What if Parry was a rate like Block?

It's a simple idea. Block rate/strength comes in a set amount based on shield type and item level. What if Parry worked the same way as a flat amount on tank weapons based on, in this case, only item level?

Parry as a stat has been especially lackluster in HW. It's hard to rely on Parry rating to increase your longevity in fights because it's up to RNG whether or not you parry. While DRK and WAR both have CDs for increased parry chance, it's still just a chance.

The changes to Vit aimed at getting Slaying gear off of the tanks did a little bit to change the "avoid parry" meta, but the fact remains that less parry and more of any other stat is still better. So what if parry was removed as a secondary stat and implemented as a flat rate on tanking weapons?

Well, parry strength used to scale with strength but was removed.

Parrying an attack is not interactive. Parrying an attack is not exciting, fun or engaging gameplay (even with procs). I don't feel like I've done anything to negate some damage and just roll on with my proc.


That's the key of the issue surrounding it as a gameplay stat, that active mitigation is more engaging and rewarding, while parry was neither.
So if parry was like block, it'd still suffer from the current issues surrounding it.
It's boring to itemize around, it's random and not-useful as defense in a spike damage game and it does not engage the tanks, rather relegating them to meatshields who simply take hits and hold aggro.

No pls leave parry off my weapons thank you have a nice day

the could scale it with vit, i dont see too much happening there really,
in fact just make vit the tanks equivalent to healers mind and melees str/dex at like a .8 per point weight and just flush str for tanks down the latrine entirely so theyre balanced and not weird like every other job that has a straight stat for attack and everything else that it does

Parry just needs to not be so lackluster. The goal isn't to remove its stat relevance, just to make it worth stacking. Parry needs some type of counterattack or something included in it and better stat scaling, or largely noticeable overall mitigation. The problem with parry currently is that it is the worst scaling stat AND barely noticeable.

Removing Parry as a secondary stat will not fix the parry problem.

Parry needs to be reliable, making weapons have flat both chance and strength won't do the trick.

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

Removing Parry as a secondary stat will not fix the parry problem.

Parry needs to be reliable, making weapons have flat both chance and strength won't do the trick.

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There's really nothing wrong with how Parry functions. It's 20% physical mitigation sometimes. It's simple and to the point. The issues it has is when brought under the lens of opportunity cost; having parry as a secondary means not having something else, and short of excessive accuracy rating, parry doesn't have a larger stat weight than the other possibilities.

By removing it as a secondary stat, that opportunity cost goes away.

No one would care. Either it would be an optional stat on weapons that any good tank would try to avoid, or it would be a mandatory extra stat that gets ignored for more important stats, like shield block rate on PLD.

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Originally Posted by Destous

By removing it as a secondary stat, that opportunity cost goes away.

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BY removing it in that way, you remove possible additional stat designed for tanks. Stat, that was designed only for tanks.
Spell speed/crit is for casters, piety/whatever for heaelers, crit/det for melee.

Taking away this stat rather than improving how it works, is avoiding responsibility and doing something to piss off.
And that's not what i want to be done with parry.

The way parry functions is wrong, becuase, as i said, it is not a reliable source of possible mitigation.
It needs improving or fixing.
If parry functions so good, why people do not meld it like crazy?
It was rhetorical question, please do not try to convience me by trying to give some arguments you will write while-you-wait.

Parry to be as good as other secondary statistics, needs to be reliable.
Giving weapons flat parry and removing any other sources of parry influence, do not make parry reliable, since you will have no impact on it.
In other words, you will take away the only tank's secondary stat, to conceal the fact, you didnt even bother to make it better: "We removed parry, now, that you have no posibility to worry about it, it's all good."

In my opinion, they should make parry and tower shields block 100% of damage, and shields should help mitigate magic damage based on their size. They should rebalance abilities around this idea. I don't see what the big problem is with cutting the healers a break every now and then by lucking out and successfully blocking. If they really want to make certain attacks always inflict damage, they can stick to magic-based attacks. In my opinion, this would help balance DRK vs. PLD after they sort out the balancing of Dark Dance and Sheltron.

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

BY removing it in that way, you remove possible additional stat designed for tanks. Stat, that was designed only for tanks.
Spell speed/crit is for casters, piety/whatever for heaelers, crit/det for melee.

