Tanks: parry becoming important?

Are they making parry a key stat now?

There's been no mention of changes to Parry as far as I'm aware. With new Tank skills coming that will guarantee Blocks and Parries, though... it is explicitly necessary for something to be tweaked with it or it will become completely irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

There's been no mention of changes to Parry as far as I'm aware. With new Tank skills coming that will guarantee Blocks and Parries, though... it is explicitly necessary for something to be tweaked with it or it will become completely irrelevant.

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^ This.

The more they guarantee Blocks/Parries the less important the stat becomes. I'd be all for an overhaul to make it worth its slot on gear.

As long as parry is random, it's a useless stat. They haven't said anything about changing it.

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Originally Posted by Launched

As long as parry is random and tank survival mostly depends on mitigating specific attacks, it's a useless stat. They haven't said anything about changing it.

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It's very easy to think about how a random occurrence can be quite beneficial. You just have to give it enough opportunities to be useful that statistics take over. On the attack side, you have Crits, which are clearly valuable to damage.

In an extreme: If tank damage was completely based on autoattacks and it was consistently at a level high enough it required constant healer attention, you're going to end up with the healer slowing getting behind on damage or running out of mana. Adding a decent percentage of parrying will produce meaningful results. That's really tight balance, and once you're beyond the minimum gear it gets quite easy to deal with.

A different example would be if "tank killer" attacks were composed of many separate, parryable, hits rather than one or a couple big hits.
Instead of "Ultima" that hits for 20k in one hit, where parry is useless because it's unreliable, it could hit 100 times for 200damage. In the latter case parry would put a decent dent in the total damage taken.

I I roll full parry on my PLD. Combining it with Block Rate, the damage mitigation is 10 fold then what warriors can mitigate. Including Bulwark to the list and stoneskin, you will be set.

Of course people will argue otherwise, but it comes down to tanking styles. End game bosses usually do magic damage so parry is usless but mass pulling dungeon mobs who only have melee? That's when you see your parry shine.

Either:

1.) Parry needs to change as a stat or
2.) Encounters need to encourage Parry stacking over Det/Crit stacking for tanks.

If one of the two occurs, parry may become more relevant than it is now. If not, back to Det/Crit we go.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

It's very easy to think about how a random occurrence can be quite beneficial. You just have to give it enough opportunities to be useful that statistics take over. On the attack side, you have Crits, which are clearly valuable to damage.

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Unfortunately Parry is not very comparable to Crit in a defensive sense.

Crit is a chance at dealing 150% damage of a skill. Crit will deal the extra damage and it is always beneficial as it is a consistent drain at a static pool of HP of the enemy.
Parry is not the same, because the tank's HP pool is a constantly fluctuating amount. Parry would be amazing if a tank had 150k HP, and could not receive heals. Then the stat would be very worthwhile taking as there would be many opportunities to reduce the amount of HP you lost from a static pool.

Mathematically speaking it would be more useful in situations were the tanks is subjected to multiple attacks from multiple enemies at the same times that can be parried. Like a speed run for instance. As far as single target encounters are concerned it's negligible but I think this has more to do with the way healing is done more so than the viability of the parry stat in and of itself. Personally I am more in favor of DET/CRIT myself but my statics MT has a Parry/Det setup and does just fine.

I have to agree that the introduction of guaranteed parries or blocks and push for tank dps that seems to be coming in the expansion further marginalizes the parry stat.

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Originally Posted by Whiston

Parry is not the same, because the tank's HP pool is a constantly fluctuating amount. Parry would be amazing if a tank had 150k HP, and could not receive heals. Then the stat would be very worthwhile taking as there would be many opportunities to reduce the amount of HP you lost from a static pool.

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Fluctuating HP has little to do with it. The same holds true even if you include healing, it simply makes the pool larger. Healers are limited in both rate of healing (the amount per second of healing) and total amount of healing (They can heal at X rate for Y time, based on mana). Parry, on average, both reduces healing rate and total healing required.

