Parry: How would you improve it?

[Jpec07]

Even 600 BA (around double the Protect gives for current ilvl 230 set) woudnt change dmg recieved strongly enough to exchange them for say, 50-60 additional dmg coming from melding full crit + det.
That's my opinion about tanking. If you can survive it, its good time to focus on dmg dealt.
No need to have excessive defense. But i am crazy tanker- 15% HP? GRIT OFF, LD on, Convalescence on! Let the party begin!

I'm kind of impressed by this, though you're not alone. There's a huge mentality that is uniquely prevalent in this game, where tanks get themselves to the point where they can survive the tankbusters (even if only barely) and then throw everything they have into offense. Don't get me wrong; there's certainly nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't make any sense to me. In every other game I've played, tanking has been focused the other way. You do just enough damage to where you can hold hate, and then do everything in your power to mitigate as much damage as possible, even if that means doing less damage than you otherwise could have. It's why my main ideas for improving parry focus on making it a better defensive stat, instead of scrapping it for offense.

[Reynhart]

For me, the parry/block system should be changed entirely.
These should be low-CD actions, or even GCD, and the reduced damage should be tied to the parry stat.

The interesting part about using GCD would be a more complex meta about how many GCD you'd use to reduce damage and how many you'd use to do damage.
And, technically, I think all defensive CD should be also tied to parry. After all, offensive CD are onlys as powerful as your offensive stats.

[Yuni_Queen]

\o/

I fully agree and understand what are you talking about. There are some games, in which i was spamming shield/defence skills only to hold my HP at reasonable level, or to simply have more chances to screw up. TERA is actually a good example. I was playing as Warrior (two swords class) focused on tanking skills. There was no option to hold hate & evade shit and deal dps damage. But heals are recieved every 10 - 20 sec, so it was totally different game.

In FF, there is constant flow of HP restoration, there is that mentality, that even if i get 75% Tank Buster, i don't have to struggle with 25%HP another 15 sec, before i get a heal.
I kinda miss the tanking struggle, the real challenge!
Let's be honest. FF XIV has no challenges for tanks, only for dps'ing and healing. You watch vid, You learn when, where and how, you pop CD with right timing,
you may even make yourself a to-do-list on a self-adhesive card and stick it to the monitor to do not spam your memory with excessive info.
Because you learn fight by heart and simply follow steps. Even if you get Tank Buster... You know you are fine. The tanks problem is to be a tank, when mentioned Buster is coming, thats why WAR is so much easier, since the stance dance allows for a tanking, that this game needs: In opening, so damn BLM won't steal aggro on 2nd Fire IV; and later, during tankbusters.

Tanking is a moment.

If not the critical damage you may recieve, game would be simply fully predictable, no stress at all when lower than 25% on hp...

If Sephirot had RNG for order of his attacks, i would probably sit in Grit with brown trousers, so nobody would notice if i had shit myself.

BONUS:
Do you remember Stone Vigil (Hard) last boss? This is also a kind of tank-less boss i fell in love to.
Reminded me of Monster Hunter series. And kinda made me sad, since that was the only time i was using cooldowns so intuitional...

Now, another idea of making parry usefull, is to simply add Resist Critical statistic to attacks you parry.
600 parry allowing you to recieve 6% lower Critical damage?
I would meld half of my slots with parry, if not all.

[zmandude24]

I'd say that it should scale similarly to crit (as in if you get crit to 200% of normal damage, you get the parried attack to cause 50% of normal damage). However, I don't think it will ever be worth anything for OTs and it's currently mediocre at best for MTs. I personally think they need to make the bosses hit the tank harder in the future so at least the MT needs to focus mitigation.

[ashwich]

There's a huge mentality that is uniquely prevalent in this game, where tanks get themselves to the point where they can survive the tankbusters (even if only barely) and then throw everything they have into offense.

I feel the same way. Unfortunately, it's because healing in this game is way too easy. Healers aren't even GCD capped in entry gear. Mechanics are timed, there's not really constant flow of raid damage, there's hardly any OT damage due to the lack of adds in most encounters. A8S is an exception... but that's about it. This happens in other games when contents are too easy, like when a tank swap to dps gear to solo old dungeons/raid in WoW.

