Why Avoid Parry?

[Jpec07]

Actually no, that's not a logical conclusion at all, that's an informal fallacy. Tank viability isn't /solely/ on dps at all, nor has anyone or myself proposed that it was. We are specifically discussing secondary stats in conjunction with tanking in regards to parry vs other secondaries. Context seems to be a little hard for you to grasp but either way your conclusion isn't "logical" in any sense of the word. Dps synergy with certain TANK moves and cool downs was what we are saying, the increase in damage secondaries in conjunction with these abilities is greater mitigation than that from stacking parry. This isn't an opinion, it's been tested many many times. Because you choose to misrepresent the argument due to your inability to either understand or compose a counter argument doesn't change that. If you want to get upset and foot stamp off because parry isn't a good stat then that's fine with me, go play Bard. Either way it isn't going to stop anyone from researching or discussing the issue at hand. If you want parry then stack it until you are blue in the face, it won't matter or affect me one iota. Good luck.

Technically, that's argumentum ad absurdum, wherein he ignored other important details to present an absurd conclusion as a grounds to debase the argument (when the argument itself precludes such a conclusion from its given facts).

Tanks are tanks because they have a greater ability to mitigate incoming damage, and are built to generate more enmity. Those are the two fundamental goals of tanking (because if you do those two and those two only, barring any failure to perform on the other party members, the group will succeed). In the current paradigm, the thought seems to be that Parry isn't as valuable because you'll gain more "proxy" mitigation by killing the mob(s) faster, preventing their damage. If that was the only source of mitigation? The highest DPS should be the tank. Hell, outside of tankbusters, there really isn't much benefit to bringing tanks to Alexander Savage.

I'm not denying that damage contributes to mitigation. What I'm trying to understand is whether Parry's scaling is really so poor that the mitigation by damage increase from not having Parry is greater than the mitigation that having Parry would provide.

RNG arguments don't really fly, as long as the presented rate translates (roughly) to "real world" performance.

EDIT: I also am not denying that current encounter design might be counterproductive to the effectiveness of Parry, as there is a very clear lack of outgoing damage to make tanks value mitigation. This is more just asking about general job design for tanks, and whether Parry really is such a subpar stat.

[Kosmos992k]

If you want to get upset and foot stamp off because parry isn't a good stat Good luck.

Hmmmm?

Actually, what I said was that if superior DPS == tanking, then I'm gone. There's no need to repeat your arguments, I read them, and I'm not disagreeing with them, or arguing the apparent facts about the current meta. I signed up to play a tank, not DPS. Tanks in my view are protectors, not damage dealers. You can feel 'right' all you want in your argument, but do not belittle people who want to actually play tank, and not dps.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Hmmmm?

Actually, what I said was that if superior DPS == tanking, then I'm gone. There's no need to repeat your arguments, I read them, and I'm not disagreeing with them, or arguing the apparent facts about the current meta. I signed up to play a tank, not DPS. Tanks in my view are protectors, not damage dealers. You can feel 'right' all you want in your argument, but do not belittle people who want to actually play tank, and not dps.

Well, honestly as a protector its your job to also remove the threat.

In a real fight you can't just stand around and take hits, that will protect nobody. You have to get rid of the problem so it doesn't hurt the people your protecting. So in actuality the current way "is" the proper way to be a tank.

A real protector has to learn to defend himself, his target and disable and remove the threat.

The other thing people don't mention is, what is a Tanks job in real life?

A tank rolls in, protecting allied infantry to soak and take care of high priority threats on the battlefield with its main cannons and suppressive fire.

It doesn't have to be that complicated.

I didn't say remove tank damage, I said remove "stances." Make it so you can't stance-dance while in combat. In exchange, you lower the HP pools of future raid bosses to compensate. Hell, add more mechanics and team-function tasks OTHER than "durr hurr DPS more." T12 in Coil did this beautifully.

The point is that building content around DPS is just plain stupid. The balance of the game should not be based on damage. The balance of the game should be based on tanks tanking, healers healing, and DPS hitting things. You can still put non-damage mechanics in for all 3 roles to deal with. The current raid community is obviously not happy with the damage-formula SE moved into for 3.0. It's time for a massive overhaul of raid design.

Oh, I agree. It is stupid, no fight should be based on Enrage and how fast you can DPS. However, removing playstyles and options from the game when there is already very few: is also stupid.

However, they need to focus the fights more on mechanics that are not just: "Kill this fast or raid wipes."

[Risvertasashi]

Actually, what I said was that if superior DPS == tanking, then I'm gone.

Which is, unfortunately, a large part of why PLD is so behind in the current meta. I don't end up touching mine too much, unless the healer queues are completely unbearable (which some have been lately).

[dank1]

Hmmmm?

Actually, what I said was that if superior DPS == tanking, then I'm gone. There's no need to repeat your arguments, I read them, and I'm not disagreeing with them, or arguing the apparent facts about the current meta. I signed up to play a tank, not DPS. Tanks in my view are protectors, not damage dealers. You can feel 'right' all you want in your argument, but do not belittle people who want to actually play tank, and not dps.

You signed up to be a tank? Is tanking even your main class?
Most real full time tanks know there's only so much tanking you can do, once you can tank said content without dying anyone with a brain knows you then use your remaining time/effort dpsing

You can roleplay all you want as that noble holy paladin who swore an oath to the sword and board and will lay his life on the line to protect his comrades and save the princess and that's fine it doesn't change the reality that you have a job that needs to be executed efficiently which is eliminating a threat quickly which I will get done by maximizing my DPS and making everyone in my group's lives a little easier. You can choose to be lazy and RP getting by doing minimal DPS, that's fine, but personally I'm going to stick with the guy who understands his job is not only surviving/holding the boss in place but also killing the fucker asap

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I don't get it. In 3.x, outside of shields (which are an oddity to themselves), Parry is literally the only pure mitigation stat that we can stack. I understand that Parry isn't "reliable" because it's based on RNG, and that right now, with fights so focused on DPS output, putting any stats into mitigation is a waste.