It's the current structure of the encounters that makes parry a poor stat. That is, a parry is unreliable against spike damage and that's the true threat to tanks.
I outlined two situations where parry would make a meaningful impact on the total healing required.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

Mathematically speaking it would be more useful in situations were the tanks is subjected to multiple attacks from multiple enemies at the same times that can be parried.

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On average, over long times, it does the same thing no matter how many enemies are attacking. A high rate of attacks just means it reaches the long-time steady state more quickly.

It's an issue of stocasticity: If you have a parry rate such that you parry 90% of incoming damage averaged there's no guarantee it'll parry any specific single attack. In the example of 20k in one attack or 20k in 100 attacks. In the former you'd live most of the time, except when you didn't parry and you'd just die. In the latter you'd always take about 2k damage total +/- some varriability.

Hmm? but Parry and Block stats only improves the chances of parrying and blocking happening, dont they?
If that is so, then a skill that guarantees a 100% chance of Parry or Block does nothing for the specific stat... in either a possitive or negative way :/

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Originally Posted by Arkenne

Hmm? but Parry and Block stats only improves the chances of parrying and blocking happening, dont they?
If that is so, then a skill that guarantees a 100% chance of Parry or Block does nothing for the specific stat... in either a possitive or negative way :/

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The idea is that if you can guarantee blocks and parries often enough then there is really no need to stack the stat that makes it happen more often at random. When you need a block or parry, you'll have a button to do it for you. When you don't need one, then you'll just do a tiny smile when it happens and move along.

You're right; it doesn't make the stat any better or worse in a purely numerical sense. In a situational sense, however, being able to guarantee the action the stat merely makes more likely makes the stat less relevant in situations it previously could have been.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Guarantee against chance

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Yup, Im not saying anything against that :v

I mean, its the same as Perfect Dodge, it only allows you to 100% evade one physical attack, and tho it does nothing outside its 5 seconds of effect, it gives you control over a single enemy attack to a certain degree. So it really doesn't improve or nerf your character's chances to evade outside of its effect.

They will only allow you to perfectly parry or block that one attack you want to parry or block, but the rest will still be on lady luck's whims. :v

TL;DR we are in the same channel, as far as I know :/

Personally I think all tanks should have two sets of accessories: one for MT (vit, parry, acc) and one for OT (det, crit, acc). It also gives you options to mix and match as well to create a hybrid.

In ARR parry is very underwhelming for warriors since most attacks in raids are magic and therefore, can't be blocked or parried, and the rate of parry is far too low. Since War are considered the OT they most likely won't be tanking and if your not tanking then you are doing damage. Case and point: T13, where the war spends almost the entire fight, apart from the adds and soaking ankh morn, off defiance.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

Parry, on average, both reduces healing rate and total healing required.

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I absolutely agree with the second part you said about reliability of parry, however this quoted line is absolutely untrue, and it's the reason parry has little value as it stands due to a tank's significantly fluctuating hp pool.

There is no single instance in this game where the ability to parry negates the requirement for healing. If a tank parried an auto attack down from 4200 damage to 3100 damage, this does not yield less of a healing requirement for the healers. Instead this damage taken must be healed up, and in nearly every scenario, parry will only contribute (even more so) to overhealing.

Even if you could quite reliably parry a lot of damage, the healer classes in this game cannot choose to heal 800 damage instead of 1200 damage. They are large bulks of hp healed at once.

But to the core of the topic, all things indicating that each class has a new guaranteed block or parry skill does further diminish the value of the stat. Additionally if group dps becomes more of a focus in the new raids, the other secondaries will contribute quite a bit more in comparison anyways.

It's becoming more useless imo and from what SE has released, it seems that DET/CRIT and soon maybe skill speed are becoming more of the go to stats for tanks after acc is capped. Never understood why people keep trying to defend it, but to each their own.

Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate for having parry in any current fight. But it's really easy to conceive of situations they might implement in the future where parry is actually reliable and useful mitigation - like spike damage being dealt via many smaller hits instead of one big hit.

Even with many smaller hits, while Parry as a stat becomes stronger, parrying itself is still RNG. As an example, if Bahamut's Claw persisted throughout all of T9 then Parry would be stronger as a stat in terms of parrying those hits potentially - but not "reliable". You can't rely on a parry to save you in that situation, you're still going to want to pop a CD that will allow you to live through all the hits assuming that you won't parry one. The same goes for healing, you're not going to account on your tank consistently parrying that sequence because they could easily parry none of it.

So even if you parry something in a tank buster thats split across multiple attacks (like Claw), you're still going to get the same amount of healing and use the same CDs. For tanks, Parry will never be useful for tank busters (you'll still be popping the same CDs) - however, if a tank buster were to have time enough in between each hit for the WHM/SCH to assess how much healing needed to be done for each hit, then Parry would be useful for the healers. On the chance that that is the direction they go, then Parry will give you a higher chance to save healers MP... but I don't think that's going to happen, personally.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate for having parry in any current fight. But it's really easy to conceive of situations they might implement in the future where parry is actually reliable and useful mitigation - like spike damage being dealt via many smaller hits instead of one big hit.

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That is definitely a possibility too. Something like Bahamut's Favor as a regular tank buster, or if some bosses had a Barrage type skill that tripled (or more) their auto attacks. That would definitely increase the value of parry for progression in those sort of situations for sure.

If anything being able to get a parry/block on demand makes STR more desirable since it ups your parry amount. I would say Warriors in general benefit the most from this.

Essentially what Parry is really boiled down to as far as its usefulness is more of a last minute pray to the RNG gods than a really worthwhile stat. It is quite literally the last line of defense tanks have, and as such, mitigation should not just come down to this stat. However, to say it is useless is still folly, especially when it comes to some tank crunches. T9 comes to mind with Raven's Beak. But to understand this, you actually need to understand the order in which damage mitigation is checked. First, your tank toggle buff takes effect (Shield Oath really is the only one that matters here) and then your popped cooldowns are calculated. After these calculations, you have the damage that came through. At this point, things like your block is checked, and then in the case that you don't block, your parry is checked. At this point, you have the total damage that made it through all your mitigation. THIS is where things like Stoneskin and Adlo come in. How many times have you had healers throw those buffs up for a tank crunch, then for some reason, the damage doesn't get through those shields? This is because your block or your parry still took effect and reduced the incoming damage even more. No, this doesn't always happen. Yes, RNG is unreliable. But no, it is not entirely useless. While the benefits may not be out weighed by other secondary stats, it is still, for all purposes, a tanking secondary stat, and anyone who is looking to be a living turtle, can appreciate that fact. Doesn't mean I don't switch from tanking trinkets to dps trinkets still, and frankly, quite often, including for T13. But many people have made excellent points here too. If you can guarantee a block or a parry every so often, the usefulness of the stat is dropping. Further, with accuracy being added to tanking stances, the necessity to build things with accuracy is dropping as well. This is quite pleasing then for anyone that did slot these two stats into their 2.0 relics, since those are pretty much about to become glamour materials.

Parry strength and block strength follow a tiered 41-4x~-tandem Strength gap before an increase in % mitigated.

Pumping more strength into your build isn't going pump up your Block/Parry Strength unless it breaks into the next tier, and you can't stack that much Strength per level without losing a substantial amount of VIT or PDEF/MDEF. Meaning it comes to an EHP loss overall. That's like a DPS sacrificing STR to add more CRIT. Backwards.

SE has deliberately roped Parry off from too much stacking benefits. It's a mitigation feature all classes use, but tanks gain some extra leverage with in their meta by adding the secondary stat 'Parry' to tank gear.