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The stat's aren't as simple as that...

i.e. there are good arguments for piety builds for blm's, dragoon relies heavily on SkS (well, used to when the stats were lower), mch is crit/w/e (sks or det) but brd is crit/sks, drk and war like sks but paladin abhors it, etc. No stats were designed with one role in mind, so please don't perpetuate that idea.
Crit itself is only seeing a resurgence because of it's scaling being MUCH better than anything we currently have (until SkS gets gcd's under 1.6?s) such that the only class that doesn't really want crit is whm. But I digress.

We have 2 flat increases to tankiness, i.e. vitality and defense.

Parry actually hurts tank itemization. It pigeon holes a lot of builds into either taking only one set of items (i.e. all non-parry accessories) or taking stats which are undesirable in other roles.

If you're TANKING PHYSICAL HITS ALL THE TIME ALL THE TIME NEVER SWAPPING! then an argument can be made for parry given it's a small physical defensive boost (and stop doing DREX only you casual). But even if it is a flat defensive bonus (therefore making it the most desirable stat in the game), it's still only useful to 1/8 (maybe 2/8, your fight may vary) people.

Which creates a secondary issue.
Parry is a secondary statistic.
If parry's defensive bonus is negligible unless stacked to the nth degree, why would I stack 1 stat and force my build around that, when I could get multiple which all increase my damage. The investment and itemization around it may force some distasteful choices resulting in too much/too little of other stats to play my class effectively.

If parry's defensive bonus is noticeable when not stacked to the nth degree, as I said, it's a secondary stat. It instantly becomes the best secondary in the game for most classes, because it's meldable 4x on crafted accessories. Survivability is amazing in progression and while 12 crit isn't going to be missed much, if parry is noticeable even when not stacked to the nth degree (and given most dps accessories don't have parry on them), you can get 200+ parry along with 75 vitality on all your dps and healers, making them muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sturdier, which is very desirable.

Which outlines the two of the main issues with parry:
It forces tank itemization down specific paths (which sucks) and it has little wiggle room. On top of it being a boring defensive stat (who ever goes "fuck yeah I parried something" (unless it's followed by "REPRISAL BITCH")), it doesn't have much of a future.

In an optimization problem, there is one stat that you try to maximize. The other stats are generally constraints that you have to meet, but not maximize. Crit and det are examples of things that you try to maximize (depending on whichever one gives you the best dps return). Accuracy (and to a lesser extent skill speed) are examples of constraints, with cut-offs that you are required to meet in order to avoid losing out significantly on dps.

The problem with Parry is that it isn't something that you want to maximize (i.e. it doesn't increase your dps), nor does it act as a constraint (there is no minimum parry threshold required to survive an encounter). Average mitigation tends to be more important in attrition fights. But this game isn't designed like FF1, where you need to get through Gulg Volcano on only 4 casts of your WHM's Cure 1. As a result, we tend to just ignore parry and minimize it.

Block is nice because it's free. As a weapon property, there is no trade-off involved in blocking. There are two advantages to OP's suggestion. One is that you are no longer losing out on stats by gaining parry. Second, it gives us transparency on how much of a defensive advantage PLD gains from block, and makes it easier to normalize PLD's 1h block and parry rates against the 2h parry rates of the other two tanks.

If you want there to be a dedicated but meaningful "tank stat", then it will either end up being a constraint (meet this minimum value in order to avoid dying), or something you try to maximize when actively tanking (i.e. a counterattack stat). I personally see the latter as more interesting, but it also runs the risk of further forcing tanks to specialize into MT and OT roles based on their gear choices, which I'm not so keen on.

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

The way parry functions is wrong, becuase, as i said, it is not a reliable source of possible mitigation.

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The way that Parry functions is fine. It holds a low stat weight because it's based on RNG. There's no discussion on altering block because block rate and strength are baked into the shield and not put on PLD gear as "block rating".

The problem with parry rating comes down to opportunity cost of having parry instead of crit/det/sks/maybe accuracy; and there's really no way to "fix" it so that it's competitive with those stats; it'll only be "less bad" to have a lot of it.

Let's say parry makes your next attack crit/lowers your next GCD by x%/increases the damage of your next skill by x%; it's still worse than just having more crit/sks/det.

It's worse because getting a parry is RNG and stacking sks/crit/det for a desired effect is better than having a parry proc as a middle man.

