Requesting Data for Parry RATE (not amount mitigated)

[Syzygian]

My position on Parry is always going to be a welcoming one during progression. Reprisal is too powerful of an ability to risk not having the highest uptime possible both for you and your raid (high Reprisal uptime is what closes the gap in passive mitigation between DRK and PLD, since DRK doesn't have a shield. An MT DRK should aim to be taking that -10% less damage at least 50% of the time). I would NEVER meld Parry, but I will take Parry pieces with the best of them as I gear up. Once you hit a hard enrage and/or DPS check then I start looking for pieces without Parry. I did this with my left side gear even back before 3.2 when I was wearing all STR/melds on my right side.

And to all the people that are going to... well... not agree with this, I have this to say: tank BiS is a myth. Yes you get a DPS BiS but that isn't until long after progression (unless you're filthy rich and were able to buy a full set of 220 crafted and meld it out this tier - the fact that that is even a thing is a can of worms that deserves its own thread, but I digress). A tank's job is not mitigation or DPS so much as adaptability. We are the most changeable job-type in the game gear-wise. There's a different gear set for every boss in every raid tier. Even Layla speced for Parry in T12. Parry on tank gear is far less offensive now given that we can easily meld DPS secondaries to those gear pieces.

The worst tank is the tank that is a one-trick pony.

***(This is from a DRK perspective and DRK has personal DPS, personal mitigation, and raid mitigation gains from Parry. For WAR, Parry well and truly is pretty darn useless. For tanks that are their de-facto group OT (not that there is a such thing in current content with all these swaps), its also pretty useless. And PLD has a shield which usurps Parry rolls. So take Parry's minute benefits with a grain of salt and no matter what gear you wear, always aim to hit your DPS ceiling within that gear set.)

THIS ALL HAVING BEEN SAID... Parry is still not a good stat, and the scaling revealed in this thread is pretty damning. It could be so much more than it is. But, that doesn't mean it isn't helpful when you're learning encounters and getting your ripe little tank cherry brutally popped by whatever hellish curbstomps/donkeypunches a given boss has in store for you.

[Seku]

snip

;x Kinda makes me wish that SE had given RI, as a DA effect of Dark dance to Drk instead of War.

[Izsha]

Even if all your assumptions are corrct, you are equating 1% mitigation as being equal to .72% more damage. 1% mitigation randomly applied throughout a fight is largely useless unless you have less than 1% overheal (doesn't happen). Any tiny gains in overall mitigation that occur purely on rng are highly unlikely to have any effect due to heals. It's not predictable preventing healers from using 1 more gcd of damage reliably, nor reliable enough to help on busters which are precast abilities and heals anticipating damage. This is of course in a raid environment because in 4 mans, no gear matters enough to loose sleep over optimization fighting a 3 mob pack in a dungeon.

1% mitigation spread haphazardly through a fight will just get absorbed by over heals and buster anticipation. That's why I take issue with the idea that you can even compare damage reduction with dps in a direct 1 to 1 level as if they are equal. If everyone in the party min maxes for 1 to 2% more raid damage it's a notable gain of 5%+ raid damage combined (say every weeks new piece of tpme gear for the group). But mitigation is is only effected by tank. There are no combined small efforts from they group. Only from tank armor/hp/and parry. 2 of which you will get from any gear regardless of secondary.

In all cases the dps boost us small as is the parry boost. But the parry system has so many systematic reasons why it is weak that it becomes virtually zero effect in any actual situation (shields proc 1st. Abilities tat increase blocks or parry reduce the relative effectiveness like better ilvl shields, buleark, sheltron, raw intuition, dark dance etc, tank swaps forcing everyone to OT making parry useless for half of most fights, the preemetive use of abilities and heal timing for tank busters making a parry on a buster wasted, the nerfing of parry str scaling in 3.x, and on, and on and on. Parry is systematically neutered at every turn.

[Dante_V]

I avoid parry where ever possible on DRK. There are a few instances where I could see a potential benefit like large amounts of mobs attacking at once, but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule, and as far as arguing for a dps gain via reprisal/low blow, you aren't going to get more damage than crit respectively while crit is also viable in the OT position where parry would be virtually useless outside of a few specific interaction with adds and such. Crit also has synergy with raid wide dps utility where parry only affects the tank. Considering my personal experiences with hitting enrage at 1% or recovery in regards to a downed dps, the crit increase greatly outweighs the parry. Then there is also phase pushes via increased dps that may negate an entire tank buster or end the fight sooner. If we were talking about a lesser weighted stat vs. parry, like skillspeed, I might be more inclined to agree to a degree.

