PLD theorycraft?

[SeraviEdalborez]

Parry is not a worthwhile stat when "average mitigation" doesn't matter because "avarage damage taken" doesn't matter, base parry rate is already sufficient, and needing so much parry to give any return makes it not worth investing in.

As a tank, the only things that ever threaten your HP total are huge attacks like Mountain Buster, Death Sentence, Ravensbeak etc or a bunch of attacks from multiple enemies intended to be tanked separately (T7 Melusine+adds, T8 Avatar+Dread, T9 Boss+Ghost) or a big dungeon pull.

For these situations you never rely on your random mitigation (block or parry). You always pop an important cooldown like Rampart or Sentinel (or Inner Beast as WAR with some other cooldown additionally). Your healers cannot "underheal" in anticipation of a block or parry because you will die. Therefore when you parry or block you usually cause overhealing anyways. If you die from such a big hit due to not parrying or blocking it and you popped cooldowns, that's a fundamental problem that you and your healers must fix somehow by mitigating it better. Parry won't fix it.

Falling into the pitfall of "it's a mitigation stat, I'm a tank" is short-sighted.

[dramamine]

As a tank, the only things that ever threaten your HP total are huge attacks like Mountain Buster, Death Sentence, Ravensbeak etc or a bunch of attacks from multiple enemies intended to be tanked separately (T7 Melusine+adds, T8 Avatar+Dread, T9 Boss+Ghost) or a big dungeon pull.

Those things aren't really comparable. You're right that Parry doesn't really do anything for big single attacks, but parry's definitely worthwhile during a big dungeon pull or any time you're tanking multiple enemies, because that's where average damage dominates. That's also the sort of situation where extra DPS stats are the least worthwhile (at least as a PLD).

I think you're looking at it from the wrong direction. You don't stack parry because you're expecting a single parry to make the difference between life or death. You stack parry because the benefits of stacking DPS stats are extremely marginal for a tank in tanking stance, and parry decreases the amount of damage you take over time.

And a healer most certainly can underheal in anticipation of a block or parry. It's called staying in cleric stance and using abilities like stone skin, lustrate, benediction, regen, and so forth as the primary means to heal the tank rather than relying on cure/physick. If you take less damage over time, that becomes easier to do. Obviously they still need to top you off before big hits and that sort of thing, but it's not like there's zero benefit to increasing your mitigation over time as a tank.

[Rbstr]

The main thing is a logical agrument: The real threats to tank survival in coil/endgame come from spike damage attacks. Most of the rest of tank damage is pretty trivial to heal and requires no mitigation. So while parry may reduce the total damage you take in an encounter it can't be what saves you from a spike attack or you're simply relying on luck to survive. Luck that happens at less than a 30% rate - so clears don't happen when you rely on it. It does not increase effective HP, it is purely an incidental bonus no one can count on.

I'm not against parry completely - adding strength is way more useful than changing a parry item to a det item (At the end of the day 150 parry is like 3% total average damage reduction. 150 det on a tank isn't going to up total party DPS by that much...but it will make for a large increase in your enmity!). If you wanted to meld Topaz with strength that'd arguably be better than ruby with vit, since Palys can get into TP trouble.
I suppose if you wanted dex for some reason you could do i90 accs with dex.vit.str. But a point of parry gives you more parry rate than dex does...and it does nothing to help DPS like determination would.

[SeraviEdalborez]

If a parry or block made the difference, your healer is a goddamn robot.

[dramamine]

If a parry or block made the difference, your healer is a goddamn robot.

A single parry, probably not. But many parries can add up, especially when the bulk of your healing is from HoTs or mitigation buffs rather than straight healing casts. Those little bits add up over time. You have to stop thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, and think about parry/block as a "critical defend". You wouldn't criticize a DPS for stacking crit because "If you're relying on a single crit to make the kill, you're doing it wrong." or something along those lines. You'd say "Is that the best way to increase your DPS?"

