + pet auto-heal" into mega-attack where Parry is so worthless.

Can't speak for T12 or T13 yet.

If this is true then it explains why both ToP and FCoB gear are filled with parry.

Confirmed - the final boss of coil is also relatively autoattack heavy with big, parryable hits.

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Originally Posted by PapaSteel

Confirmed - the final boss of coil is also relatively autoattack heavy with big, parryable hits.

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Nael/twin like in respect to average iLvL at 2 weeks in?

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Originally Posted by PapaSteel

Confirmed - the final boss of coil is also relatively autoattack heavy with big, parryable hits.

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Nael/twin like in respect to average iLvL at 2 weeks in?

Edit:
So I just watched the kill video. And it's like a Michael Bay movies. (Credit to Arthars). Those big attacks are all magical. The adds hit hard and BPs autos are no different then Naels when we were i95.

Parry won't be BiS this turn.

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Originally Posted by PapaSteel

Okay, so not 'great.' It still suffers from terrible scaling, is checked secondary to shield blocks, and all the other downsides that make it famously considered to be crap.

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I've done the math before, and the whole "block is checked before parry" thing actually works in a Paladin's favor. Let's take my i110 Parry PLD. She's got a HA shield and 600+ Parry. These provide a Shield Block rate of about 30% and a Parry rate of about 30%. Since they're about equal, I can go pretend that they're a binomial distribution experiment: of two tests with a 30% of succeeding, what are the chances that exactly one of them will succeed?

It turned out that the answer to this was between 41 and 43%. Not enough to rely on, surely, but definitely a relatively happy number.

So, yes, PLDs will technically get less benefit per individual point of Parry than a WAR. However, the synergy with the Shield allows a PLD to mitigate attacks more often than a WAR despite performing the actual act of a Parry less often. In this Tier, we'll have shields that block between 32 and 33% of the time and a max Parry between 640-660(33% rate at 650). This pops the binomial results up to 44% or so.

My opinion is that Parry will finally begin to show its colors as something that the majority of Tanks might actually want if we can push the rate of Physical Mitigation past 50%. When we're statistically more likely to block/parry than not to, it'll start to matter more.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

If this is true then it explains why both ToP and FCoB gear are filled with parry.

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Yeah, I did find it rather unusual that the devs literally made it impossible to completely avoid Parry this tier, especially with respects to reaching the accuracy cap of a whopping 560. It really does give the impression that the devs want Tanks to have Parry. Perhaps they took offense to the "all STR go!" strategies people were employing. But... if that really were the case they should have made the bosses hit hard enough that stacking VIT was truly necessary instead.

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

Nael/twin like in respect to average iLvL at 2 weeks in?

Edit:
So I just watched the kill video. And it's like a Michael Bay movies. (Credit to Arthars). Those big attacks are all magical. The adds hit hard and BPs autos are no different then Naels when we were i95.

Parry won't be BiS this turn.

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Let's not jump the shark here quite yet. It could be possible that the attacks merely look magical but can still somehow be parried. After all, most bosses in this game save the magical damage for the party and mostly unload physical hits on the Tank(the big exceptions being the Ultima Weapon and Ramuh, who solely use magical attacks). Although, this is BP, so the chances probably aren't terribly high. We'll just have to wait, observe, and get brutally murdered until we can figure out what is Physical and what isn't :)

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Yeah, I did find it rather unusual that the devs literally made it impossible to completely avoid Parry this tier, especially with respects to reaching the accuracy cap of a whopping 560.

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IW Head/Dread Body/Dread Hands/IW Belt/Dread Pants/IW Boots.

0 parry, lots of crit, det, and accuracy.

Both PLD/WAR Dread weapons have Parry on them, but the HA Axe also had Parry and the HA Shield had Parry as well.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

IW Head/Dread Body/Dread Hands/IW Belt/Dread Pants/IW Boots.

0 parry, lots of crit, det, and accuracy.

Both PLD/WAR Dread weapons have Parry on them, but the HA Axe also had Parry and the HA Shield had Parry as well.

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Okay, so not impossible. It does, however, require an uncomfortable number of Coil drops(including a T13 drop), so one will probably be going into attempts to achieve this build with some Parry whether they want it or not.

Because it's smarter to just get the "other" i130 piece first and sidegrade it later, as long as it allows you to stay at the Accuracy cap. Thus, it'll probably be a good idea for every Tank to have IW Chest and Pants during their initial forays into the Final Coil. Parry or not, that Accuracy will be necessary until the proper Dreadwyrm gear appears.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

snip.

