A Paladin's opinion on Parry

[AIex]

-Within the bounds of "light party content" the OP has given us-
I want to say that the debate over all secondaries is pointless in this content. Secondary stat tweaking is only relevant in 8 man content that require high dps, intensive healing, and proper cooldown management. All a PLD needs in light party content is the STR/VIT/Defense from their armor, the STR/VIT/Weapon Damage from their weapon, and some common sense that tells them. So if you like parry for some odd reason, go parry. If you like PIE/DEX for some odd reason, go PIE/DEX. Just finish your relic asap and get your STR/VIT/Weapon Damage. It's honestly just content that you run with 3 random people and requires little to no gearing preparation.

[Donjo]

-Within the bounds of "light party content" the OP has given us-
I want to say that the debate over all secondaries is pointless in this content. Secondary stat tweaking is only relevant in 8 man content that require high dps, intensive healing, and proper cooldown management. All a PLD needs in light party content is the STR/VIT/Defense from their armor, the STR/VIT/Weapon Damage from their weapon, and some common sense that tells them. So if you like parry for some odd reason, go parry. If you like PIE/DEX for some odd reason, go PIE/DEX. Just finish your relic asap and get your STR/VIT/Weapon Damage. It's honestly just content that you run with 3 random people and requires little to no gearing preparation.

That's why I stopped my part of the debate. We can circlejerk all day about which combination of stats is more meaningless but the fact is that they're meaningless. What was happening between myself and SirTaint was two things:

1. I took offense to his insistence on providing unusually choice numbers engineered not to prove any particular point but simply to try and make Parry look as bad as humanly possible. I was less trying to prove him wrong and more correcting his numbers. I did give up though when he said his i124 WHM averaged over 2k on Cure 1(A i124 WHM will hit those numbers... during Divine Seal) and 8 attack rounds(GCDs) isn't realistic for a pull(it'll only last less on average if you have 2 BLMs, 1 WHM, and 1 WAR all going ham. Random DF parties will definitely last longer than 8 on average.) since they were so obviously fudged numbers and situations. His bias against Parry is just so high that he's willfully blind to even the smallest possible benefit it can bring. Because...

2. This never really was an argument about secondaries. What it actually was is a conflict between ideologies. I look at a Tank, see that they have the most tools and viable stat combinations of any role, and find that the truest determinant of a Tank's skill and awareness is the ability to read a party and/or situation and choose the best tools for the job. There are no reasonable(ie. stats that have some use to a Tank) stat combinations that have absolutely zero use. My only exception to this is that there is a line a Tank can cross where they have abandoned the core tenets of their role to pursue damage over them and so they stop being a Tank and become nothing more than a DPS who happens to get getting hit in the face instead. Full Strength is therefore not the tool of a Tank but the tool of something else entirely. SirTaint here would obviously disagree as he prescribes to the notion that the only possible build for a "Tank" is Full Strength and there are few people in the entire community who are as cemented into that mentality than he.

And that's what happened. Someone who thinks that every build is viable, has a time and place, and therefore should be considered versus someone who thinks that there is only one viable build. The argument became circular, as most arguments on the internet tend to do. And then the thread got somewhat derailed. Again.

So that's my seven cents on the whole thing. The thread should probably end now. The OP made his point and people acknowledged it. Mission accomplished.