Any research into WAR DEX?

[Terabyt3]

Not to dismiss your tests or anything but you do realize that even if you can get Parry relatively high (say 30-40%) it's still not reliable in any way shape or form, and honestly would only be directly comparable to Shield Blocks from Paladin. It's all well and good to block sustained attacks frequently and reduce the damage by ~25% but when that big hit comes and you fail the parry check, what do you do then?

I'm only talking about the effectiveness of VIT vs. DEX/Parry over sustained fights (Majority of battles in game) not counter burst damage.

How does a PLD counteract a burst damage? I'm not wised up on the class all too much but as I understand they have 1.5k~ less health, rely on block and parry to avoid damage and pop cool down pre emptively to counter big hits?


Whereas a WAR seems to answer reactively to big hits. I.E. their cooldowns and larger HP pool allow them to take a hit and then heal themselves.




This whole DEX/VIT discussion is ONLY about the 30 bonus points right now. And main comparisons like i say are in sustained combat.

[CurlyBruce]

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Ah, sorry I thought you meant gearing for DEX as compared to VIT/STR. A PLD and WAR have the same effective HP because the 25% boost from defiance allows a WAR to stay alive for the same amount of damage as a PLD taking 20% less damage. The only HP difference is from base job advantage where the WAR has about 85 more HP. PLDs react to burst damage like you said by preemptively popping a damage reduction cooldown. The problem lies in how PLDs burst mitigation compares to WARs. WARs self heals are severely outclassed by mob damage at endgame levels. As many other people point out, PLDs mitigation scales with the mobs stats not the players and mob stats scale exponentially higher than players. WAR self heals are reliant on their own damage which scale at a rate that is almost invisible compared to how much damage you take from bosses.

[C-croft]

Ah, sorry I thought you meant gearing for DEX as compared to VIT/STR. A PLD and WAR have the same effective HP because the 25% boost from defiance allows a WAR to stay alive for the same amount of damage as a PLD taking 20% less damage. The only HP difference is from base job advantage where the WAR has about 85 more HP. PLDs react to burst damage like you said by preemptively popping a damage reduction cooldown. The problem lies in how PLDs burst mitigation compares to WARs. WARs self heals are severely outclassed by mob damage at endgame levels. As many other people point out, PLDs mitigation scales with the mobs stats not the players and mob stats scale exponentially higher than players. WAR self heals are reliant on their own damage which scale at a rate that is almost invisible compared to how much damage you take from bosses.

The way I look at it is, if his data is correct, he is one step closer to the 'solution' than naysayers regarding DEX, trolls, and 'qq'ers. With such a small sample, its hard to say either way. With increased parry rates coupled with our relatively lame CD's and self heals, maybe this is what they mean by research more. Still holding out judgement until the test sample grows. I am half tempted to see what happens when I dump everything in DEX and try to take some samples from that. Worse case scenario, 20k seals shouldn't be that hard to farm with FATES on a lower level character.

[CianaIezuborn]

I'm only talking about the effectiveness of VIT vs. DEX/Parry over sustained fights (Majority of battles in game) not counter burst damage.

When was the last time you died due to a healer that was only healing you running out of mana? That is the only scenario that sustained damage over the entire fight is even important in the manner that you're approaching it. No ifs, ands, or buts. No.

You die to burst, or you die to healers not putting enough heals into you. Average damage taken over the fight does not matter, what matters is surviving the fight.

I do believe that at some point, stacking enough Vit, you will then want to favor avoidance on a certain ratio. From what I've seen of stats, if they remain linear, it's a LONG way off but still possible. The first step is having a comfortable HP lead over the highest reasonable burst you will face. I'm actually a heretic in some tanking circles for even suggesting that much, but I've done math in other games to support it. Please continue to put together numbers to shed light on the effects of avoidance stats, but please, for the love of all that is holy.

Never suggest that sustained damage is even close to the importance of the ability to survive burst. Never. They aren't even the same concept when it comes to tanking.

I seriously thought you were trying to find a way to lower burst damage by stacking dex, which I was trying to explain was counterproductive when the alternative is EHp. But never suggest that average incoming damage is anywhere near as important as ability to survive burst.

[CianaIezuborn]

There is one thing to consider, and I'm setting it in a separate post so that it is not confused with the above point.

It's possible that at a certain level of Dex/Parry that 100% of hits taken could be parried. This would effectively change Parry from Avoidance to Mitigation. With the current numbers I've seen, I highly doubt this is possible in reality, however I have noticed that the increases appear to be linear with no current sign of a soft cap or built in diminishing returns.

