Serious discussion: 3.2 Materia slots, Tanking, Parry and You

[Ironos]

b

If I am reading you correctly that would imply the Primal gear has materia slots and Esoterics will not? Just want some clarification.

Based on what they've said, yes that's what I've gathered. Lore gear and Midas gear will have materia slots, though it's all just guesswork based on what they've said until we see the patch notes, or the patch itself.

[Syzygian]

If I'm accuracy capped, and I get a piece with say, Crit/Det and manage to cap SkS on that same piece using materia with slots to spare, guess whats going in those last slots?

Parry. #dealwithit

On a serious note, I really wish they would come out and address parry in some fashion. People have been complaining about it longer than almost anything else in the game, everything there is to complain about that people have collectively complained about, they've fixed, Parry they actually screwed up -more- (although I'm glad they put a cap on Dexadins, because that was utterly idiotic). And there are so many threads like this where all people can talk about is how bad it is (like they're having the same discussion for the first time that they've been having on every one of these threads for 2 years). Isn't anyone interested in figuring out rare scenarios where it might be useful? And then of course there's the fact that 35 Parry = 1% parry rate which I'm almost certain is false nowadays, but no one cares enough about the stat to do accurate testing.

They also should make some more tanking secondary stats that are practically no-brainers/inexcusable for us not to have. For instance, why isn't there a stat equivalent of Convalescence that contributes to healing received? Why isn't there a stat for Parry strength (We have Crit strength and rate now, in one stat no less)? Why isn't there a stat version of Awareness that guards against being hit critically? Why don't we have a stat that benefits both magic and physical mitigation (Det affects magic and physical DPS...)? Hell, why isn't there a (visible) stat for evasion? We have cooldowns that boost all of these invisible stats but no way of seeing or modifying them ourselves.

Why isn't Parry a Weapon stat? You parry with your weapon. That's what you use to parry, that's what parry means. Having parry on rings and pants makes ZERO sense. You wouldn't put block rate/strength on your feet or choker would you? Hell, why don't blocks and parries deal recoil damage?

These are all "DUH" stats it really feels like we should have. If we got to stack these instead of crit/det/sks and still had the same high overall attack power and weapon damage it would really go a long way to making tanks feel more like tanks while not removing their potential for high DPS. It'd make the game more interesting, imo.

[Violette]

fuk ur long quote

Except so far they've implied that all pieces for raid are going to have 1 (1) materia slot, maybe 2 on body pieces because you cannot overmeld them (that one is guaranteed).

As for a stat that increases both magical and physical mitigation (hello mdef/def stats).

Parry was useful in T1,T4 and T5 because those mofo's hit hard and you took every bit of protection you could.
Then we got Scob.....yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Also, why are people still discussing this. Took me like 2 minutes to write up a post answering the question

[Grux]

Wonderful insights.

They also should make some more tanking secondary stats that are practically no-brainers/inexcusable for us not to have. For instance, why isn't there a stat equivalent of Convalescence that contributes to healing received? Why isn't there a stat for Parry strength (We have Crit strength and rate now, in one stat no less)? Why isn't there a stat version of Awareness that guards against being hit critically? Why don't we have a stat that benefits both magic and physical mitigation (Det affects magic and physical DPS...)? Hell, why isn't there a (visible) stat for evasion? We have cooldowns that boost all of these invisible stats but no way of seeing or modifying them ourselves.

Brother of light, these are excellent points. The invisible stat makes it difficult to see diminishing returns of mitigation stats. But it seemed structured that way from the start. Since the only way we can mitigate further (passively) is by increasing gear ilvls - a little one track.

In WoW, there was a stat called 'Resilience' - the more you have it the more damage reduction you get (if I remembered correctly) but I digress.
It would be quite cool if they revamp Parry to have a bit of a Counter damage everytime you parry.

For eg:
Each parry would counter 1-5% of damage taken back to the attacker.

Or each successful parry would reduce next incoming damage by 5%.

I think the problem with FFXIV in regards to stat customization, materia and whatnot, is that the scaling is linear.
This means that each point of stat has already a fixed amount of weight.

That's why it is a structured in such a way that:
1) You are not able to calculate or see the diminishing returns.
2) There will only be one "best" materia, given all other materias out there.

Now, imagine if diminishing returns are in place. Now that would make things a hell lot more interesting.

Why isn't Parry a Weapon stat? You parry with your weapon. That's what you use to parry, that's what parry means. Having parry on rings and pants makes ZERO sense. You wouldn't put block rate/strength on your feet or choker would you? Hell, why don't blocks and parries deal recoil damage?

Too much truth in this.

Also, why are people still discussing this. Took me like 2 minutes to write up a post answering the question

I was reviving a topic that SE has dodged for a long time. I think discussions like these would help spark some innovation and creativity from SE when it comes to stat customization and damage design.

We can only hope. Quoting another brother of light:

One day they'll fix Parry. One day...

[Seku]

Post.

I sorta wish dex was still around for parry rate. Just to see how DRK and NIN would operate.

