Why Avoid Parry?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

This is part of the reason there are less and less tanks and healers these days. SE needs to find a way to give DPS a 3-fold job to balance it out or remove DPS stances from tanks and healers and removing 1 item from each of those lists (which is honestly what I think SE needs to do).

DPS do have other things to their job, support and damage. However, the balance of the game is based off damage. If you remove damage from Tanks the entire engine would have to be recoded to change enmity. If you remove damage stance from healers then you risk losing all of your raiding high end population, due to the fact that most content can no longer be cleared.

So, SE would need to recode their entire game to balance it around such changes.

Honestly, Everquest did a "different" approach:

Tanks had:
Damage, Sustain, Self-Healing.

Healers Had:
Healing, Damage, Buffs, Wards

DPS Had:
Support, Damage, Debuffs, DPS Buffs, Hate Transfers.

Giving DPS classes debuffs, DPS-buffs and hate transfers would fix the issue.

Imagine Black Mage having a buff, which transfers 10% of the damage he does to the tank as enmity?
What if Ninja had a buff that increased a target's casting speed by 10% every time he scores a critical hit for 10 seconds?
What if Dragoon had a debuff which increased the chance of the entire raid to score a critical hit against the mob?
What if Machinist had a buff which increases the attack speed of the raid?
What if Bard had a buff that increased the damage of another person and gave them a proc that lowered enmity gain?
What if Bard and Machinist had a buff that raised the damage of a tank class and gave them a proc that increased enmity gain?
What if Monk had a raid wide buff which increased the ranks damage reduction?


What if DPS had to do more in the raid then just damage? In Everquest a lot of times DPS classes had to do the mechanics of the raid, like hitting levers in the right order to weaken the monster.

In the Djinn Master fight, DPS classes had to jump on keys in a correct order to make a song or the Djinn Master would not take damage and constantly pulse AOEs.

[Jpec07]

I will say it again (and I'll edit the original post to include this):

Killing a mob faster is only viable as mitigation if the damage prevented is greater than the damage that would have been prevented by instead passively mitigating it. Killing a mob faster to save .3% damage by stacking Crit is not viable as mitigation if a full Parry build would have saved you .5% incoming damage.

I'll need to look at some parses later to determine how much damage a tank can save by killing a mob faster versus wearing full Fending, but I have a very hard time believing that tank DPS can have such an effect on the rate at which mobs and bosses die as to make Crit, Skill Speed, or Det more worthwhile than Parry for mitigation.

As a note, I'm not denying that Alexander (+Savage) 1-4, and most of the bosses from 50-59 and Fractal Continuum and Neverreap are kind of backwards for this mentality. But in my mind (which I guess I'm trying to clear up about this), I'd tend to think stacking Parry would be a much better idea for trash pulls than DPS stats, especially large ones, where you're facing a lot of physical auto-attacks.

"But cooldowns!" Do provide the majority of mitigation. Yes. But that applies to literally every other stat on gear as it contributes to tank survivability. Parry from gear applies on top of that in most cases, and so still provides extra mitigation.

Again, not trying to argue this. I just want to understand it. I apologize if I'm getting aggravating about it, I just really don't get it.

[Rhais]

This is part of the reason there are less and less tanks and healers these days. SE needs to find a way to give DPS a 3-fold job to balance it out or remove DPS stances from tanks and healers and removing 1 item from each of those lists (which is honestly what I think SE needs to do).

If anything there are more tanks and healers, not less. Though if they removed tanks and healers ability to contribute dps I think you would see the amount of people playing them drop quite a bit.

[Dante_V]

Hold on, the logical conclusion of your thoughts here would suggest that a Dragoon could be a viable tank since healers can pre-cast everything in scripted fights and you're leaning heavily on dps output as a form of mitigation by proxy.

Actually no, that's not a logical conclusion at all, that's an informal fallacy. Tank viability isn't /solely/ on dps at all, nor has anyone or myself proposed that it was. We are specifically discussing secondary stats in conjunction with tanking in regards to parry vs other secondaries. Context seems to be a little hard for you to grasp but either way your conclusion isn't "logical" in any sense of the word. Dps synergy with certain TANK moves and cool downs was what we are saying, the increase in damage secondaries in conjunction with these abilities is greater mitigation than that from stacking parry. This isn't an opinion, it's been tested many many times. Because you choose to misrepresent the argument due to your inability to either understand or compose a counter argument doesn't change that. If you want to get upset and foot stamp off because parry isn't a good stat then that's fine with me, go play Bard. Either way it isn't going to stop anyone from researching or discussing the issue at hand. If you want parry then stack it until you are blue in the face, it won't matter or affect me one iota. Good luck.

