A Paladin's opinion on Parry

[RaineAmorie]

Sorry Warriors, leaving you guys out :P

Over the last >1 year of tanking in ARR, I've seen lots of discussion about parry. Most of what I've seen here is that parry is useless. I know some of you believe that, and with the way secondary stats work it's pretty valid. However, I feel like this has completely discouraged the use of parry for anyone. Id just like to share some of my opinions as a career Paladin on parry.

I'd like to start by saying I'm not a raider. Not to say I haven't done any coil or primals, but I don't have a static and when I do raid it's with FC mates. I'm totally capable, but that content just doesn't interest me. The majority of the content I play are light party dungeons, roulettes and the like.

As a Paladin, the most suggested route for relic/gear is Det/Crit or Det/Acc/Crit. Det is obvious, since it boosts your Flash and overall damage output, and I don't need to explain Acc. Crit has always been an issue with me as a PLD. Why is it considered so useful for us? Crits are pretty and all, but I find them mostly purposeless unless I've got Bloodbath up. The aggro difference it makes is also negligible imo, if you are thanking God for that Halone crit for keeping that mob off the BLM you should have been Flashing anyway. I know you're all gonna say damage is damage and things that die fast do less damage. True, but if you have to pick up a person or 2 in DF your crits may not be the deciding factor.

I'm not going to fap about parry, don't worry. Parry isn't amazing, like crit it's just a chance to perform, making it highly unreliable. However imo, in a dungeon environment the passive mitigation is more valuable to me than crit. I currently parry 27% when it activates. In a group of even 3 mobs that mitigation starts to add up, especially since I'm only able to crit one mob at a time unless I'm using CoS. I'm not relying on parry in any way to keep me from dying, since that's not going to happen, but it gives my healers a bit of a cushion to dps or manderville or w/e. Yes, parry does take away your block chance of it activates, but if you're really worried about blocking, that's what Bulwark is for, and you should be using it in big groups anyway.

Im not trying to prove parry is better than crit or vice versa. I'm just trying to let people know that parry isn't any more useless than any of the other secondary stats. Some of my friends spent millions on their Relics with Crit/Det, just because they read parry was garbage. I stacked Det/Parry and saved myself a headache, and have no problems with aggro, just like them. To anyone building a relic or considering new gear, don't count parry out. Your play style may be more suited for it than Crit/Acc, and there's no need to be destitute if the benefit is minimal at best.

tl;dr: If you are a dungeon tank with minimal raiding, parry may not be the worst choice for PLD. If you want to do a lil more damage then go crit, but parry shouldn't be seen as "useless" just because it doesn't speed up a run or make an immediately obvious difference.

[Carvaka]

I did the parry/acc/det build on my warrior zeta. Sure I can see the benefit in having a 12 inch long str/crit build that you want to flop out and wave around, but I don't mind a bit of parry. I have a hunch, which could well be unfounded, that HW may reward parry a little more. Comes down to what you like and how you play the role. Others can 'man-mode' it up. I will give the healer some breathing space.

[RaineAmorie]

I agree, I assumed with level cap increasing our stats would get a nice big boost. I'm over 600 parry with food, so the only way to go is up. Maybe parry will pan out to be worth a damn for tanks, since it's really the only tanking stat we have good control over.

[VargasVermillion]

The thing is about parry though is on PLD it's even less desirable since your shield is always checked first and the rate is increased as you get better shields, passive rng mitigation is already built into the class making parry even more pointless, blocking also mitigates more damage.

[RaineAmorie]

I mentioned that, and yes, you're right. But if you're needing to block, just use Bulwark. Parry procs less than block anyway, and you're onlyblocking 5% more than you parry (or at least I am). 2 reasonable chances to mitigate is better in my book than losing a good chance to parry anything.

[Xenosan]

Have to give crit it's due.

I started writing up pros/cons with parry/crit, but there's much better text on this right here in these forums that I would recommend that before trying to secondhand.

My opiniion: if parry proc'd shieldswipe or reflected the amount of damage mitigated back to the enemy that's viable. But as is? Crit > Parry any day

[Cabalabob]

Personally I have 2 sets, a crit/det set and a parry/det set. I wear the parry set for new and unfamiliar content where I don't know all the mechanics and the healers likely don't either, we'll be taking it slow anyway and probably won't be pushing any phases that I could make the difference on anyway so that little extra mitigation could make a difference between us seeing 2-3 phases instead of 1-2 phases.

When I know the content like the back of my hand and we have Echo and healers are able to keep me alive while in cleric's stance 90% of the time anyway, I'll switch to my det/crit build to help push phases and make each run that bit quicker.

Also, a couple notes to OP.
1. Parry doesn't lower your chance to block. Block lowers your chance to parry. The game works on a priority system, miss > dodge > block > parry > hit. Everything that comes before lowers your chance to parry.

E.G mob has 100% acc, you have no evasion and no shield. You have a 20% parry rate. In 100 hits you will parry 20 of them.

The mob has a 1% chance to miss, you have 5% evasion, a shield with a 30% block rate and 20% parry. In 100 hits, 1 will miss, you will dodge 4, you will block 28 and you will parry 13. Your parry rate has remained the same but you parry less attacks because it's a 20% chance on 67 hits rather than a 20% chance on 100 of them.

This is why people say parry is worse on PLD than on WAR because the same amount of parry on PLD will parry less attacks than it would on WAR, not because it takes away from your blocking. Bulwark actually makes this even worse as it raises your block rate to usually over 90% for 15 seconds which temporarily chops off even more of your chances to parry.

2. Crit may not seem good to you because you probably don't build for it, but when you're in a set with 600+ STR and 350+ det, those spirits within and rage of halone crits can do upwards of 1.5k definitely not something to brush off as negligible.

[melflomil]

Well in the last live letter they said paladin are all about defenses so I would stack crit and parry and get a tower shield to have a block strength of like 80% but block less and that would parry will cone into place.

[kensatsu]

realy it matter if you want to be full defense or offense.
it's better to have two set.
healers don't rely on the chance you are parry something, it can give a breath to the healer if it happen.
In fact it's a choice, parry bonus is not needed to finish content, also crit/det is not needed to finish content as well, it just help, in defense or offense/aggro

[Launched]

A tank's opinion on parry: It's RNG and never required to survive anything. This is a game about getting as much DPS as possible, and consistent DPS from a tank with det/crit is far more reliable than hoping your healer will get to cast another damaging ability when you parry.