Why Avoid Parry?

[Donjo]

Jpec, I've just gotta say. You've handled yourself very well in this discussion. You've asked some important questions; questions that too many people have outright ignored... and when people bit back, you peacefully considered their points of view without biting back yourself.

So kudos to you. This has been a good thread.

[T2teddy]

I really loathe the fact that SE made Coils and Alex require so much more dps that the dedicated raiders chose to force tanks and healers to dps too. THAT's what has led to all this damage is the be all end all of tanking crap. And sadly. the raider's self imposed meta has spread through the whole damned game where IT IS NOT NEEDED. The only reason virtually all he community is insisting on tanks and healers upping their dps and pulling massive amounts of mobs is so the stupid dailies take 1 minute less to run.

I might add that by behaving like that y'all suck the joy out of being a low level player in an instance for the first time. Seriously.

[Sapphidia]

One thing I think is also worth mentioning: quite a few of the raiding tanks here who are vehemently defending the "no vit, no parry, tank in dps stance whenever possible" meta are not necessarily fans of it.

I personally would LOVE if I could stack Vit, stack Parry, and walk into an encounter and just laugh as I shrug off damage barely needing any healing, and how my health pool was a direct correlation to my gear advancement. I don't -like- the DPS heavy meta because this wasnt why I chose to roll tank as my main. Obviously a lot of players DO like the current meta as it lets them have a more aggressive playstyle (particularly players who play tank who normally gravitate to DPS roles in games), but it's certainly not clear cut.

We're all waiting with baited breath to see what changes 3.2 brings. I fully appreciate the -desire- of Jpec07 to try and justify a mitigation-heavy setup. Reading between the lines of his posts I get the feeling Jpec07 is a similar tank-minded player to myself who is desperately trying to find some kind of nuance or statistic to cling onto to let it be viable to gear up to TAKE LESS DAMAGE, which is where a lot of the enjoyment of tanking comes from. That feeling that your gearing choices and gear advancement over time as you progress is contributing to making you harder and harder to kill.

Sadly, as things are now, Parry is just a garbage stat simply because 40 parry = 1% parry chance = 0.2% less damage taken by physical only, with added unreliability. With Crit being a similar amount for 1% crit, which is about 0.5% damage increase, it's just a much much bigger impact on your performance. I wish this wasnt the case.

Ironically, as I say this, I'm a raiding Paladin who has 650 Parry in their tanking set (even with full Slaying Accessories), more than any other secondary stat bar Acc, simply because the i210 tanking gear I've picked up has all been stacked with it and there hasnt really been any other viable option due to how gated Esoterics and Gobtwines are. So here I am saying just how much it sucks, yet the best gear I have available to me sadly is stacked with it.

[Februs]

One thing I think is also worth mentioning: quite a few of the raiding tanks here who are vehemently defending the "no vit, no parry, tank in dps stance whenever possible" meta are not necessarily fans of it.

It's also worth noting that "Har Har! Moar Dps! Har Har!" Is not the only reason for why slaying accessories are sometimes preferable. I mainly Tank as Pld, and most people's instinct is to use pure Vitality on a Pld given that they have less health than Warriors (especially in Defiance); however, people who main Pld know first hand that Pld's have the lowest enmity gen of all 3 tanks. Scaling Str accessories allows a Pld to somewhat compensate for this discrepancy because Flash, RoH, and even Clemency scale with Str, not Vit.

Currently, I am running with full Vit, but when I chose to run with Str I do so knowing that I'm doing it at a trade off. I'm exchanging a tiny bit of HP out of my already more than sufficient Hp pool for increased enmity generation and greater returns off of my skill set. The fact that this also boosts a bit of my Dps is just a nice sidebar, not the goal.

[Hitoseijuro]

One thing I think is also worth mentioning: quite a few of the raiding tanks here who are vehemently defending the "no vit, no parry, tank in dps stance whenever possible" meta are not necessarily fans of it.

