Parry...

[ZDamned]

Alec, I appreciate your response!

I fully understand that my findings are more anecdotal than anything, as my sample size is only Turn 4, and my group composition is quite powerful, thus lowering the umber of attacks I can tank, Further more, my group is not made up of robots, so their rotations, and thus, kill speed differs per wave.

My findings in my opinion are just as I mentioned early on in my OP. Lets as a community question what we are doing, instead of blindly following things.

Kirtu posed a theory as well: Parry caps at X%, and we need Y Amount to achieve that cap per monster level we face.

My intended goal is to find the most optimal way to prepare my Paladin for Coil 6-9. If adding 30-50 DPS is possible, I would gladly run the entire fight with a "Fight or Flight" effect permanently on just form gear alone.

Typically I achieve 85 DPS with Paladin, if I can up that to 120, I would say that's not just acceptable, but preferred if it only means dropping off the chance to parry a negligible amount.

If on the other hand, Parry per point is better than the proposed number in this thread, I can justify more into it, however I would need to find a number that is at least 7 times greater in order to care, since Determination will have a FAR greater effect on the course of any given battle, than say, 1% parry chance per 90 points of parry.

Mind you all, my proposed BiS set is not absent of parry either, however the choice for the developers to reduce our amount from i90 potential is also questionable as to their views of how tanks should be geared.
-Full High Allagan awards 154 Parry
-Full Noct awards awards 159 Parry
-Full BIS i90 awards 256 Parry
-Full Parry i110 awards 234 Parry ----while at best with food giving only 465 Accuracy (Not even enough for Coil 1-5)

Those numbers should be indicative of something a miss here, they wouldn't just up ilvl while down grading our mitigation would they?

[Kitru]

Kirtu posed a theory as well: Parry caps at X%, and we need Y Amount to achieve that cap per monster level we face.

I really want to test this out, and tt shouldn't actually be all that hard either, given a decent parsing tool. All it requires is finding out whether there is a straight up cap to parry chance (easily done by just getting attacked by a low level enemy) and then testing out whether that cap is present when fighting enemies that are "harder" (e.g. the same level as you). You could test it further by slowly reducing your parry rating and seeing if parry chance goes down immediately or whether it remains the same until you go under a certain number.

Typically I achieve 85 DPS with Paladin, if I can up that to 120, I would say that's not just acceptable, but preferred if it only means dropping off the chance to parry a negligible amount.

That seems really low to me, even for a PLD. In tank stance and using i90 pure tank gear, I regularly manage 150 DPS as a WAR; my PLD friends manage ~120 in similar circumstances. The only time they don't get those numbers is during AoE scenarios or those with extended downtimes.

Those numbers should be indicative of something a miss here, they wouldn't just up ilvl while down grading our mitigation would they?

It should be kept in mind that most of the slots in the two i90 sets both have parry rating on them whereas there is only a single slot in the 110 sets that has parry on both sets (Body); for every other slot (not counting Ring, since you wear both of them), either Noct or High Allagan is lacking parry rating. As such, just listing total parry per set isn't providing an accurate measure of what the devs are "providing" for the given tier.

There are only 2 reasons I can imagine for the devs to deviate so far from what most would consider to be the "proper" way to itemize tank gear (e.g. lots of parry and acc; very little det, crit, or speed). Either the devs want to force players to both spend soldiery tomes and run content to get functional tank gear (either of the i90 sets works out quite well; going either full Noct or full High Allagan is a bad idea) or they are trying to send a message that stacking as much parry as we have been is basically wasted and are designing said sets to "encourage" players to stop doing so.

[reckless76]

I was told at some point while leveling a paladin that parry doesn't work if a mob is behind you or on your flank. That said, nearly every tank I've run T4 with has let themselves become completely surrounded every chance they got. So, if the tip about parry is correct, and if the OP tanks T4 the way I've seen it done so often in the past, then I'd say no conclusion could be drawn from this test at all.
If the tip is wrong, I'd like to know cause I bust my @ss all the time trying to keep all mobs in front of me and wouldn't mind quitting that.