[Izsha]

Parry:
Doesn't work on all attacks. As people have said. Phy only. Titans mountain buster, phy. Lots of stuff I'm game looks like magic but is phy. This has been tested for years. Trust us.

Does not work on magic. See above

Does NOTHING when you off tank.

Must be facing the target.

Doesn't matter for spike damage tank busters. Healers and tanks must premet8vely buff to prepare for a buster. You can't wait to see if you parried before you pop sentinel or cast adlo. So even 8f you do parry it saves no CDS or MP because players must act with the assumption they won't parry because mitigation is a premptive task and good healers are precast ing the cure to top you off before the damage hits.

Parry is the last thing to proc. Evasion checks then shields then parry. So plds automatically reduce the value of parry because shield procs water it down including shelltron spam. If you shelltron you won't parry that hit etc. War has a parry ability for 100% parry. So gear means nothing when you can turn parry on so frequently without gear. Similar with drk theu can up parry rate with a skill making gear less useful.

NOW you can add in the terrible scaling. It takes 100s of parry to increase your rate. I forget the exact numbers. May look them up and edit, but it's horrible.
_____________
Compare that with any dps stat. Works MT and OT. Works on all mobs. A tank is always hitting something. Therefore dps stats are always useful. Parry is not always useful, and when it is, it is not very important.

Parry is a situational OK stat. 8f this was FFXI where you change gear then it would have a place. But most fights the MT and OT are forced to swap. So right there parry use is cut in half because you only tank half the time. Then of that 50% only some of it is physical. Of that some of it is busters which are irrelivant. Of what's left pld procs shield block 1st (including shelltron) and wars have a 100% parry buff watering down the effect of parry further.

EVERYTHING in this game reduces the value if parry. When you combine it all, it's just a bad stat, while dps stats are universally good in every situation. It's just how the game is designed. Parry is just crap.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I will say it again (and I'll edit the original post to include this):

Killing a mob faster is only viable as mitigation if the damage prevented is greater than the damage that would have been prevented by instead passively mitigating it. Killing a mob faster to save .3% damage by stacking Crit is not viable as mitigation if a full Parry build would have saved you .5% incoming damage.

I'll need to look at some parses later to determine how much damage a tank can save by killing a mob faster versus wearing full Fending, but I have a very hard time believing that tank DPS can have such an effect on the rate at which mobs and bosses die as to make Crit, Skill Speed, or Det more worthwhile than Parry for mitigation.

As a note, I'm not denying that Alexander (+Savage) 1-4, and most of the bosses from 50-59 and Fractal Continuum and Neverreap are kind of backwards for this mentality. But in my mind (which I guess I'm trying to clear up about this), I'd tend to think stacking Parry would be a much better idea for trash pulls than DPS stats, especially large ones, where you're facing a lot of physical auto-attacks.

"But cooldowns!" Do provide the majority of mitigation. Yes. But that applies to literally every other stat on gear as it contributes to tank survivability. Parry from gear applies on top of that in most cases, and so still provides extra mitigation.

Again, not trying to argue this. I just want to understand it. I apologize if I'm getting aggravating about it, I just really don't get it.

Parry would be better on trash pulls? No.

DPS and Critical Stacking is a lot better, especially on a Warrior:

Pull a bunch of trash, stack up all of your damage buffs and pop vengeance: You heal for the damage you do and are constantly overpowering which is giving you massive sustain because your healing for how much damage you do. A critical hit will make you heal for even more.

Damage multiplies with stats, unlike Parry, which is always the same value.

Honestly, if they removed Parry from the game and replaced it with something like: Max Health? Then I would consider it a very valuable stat. However, as it is.. No.

[Syzygian]

Can someone please explain to me why anyone wanting to find value or potential value in defensive secondaries for tanks is consistently met with these absurd straw man arguments suggesting that they are trying to abolish tanks' ability to dps completely?

Most of these arguments are moot anyway as you have to have full sets of asavage/upgraded eso/diadem gear to choose from in order to have 0 parry on your character and finally be branded a good player. /s

And at that point you've cleared all that content and the extra dps is merely bragging rights. Its impossible to avoid parry in progression so bickering about whether or not to stack it is pointless. Just make sure you have the vit to survive and the most str that you can muster.

[Freyyy]

snip

But we're saying again and again that the passive mitigation granted by parry is :
- Unreliable, while more damage is always reliable
- Only physical, while killing things faster prevents all types of damage
- So low that it's not even noticeable, while DPS secondaries are a very noticeable increase in DPS

What is missing here for you to understand ? You can even add that more DPS secondaries = more self-healing via lifesteal = mitigation as well !