I personally would LOVE if I could stack Vit, stack Parry, and walk into an encounter and just laugh as I shrug off damage barely needing any healing, and how my health pool was a direct correlation to my gear advancement. I don't -like- the DPS heavy meta because this wasnt why I chose to roll tank as my main. Obviously a lot of players DO like the current meta as it lets them have a more aggressive playstyle (particularly players who play tank who normally gravitate to DPS roles in games), but it's certainly not clear cut.

We're all waiting with baited breath to see what changes 3.2 brings. I fully appreciate the -desire- of Jpec07 to try and justify a mitigation-heavy setup. Reading between the lines of his posts I get the feeling Jpec07 is a similar tank-minded player to myself who is desperately trying to find some kind of nuance or statistic to cling onto to let it be viable to gear up to TAKE LESS DAMAGE, which is where a lot of the enjoyment of tanking comes from. That feeling that your gearing choices and gear advancement over time as you progress is contributing to making you harder and harder to kill.

Sadly, as things are now, Parry is just a garbage stat simply because 40 parry = 1% parry chance = 0.2% less damage taken by physical only, with added unreliability. With Crit being a similar amount for 1% crit, which is about 0.5% damage increase, it's just a much much bigger impact on your performance. I wish this wasnt the case.

Ironically, as I say this, I'm a raiding Paladin who has 650 Parry in their tanking set (even with full Slaying Accessories), more than any other secondary stat bar Acc, simply because the i210 tanking gear I've picked up has all been stacked with it and there hasnt really been any other viable option due to how gated Esoterics and Gobtwines are. So here I am saying just how much it sucks, yet the best gear I have available to me sadly is stacked with it.

I think on top of how parry scales, it also is stacked with very poor choice secondaries. You cant be an endgame tank and want to stack all the parry you want(Lets be in a world where parry was great)because your other stats would also suffer, on some classes you would probably have more than the desired skill speed you want, and outside of warrior, you would go dry very fast on pld/drk even with breaks. Not even going to mention the biggest factor, which is accuracy, fully stacked parry armor gives very little accuracy. Either way you're still forced to go hybrid(if you want parry). If parry came with more options of crit/acc/det on better piece choices one could make an argument for having more parry.

Ideally, as a paladin you want to be a bunker, that's the logical way every player views a paladin, I'm sure even SE which is why they want them dealing dmg on the lower spectrum of all 3 tanks, so having parry would be something a paladin would love to have or I should say work, but because of how block works and having sheltron, you diminish its utility.

Warriors don't have block so parry would be a nice average mitigation(like block does for pld) however(I'm not a warrior so bare in mind) I believe because of their self heals crit not only impacts them offensively but also defensively so having crit as a priority is also a thing.

This leaves us Dark, I am and always will be a dps tank, over 10 years and I don't see this every changing, but as I say that, I can see *merits* for a dark looking to add in some hybrid crit/parry in their set up due to reprisal/Dark dance(up 30% of the time). I'm not making an argument for parry on dark but I can see if someone wants to.


I made a few sets for each class, 1 being full parry as max as possible,1 being get as much parry as possible while achieving proper accuracy for AS4, 1 being a hybrid, having a good amount of crit while getting parry whenever possible while maintaining proper acc, and the last, full priority on crit/acc.

*note, these sets dont include melded/Diadem(more on diadem later), going to use Dervy's theorized parry : (parry-354)/(858*4)+ 0.05(this is just theory not accurate just using as a ref)

Warrior:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4H9 - 9.1% crit, 580 acc(no food), 875 parry(20.1%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HB - 12.57% crit, 665acc, 753 parry(16.62%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HD - 13.3% crit, 669 acc, 625 parry(12.89%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HG - 17.21% crit, 677acc, 496 parry(9.13%)