Hence the problem with parry. Currently tanks are giving up a lot for damage, Parry would have to be changed to top all that (tank stance + crit meld's worth), or tanks will have to take a huge nerf to damage done, in order for this to get relevant.

[Aurelinaus]

Here's a fix for parry that I've been popping off here and there

- Fix the horrible scaling, make somewhat acceptable
- Make it like CHR, in addition to increasing effective parry rate by having more of the stat, % parried increases too
- a fraction of % parried returned gets returned as damage or converted to hp/mp (e.g. pld - damage return, war - hp refresh, drk - mp refresh)
- and/or -
- an added effect procs on certain skills/abilities (% chance pld's next GB to add its full damage over time amount to its initial damage; drk - % chance after parry, next DA will cost half MP; War - % chance after parry, gains a stack of wrath or abandon)

[HoodRat]

Here's a fix for parry that I've been popping off here and there

- Fix the horrible scaling, make somewhat acceptable
- Make it like CHR, in addition to increasing effective parry rate by having more of the stat, % parried increases too
- a fraction of % parried returned gets returned as damage or converted to hp/mp (e.g. pld - damage return, war - hp refresh, drk - mp refresh)
- and/or -
- an added effect procs on certain skills/abilities (% chance pld's next GB to add its full damage over time amount to its initial damage; drk - % chance after parry, next DA will cost half MP; War - % chance after parry, gains a stack of wrath or abandon)

Unless parry somehow increases your own dps or mitigates so much damage that healers don't even need to heal you and can dps full time, it will still be in the same boat it's in now.

[Shurrikhan]

Unless parry somehow increases your own dps or mitigates so much damage that healers don't even need to heal you and can dps full time, it will still be in the same boat it's in now.

Or any lesser degree that can still add as much raid damage as the highest weight(s) of offensive secondary stat(s) both while MTing and OTing, or averaging over the two positions.

Here's a fix for parry that I've been popping off here and there

- Fix the horrible scaling, make somewhat acceptable
- Make it like CHR, in addition to increasing effective parry rate by having more of the stat, % parried increases too
- a fraction of % parried returned gets returned as damage or converted to hp/mp (e.g. pld - damage return, war - hp refresh, drk - mp refresh)
- and/or -
- an added effect procs on certain skills/abilities (% chance pld's next GB to add its full damage over time amount to its initial damage; drk - % chance after parry, next DA will cost half MP; War - % chance after parry, gains a stack of wrath or abandon)

• To what? 1% per 25 Parry? (40% bonus parry at 1000?)
• CHR took a blow to actual chance given when it added the % critical damage/healing bonus. If the same were applied to Parry, the stat would be an even more sizable chunk of damage reduced that tanks would be expected to further rely on potentially, while being even less reliable due to reduced parry chance. I could see excess parry chance as increasing effect, so that the Parry stat has some effect on Raw Intuition or when capped with Dark Dance when at, say, 2k Parry, but any other change is really just going to be a nerf in and of itself unless paired with further changes (such as a system increasing parry chance based on %HP that would otherwise be lost, at cost to future parry chance for a balancing duration).
• Counter-damage would serve the same purpose as avoiding Parry outright for more offensive secondary stats. Converting damage taken to HP would work identically to increased parry % mitigation, except that it doesn't increase your one-hit eHP. Converting to MP would be basically waste for all but DRK, and would be better served as a class mechanic.
• So more class/job parry mechanics? Fair enough, but keep in mind what each would actually implicate (e.g. a 1050-potency attack in the form of that GB change, for instance; further MT dependence for DRK; chaotic gameplay for WAR).

[zmandude24]

They can always do the lazy plan of having it give you 0.25 strength per point in tank stance and converting directly to crit in dps stance.

[Ekimmak]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding it, but what I see as the biggest issues with parry are (A) it's unbalanced where it's useful, since Paladins get less use out of it than the other two tanks, and (B) it is completely useless to offtanks. They don't take any physical damage, so it's a dead stat on their gear.

Perhaps make it so that parry has a chance to trigger a bonus auto-attack? Not a "Parry, and you can use this skill" case, or "Parry, and you deal a bit of damage back", I mean when you auto-attack, you might get a second auto-attack, with a chance based off of Parry.

A slight confession, I love the sound effect of a parried hit on paladin.