Parry...

[Casper]

@bok: "because of the unpredictable nature of parries, the DR is actually nearly useless in terms of increasing your Effective HP, since this extra 1.68% may or may not occur when you're about to get one-rounded by a sudden burst from the enemy": Sorry, have to disagree a bit here this is only true for pure burst like death sentence / mountain buster / swarm. In the new coil, those are almost inexistent (swarm is not frequent enough to be a problem or a significant danger and is almost the only case i can think of). For anything that is not that bursty, yes, you will feel the DR, because with ~30% parry and 21 to 40% block, you are bound to mitigate crap; we are not talking about a 10% chance here. I agree though that indeed some attacks can't be parried.


@Zdamned: A shame you drop the ball now i wanted you to go do the same test i did so we could compare numbers. Also, would like to point out: i think i have found the bias you had in T7. Most likely, in one run, you had songs from your bard that hit you to recover tp, while in the other run you had not. I noticed that if the bard was too far away when singing i could just get tp deprived as soon as at 75% of melusine. Even if you get a song a bit later on, having any kind of TP starve is going to impact the results a lot. I am pretty sure this is what happened, and would explain such a massive difference in damage dealt.

[ZDamned]

@Zdamned:... would like to point out: i think i have found the bias you had in T7. Most likely, in one run, you had songs from your bard that hit you to recover tp, while in the other run you had not. I noticed that if the bard was too far away when singing i could just get tp deprived as soon as at 75% of melusine. Even if you get a song a bit later on, having any kind of TP starve is going to impact the results a lot. I am pretty sure this is what happened, and would explain such a massive difference in damage dealt.

I actually never ran out of TP on T7. =P Shield Swipe is a VERY important tool for Paladin TP Management. Once you get the 2nd RoH combo off, you should be using it every time it's up, with only 1 notable deviation for re-applying the RoH De-Buff.

In regards to that point, I highly recommend you macro Shield Swipe in, as the first action you use for both Fast Blade, and Savage Blade. It takes a little getting used to since SS is also a GCD, but once Enmity is established, it's always the best skill to use. (15 seconds into an encounter.)

Also in regards to Bard songs, we have to bards, but only use the Foe Req and Mages Ballad. Paeon only when someone calls for it.

I'll still do your tests on my end as well, as soon as I get the time. I was just summing up my thoughts, and conclusions that I drew, and giving everyone props for making this thread one of the non fail ones in this forum. =P

[bokchoykn]

@bok: "because of the unpredictable nature of parries, the DR is actually nearly useless in terms of increasing your Effective HP, since this extra 1.68% may or may not occur when you're about to get one-rounded by a sudden burst from the enemy": Sorry, have to disagree a bit here this is only true for pure burst like death sentence / mountain buster / swarm. In the new coil, those are almost inexistent (swarm is not frequent enough to be a problem or a significant danger and is almost the only case i can think of). For anything that is not that bursty, yes, you will feel the DR, because with ~30% parry and 21 to 40% block, you are bound to mitigate crap; we are not talking about a 10% chance here. I agree though that indeed some attacks can't be parried.

Ravensbeak in Turn 9 hurts a lot. Rotoswipe combined with Diffusion Ray in Turn 8 too.

Anyway, this is kind of besides the point. Look at it this way:

How does a tank die? Sometimes, the healers are preoccupied with someone else, they make an error, and the tank takes a sudden burst of damage and his HP drops to 0.

How does the tank prevent that from happening with gear? By increasing his effective HP. Effective HP represents the maximum amount of damage you can take without a heal before dying. Remember this definition.

How does the tank increase his effective HP? By increasing his HP (Vitality) or by increasing his damage reduction.

Parry/Block gives damage reduction. Does that mean that Parry/Block increases effective HP? No, it doesn't. It doesn't because when it comes to that burst that's going to kill you, the X% Parry that you get from gear may or may not occur during this period. It MIGHT save you. There is a chance that it will and there is a chance that it won't.

The bottom line is that Parry/Block does NOT increase the maximum amount of damage you can take without a heal before dying. The damage that would have killed you can still potentially kill you even if you added a ton of Parry (and nothing else) to your character's stats. Your Effective HP remains the same.

This is the point I was trying to make.