Dark:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HH - 6.72% crit, 552 acc(no food), 934parry(21.89%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HI - 9.77% crit, 654acc, 805parry(18.14%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HK - 13.01%crit, 690acc, 746parry(16.42%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HL - 15.83% crit, 782acc(....), 384parry(5.87%)

Pld:
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HM -6.72% crit, 580 acc, 912parry(21.25%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HO - 9.49% crit, 668acc, 848parry(19.39%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HP - 15.02% crit, 690acc, 641parry(13.36%)
http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/S4HQ - 17.23% crit, 765acc(....), 413parry(6.71%)


So basically the first sets shouldnt really appeal to anyone, going for full parry will give you sub optimal dmg on top of not enough accuracy for endgame raids outside of probably As1 with or w/o food. This might be an obvious deduction but you'd be surprised what I've seen/read or heard.

For the next 2 sets, for pld you gain roughly 1% crit for a 1% loss of parry when you prioritize crit over parry in a hybrid. Dark is almost in that boat as it gains 1% extra crit with the 1 for 1 exchange. Warrior on the other hand gains 1% for a 4% loss.

The interesting part is the last set vs the others as with pld you gain 2% more crit with a crit focused build but lose 6.6%(half your parry% from previous set), Dark gains almost 3% more crit but loses about 10% parry for it. Warrior on the other hand gains 1% per 1% loss on parry, gaining 4% crit while losing 4% parry but still having a 3% parry over the other 2 over all.

So warrior gains 11% crit at an 11% parry loss, Dark gains 9% crit with a 16% parry loss, and pld gains 10.5% crit over a 14.5% parry loss. Ideally though those full parry sets are bad so perhaps we can look at the hybrid vs crit builds and get a better idea.

So lets look at a Crit/parry build(sets 2-3 on each class)against a more crit focused set. For war you gain roughly 4% crit while losing 7-4%(average that to 5.6%), Dark you gain 6-3%(4.5%) while losing 12-10% parry and finally for pld you gain almost 8% crit for a 12-6%(9%) parry loss.



For warrior going for a full crit build seems to suffer the least out of all the jobs when it comes to how much crit you gain over parry loss. Dark seems to be ok with going into a hybrid crit/parry. Parry does help with reprisal/low blow(not a case for stacking it but a bonus for having it). PLD on the other hand works well with hybrid but also well with crit focus'd builds due to the fact as I mentioned before of block and sheltron.

Again, the problem with all this is just parry doesn't function as great as you want or wish it did, But if you want to be more durable and feel like having more parry will help your healers then maybe checking out the 2nd and 3rd set for each class that I posted might be something to look and of course tweak around since I did not rip these sets a part 100% to get the min/max out of each set but generalized it.


The biggest wrench that was thrown with all this gearing for crit or parry is Diadem, if you're someone doing Diadem, then congrats, you can get the best of both worlds(very slowly) since you can try to farm your chance at getting something with crit, parry and accuracy on top of det.


TL;DR : Crit hybrid builds can work if people want placebo durability with more parry at a small loss of crit. Wars probably suffer the least from full crit builds(hence their OP status). Turtle tanking could be better if the defensive mechanics of the game were better but currently straight -% damage taken is still king of mitigation and anything else is just sprinkles(bonus). I think this post is beyond long and probably not read or approached due to its length.....

[MercureXI]

Well, just adding my PoV here, but considering how little parry stacking has any effect on the actual encounter (low boost and unreliable anyway : healers can't predict a parry, and use same heals anyway), you are better off with DPS just because reducing the time you have to tank, on the other end, is a good thing, like when you push a phase or kill adds faster etc.

Not to mention that, as a WAR, more attack means more self-heals, which helps a lot more and is more reliable than parry as a whole.

Until SE decides to actually put some thoughts into parry (like, for example, parry stat affecting some of your skills, like say, parry making some of your defensive skills last longer or be more effective), it's a dead weight stat.

Gearing up with parry as your priority, will just nerf you overall compared to gearing up with dps stats.

