not new to tanking, but new to ffxiv.

[Teiren]

I should clarify about why parry is so stupid in this game.

It only works for physical attacks to your "front" in a game where target circles have four 90 degree quarters, not two 180 degree halves like WoW and many MMORPGs like WoW. At the same time, enemies literally push each other around to make room which inevitably means your flank is getting hit all the time. Even against a single target boss, the tank will have to move sometimes which again causes the flank to get hit. Therefore, Parry as a whole will be next to useless until it's changed so you can parry from flank, as well as block from flank for that matter. It does not matter if it makes no "logical or roleplay" sense. You have to give some of that up to facilitate functional gameplay.

That's not even mentioning how some enemies use magic damage as their auto attack and so parry does absolutely nothing for that. But this isn't as important as the former issue.

[Niwashi]

It only works for physical attacks to your "front" in a game where target circles have four 90 degree quarters.
... Therefore, Parry as a whole will be next to useless until it's changed so you can parry from flank, as well as block from flank for that matter. It does not matter if it makes no "logical or roleplay" sense.

I think so long as they exclude attacks from the rear, that would cover the logical and roleplay concerns well enough. An agile fighter should be able to swing his weapon or shield around as needed to meet attacks from either side (leaving only the question of how you'd meet multiple attacks at once, but that's kind of a separate issue from direction). They could even do something like Parry is at at full effect for attacks from the front and you have 50% or 70% of it's normal chance for attacks from the flank (and it doesn't work from the rear). It would still be a lot better than the current frontal-attacks-only rule. And I agree with you that they're going to need to fix this to make Parry useful. Maybe that's some of the fiddling that they'll be doing with it for 4.0.