Why Avoid Parry?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

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.

Parry would be better on trash pulls? No.

DPS and Critical Stacking is a lot better, especially on a Warrior:

Pull a bunch of trash, stack up all of your damage buffs and pop vengeance: You heal for the damage you do and are constantly overpowering which is giving you massive sustain because your healing for how much damage you do. A critical hit will make you heal for even more.

Damage multiplies with stats, unlike Parry, which is always the same value.

Honestly, if they removed Parry from the game and replaced it with something like: Max Health? Then I would consider it a very valuable stat. However, as it is.. No.

[Freyyy]

snip

But we're saying again and again that the passive mitigation granted by parry is :
- Unreliable, while more damage is always reliable
- Only physical, while killing things faster prevents all types of damage
- So low that it's not even noticeable, while DPS secondaries are a very noticeable increase in DPS

What is missing here for you to understand ? You can even add that more DPS secondaries = more self-healing via lifesteal = mitigation as well !

Parry IS shit as it is right now. Bottom line.

You seem to also think that doing more damage only grants a group the ability to kill the boss 2-3sec faster. It's not only that. It also permits to push phases earlier and sometimes it makes you able to skip completely some mechanics. It can literally cheese the fight. And tank DPS helps a LOT with that. Much more than what you seem to think.

[Dante_V]

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.

In regards to dps/mitigation synergy it isn't only just "killing the mob faster" that makes dps stats more viable, while that does help you also need to consider that 2 of the tanks are built in a manner that have dps/mitigation synergy. Meaning they can turn outgoing damage into HP recovery, sometimes at very substantial rates. In regards to secondaries specifically, at any given ilvl you will have static amount of secondary points available. This is known in the community as the "stat budget" of an item. Within that budget there are relative caps for each secondary in regards to SE's decision and the "weight" of the stat. So stacking parry means sacrificing another stat. Due to the nature of dps and mitigation not being mutually exclusive in practice and design of the tank classes, but only in actual stat budgeting, taking damage stats not only allows you to kill the enemy faster but also achieve greater utilization of the abilities that synergize with dps stats.

Now there are ways they could fix parry as a stat to alter the balance here, but in regards to it's very low stacking rate and limited utilization, along with the healing and tank meta it becomes more advantageous to take another stat if possible in it's place. This doesn't mean parry is useless per se, just that there are other stats available that will achieve greater mitigation in it place.

Also I don't think your question or inquiry is unreasonable at all. SE doesn't make these things very obvious and in some cases makes very questionable decision in regards to stats specifically involving tanks. If you would like to see some hard scientific data on the issue I would check out the FFXIV reddit forums and do a search on parry stats or stat weights for tanks. There is some pretty comprehensive research on the issue that has been done by the raiding community if you are interested in that type of thing.

[Risvertasashi]

If you would like to see some hard scientific data on the issue I would check out the FFXIV reddit forums and do a search on parry stats or stat weights for tanks. There is some pretty comprehensive research on the issue that has been done by the raiding community if you are interested in that type of thing.

Another good place to check for data like this can be the bluegartr forums. Just be aware they're not the most welcoming/patient of folks.

[Izsha]

Parry:
Doesn't work on all attacks. As people have said. Phy only. Titans mountain buster, phy. Lots of stuff I'm game looks like magic but is phy. This has been tested for years. Trust us.

Does not work on magic. See above

Does NOTHING when you off tank.

Must be facing the target.

Doesn't matter for spike damage tank busters. Healers and tanks must premet8vely buff to prepare for a buster. You can't wait to see if you parried before you pop sentinel or cast adlo. So even 8f you do parry it saves no CDS or MP because players must act with the assumption they won't parry because mitigation is a premptive task and good healers are precast ing the cure to top you off before the damage hits.

