Parry...

[Menae]

Zdamned, that's... not exactly the point. I'm well aware that paladins block, and then parry. My point is that BECAUSE they block first, that damage cannot be affected by parry, and thus they inherently reduce the benefit they gain from parry:

Let's say a paladin blocks 25% of the time, and parries 25% of the attacks he doesn't block, and let's say a blocked hit reduces damage by 20% and a parried hit reduces it by 20%.

An attack that normally does 10000 damage will hit this paladin for:

10000 damage 56.25% of the time (attack not blocked or parried)
8000 damage 25% of the time (attack was blocked)
8000 damage 18.75% of the time (attack was not blocked, but was then parried)

This means, on average, we expect this paladin to take 9125 damage per attack.

Let's say a warrior also parries 25% of attacks he doesn't block (this is all of them) and parries at a 20% rate. This warrior eats 10 k damage hits for:

10000 damage 75% of the time.
8000 damage 25% of the time (attack was parried).

We expect the warrior to take 9500 damage per attack on average.

Now each of the tanks get a super weapon drop that is exactly like their current weapons except that the new drops have waaaaaaaay more parry rating. So much so, that now both tanks parry 50% of the time instead of 25%.

Now the paladin takes:
10000 damage 37.5% of the time (no block or parry)
8000 damage 25% of the time (blocks)
8000 damage 37.5% of the time (attack not blocked but was parried)

for an expected damage of 8750 per swing, which is an absolute reduction of 375 and an relative reduction of ~4.1% damage taken. Nice.

The warrior now takes:

10000 damage 50% of the time
8000 damage 50% of the time (parries)

for an expected damage of 9000 per swing, which is an absolute reduction of 500 and a relative reduction of 5.2%. Nicer.

By blocking first, the paladin has effectively removed the chance for some of his incoming damage to be affected by parry.