DEX with War

[Gamemako]

Why Militia, and not Darksteel?

He got an ilvl90 AF+1 helm, and needed to fall back on something. I do think, though, that it would have been better to use ilvl60 Hoplite instead.

From what I've read online spending full attribute points on DEX only gives you a ~1% chance TO parry.

This is simply false. Ninjiitsu found that with 486 parry, adding 30 points of Dexterity (216-246) increased parry rate by 3.55%. This is about 0.118% parry rate per point. At 456 parry, he tested 216-266, an increase of 50 DEX. This yielded an increase in parry rate of 4.72%, or about 0.0944% per point. These are all subject to random error and so on, and nobody has the volume of data needed to make a good prediction on the exact formula.

[Ysarel]

Adding DEX in every tested case that anyone has done has increased parry rate. The exact formula isn't known, but nobody has managed to find a case where adding DEX did not increase parry rate. That does not mean the addition of a small amount of DEX will be noticeable, however.

I am not aware of any testing involving sufficiently small variations in DEX at a sufficiently high level of confidence as to support your assertion. Care to provide a link to your source(s)?

[Mishini_Dracoto]

Why Militia, and not Darksteel? That's what has me confused about this post. If you are going to spend money into melding Materia, you should hold off until you at least have the good suit of armor. I used AF -> AK -> DL -> AF+1. The only real plausible deviation I respect from that, is at any step, moving to HQ Darksteel & melding.

[Yunnie]

The correct answer is... If your considering melding dex, then you should instead meld DET! If you cannot meld DET, you should then go for CRIT... If you cannot do that either... Then you should then go to ACC...

This is considering you cannot meld VIT

[Gamemako]

The correct answer is... If your considering melding dex, then you should instead meld DET!

Determination is generally a poor stat for tanks. The impact of determination on weaponskill damage is negligible, so it offers little in terms of enmity gain. It is just a small boost to DPS primarily through autoattacks. It does not affect anything else that happens to a tank -- not damage taken, not evasion, not healing received, not parry, nothing. Quite the opposite to your claim, DEX should be fourth in line: VIT & ACC to content requirements, then STR, then the two parry stats. DEX is more valuable per point than Parry in every known test, but the two may be better in combination than by pumping one or the other -- not enough data to say for sure.

[Yunnie]

Determination is generally a poor stat for tanks. The impact of determination on weaponskill damage is negligible, so it offers little in terms of enmity gain. It is just a small boost to DPS primarily through autoattacks. It does not affect anything else that happens to a tank -- not damage taken, not evasion, not healing received, not parry, nothing. Quite the opposite to your claim, DEX should be fourth in line: VIT & ACC to content requirements, then STR, then the two parry stats. DEX is more valuable per point than Parry in every known test, but the two may be better in combination than by pumping one or the other -- not enough data to say for sure.

So the tool tip about increasing healing received via spells is false? I'm surprised SE would would advertise a false statement on their tool tips.

[Paikis]

So the tool tip about increasing healing received via spells is false? I'm surprised SE would would advertise a false statement on their tool tips.

It does not say anything about healing received. It specifically states

"Affects the amount of damage dealt by both physical and magic attacks, as well as the amount of HP restored by healing spells. Auto attack potency is also affected."

Your interpretation is incorrect. The wording could be done better though.

[Gamemako]

I am not aware of any testing involving sufficiently small variations in DEX at a sufficiently high level of confidence as to support your assertion. Care to provide a link to your source(s)?

If you review review Ninjiitsu's data and Hulan's data via Valk, you will find no other reasonable conclusion at this time. No, the data is not good, and the relationship is complex (especially with Hulan's data, which includes both parry and blocking both), but, there is an effect observed with every DEX interval.

So the tool tip about increasing healing received via spells is false? I'm surprised SE would would advertise a false statement on their tool tips.

As Paikis pointed out, it doesn't actually say that. The wording is just a bit poor. However, tooltips are pretty bad in general in ARR. "Clusters are unavailable in the beta version", anyone? And Steady Hand tooltip on the buff itself is wrong, saying 10% instead of 20%.

[Phreak]

As Paikis pointed out, it doesn't actually say that. The wording is just a bit poor. However, tooltips are pretty bad in general in ARR. "Clusters are unavailable in the beta version", anyone? And Steady Hand tooltip on the buff itself is wrong, saying 10% instead of 20%.

For spending 2ish years rebuilding this game 'from the ground up' it's a bit disheartening to see how much seems to be a copy/paste job.

[Ysarel]

If you review review Ninjiitsu's data and Hulan's data via Valk, you will find no other reasonable conclusion at this time. No, the data is not good, and the relationship is complex (especially with Hulan's data, which includes both parry and blocking both), but, there is an effect observed with every DEX interval.

Neither data set nor the combination of the two provides enough data, much less good data, to support your conclusion. What conclusions we can draw from them does not extend to anything remotely close to sub-1% levels of accuracy. If this is all there is then we do not have enough data at this time to determine how exactly the effect of DEX on parry is calculated.