I'm willing to bet that with the level cap rising, SE is going to add some new math to the formula to keep the stat scaling of Parry/Block Strength (and Parry Rate for that matter) normalized.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

I'm willing to bet that with the level cap rising, SE is going to add some new math to the formula to keep the stat scaling of Parry/Block Strength (and Parry Rate for that matter) normalized.

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I do hope this happens as well. I'd really like to see them rework this stat to being more beneficial for the tanking classes, as things like determination and crit rate just seem so backwards to someone who has always loved to tank in other games. I feel less like a tank and more like a durable dps, which isn't how tanking should feel.

Parry really won't become very important until enemies deal consistent high damage instead of the current low damage with a spike here and there.

When we get something like Patchwerk that just hits like a truck every half-second, then it'll be important.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

Parry strength and block strength follow a tiered 41-4x~-tandem Strength gap before an increase in % mitigated.

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Sorry but you are misinformed. There is no tier. The % jump is what shows at 41-42, but as confirmed by SE every point increases your % parry amount. It just doesn't show because it is 31.9% and the game just round sit down to 31% until you get ot 32%.

@ Whiston
Then all fights would be RNG based. As you'd be depending on Parry to win the fight for you and not how the player use their CD's. Same thing happened in FF 11 and it's why Ninja and anything /nin took over the designed tank's job. This would also lead to either War getting it's face raped and PLD taking over due to shield AND parry blocks OR if they majorly increase the worth of the parry stat, PLD becomes worthless as WAR parries enough while still throwing out more damage in tank stance. Lose/Lose situation. Parry imo is fine where it's at as it normally gets slapped onto at least 1-2 gear drops that end up being BiS iirc.

@Ceodore
No one is saying parry is useless. Most people are just saying it's silly to purposely stack it after capping ACC when DET, CRIT, and maybe soon Skill speed do a lot more for tanks. Having that random block pop up is nice, but not nicer than getting a larger hate lead so your DPS and yourself can go all out in terms of damage.

Parry could be a more interesting mechanic of mobs hit you with multihits instead of single hits. If you got hit 10 times for 1000 instead of once for 10000, you'd see more parry procs and it would appear to be more useful, particularly since each hit would hafta meet the parry check. Kinda like Bahamut's Claw, though with more swipes.

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Originally Posted by Steady

Parry could be a more interesting mechanic of mobs hit you with multihits instead of single hits. If you got hit 10 times for 1000 instead of once for 10000, you'd see more parry procs and it would appear to be more useful, particularly since each hit would hafta meet the parry check. Kinda like Bahamut's Claw, though with more swipes.

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That leaves you with the same mechanics we have now. Just more of them. But really imo people are going to hold fast to their faith despite what numbers say because they "feel" it's better. Thus to each their own.

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Originally Posted by Seku

That leaves you with the same mechanics we have now. Just more of them. But really imo people are going to hold fast to their faith despite what numbers say because they "feel" it's better. Thus to each their own.

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Not necessarily. We pop cooldowns to survive big hits that would otherwise one-shot us, but if an enemy is hitting for a medium amount constantly, and it's avoidable, it gives parry more worth. We won't instantly die if we fail to parry like we would with a high damage attack.

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Originally Posted by Zaft

Snip.

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Yes necessarily. We have it in T9 and T13 so far from the top of my head. No it doesn't give parry more worth because as you said we won't instantly die if we fail to parry and one you can't parry I think. If the game ever threw something at us to depend on parry see my reply to Whiston in a earlier post.

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Originally Posted by Seku

If the game ever threw something at us to depend on parry...

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The difference isn't between surviving mechanics or not, because parry will never be held that high as a stat.
The game won't be able to make or break a fight by a parry unless it's in progression, in which case, no amount of parry will overcome simply gearing over the threshold of that lost parry.
The way the game could potentially make parry a useful stat however is to throw attacks at us of a potency and frequency such that increased parry would offset the need for additional healing.