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Originally Posted by Violette

Which outlines the two of the main issues with parry:
It forces tank itemization down specific paths (which sucks) and it has little wiggle room.

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Yup, it sucks. And it does already exist. DRGs relaying heavily on SkS are rather history as well as ninjas melding SkS...
There are better and worse meld choices. Melding full SkS or even just a little for ninja is a waste, while melding Det for BLM is not too efficient compared to spell speed and crit rate.

You are saying that making parry stronger it would state which path should be taken to be most efficient.
But that's how it is already. Crit has highest AP per point, Det is just behind, and rest are there somewhere. Se meta already exist.
Changing parry that way won't change the meta itself.

Btw:

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Originally Posted by Violette

(and stop doing DREX only you casual)

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Please explain what is written here. i literally have no idea if you are offending me or just joking.
For your sake you pray it is this second... >:C

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

Btw:

Please explain what is written here. i literally have no idea if you are offending me or just joking.
For your sake you pray it is this second... >:C

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1. Don't make threats, that's not making me want to answer.

2. It's because dungeons tend to have heavy physical damage, with very few magical attacks, as opposed to raids, where the dangerous damage is more mixed (or magical).

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Originally Posted by Violette

1. Don't make threats, that's not making me want to answer.

2. It's because dungeons tend to have heavy physical damage, with very few magical attacks, as opposed to raids, where the dangerous damage is more mixed (or magical).

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Abandon Topic.
Still have no idea what DREX is.
And quess my joke missed you at doorway as well ._.

Sohm Al is a good example of way more magical dmg than physical, but yeah, most dungeons have less those.

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Originally Posted by Yuni_Queen

Abandon Topic.
Still have no idea what DREX is.
And quess my joke missed you at doorway as well ._.

Sohm Al is a good example of way more magical dmg than physical, but yeah, most dungeons have less those.

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Duty Roulette EXtreme.

And while bosses may tend toward more magical mechanics, trash still is mostly physical across the board. Which also the only place parry approaches its true defensive values, but that's another post in another thread

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Originally Posted by Violette

On top of it being a boring defensive stat (who ever goes "fuck yeah I parried something"

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I love to parry things. Suddenly taking less damage is cool.
Sure it's not the best stat out there, but it is performing it's function right now.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I love to parry things. Suddenly taking less damage is cool.
Sure it's not the best stat out there, but it is performing it's function right now.

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I stand corrected but that's still a rare case.

PARRY IS FINE THE WAY IT IS

I once thought about the notion of attaching ingrained Parry statistics into weapons ala Paladin Shields... but keeping the Parry stat in place as-is.

Currently a Paladin can stack Parry to, by virtue of rolling both Block and Parry against a physical attack, end up in situations where they do something to reduce physical damage for 50%+ of physical attacks. That is not too shabby, if I say so myself. It's not particularly helpful when the major threat is singular large hits(seriously, why aren't there more multi hit physical busters. Geez...), but it's neat to be able to reach those numbers. So it'd be interesting to let the other two tanks reach that ~50% threshold if they wish to but it would kind of step on the one actual mitigation advantage Paladin has.

Another thing I wondered about is what if SE put Parry on all Tank equipment the way Accuracy was on 2.2+ Healer gear? A completely free stat that just slowly raises as your item level does. Another aspect of better gear making you just a little bit tankier. Shrug.

Of course, none of this would actually fix the issue of Parry being underwhelming as a stat. There seems to be talk of reworking it in either 3.4 or 4.0, so there's that. I mean... nothing SE can do to the stat will make the current generation of players actually want to stack it, but one can appreciate their intent.

The shield is PLD's mitigation gimmick, all the tanks already have one (WAR has self heals, DRK has the parry-Reprisal fusion that basically functions like a built-in Eye for an Eye). So I wouldn't want to see that kind of free passive mitigation just handed out on a platter to DRK and WAR. They don't really need it.

The only way to make Parry meaningful in my opinion is to follow the Wrath - Abandon model where Parry is converted to Crit between MTing and OTing based on stance. I.E eliminate the stat and just convert Crit into Parry when you go into tank stance, or the other way around and elminate Crit from tank gear and just convert Parry into Crit when turning off tank stance/turning on DPS stance.