But in general, don't tanks want to do whatever they can to take less damage? Sure, you can't rely on Parry to save you, but won't it help to smooth out incoming damage when there are a lot of hits coming in? And to that end, isn't Parry then the best stat a tank can get?

So why should tanks avoid Parry, and why is the advice to new players to avoid it?

Well, why should you get parry?

Having 700 parry is literally the same as having a 4.69% chance to parry, and that is a lot of a stat to stack. When you add in RNG that is about... 0.938% physical damage reduction. Meaning it is pretty much worthless, it also does not work on magic attacks, only physical.

You get a lot more out of Accuracy, Critical Rate and Determination. Which should be on more tank gear honestly.

So, as others said.

Scales Poorly:
100=about 0.67% parry.

Does not prevent all damage:
Parry is only 20%, not 100%. Only works on magical attacks.

Since there is no gear variety outside of Diadrem now. I hope in the future we can choose our statistics so I can stack more proper stats.

Many tanks do not seem to understand this, but damage is sustain. Doing more damage means the fight lasts shorter and more enemies die faster, which equals less damage to you. Stacking critical rate gives you more sustain then stacking parry does, just by making the fight shorter.

[Velox]

Actually, a tank's job is 3-fold:
1. Keep hate.
2. Survive by using CDs when needed.
3. Contribute to party damage.

Some people like to forget #3 there.

Likewise, a healer's job is 3-fold:
1. Heal the party, especially the tank.
2. Contribute to party damage.
3. Don't overheal.

This is part of the reason there are less and less tanks and healers these days. SE needs to find a way to give DPS a 3-fold job to balance it out or remove DPS stances from tanks and healers and removing 1 item from each of those lists (which is honestly what I think SE needs to do).

[Nektulos-Tuor]

This is part of the reason there are less and less tanks and healers these days. SE needs to find a way to give DPS a 3-fold job to balance it out or remove DPS stances from tanks and healers and removing 1 item from each of those lists (which is honestly what I think SE needs to do).

DPS do have other things to their job, support and damage. However, the balance of the game is based off damage. If you remove damage from Tanks the entire engine would have to be recoded to change enmity. If you remove damage stance from healers then you risk losing all of your raiding high end population, due to the fact that most content can no longer be cleared.

So, SE would need to recode their entire game to balance it around such changes.

Honestly, Everquest did a "different" approach:

Tanks had:
Damage, Sustain, Self-Healing.

Healers Had:
Healing, Damage, Buffs, Wards

DPS Had:
Support, Damage, Debuffs, DPS Buffs, Hate Transfers.

Giving DPS classes debuffs, DPS-buffs and hate transfers would fix the issue.

Imagine Black Mage having a buff, which transfers 10% of the damage he does to the tank as enmity?
What if Ninja had a buff that increased a target's casting speed by 10% every time he scores a critical hit for 10 seconds?
What if Dragoon had a debuff which increased the chance of the entire raid to score a critical hit against the mob?
What if Machinist had a buff which increases the attack speed of the raid?
What if Bard had a buff that increased the damage of another person and gave them a proc that lowered enmity gain?
What if Bard and Machinist had a buff that raised the damage of a tank class and gave them a proc that increased enmity gain?
What if Monk had a raid wide buff which increased the ranks damage reduction?


What if DPS had to do more in the raid then just damage? In Everquest a lot of times DPS classes had to do the mechanics of the raid, like hitting levers in the right order to weaken the monster.

In the Djinn Master fight, DPS classes had to jump on keys in a correct order to make a song or the Djinn Master would not take damage and constantly pulse AOEs.

[Rhais]

This is part of the reason there are less and less tanks and healers these days. SE needs to find a way to give DPS a 3-fold job to balance it out or remove DPS stances from tanks and healers and removing 1 item from each of those lists (which is honestly what I think SE needs to do).

If anything there are more tanks and healers, not less. Though if they removed tanks and healers ability to contribute dps I think you would see the amount of people playing them drop quite a bit.

[Jpec07]

I will say it again (and I'll edit the original post to include this):

Killing a mob faster is only viable as mitigation if the damage prevented is greater than the damage that would have been prevented by instead passively mitigating it. Killing a mob faster to save .3% damage by stacking Crit is not viable as mitigation if a full Parry build would have saved you .5% incoming damage.

I'll need to look at some parses later to determine how much damage a tank can save by killing a mob faster versus wearing full Fending, but I have a very hard time believing that tank DPS can have such an effect on the rate at which mobs and bosses die as to make Crit, Skill Speed, or Det more worthwhile than Parry for mitigation.

As a note, I'm not denying that Alexander (+Savage) 1-4, and most of the bosses from 50-59 and Fractal Continuum and Neverreap are kind of backwards for this mentality. But in my mind (which I guess I'm trying to clear up about this), I'd tend to think stacking Parry would be a much better idea for trash pulls than DPS stats, especially large ones, where you're facing a lot of physical auto-attacks.

"But cooldowns!" Do provide the majority of mitigation. Yes. But that applies to literally every other stat on gear as it contributes to tank survivability. Parry from gear applies on top of that in most cases, and so still provides extra mitigation.

Again, not trying to argue this. I just want to understand it. I apologize if I'm getting aggravating about it, I just really don't get it.