As the gameplay currently stands, the balance between attack mitigation of any form and healing is pretty substantial, and the mitigation format is such that you only have to mitigate enough damage to not die and get healed up afterwards.

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Originally Posted by Whiston

The difference isn't between surviving mechanics or not, because parry will never be held that high as a stat.
The game won't be able to make or break a fight by a parry unless it's in progression, in which case, no amount of parry will overcome simply gearing over the threshold of that lost parry.
The way the game could potentially make parry a useful stat however is to throw attacks at us of a potency and frequency such that increased parry would offset the need for additional healing.

As the gameplay currently stands, the balance between attack mitigation of any form and healing is pretty substantial, and the mitigation format is such that you only have to mitigate enough damage to not die and get healed up afterwards.

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I agree with this one hundred percent and I think healing is something that is relevant to the convo because any healer with his salt isn't banking on a parry as a factor of their healing. Most are pre casting heals in anticipation for damage based on their knowledge of the damage to be incurred, not waiting to see if the tanks parries or not.

They should just make a mob type that gets a stacking buff every time they land a hit that is not parried. That's the only way I could see parry becoming a necessary stat type. Once you parry said auto attack, they lose the buff and it starts from 0 once more. Other than that, a random chance at parry doesn't make much difference, as Whiston has said. Healers are still going to top off the tank, even if they parry. They're still going to use the same amount of MP unless a mechanic is introduced like the one I mentioned. In that case, parrying becomes essential, because otherwise it increases the stress put onto your healers.

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

Honestly, in my opinion, they should just do what they did with healer gear and accuracy. Add a small amount of parry to all tank pieces, and just remove it as a secondary stat on gear for tanks. Healers gain an extra stat slot on their gear for little bits of accuracy. Usually 5-9 accuracy per piece. Up that a bit to say 10-17 parry per piece, and it WILL be useful, since you don't have to sacrifice det/crit for parry.

The tank stats in this game should be -pdt,-mdt and -dt. (they could also vary DET/MDEF) Parry could still be a stat but it needs to be complimented with a stat that matters.

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Originally Posted by Whiston

that you only have to mitigate enough damage to not die and get healed up afterwards.

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You basically killed your entire argument and theoretical situation on how parry could be a useful stat to purposely stack with that line.

@Sirtaint
if they added Def or something to the parry stat or the old -pdt from FF11 onto it, even in small amounts it could become useful. Because eventually, if nothing counter acts Critical rate on bosses, Crit will eventually start giving diminishing returns unless they later allow the damage multiper of 1.5 to increase with stacking more crit. But as the game stands right now, thats also heavily dependent on to what degree Skill speed will effect DoT's.

@Gunsblazing
They already have Parry on gear naturally. Unless you mean parry + the other stats.

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Originally Posted by Seku

You basically killed your entire argument and theoretical situation on how parry could be a useful stat to purposely stack with that line.

@Gunsblazing
They already have Parry on gear naturally. Unless you mean parry + the other stats.

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Excuse me if I have been temporarily unable to read, but I believe that Whiston was arguing against the usefulness of deliberately stacking Parry.

Regarding Gunsblazing, I think he's making a parallel with healers. Right now, healers just have some Accuracy on all of their gear pieces that does not count toward the actual allocation of secondaries on their gear. They're free stat points. Gunsblazing is suggesting that the same thing be done with Parry on Tank gear; just put "free" Parry on everything.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Snip

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Regarding Whiston I was referring to his theory of where Parry could be made useful and his argument against my theory of them having to make it so where you -need- parry to win fights as it is now. But as stated before, would be stupid and as he stated they'd more than likely never allow that, that is forcing players to need parry.

Regarding Gunsblazing, wasn't 100% sure what he was saying. Thus why my second situation of "unless you mean parry + other stats" or as you put it "free parry on everything."