Parry...

[ZDamned]

Gear list for my Results:

Crit/Determination Set: W/ HQ Buttons in a Blanket
Wave ShamShir
Wave Shield
High Allagan Circlet of Fending
Valor Surcoat
Heavy Allagan Gauntlets
Heroes Belt of Fending
Heavy Allagan Cuisses
Weathered Noct Greaves
Heroes Necklace of Fending
Tremor Earrings of Fending
Weathered Noct Wristlets
Heroes Ring of Fending
Vortex Ring of Fending

Stats: ilvl 93 W/ HQ Buttons in a Blanket
Strength - 371
Accuracy - 491
Critical Hit Rate - 401
Determination - 281
Parry - 449 (I'm editing my last post, I must have misread the number last night, I had way less parry than before. =P)
Defense - 762
Skill Speed - 406
Attack Power - 371 (I guess this just mirrors strength?)

Parry Set: W/ La Noscean Toast
Allagan Blade
Weathered Noct Hoplon
High Allagan Circlet of Fending
Valor Surcoat
Valor Gauntlets
Allagan Plate Belt
Valor Cuisses
Weathered Noct Greaves
Allagan Choker of Fending
Allagan Earrings of Fending
Weathered Noct Wristlets
Heroes Ring of Fending
Allagan Ring of Fending

Stats: ilvl 94 W/ HQ La Noscean Toast
Strength - 372
Accuracy - 512
Critical Hit Rate - 356
Determination - 235
Parry - 564
Defense - 762
Skill Speed - 382
Attack Power - 372

[PetiteMalFleur]

My only real experience healing a dps geared tank is from a long while back. It was with a FC group trying to clear Titan HM for the first time. The MT died and the OT wearing dps gear was one shot by the next mountain buster despite having cooldowns up. He was a PLD.

I'm sure in content like t4 it isn't much of a difference with how geared out people are now, but if my tank were eating plummets with little parry I'm certain I'd notice this.

[ZDamned]

My only real experience healing a dps geared tank is from a long while back. It was with a FC group trying to clear Titan HM for the first time. The MT died and the OT wearing dps gear was one shot by the next mountain buster despite having cooldowns up. He was a PLD.

I'm sure in content like t4 it isn't much of a difference with how geared out people are now, but if my tank were eating plummets with little parry I'm certain I'd notice this.

This is not Titan HM were talking about.
This is deep end game content, post Coil.
And Eating Plummets with less parry is something you would NOT notice, because it's an attack that doesn't happen enough, nor does it hit hard enough. 2000~ Damage is a 300-400 Damage mitigation with a parry, and it comes randomly baked in with an added Auto Attack for another 1.1K as well. You won't notice 300-400 damage fluctuating because of double and triple hits, and even full on parry tanks don't parry every single plummet.

PS: You can tank Titan HM on a Dragoon if your healers are good enough thees days.

But DPS Geared in this thread does NOT mean Strength accessories! I'm so tired of people thinking that I am sacrificing Vitality... I have 7100 HP tanking in T6/7, and I do not dip below this number.

[MythToken]

By process of elimination, what you've effectively said here is "of the other secondary stats that matter to non-mages, determination doesn't have diminishing returns, but the others do/might under certain conditions", so why the immediate "Um no" response?

All of the data is out there, in past threads. Sorry I will not link it for you. But stats in this game are LINEAR, get over it.

The only exceptions are speed, because it literally does nothing but TP starve you.
And ACC because after a point it doesnt help you, yet it is still linear.
More acc will give you the exact same increase in accuracy
More crit will give you the exact same increase in crit
ect ect ect

Search the forums, and stop being lazy.

And get over the idea of soft caps, this isn't wow.

[MythToken]

When I say DPS gear, I meant to say DPS Fending gear, and it is in Shield Oath that I gain 30 DPS going from Parry to Crit/Det. Sword Oath, I tend to hit the 185 DPS mark in the Drit/Det set.

My groups Warrior does keep Storms Eye up.

Ok everyone! Results are in! Here are my Parse logs from tonight's T7 Clear, and my first T7 Clear on Sunday.

Damage taken on Turn 7 169,119 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage taken on Turn 7 173,978 in Crit/Det Gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

Damage Dealt on Turn 7 64,879 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage Dealt on Turn 7 73,719 in Crit/Det gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

-EDIT- Fixt the Parry Numbers I mis read it initially, and had reported 479 in Crit/Det gear. SORRY! =P

I will GLADLY take 4859 damage to gain a level 1 limit break every 6 minutes.

How long was each fight? These numbers don't mean anything without a time.

[ZDamned]

The Parry gear fight was exactly 6 minutes and 18 seconds. I'll have to re-load my logs from the Crit/Det gear fight to give you that ones exact timer.

Honestly though, the fight, no matter how long it takes, wipes you at 7 minutes. It's an enrage that hits the entire party for 25,000 damage. So Real world numbers say The boss has 532,000 HP, so that's how long the fight is. Time is irrelevant realistically. If your killing it faster, then you ARE mitigating better, and taxing your healers less.

The boss also has an innate DPS that is visible, but in the end, If the boss deals 2000 DPS for Example, and you kill it 30 seconds faster, then you just mitigated a theoretical 60,000 damage. If I recall, (Don't quote me on this, I'll get the real number soon) the T7 boss deals only 270 DPS on average. So if we kill her 30 seconds faster, that's a mitigation of 8.1K caused directly by increased damage being put out. (Strangely enough, that's almost exactly how much less I took in Parry gear.)