Parry is the last thing to proc. Evasion checks then shields then parry. So plds automatically reduce the value of parry because shield procs water it down including shelltron spam. If you shelltron you won't parry that hit etc. War has a parry ability for 100% parry. So gear means nothing when you can turn parry on so frequently without gear. Similar with drk theu can up parry rate with a skill making gear less useful.

NOW you can add in the terrible scaling. It takes 100s of parry to increase your rate. I forget the exact numbers. May look them up and edit, but it's horrible.
_____________
Compare that with any dps stat. Works MT and OT. Works on all mobs. A tank is always hitting something. Therefore dps stats are always useful. Parry is not always useful, and when it is, it is not very important.

Parry is a situational OK stat. 8f this was FFXI where you change gear then it would have a place. But most fights the MT and OT are forced to swap. So right there parry use is cut in half because you only tank half the time. Then of that 50% only some of it is physical. Of that some of it is busters which are irrelivant. Of what's left pld procs shield block 1st (including shelltron) and wars have a 100% parry buff watering down the effect of parry further.

EVERYTHING in this game reduces the value if parry. When you combine it all, it's just a bad stat, while dps stats are universally good in every situation. It's just how the game is designed. Parry is just crap.

[Syzygian]

Can someone please explain to me why anyone wanting to find value or potential value in defensive secondaries for tanks is consistently met with these absurd straw man arguments suggesting that they are trying to abolish tanks' ability to dps completely?

Most of these arguments are moot anyway as you have to have full sets of asavage/upgraded eso/diadem gear to choose from in order to have 0 parry on your character and finally be branded a good player. /s

And at that point you've cleared all that content and the extra dps is merely bragging rights. Its impossible to avoid parry in progression so bickering about whether or not to stack it is pointless. Just make sure you have the vit to survive and the most str that you can muster.

[Velox]

snip

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.

[Donjo]

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.

...

So, as others said.

Scales Poorly:
100=about 0.67% parry.

Source. Now.

Oh, wait. You're wrong. As usual.

Because many people went into 3.0 fully intending to ignore Parry, no "super official maximum accuracy" statistics have been gathered for the stat for 3.0 scaling. However, this thread appears to be the closest thing we have. People did things correctly in this thread, albeit without data sets large enough to ensure maximum accuracy. Nevertheless, it's close enough to be able to presume with enough accuracy that an increase of 1% Parry Rate requires 35-40 points of the stat, not over 100. A larger data set will not suddenly reveal all of the previous testing to be off by a factor of over 200%. That's not how statistics work.

We can even use other logic to strengthen the assumption.

1. This scaling is slightly higher than the scaling of Critical Hit Rate. Parry scaled slightly faster than Crit in 2.X as well.
2. Gearing for max parry would result in a total parry rate of between 28 and 31%, according to these stats. If we go back to 2.X and gear for max parry in i90(to compare the item level at both "first raid tiers"), the total rate also comes between 28 and 31%.

I don't get why people are trying to hard to spread such awfully exaggerated accounts of Parry's faults. Using more correct numbers won't change the arguments of why it isn't the best idea to stack.

[Syzygian]

snip

Gasp, accurate information on parry? Not in my forums! 354 parry or gtfo!

Love you tahz.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Source. Now.

Firstly though you need to find out if there is a "base parry" trying to parry 10,000 hits with 0 parry. Then add 100, then 200, then 300.
You also need to test every class, because stat values weigh differently per class.

I only guesstimated. That is why I used the word "about".

I do know it changed a lot from 2.X to 3.X.

However, saying: "Source" to me, does not matter. You need a "Source" to prove me wrong if that is the case. Which I wouldn't mind, since I said "about" it means I was not setting it as a fact, my only fact is that it doesn't happen very often and is based on RNG.

So, where is the source showing all three tanks testing at 0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800+ parry?

You also have to factor that this is only physical damage we are preventing, not magical. Which lowers its total damage reduction value.

It is completely unreliable and that is is. Which is why I used the term: about. Meaning It wasn't an exact rate, even with your increased rate it is still very poor and unreliable.