[ZDamned]

That seems really low to me, even for a PLD. In tank stance and using i90 pure tank gear, I regularly manage 150 DPS as a WAR; my PLD friends manage ~120 in similar circumstances. The only time they don't get those numbers is during AoE scenarios or those with extended downtimes.

This is dependent on which Parser you use, they deviate, however the one I cited my numbers from is my FC's Standard tool, which is not always indicative of accuracy.

Perhaps we can work together and find a common tool to test with? because my warrior in my preferred set can manage ~235 DPS, so I'm not sure how our parsers differ.

It should be kept in mind that most of the slots in the two i90 sets both have parry rating on them whereas there is only a single slot in the 110 sets that has parry on both sets (Body); for every other slot (not counting Ring, since you wear both of them), either Noct or High Allagan is lacking parry rating. As such, just listing total parry per set isn't providing an accurate measure of what the devs are "providing" for the given tier.

That being said, I find the Only Soldiery set worth mentioning, because the full i100 set is obtainable as the best possible gear to the players who cant raid Coil. AKA "Casuals". I have bounced the term Myth Heroes of 2.1 around, but in 2.2, Myth is the new Darklite, and so Weathered Soldiery is the new Myth. that is the highest Achievable solo gear, along with the Animus Weapons.

[ZDamned]

I was told at some point while leveling a paladin that parry doesn't work if a mob is behind you or on your flank. That said, nearly every tank I've run T4 with has let themselves become completely surrounded every chance they got. So, if the tip about parry is correct, and if the OP tanks T4 the way I've seen it done so often in the past, then I'd say no conclusion could be drawn from this test at all.
If the tip is wrong, I'd like to know cause I bust my @ss all the time trying to keep all mobs in front of me and wouldn't mind quitting that.

I tested this yesterday, and it is true, you can NOT block, OR parry anything behind you or too far to your side.
ALSO!
I do NOT tank T4 like a moron. I in fact hold everything in front of me, and did so for each of my runs.

[reckless76]

Thanks for clearing that up. Didn't mean to imply you were a moron, but I really do see this with disgusting frequency. As I main a white mage these days, it's pretty frustrating. Is it really that hard to run a couple circles to bunch up the mobs? Is it ignorance?
Whatever their problem, I'm sure your healers and AOE dealing DPS appreciate your efforts.

[Skull_Angel]

I tested this yesterday, and it is true, you can NOT block, OR parry anything behind you or too far to your side.
ALSO!
I do NOT tank T4 like a moron. I in fact hold everything in front of me, and did so for each of my runs.

It was also found that blockable enemy AE attacks/specials could be parried/blocked from any direction (back and flank included).

On the matter of enemy positioning; for myself, if it is a large group and I've already spent a decent amount of time positioning them (say 2~3 globals) I try not to worry too much when an enemy or two repositions them self too far to the side to parry, at that point I find allowing Damage classes to focus (melee positioning themselves optimally and generating hate for ranged classes to unload) is a more important contributor to overall damage mitigation.

[ZDamned]

So, after re-testing on a Striking Dummy, my Paladin is getting 115 DPS in Parry gear, and 135 DPS in my Cirt/Determination set. I personally find that to be significant enough a change to be worth looking into if Parry is not as good as we all think it is.

[PetiteMalFleur]

As a healer I've found healing tanks wearing dragoon gear to take a ton of spike damage.

Maybe you didn't appear to take as much damage because your healers had good mitigation on you.

[SwordCoheir]

As a healer I've found healing tanks wearing dragoon gear to take a ton of spike damage.

Tanks don't need to wear Dragoon armor in order to have competitively equal DPS gear. The only real difference when it comes to my DRG and my Tank DPS gear is my DRG gear has around 30% less Def, and 60% less M.Def naturally (Inverse for BLM/SMN gear) so yes they'd take more damage than they should be taking. Gear homogenization pretty much eliminates the gear deficiencies between classes leaving only the Job/Classes natural Traits, Attributes, and Abilities to differentiate the power of classes. If they are wearing DRG/MNK gear though while tanking, shame on them.