Parry IS shit as it is right now. Bottom line.

You seem to also think that doing more damage only grants a group the ability to kill the boss 2-3sec faster. It's not only that. It also permits to push phases earlier and sometimes it makes you able to skip completely some mechanics. It can literally cheese the fight. And tank DPS helps a LOT with that. Much more than what you seem to think.

[Jpec07]

Actually no, that's not a logical conclusion at all, that's an informal fallacy. Tank viability isn't /solely/ on dps at all, nor has anyone or myself proposed that it was. We are specifically discussing secondary stats in conjunction with tanking in regards to parry vs other secondaries. Context seems to be a little hard for you to grasp but either way your conclusion isn't "logical" in any sense of the word. Dps synergy with certain TANK moves and cool downs was what we are saying, the increase in damage secondaries in conjunction with these abilities is greater mitigation than that from stacking parry. This isn't an opinion, it's been tested many many times. Because you choose to misrepresent the argument due to your inability to either understand or compose a counter argument doesn't change that. If you want to get upset and foot stamp off because parry isn't a good stat then that's fine with me, go play Bard. Either way it isn't going to stop anyone from researching or discussing the issue at hand. If you want parry then stack it until you are blue in the face, it won't matter or affect me one iota. Good luck.

Technically, that's argumentum ad absurdum, wherein he ignored other important details to present an absurd conclusion as a grounds to debase the argument (when the argument itself precludes such a conclusion from its given facts).

Tanks are tanks because they have a greater ability to mitigate incoming damage, and are built to generate more enmity. Those are the two fundamental goals of tanking (because if you do those two and those two only, barring any failure to perform on the other party members, the group will succeed). In the current paradigm, the thought seems to be that Parry isn't as valuable because you'll gain more "proxy" mitigation by killing the mob(s) faster, preventing their damage. If that was the only source of mitigation? The highest DPS should be the tank. Hell, outside of tankbusters, there really isn't much benefit to bringing tanks to Alexander Savage.

I'm not denying that damage contributes to mitigation. What I'm trying to understand is whether Parry's scaling is really so poor that the mitigation by damage increase from not having Parry is greater than the mitigation that having Parry would provide.

RNG arguments don't really fly, as long as the presented rate translates (roughly) to "real world" performance.

EDIT: I also am not denying that current encounter design might be counterproductive to the effectiveness of Parry, as there is a very clear lack of outgoing damage to make tanks value mitigation. This is more just asking about general job design for tanks, and whether Parry really is such a subpar stat.

[Dante_V]

I will say it again (and I'll edit the original post to include this):

Killing a mob faster is only viable as mitigation if the damage prevented is greater than the damage that would have been prevented by instead passively mitigating it. Killing a mob faster to save .3% damage by stacking Crit is not viable as mitigation if a full Parry build would have saved you .5% incoming damage.

I'll need to look at some parses later to determine how much damage a tank can save by killing a mob faster versus wearing full Fending, but I have a very hard time believing that tank DPS can have such an effect on the rate at which mobs and bosses die as to make Crit, Skill Speed, or Det more worthwhile than Parry for mitigation.

In regards to dps/mitigation synergy it isn't only just "killing the mob faster" that makes dps stats more viable, while that does help you also need to consider that 2 of the tanks are built in a manner that have dps/mitigation synergy. Meaning they can turn outgoing damage into HP recovery, sometimes at very substantial rates. In regards to secondaries specifically, at any given ilvl you will have static amount of secondary points available. This is known in the community as the "stat budget" of an item. Within that budget there are relative caps for each secondary in regards to SE's decision and the "weight" of the stat. So stacking parry means sacrificing another stat. Due to the nature of dps and mitigation not being mutually exclusive in practice and design of the tank classes, but only in actual stat budgeting, taking damage stats not only allows you to kill the enemy faster but also achieve greater utilization of the abilities that synergize with dps stats.

Now there are ways they could fix parry as a stat to alter the balance here, but in regards to it's very low stacking rate and limited utilization, along with the healing and tank meta it becomes more advantageous to take another stat if possible in it's place. This doesn't mean parry is useless per se, just that there are other stats available that will achieve greater mitigation in it place.

Also I don't think your question or inquiry is unreasonable at all. SE doesn't make these things very obvious and in some cases makes very questionable decision in regards to stats specifically involving tanks. If you would like to see some hard scientific data on the issue I would check out the FFXIV reddit forums and do a search on parry stats or stat weights for tanks. There is some pretty comprehensive research on the issue that has been done by the raiding community if you are interested in that type of thing.