Also it important to consider that reprisal has a cooldown and any proc within that cooldown is essentially a waste in regards to increased dps further limiting the viability of the dps increase from parry and reprisal. From this stand point if we are to calculate the potential of getting a reprisal proc over the course of 2 minutes of constant attacks that can be parried, there is a max number of reprisals that can be activated during this period and depending on the rate of incoming attacks a few percent difference in parry rate will likely not result in a substantial difference in reprisals available unless parry had some affect on lowering the cool down of reprisal itself.


As far as the mitigation argument via a proc reprisal, parry doesn't really substantiate the cost as I can proc reprisal on demand a very large portion of the time by using Dark dance 3 to 5 hits before reprisal is needed and almost always have it up when I want it. (Try using dark dance during the "jumps" at the beginning of seph ex for instance and you will almost always have reprisal for the tank buster without fail.) With this in mind I get that benefit along with Soul eater crit potential for life regen.

Then there is the healing meta which is precast full damage recovery essentially rendering random parry mitigation a waste of mp on scripted large hits and unreliable in the short term. Even generally speaking, if you increased the parry rate by 6%, it would still be negligible across the course of the fight when compared to the damage increase of other stats and a well thought out cool down rotation.

This is just my opinion however, feel free to load yourself up on parry if that's what floats your boat. I will be sticking to avoiding it for now.

[Dante_V]

My suggestion for fixing parry as a stat is to have it also reduce the cool down of job native mitigation and attack abilities by X percent per point. Meaning stacking parry would give you a random mitigation increase and a calculated damage mitigation decrease over the course of the fight, along with a slight increase in native damage cool downs for tanks. If stacked heavily it could allow for extra cool downs available negating the use of living dead in some cases, while also increasing the rate of proc and ogcd abilties like reprisal, fight or flight, mercy stroke, dark passenger, etc. by effectively lowering their down time. This would offset the loss of damage associated with the opportunity cost of taking parry over a damage stat like crit or det and actively incentivize its use.
With the recent overall reduction in tank damage due to tank stat normalization this idea could be applied without disruption to the general relative balance of tank and dps damage output differences.

[Syzygian]

I'm assuming these last three posts are in reply to me. If not, my mistake -

Note that I would never argue, even in the case of LB or RE procs, for Parry to be a DPS gain over Crit/Det/SS, only that it is a DPS gain over nothing at all (not having damaging abilities that proc off of parry, like WAR/PLD). The reason for this is simply that I do not know and no math has been done on the subject, I still favor Crit and Det (not so much SS) over parry, but if I get a Parry piece, I wear it, and I still will spend tomestones on pieces even if they do have Parry, just so that I have options in a given fight.

I would not have myself be pidgeonholed or labeled a parry advocate. I'm an advocate of adaptability and giving yourself options. Options = Win. Black and White "DPS or Fail" philosophies are a LAZY attitude to bring to a group in terms of planning and strategy.

Parrying a TB that would have otherwise killed you means the pull lasts longer > you see/practice more mechanics > you progress faster. Can it be relied on? Well no shit it can't. But I'd rather have a chance to live and see more of the fight in some circumstances.

Stacking so much DPS during progression (progression means you're learning the fight, you haven't seen the entire thing yet, people are still dying repeatedly to dumb things, etc.) in the absence of strict DPS checks (DPS checks in Midas are crazy lenient right now) is like a dude of average endowment buying a bunch of magnums.

If you failed a DPS check, DPS matters. If you hit enrage, DPS matters. If you are reasonably within reach of pushing a phase early, DPS matters. If you wiped, and none of the aforementioned are true, your DPS means ***nothing*** because you didn't kill the boss. You did a buttload of damage that is lost to the void and flushed down the toilet of the game's memory cache because it resulted in nothing: You still wiped.

Edit:

My replies are not to you, just in general to comments from the thread.

Ah, my bad then. Although I feel the general message of my post is worth contributing to this thread.

[Dante_V]

My replies are not to you, just in general to comments from the thread.

[Dante_V]

Parrying a TB that would have otherwise killed you means the pull lasts longer > you see/practice more mechanics > you progress faster. Can it be relied on? Well no shit it can't. But I'd rather have a chance to live and see more of the fight in some circumstances.

