Parry: How would you improve it?

[Jpec07]

Fun thought exercise. I'd focus on improving the defensive properties of parry; it's the only raw defensive stat we have, so why not make it worth taking for defense purposes? I'd probably do something like the following:

1. Block Rate += Parry - for Paladins in Shield Oath, have the parry stat apply directly to block rate. Paladins have shields, so instead of trying to bat attacks away with their swords, it makes more sense for them to hold up their shields.
2. Base Mitigation - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry also increases physical defense at .5*parry, and magic defense at .25*parry (coefficients subject to change). Parry would still have a chance to proc increased mitigation on physical attacks, but would also provide baseline mitigation.
3. "Magic" Parry - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry can also mitigate magic damage. The rate and amount would be 50% of the rate and amount for physical damage (coefficient subject to change).
4. Better Scaling - either double the rate at which parry affects parry rate, or have parry also affect the mitigation provided by parry while in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit.
5. Critical Block/Parry - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, give tanks the ability to critically block/parry, based on critical strike rating (so a 15% critical strike rating would also give you 15% chance at a critical block/parry, which would block/parry at (145+15)% strength).
6. Parry/Block Critical Strikes - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, let tanks parry/block critical strikes. A blocked/parried critical strike deals damage equal to if it had not been critical.
7. Awareness - to account for above changes, Awareness now also provides +15% parry.
8. Riposte - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry now also provides a chance to deal a 25 potency attack following a parried/blocked attack (chance equal to current parry rate).
9. Battle Mastery - new trait for all tanks, which applies 50% parry to accuracy and 50% parry to critical strike, regardless of current buffs/debuffs. Given at level 30 with job soulstone.
10. Stat Budget - Parry on gear no longer counts toward the overall stat budget of the item, functioning like Def and M.Def, as a bonus for tanks.

EDIT: even though I'm crazy and I try to get as much parry as I can on my gear, I recognize that the stat is relatively weak. This is partially due to the desire of developers to reduce instances where secondary stat allocation caused older pieces to outrank newer pieces for BiS (such that more primary stat is always an upgrade), but it feels like they went just a little too far with that in this case.