[Bravely_Default]

Yes mixed tanking can work out alright as well. There are a few fending accessories (fabled bracelet of fending / fabled earrings of fending) that give determination/skill speed/accuracy which are much more useful then parry. so if you are replacing just the parry fending accessories with strength you are gaining both some damage, and some bulk. Keep in mind that with the left side at 200 or higher, you have enough health to survive whatever you need to. (with proper cooldown management)

[Kotemon]

I don't get it.

What I don't get is how Dark Knight can parry an explosion from a crystal in Darkhold but can't parry a rock being tossed at them via white magic. Its still a physical rock being tossed at you and it will only hurt if it hits you, Yet we have no problems with an invisible force moving at the speed of sound from 10 feet away.. Right now I'm trying to find out the relation between damage penalties being offset by strength ratio. However when it comes to parry these video guides for Dark Knight helped clear up my notion of the parry. He doesn't get into Parry until around 9 min but before that its more or less proper use of Strength and Vitality.

DRK stats! STR, VIT and Parry crusade.

[Faytte]

Tank's are badly designed in this game, from playstyle (you are basically behaving as a dps that pops cd's for busters. Unlike the active mitigation that most other MMO's now have moved to, FFXIV is largely old school/passive mitigation) to the item mechanics (the only tank only stat, parry, is one that every tank seeks to avoid because of how little it does) or itemization (the entire issue with our right sides, with extra vitality only being useful for a brief window, making melded accesories the best option ---something that no class deals with. Ironically once you get melded gear, you will end up getting very bored as a raider as 5 of your item slots don't get upgraded).

Tanking is also frankly, boring--once you learn the mechanics of a fight (which are well designed and fantastic) the actual act of 'tanking' is incredibly boring, leading you to mostly just joining the dps to race to kill the boss. In other games, a great tank can heavily reduce their incoming damage second to second with great skill---and while damage does come, its secondary after actively mitigating down the incoming damage.

[Ralvenom]

Unlike the active mitigation that most other MMO's now have moved to, FFXIV is largely old school/passive mitigation

The active mitigation model is largely proving to be no better. WoW is proving this as I speak. You end up doing the same thing; it's just that CDs are more frequent & less powerful, while giving you tools that both do damage and increase mitigation. However, look at Warrior Tanks in WoW or how the Lancer in Tera works. The former example is very clunky, while the latter example relies on the player actively using what boils down to the "dodge button". Active mitigation is HARDLY what it's cracked up to be.

the actual act of 'tanking' is incredibly boring, leading you to mostly just joining the dps to race to kill the boss. In other games, a great tank can heavily reduce their incoming damage second to second with great skill---and while damage does come, its secondary after actively mitigating down the incoming damage.

In WoW & Rift & Tera, it became a dps game for tanks too. Don't kid yourself. Just because tanking in WoW as a Death Knight or Druid meant self-healing doesn't mean it wasn't a dps race. If you want to play a game where tank damage is irrelevant, then you better go play on some Vanilla WoW server, where people care more about nostalgia than actual damage.
In the active mitigation scheme, the damage is largely mitigated by using your most damaging abilities OR tank damage is so ungodly low that tanks don't even try to do anything other than basic damage. So, in other words, depending on the way it is implemented, either tanks who do bad damage are also bad at tanking OR tanks who focus on damage over mitigation are dead. Either extreme is really not a good balance. The former extreme results in the same kind of dps races that we have in FFXIV, while the latter extreme means that tanks are generally bored and constantly going, "My CDs that requires 5 stacks of X is now up for 5 seconds. (Snooze)".

Fact is, while tank itemization is a problem right now in FFXIV, tanking in this game is relatively well implemented compared to other games. So, before you go crapping on tanking in FFXIV, go tank in the games I mentioned. It all equals out to be about the same end result. You still use every GCD to ensure you are doing max damage. You just have different skills and your damage scales based on how the devs in that game decided tank damage would scale.