I'm not saying parry's always absolutely the best secondary stat for tanks. I'm just saying that it's not as worthless as some people here are saying it is, and that there are times when it's significantly better than DPS stats (like, as I mentioned earlier, during big pulls in dungeons where there's zero benefit to increasing your DPS, and statistically, all the parries will add up to a significant amount of damage mitigated over a short period of time).

[Alistaire]

A single parry, probably not. But many parries can add up, especially when the bulk of your healing is from HoTs or mitigation buffs rather than straight healing casts. Those little bits add up over time. You have to stop thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, and think about parry/block as a "critical defend". You wouldn't criticize a DPS for stacking crit because "If you're relying on a single crit to make the kill, you're doing it wrong." or something along those lines. You'd say "Is that the best way to increase your DPS?"

That is the worst logic...dps crits actually do more damage. Healing for more than is needed doesn't raise your tank's HP beyond its max.

And yes you do have to keep thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, because that's how healers learn a fight and learn what big hits to prepare for.

[dramamine]

That is the worst logic...dps crits actually do more damage. Healing for more than is needed doesn't raise your tank's HP beyond its max.

And yes you do have to keep thinking about it as if a single parry/block matters, because that's how healers learn a fight and learn what big hits to prepare for.

(sorry about waiting so long to respond, internet issues... Comcast sucks)

I think you're still missing my point. You're arguing that parry/block isn't reliable enough for huge hits, which I'd agree with, that's a stupid reason to stack parry/block. I'm arguing that parry's utility is that it reduces the amount of damage you take over time, especially in cases where you're getting hit frequently by lots of attacks. Your HP ticking down slower means that heals that don't depend on Mind like regen/medica II (if they are cast before switching to cleric stance), a fairy, benediction, lustrate, stone skin, and so forth are made more effective, reducing how often a healer has to resort to mind-based heals.

As I and other people have pointed out, all of the secondary stats kind of suck in this game, and increasing your mitigation is generally only useful to a point that depends on the content you're doing and how well you and the rest of your party know their class/the content, so parry's usefulness has it's limits. I'm just trying to point out that it's not anywhere near as useless as some people make it out to be.

[SeraviEdalborez]

I think you're still missing my point. You're arguing that parry/block isn't reliable enough for huge hits, which I'd agree with, that's a stupid reason to stack parry/block. I'm arguing that parry's utility is that it reduces the amount of damage you take over time, especially in cases where you're getting hit frequently by lots of attacks. Your HP ticking down slower means that heals that don't depend on Mind like regen/medica II (if they are cast before switching to cleric stance), a fairy, benediction, lustrate, stone skin, and so forth are made more effective, reducing how often a healer has to resort to mind-based heals.

The damage you take over time doesn't really matter. It's handled by a "healer autoattack". Furthermore it pays to have a non-parry set in any case, since you can find yourself tanking mobs where parry quite literally does nothing (Leviathan head, Ramuh, T1+2 ADS) or when you are not tanking for extended periods of time.

[Alistaire]

I did some digging, from a guy on reddit that did tests it took about 2.6 DEX to equal 1 parry stat. I had DEX-melded some heavy wolfram, with 21 parry and 13 DEX on the helm it was effectively the equivalent of 25 or 26 parry.

Parry's not horrible for dungeon running though, more small hits you're taking the more it'll even out. But definitely for endgame content don't go out of your way for it.

And as far as DEX rings for PLD because of parry/block rate, STR boosts the damage lessened by those parries and blocks so that argument's a moot point. Do not wear DEX rings on PLD. The only time you'd consider DEX on accessories is if you were so keen on parry despite what everyone's said, that you'd get topaz accessories and meld STR, then DEX. Even ruby you'd meld VIT, then parry before you'd even consider DEX. Which, bringing it all back to "parry is a bad stat", you wouldn't.

[Remn]

Parry is good when you speed run or undergear the content you doing.

as you gearing up, parry start to lose it usefulness. (T9 ilv110 max parry will mostly lead to Over Healing in most case.)
most end game healer that I saw will pre-cast heal so it hit the tank right after big atk. I never saw end game healer wait for tank to take big atk then decide which heal to cast.. just so they can use cure1 instead of Cure2 ;P