First if you are being saved by a parry on a tank buster your healers or tank is doing something very wrong. Parry in context should absolutely not be relevant during a tank buster. The "what if" scenario of a parry during the tank buster is not even remotely considerable in regards to rational comparison between the opportunity costs of taking it or not, hence the reason no one is really talking about it. Especially considering you can mitigate ENTIRE tank busters on some fights by pushing dps. Seph ex is again another example here. A good team is only getting 3 TB on first phase with the phase ending before the next purple circle layout. The damage avoided by pushing the phase and missing the a TB or mechanic is greater than that would be accrued by an marginal increase of parry rate.

Also "extra dps" is DIRECT RECOVERY for both War and Drk AND mitigation via phase push, all of which are more reliable than parry. The whole "magnum' comparison is kinda silly and irrelevant as dps provides a team contribution. And while dps checks may be lenient on faceroll midas normal, midas savage I would have to disagree. DPS checks are high enough in savage where min maxing is relevant enough to require higher ilevel or a higher lvl weapon than just 210 sets for 99% of the player population.

I agree with options, hence parry isn't usable outside of MT and a very small subset of situations as OT making it LESS adaptable as it is useless when not MT where damage is applicable to both across the board.

[Syzygian]

First if you are being saved by a parry on a tank buster your healers or tank is doing something very wrong. Parry in context should absolutely not be relevant during a tank buster.

That's progression dude. People do wrong shit all the time when they don't know a fight. I could see your point in a farm party, but statics are made of humans, not machines.

The "what if" scenario of a parry during the tank buster is not even remotely considerable in regards to rational comparison between the opportunity costs of taking it or not, hence the reason no one is really talking about it. Especially considering you can mitigate ENTIRE tank busters on some fights by pushing dps. Seph ex is again another example here. A good team is only getting 3 TB on first phase with the phase ending before the next purple circle layout. The damage avoided by pushing the phase and missing the a TB or mechanic is greater than that would be accrued by an marginal increase of parry rate.

This is possible now, but not so much week 1, you weren't pushing shit, unless you bought and fully melded i220 crafted gear. People say this all the time, but its really only applicable when you're overgeared.

Also "extra dps" is DIRECT RECOVERY for both War and Drk AND mitigation via phase push, all of which are more reliable than parry. The whole "magnum' comparison is kinda silly and irrelevant as dps provides a team contribution. And while dps checks may be lenient on faceroll midas normal, midas savage I would have to disagree. DPS checks are high enough in savage where min maxing is relevant enough to require higher ilevel or a higher lvl weapon than just 210 sets for 99% of the player population.

Touché. But not about the DPS checks. These checks are laughable.

I agree with options, hence parry isn't usable outside of MT and a very small subset of situations as OT making it LESS adaptable as it is useless when not MT where damage is applicable to both across the board.

No one is advocating a Parry set that a tank just sits around in 24/7 and runs in dungeons and farm parties with it.

What I'm saying is I carry around parry pieces in my inventory, I meld them with DPS secondaries for some extra oomph, and I put them on when I'm learning a fight, and take them off when we're needing more DPS than we have, or are in sight of a clear.

There's literally zero wrong with a tank approaching a new encounter in that fashion, I feel, unless they are a WAR, or the OT and there are no tank swaps, or the fight is 100% magic. Its a totally reasonable thing to do, particularly if you're a DRK, and the MT.

[Jpec07]

Self-ascribed Parry advocate here: Parry is only useful for main tanks. There are some odd AoEs out there that can be parried, but when you're in that off-tank position, your role is typically to support and push as much damage as possible. I'd say it's only valuable in a fight if you're going to be tanking the boss or an add for at least 50% of the fight. This is why Syz' stat smorgasbord is generally a good idea while you're still getting gear: secondaries aren't going to make an iLvl upgrade not worth taking in a majority of instances, because you get more mitigation from Def/MDef/Vit than you ever could from Parry on gear, and you get more DPS from Vit/Str than you ever would from Crit/Det/SkS.

In an ideal situation, a tank would minmax their gear for every encounter, because each encounter has different requirements, and they'd refine a gearset that grants them optimum performance in each role (MT or OT) for each fight in progression. But that's a pipe dream, since gear is the carrot on the end of SE's stick, and since it is rightly time-consuming to obtain. At the very most, a tank might be able to accomplish a general MT set and a general OT set by the end of farming, but even that is a stretch.

If my math holds, and Parry contributes more to tank mitigation than their contribution to group DPS by the other stats, then I still think Parry is the best stat for a tank to take, unless they will spend substantial portions of time away from the boss' or adds' faces. But the adage someone once quoted holds true: a tank is, above all, adaptable.

I'll try to do some more number crunching this weekend to see if I can't find thresholds where Crit might outweigh Parry. Google Sheets shall be my friend even if it doesn't hold a candle to Excel.