Any research into WAR DEX?

[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]

...

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]

...

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.

[CurlyBruce]

According to the data for PLD, the stacking of DEX would have shown a massive improvement with or without blocking.

The point I was making about that is if Shield Blocks have a specific cap, where as Parry has a higher cap, and Shield Blocks are checked first. The increase to Parry from DEX would seem smaller because Shield Blocks are obscuring the data. Say Shield Block is 25% rate but with the same DEX you have a 50% parry rate. You have to fail the shield check first before a parry goes off, and because you can't shield block and parry on the same attack any attack that passes the shield check will register as a block instead of a parry. So your observed parry rate is lower than it really is because you have an extra level of mitigation to go through first.

[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.

[Stonie]

i'd like to see these #'s as well just for the hell of it, but i don't put much stock into it.
IMHO the 500 HP for 30 vit isn't that great compared to the bonuses you'd get from stack STR, face it, WAR is a leecher, if you do it right you can leech alot of health. most people think of it as seriously underestimated, but if you think about it and use it right it will save your ass really well. i been watching a bunch of vids on Titan and it would seem that if you saved infuriate + 5 wrath, with high enough str inner beast will easily cure you for 1k+ on a non crit, titan seems to like to save his huge attack for the end of the fight, or at least do it so much that you gotta give your all at the moment.i say save infuriate at that moment cuz you might not need it when you use one inner beast right off the bat, as long as the healers pick you up from there, but if they can't you can infuriate for a second inner beast back to back. now you are giving yourself back nearly half of what your lost on your own, if you are in a party with two WAR, then you could bounce hate, it'd work like this, first tank takes the big hit, whats that 4-7k depending on how much def they have, i know all the youtube vids i see the wars seem to take 4 k but i hear 7 sometimes so for worst case senarios i'll put that number up there(even though if you have crappy enough gear[which i am only 49 atm so i would lol, and wouldn't be even trying til i have better] you shouldn't be even trying) then have the second WAR provoke off(puts him at top of hate list) and take the hate off him for a second, he can even have crappy gear and die but it would work at the end because, it would give you a bit more time to heal main tank, second tank would take the next really big hit and not main, at which time main would take hate back with provoke and be ready for the next one. i'd totally take a dive for this purpose if i had to. i know this part is posible, but your main war would HAVE to have lv 90 gear lol

[C-croft]

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.

In the same token, at end game, for WARs with the lack of any real defensive cooldowns, wouldn't every hit be like a burst? From the sounds of it, people are making it sound like healing a WAR is hard, which to me sounds like MP management issues. Spamming cure II isn't effective on MP but if every hit is coming in hard like that, anyone would go down quickly due to attrition. So in a sense, you are right, considering a dead tank is still a dead tank, but I would like to think that in the whole grand scheme of things average incoming damage is very important when it comes to WARs in a group setting, so the WHM/SCH has enough MP to heal the burst.

Second thought: You are definitely right, you have to live through the burst.... no amount of mitigation helps if you can't survive the burst at all.