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I agree, however, the Soldiery Body/Pants also had Parry on them so we're basically looking at a similar situation as 2.2, the Dread Pants being 1 turn later than the HA Pants were. If you choose to go with the IW pants or body in your second week, then you'll definitely have some Parry on your gear, however you can also opt for the belt + boots/head combo, which gives you +1 VIT/STR as well as Det/Crit. Regardless, secondary stats are only minimal increases in your survivability/DPS, so you could have a full set of Parry gear with no Det/Crit and it wouldn't make any real difference.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Let's not jump the shark here quite yet. It could be possible that the attacks merely look magical but can still somehow be parried. After all, most bosses in this game save the magical damage for the party and mostly unload physical hits on the Tank(the big exceptions being the Ultima Weapon and Ramuh, who solely use magical attacks). Although, this is BP, so the chances probably aren't terribly high. We'll just have to wait, observe, and get brutally murdered until we can figure out what is Physical and what isn't :)

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Bahamut Attacks directed at the tank that can be blocked/parried:

- Auto Attack
- Flatten (Phase 1 and 2 only)

Bahamut's magical attacks directed at the tank that cannot be blocked or parried:

- Flame Breath
- Akh Morn


On average Bahamut's auto attacks hit from 1600-2200 on me. Flatten unmitigated was hitting for about 11k. Flatten is basically the "Death Sentence" and Ravens Beak of Phase 1 to 2.

In phase 1, Flatten is followed up by 3 Flame Breaths, which can hit up to 4600 unmitigated. In phase 2, Flatten is followed by a single Flame Breath.

Akh Morn is Bahamut's big attack in the final phase. It hits both tanks for 12k unmitigated on the first strike, then significantly less each consecutive strike. This move is the big tank killer which cannot be blocked or parried.


The reason I opted to go for full block/parry with dex melded gear for T13 is because when you're at the current gear level, you need to do whatever you can to mitigate as much damage as possible. For our group, we needed the WHM to solo heal phase 1 and most of phase 2 in order to make the DPS push to beat the enrage timer. We tried going full MT DPS with vit melded STR accessories but that proved to be way too difficult to solo heal, and getting through the phases with it was doable but extremely risky.

The idea behind using block/parry for Bahamut is to allow the WHM to use as few unproc'd Cure 2's as possible so his MP pool will last until dive bombs. Once in dive bombs, I picked up the Pain mob, where block/parry helped a great deal (it hits very hard, very often).

Block/parry also helped for the last phase because it alleviated the risk of the MT going down from an auto attack after Akh Morn (and helped keep my HP topped off before it).

In all reality though, when you're at a comfortable gear level to do T13, block/parry's merit starts to go out the window. When your WHM gets a 130-135 weapon and can solo heal Phase 1 and 2 very comfortably, you don't need to rely on mitigation as much. The MT can begin to transition away from defensive stats and go for an offensive build, as long as they have the HP to soak up all in coming damage.

For this reason, Parry will begin to lose its value as your healers and DPS become more geared. T13 will turn into a "Burn the boss as fast as possible to skip phases" fight. In which case you don't really need to care about conserving healer MP any more.

I'm personally not going to transition right into a full DET/CRIT build right away. I'm going to start off by replacing my crafted gear with i130 pieces that have parry on them. Eventually I'll be going for a full DET/CRIT tank build once my healers have more gear. At that point, DET/CRIT builds will be BiS for PLD, and parry will get completely ignored once again. There's literally no reason to try to go full defensive when you have enough DPS to skip mechanics in T13.

Thanks for the break down. That's exactly how the fight looks.

Can't wait to get there, we fell back a week due to member out of town :(

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Originally Posted by Donjo

It turned out that the answer to this was between 41 and 43%. Not enough to rely on, surely, but definitely a relatively happy number.

So, yes, PLDs will technically get less benefit per individual point of Parry than a WAR. However, the synergy with the Shield allows a PLD to mitigate attacks more often than a WAR despite performing the actual act of a Parry less often. In this Tier, we'll have shields that block between 32 and 33% of the time and a max Parry between 640-660(33% rate at 650). This pops the binomial results up to 44% or so.

My opinion is that Parry will finally begin to show its colors as something that the majority of Tanks might actually want if we can push the rate of Physical Mitigation past 50%. When we're statistically more likely to block/parry than not to, it'll start to matter more.

Yeah, I did find it rather unusual that the devs literally made it impossible to completely avoid Parry this tier, especially with respects to reaching the accuracy cap of a whopping 560. It really does give the impression that the devs want Tanks to have Parry. Perhaps they took offense to the "all STR go!" strategies people were employing. But... if that really were the case they should have made the bosses hit hard enough that stacking VIT was truly necessary instead.