The reason I don't sacrifice Vitality for damage, is because that's a guaranteed safety net. My healers have reliable breathing room with each point of Vitality I gain. Sacrificing that for Strength is only useful if your healers don't need as much breathing room. So for this fight specifically, I would actually start to equip Dragoon gear as we gain in Party ilvls. Killing her faster saves us a LOT of headaches. I will be slowly swapping gear pieces in favor of Strength each week we clear it, until my healers tell me to stop. (I do EVERYTHING with their permission BTW, because I tank for my group, not for myself.)

[MythToken]

I agree with your theory zdamned, I just wanted the times, so I could calculate exact amount mitigated and dps increase.

Time is very important to the things we are discussing because that would give us how much damage you mitigated per minute. Where as all we have now are how much total damage you mitigated.
If your crit/det gear damage taken of 173k was done in 3 minutes(rounding), then you actually took 346k theoretical damage compared to the 169k in the 6 minute fight parry geared.

Obviously I am exaggerating, but with damage taken per minute/second numbers we can get a better idea of dps increase vs damage taken. And weigh the trade offs.


I am very interested in your gear choices though, and your general approach.

I am still wondering if this applies to warriors since we can't block. Parry is our shield.

[ZDamned]

Basically, what my theory is set out to prove, is that Parry isn't working as well as we all like to think it does, so in that respect, I feel that it would give similar if not better results for warriors. Unchianed gives you essentially a 20% boost on the Crit/Determination stats and as such, your buffing you best stats.

[bokchoykn]

When I say DPS gear, I meant to say DPS Fending gear, and it is in Shield Oath that I gain 30 DPS going from Parry to Crit/Det. Sword Oath, I tend to hit the 185 DPS mark in the Drit/Det set.

My groups Warrior does keep Storms Eye up.

Ok everyone! Results are in! Here are my Parse logs from tonight's T7 Clear, and my first T7 Clear on Sunday.

Damage taken on Turn 7 169,119 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage taken on Turn 7 173,978 in Crit/Det Gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

Damage Dealt on Turn 7 64,879 in Parry gear. (564 Parry, ilvl 94)
Damage Dealt on Turn 7 73,719 in Crit/Det gear. (449 Parry, ilvl 93)

-EDIT- Fixt the Parry Numbers I mis read it initially, and had reported 479 in Crit/Det gear. SORRY! =P

I will GLADLY take 4859 damage to gain a level 1 limit break every 6 minutes.

While I agree with you that Parry is a pretty crappy stat and isn't as good as most tanks hype it out to be, your testing method is totally flawed and the results are unusable.

There are HUGE uncontrolled variables in your test that aren't accounted for. If your overall DPS increased (eg. a week's worth of upgrades for your DPS), this would skew your Damage Taken and Damage Dealt since the fight would be shorter (and not just by virtue of your own damage increasing).

Unless your teammates performance was completely and exactly equal in both attempts (impossible), using Total Damage Taken and Total Damage Dealt as metrics to measure the value of Parry vs Crit/Det is not statistically sound.

[ZDamned]

While I agree with you that Parry is a pretty crappy stat and isn't as good as most tanks hype it out to be, your testing method is totally flawed and the results are unusable.

There are HUGE uncontrolled variables in your test that aren't accounted for. If your overall DPS increased (eg. a week's worth of upgrades for your DPS), this would skew your Damage Taken and Damage Dealt since the fight would be shorter (and not just by virtue of your own damage increasing).

Unless your teammates performance was completely and exactly equal in both attempts (impossible), using Total Damage Taken and Total Damage Dealt as metrics to measure the value of Parry vs Crit/Det is not statistically sound.

That's a valid point, but in a higher ilevel, and with full parry gear, I still dealt clearly less damage. So to look at it at the very least for what it is, we went in without doing any more soldiery farming, and Drop wise, between the 2 fights, we had 3 healer upgrades, and 1 tank upgrade for my Off tank. So the DPS were virtually identicaly. and we have the encounter down to a science since we spent the better part of a week just on the fight before we finally downed it, then there was exactly 1 more attempt before the 2nd clear. Performance wise, I can attest that my party was perfectly on par, and execution went the same way each time we beat it. IE: Noone died, Noone took added Fireball damage, and noone was petrified.

If people don't want to take my results into account, I'll just do the most obvious test, and show point per point what my Rage of Halone combo can do exact number wise, with and without the Crit/Determination gear. I'll get all the statistically high and low numbers in , without any buffs at all.

But my point still stands. I dealt significantly more damage with my DPS Fending gear than I did with my parry gear, and I did not take much more damage in any noticeable way to my healers.

Truth be told, My group is very consistent with our numbers, and this fight's results are also in line with how my Turn 4 results were showing. I feel that my added damage is a helpful way to beat content that is too easy, or that requires a DPS check.

PS: My groups T6 kill was 1 Warrior Standing in Holmgang. If I didn't have my DPS gear on, we would not have gotten it that attempt, and that is absolute.

Also! I don't care about statistically sound evidence. I only care about Live Fact testing. You can Theory craft all day, and statistically, Parry IS the best option, but when you look at what happens on Live, vs on Paper, you can clearly see different results.

What you seem to be requiring of me are Robotic simulations that won't actually benefit anyone running High end raids, which is why I'm doing practical tests, instead of perfect impossible simulations.
Practicality is way more useful than theory when it comes to planning how to go about spreading gear for progression.