That would then cause Parry to effectively increase your EHp against physical damage mobs, and would make it acceptable to rush stack Parry/Dexterity to reach that point. This would be similar to WotLK era tanking where you first needed to rush avoidance to remove crits off the table before stacking HP.

Which brings up another interesting point, and that is has anyone done any testing with high amounts of avoidance and crits taken?

[CurlyBruce]

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If WAR can get 100% parry rate then PLD can get it too. PLD and WAR share all gear and have pretty much the same stat spread. I've mentioned it before but if Parry was supposed to be a main form of mitigation for WAR they would not have changed Foresight from 1.0 (parry boost) to what it is now (worthless). They moved the parry boost to LNC for some reason and unfortunately LNC is not one of WARs sub classes. As far as avoiding Critical Hits, the only ability in the game that prevents critical hits is Awareness.

[C-croft]

If WAR can get 100% parry rate then PLD can get it too. PLD and WAR share all gear and have pretty much the same stat spread. I've mentioned it before but if Parry was supposed to be a main form of mitigation for WAR they would not have changed Foresight from 1.0 (parry boost) to what it is now (worthless). They moved the parry boost to LNC for some reason and unfortunately LNC is not one of WARs sub classes. As far as avoiding Critical Hits, the only ability in the game that prevents critical hits is Awareness.

Unless there is a way to boost a WARs parry to the point a parry boost is moot. If DEX is the hidden modifier for doing that, it could be WAR specific. Just because WAR gets it doesn't mean a PLD has to as well. According to the OPs data, PLD and WAR do not share the same affect on DEX.

PS Foresight in itself sounds like a parry boosting ability. Should have renamed it to Itsjustafleshwoundsight.

[CurlyBruce]

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It would be highly illogical that SE would only add a hidden modifier on a single job out of the 9 jobs in the game, and only DEX when it comes to parry rate. You can't make any sort of statement from the data he's posted so far because the sample size isn't nearly big enough. The margin of error is too wide to make any significant guesses as to how much it's affecting the parry rate. There are also other factors that could be involved. The limited parry rate testing that was posted from Valk-Dancing mad lacked information on whether they tested just parry w/o a shield on the PLD. From what I understand the test was done for Shield Blocks specifically but because they had the data they included parries as well. We don't know the priority of Parry vs Shield. Maybe both PLD and WAR gain the same boost from DEX for parry but because Shield Blocks are checked first you won't see as many parries on a PLD.

For the record, I'm not saying OP is wrong or that his test is pointless. I'm saying if he really believes this as a possibility he needs to do extensive testing before posting any results. Wide-eyed enthusiasm after a few short trials only helps to spread misinformation about whatever it is we're missing about WAR. Frankly I'm convinced the "more research" comment was a backhanded way of saying "We don't know what's wrong either so you guys figure it out". I would rather keep my hopes low and be proven wrong than keep my hopes up only to have them come crashing down.

[C-croft]

It would be highly illogical that SE would only add a hidden modifier on a single job out of the 9 jobs in the game, and only DEX when it comes to parry rate. You can't make any sort of statement from the data he's posted so far because the sample size isn't nearly big enough. The margin of error is too wide to make any significant guesses as to how much it's affecting the parry rate. There are also other factors that could be involved. The limited parry rate testing that was posted from Valk-Dancing mad lacked information on whether they tested just parry w/o a shield on the PLD. From what I understand the test was done for Shield Blocks specifically but because they had the data they included parries as well. We don't know the priority of Parry vs Shield. Maybe both PLD and WAR gain the same boost from DEX for parry but because Shield Blocks are checked first you won't see as many parries on a PLD.

For the record, I'm not saying OP is wrong or that his test is pointless. I'm saying if he really believes this as a possibility he needs to do extensive testing before posting any results. Wide-eyed enthusiasm after a few short trials only helps to spread misinformation about whatever it is we're missing about WAR. Frankly I'm convinced the "more research" comment was a backhanded way of saying "We don't know what's wrong either so you guys figure it out". I would rather keep my hopes low and be proven wrong than keep my hopes up only to have them come crashing down.

We're going down the rabbit hole here. According to the data for PLD, the stacking of DEX would have shown a massive improvement with or without blocking. But we have both agreed at this point OPs sample size IS too small.

And illogical is the new logical when it comes to FFXIV. Anyone can see that WAR isn't where it should be on the tanking ladder at this point in time. But I feel the same as you and would rather not come crashing down.

[Eej]

It would be highly illogical that SE would only add a hidden modifier on a single job out of the 9 jobs in the game, and only DEX when it comes to parry rate.

I would not be surprised simply if it was a last minute change to make WARs have slightly better mitigation, with the reasoning being that they miss out on half the passive mitigation of Paladins due to no shield.