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Hi Donjo,

Great analysis. I mentioned this in another thread: I also see Parry becoming something more meaningful, especially when Yoshi P announced at the Fan Festival that the next Tank - Dark Knight - was a Parry-style Tank.

I'm hoping in 3.0 Heavensward that we'll see more meaningful Stat Adjustments and that all Jobs will have more interesting Stats / Builds to play with (please!). :)

The big thing to remember is that Bahamut does still auto during his flame breath, and those moments of clutch mitigation now 'count' for a lot more than they used to. Ganga, thanks for the valuable input. Our PLD has definitely been rethinking his normal approach as we slog through the last phase.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

. . . So, yes, PLDs will technically get less benefit per individual point of Parry than a WAR. . .

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Waitwute :S According to BLITZBALLL (valk.dancing-mad.com/methodology) Increasing Parry Rate actually improves the shield block rate and the amount of damage mitigated by not only parry, but by shield block as well.

I was looking at the calculations on WAR, and since we don't have shields, a 100-point swing in Parry was about a 1-2% Difference in Damage Mitigation. Meanwhile, a 100-point Swing in Critical hit Rate/Determination, meant much more HP recovered from Inner Beast, not to mention benefits for threat control, overall higher DPS, etc.

Making us 'need' those last 30 points of Vitality is a Fickle thing. I an a Seawolf Roe, with Super bloated Vit. I am fully specced in STR on my WAR (VIT on PLD). The adds hit hard enough that I'm wearing VIT Accessories, but as much as I can I'm wearing the i110 with as much crit/det as possible.

I'm almost ready to craft myself the i110 Crafted Gear. if ACC Cap for Final Coil is 560, I will probably meld that accordingly, and spend the rest of my life melding Crit and Det onto it for Final Coils, and use that in leiu of i120/i130 gear.

No parry does not affect shield block rates. Parry is diluted by shield blocks.

WAR healing died a year ago. It is now a bonus.

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Originally Posted by Mishini_Dracoto

Waitwute :S According to BLITZBALLL (valk.dancing-mad.com/methodology) Increasing Parry Rate actually improves the shield block rate and the amount of damage mitigated by not only parry, but by shield block as well.

I was looking at the calculations on WAR, and since we don't have shields, a 100-point swing in Parry was about a 1-2% Difference in Damage Mitigation. Meanwhile, a 100-point Swing in Critical hit Rate/Determination, meant much more HP recovered from Inner Beast, not to mention benefits for threat control, overall higher DPS, etc.

Making us 'need' those last 30 points of Vitality is a Fickle thing. I an a Seawolf Roe, with Super bloated Vit. I am fully specced in STR on my WAR (VIT on PLD). The adds hit hard enough that I'm wearing VIT Accessories, but as much as I can I'm wearing the i110 with as much crit/det as possible.

I'm almost ready to craft myself the i110 Crafted Gear. if ACC Cap for Final Coil is 560, I will probably meld that accordingly, and spend the rest of my life melding Crit and Det onto it for Final Coils, and use that in leiu of i120/i130 gear.

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As Sir Taint mentions below, the Parry stat doesn't appear to affect shield block rate and it definitely does not affect the amount of damage mitigated by a block. The stat for that particular miracle is Strength.

Regarding the benefits of extra Strength for the tanking classes, it goes almost without saying that a Warrior benefits from it more than a Paladin does. Warriors get more healing and their ability to nullify the penalty of Defiance makes every point of Strength worth more in regards to their potential damage ceilings. All Paladins get for their trouble is 1% more damage mitigated per block/parry and some more damage dealt. Threat is irrelevant in the argument as even a Tank with all Acc/Parry will be able to keep threat with even BiS DPS as long as their weapon is properly updated. Building more threat just isn't a valid reason to stack Strength; there are far better benefits to quote, especially for Warriors.

I'll also just up and say that your plan of overmelding i110 gear and proceeding to refuse to use i120/i130 Body Pieces is an awful idea. It doesn't matter how many Secondary Stats you pile onto those pieces of gear, i120 pieces still stand a decent chance of being better and i130 pieces will always be better. Strength is king when determining damage and any Tank who wants to start stripping Vitality off of their gear needs a left side with max vitality in order to keep their HP high enough to be relevant. It's the only Vitality you aren't sacrificing Strength to obtain; take advantage of it.

Extremely related

http://puu.sh/cRxnI/5327efd97a.png


This was done as a WAR on Lv 49 mobs in North Than, removed any magical attacks, and removed all dodges from the equation.