And parrying with your neck is the new craze in 2016. Takes blood tanking to a new level.

[Brian_]

Lots of incorrect posts in this topic as per usual about any topic about parry.

The main problem with parry is that it has no impact on how tanks are healed. A longer fight with more physical hits is not going to do anything to help parry because you are missing the primary limiting factors on the consistency of parry -- tank HP, damage intake, and healing potency. Saying this just shows you have absolutely no grasp on healing mechanics in this game.

Currently a randomly parried hit is not going to increase your healer's DPS up-time. It's not going to allow them to stay in cleric stance for an extra GCD. Why? I'll give a simplified example of this using A3S numbers (since A4S is primarily magic damage).

Tanks generally have 17k HP for the fight. Average AA damage is around 2000. Average Fluid Swing hits for 8000. Average Cure I is around 3000. Average Cure 2 is around 5k. Average Regen tick is around 1000.

400 less damage on a AA doesn't mean anything. Even 1600 less damage on a Fluid Swing means very little. Neither parry adds up to enough damage reduction to negate a necessary heal. So, again, your healer is expending the same GCD count on you parry or not.

Now, why I said tank HP is a limiting factor is that with a max HP of 17k, assuming the hypothetical situation where you have a 33% chance to parry, over the course of going from 100% to dead, based off only AAs, you will have parried 3 hits for a total damage reduction of 1200. That is not going to mean anything to a healer.

But, if tanks had 100k HP, the math changes. From 100% to dead, you will have parried roughly 7k damage. You actually save your healer 2 GCDs worth of healing. Unfortunately, even with the changes to STR and VIT, we are probably not going to see tanks with enough HP to give parry enough RNG HP buffer to consistently result in fewer required GCDs of healing. This is why crit, which is similarly based on RNG, is unconditionally valuable. The RNG buffer it relies on is the raid boss's massive amount of HP. Over time, crits are going to shave down the amount of GCDs you need to kill the boss.

[Awful]

In WoW, there was a stat called 'Resilience' - the more you have it the more damage reduction you get (if I remembered correctly) but I digress.
It would be quite cool if they revamp Parry to have a bit of a Counter damage everytime you parry.
:

Resilience affected PvP the more you had the less dmg you took in PvP/ chance to be critically hit it wasn't a tanking stat. Now on live they don't have it they have you wear PvP gear in PvP it increases it's ilvl in PvP (arenas, BGs, rated BGs, etc).

[Violette]

Worlds worst example was here.

I don't think the reason parry is bad is because it doesn't let your healer dps. Could just be me though. Could also be its low % damage reduction in specific situations, the lack of reliability, lack of ways to increase meaningfully (negative scaling and all) and lacklustre base line. It must be because it doesn't let healers dps.

[Arkenne]

Hrm... correct me if Im wrong but...
Wasn't it mentioned that Main Stat materia would only be banned from overmeldings??

Doesn't this mean for Tanks that they can invest their accesories sure slot onto STR materia since VIT would already be maxed out and overmeld with substats?

It would give them some more parry power there, too.

Current parry rate at 23% would give you a rough passive defense over unlimited attacks of 4.6% (0.23*0.2=0.46).
Increasing that to 29% parry gives you a rough passive defense over unlimited attacks of 5.8% (0.29*0.2=0.58).

This also kinda bothers me... 0.23 * 0.2 = 0.046 and 0.29 * 0.2 = 0.058 last time I checked

[Jpec07]

The main problem with parry is that it has no impact on how tanks are healed. A longer fight with more physical hits is not going to do anything to help parry because you are missing the primary limiting factors on the consistency of parry -- tank HP, damage intake, and healing potency. Saying this just shows you have absolutely no grasp on healing mechanics in this game.

Except a long fight with more physical fights really is going to help.

The effect of Parry is cumulative over the duration of a fight. A good healer will never top you off all the way, and will wait to heal you until the full effect of their heal can be played onto your HP bar. Minimizing overhealing is the best way to conserve MP, which is absolutely essential for some of the marathon fights out there (how many 5% wipes happen because of healers going OOM?).

In this case, the 400 less damage you take adds up for each 400 damage mitigated. Assuming your numbers are right and Cure I heals for ~3,000 HP, a Cure I can be foregone for every 8 parried AAs, which add up to 3,200 damage mitigated. I'll admit that this seems low - assuming a 100% Parry rate, this will take 24 seconds to be felt (barring any haste effects or specia attacks). However, when fights run 5-10 minutes long, getting 8 parried autoattacks becomes increasingly possible.

And especially since the aggressive meta is, by all indications, disappearing in 3.2 (and because healer DPS isn't calculated in the item-level-appropriate tuning of fights), it stands to reason that slotting Parry might be in everyone's best interest.

*ducks behind his shield to avoid the parry haters*

This also kinda bothers me... 0.23 * 0.2 = 0.046 and 0.29 * 0.2 = 0.058 last time I checked

It's ironic, the percentages he listed line up with your decimals, so I'm guessing it was just human error, and that he wrote the maths out after doing the calculation.