Its the only way to not make Parry conflict with DPS stats. And I hate the ideal of just putting it on a Weapon a la rate/strength stats on PLD's shield, or just slapping it by default on all of our gear as a 3rd secondary, as it eliminates the need for the stat period if its just a thing that goes up whether we choose to or not why not just code it into the job itself? It would also have to scale insanely slowly so as to not reach a point where we're parrying everything.

Yeah, that's why I'm kinda "eh" about those ideas. One leans toward homogenization and the other is just a cop-out.

But... yeah. I don't see any viable way for Parry to be wholly defensive and desired at the same time. Not without redesigning a lot more than just the stat.

Sit tight for next patch where Parry is BiS. /s

inb4 it might actually be.

My issue with Parry converting to straight DPS gains (ala a replacement to Crit Rate or Determination), is there would exist the same lack of itemization we have now, just on the opposite end of the spectrum. That is not the best solution to my problem with the Parry secondary. But it certainly is a simple solution.

Personally I'd like to see Parry secondary enhance itemization and bring more sophistication to secondary stat allocation (and the debates that go along with that):

What if the Parry secondary scaled like Accuracy. We need 'so much' before we hit a cap. The secondary scales up Parry proc chances much-much better, but hits a cap that is based on the enemy mob (like accuracy).

Or the Parry cap scales with iLVL, which increases itemization min/maxing as we progressively upgrade in iLVLs (each individual upgrade raises the ceiling to permit dumping of extra Parry secondary).

But, that is still only half of a solution.

The other half is ensuring that stacking Parry secondary - at all - provides added measures of significance for tanks. The mechanic of Parry procs themselves are arguably just as much of a problem as the scaling of their secondary.

Personally, I don't see much improvement in Parry - as a mechanic - unless each tank had their own unique perks & gains from those Parry procs. What about a Parry-specific job trait unique to each job? Benefits as powerful as: each Parry proc increases attack speed by 10-20% for the next two GCDs (raw intuition == presence of mind)? Parry as a secondary increases SwO AA potency (like Determination use to)?

First Parry - as a proc mechanic - needs to be more desired (preferably for reasons unique to each Job), and then the secondary, with better scaling, has a fluctuating cap placed on it. That is the sort of itemization I'd like to see.

I believe they did mention looking at enhancing Parry as a secondary in a recent LL, but I hope they don't provide a cut-corners solution. I guess it depends on how far they're willing to go with an adjustment.

Causing Parry to function like Block would only increase its value over the course of an expansion, and only by some 25-30%. It would not make it more reliable, manipulable, tactical, or interesting.

If you increased the general value of RNG mitigation and made parry and or block mitigate flat amounts, or a flat amount and a percentage both, and/or have a minimum average internal cooldown, etc., then you might see some more interesting effects. My bet is that it won't be interesting, however, until we have more ways to actively control resourced backing or fueling our parry, block, and dodge rates and strengths.

As it stands, the RNG mitigation categories already fight each other when it comes to mitigation given. The strongest prevents any weaker from occurring; they cannot stack, and there is no advantage in an otherwise successful role going unused (in actuality, never being rolled at all) since it isn't saved. If, say, they all worked instead on components of flat mitigation based of X factors and percentile mitigation based off Y factors, those elements could instead stack, such that, say, a Blind via Dark Passenger and a Dark Arts Dark Dance could actually indirectly improve parry chance, rather than cutting it shorter. There are engagement and tactical advantages to either system, if not more so to our current non-stacking one, but until RNG mitigation has that kind of strength through decreased self-conflict and increaseable reliability, it's going to mostly remain a joke against most forms of damage for which a set eHP is needed.

No matter what they do with parry it wouldn't change a thing in most cases. As long as it remains a defensive stat it keeps being neglected because it will always be a chance and will not contribute to damage.
If they turn parry into something like retaliate though it would be interesting, as in reflect the portion of the damage you just parried back to the attacker.

I would like to see parry being reworked as a form of reflect for warriors and dark knights.... for paladins as a form of blocking. Or even diversify parry or block when used on weapons,armor or accessories...

but SE knows better so lets see what we can get....

basically in general the consensus is parry doesn't help my mad deeps so it's worthless

No, it's worthless because it's unreliable even when stacked to the nth degree. The fact that it doesn't improve damage numbers is the piss icing on this shit-cake.