Why Avoid Parry?

[Jpec07]

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?

Edit: 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. Is the scaling on Parry really so poor that the DPS gained by using other stats instead makes tank DPS a more viable source of mitigation?

[Freyyy]

- Parry is only possible against physical attacks.
- The parry stat scales very VERY poorly, you have to get a LOT of it in order to see a tiny difference. And by doing that, you're wasting a LOT of good DPS secondaries.
- Unreliable form of mitigation. When big physical damage are incoming, you and your healers can never assume that you will parry. You have to prepare for it with your tanking stance and appropriate cooldown usage. If RNG decides that you parry on top of that, it's unneeded and unexpected mitigation which leads to overhealing most of the time.
- Only useful when actually tanking something, while DPS secondaries are useful 100% of the time.

[Jamillion]

Because it scales terribly, is completely unreliable, and is capped at how much it can mitigate. Even if DPS wasn't the current meta it would be more efficient to mitigate through dpsing than stacking parry

[Tagihi]

its nothing wrong with parry " IF "you parry.
Rate of parry is to low scaled its basicly to low so its more less waste of stats. Why not use another stats to increase ur dmg insdead?
Parry dosen't happen often even with super high parry.

[Kosmos992k]

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

Because SE screwed up tanks in 3.X. In the interests of scaling (apparently) both Parry and blocking were treated to huge nerfs in effectiveness and more or less capped in terms of what they can do. The impact of Parry was scaled down so much that it's of extremely limited use now, despite all our tank gear dripping with it.

Thinking about the PLD for a moment, PLD is supposed to be the mitigation tank, and yet not only did they screw up Parry, they screwed up blocking, and now further compromised the usility of blocking with the changes to Shield Swipe. So, almost all the extra mitigation PLD has, has been seriously nerfed.

[Jpec07]

- Parry is only possible against physical attacks.

Not sure how accurate this is. I've seen parry come up on a number of magical attacks, and based on what I've seen from other posters, it seems to affect both physical AND magic. Evidence is purely anecdotal, though.

- The parry stat scales very VERY poorly, you have to get a LOT of it in order to see a tiny difference. And by doing that, you're wasting a LOT of good DPS secondaries.

Even so, isn't it still more valuable for a tank to stack anything that will reduce incoming damage? Even if only by a little bit? Sure, encounters right now don't really make mitigation valuable (because of how little damage is going out), but as a general rule, isn't anything you can do to even have a chance of slightly reducing incoming damage worthwhile?

- Unreliable form of mitigation. When big physical damage are incoming, you and your healers can never assume that you will parry. You have to prepare for it with your tanking stance and appropriate cooldown usage. If RNG decides that you parry on top of that, it's unneeded and unexpected mitigation which leads to overhealing most of the time.

But what about trash pulls, or bosses that have frequent auto-attacks? You're listing one example, but that example is why cooldowns exist. Parry seems more to exist for helping to just reduce incoming damage in general; as a tank, isn't any little bit of help we can give to our healers worthwhile?

- Only useful when actually tanking something, while DPS secondaries are useful 100% of the time.

This is the only point I can kind of understand--but even so, wouldn't it still make sense for the MT to equip Parry to smooth incoming white damage? Especially when DPS is only an incidental goal of tanking, doesn't it make more sense for a Main Tank to do whatever is within their power to have the greatest chance at reducing incoming damage as possible? DPS secondaries are also not useful for period of outgoing damage where the boss cannot be attacked, while Parry is/might be.

Not trying to argue, just really trying to wrap my head around this, because it seems completely backwards to me.

[Risvertasashi]

Basically... let's say you go all parry. If you can get a piece for a slot with parry, you get it, wear it, use it.

To notice the difference, you have to do some hard core stat crunching. Recording encounter after encounter until you have a ton of data points to compare against your previous build. Only then will you notice a very slight difference.

Without the help of said programs/crunching, you'll never notice any gain from stacking the parry stat. Your healers won't notice. That's why people call it a terrible stat.

Same applies to block for PLDs.

[Twilite]

The cap on parry is better than what foresight offers lol. That said, parry isn't all that great outside of Raw Intuition.

[Merkava]

Not sure how accurate this is. I've seen parry come up on a number of magical attacks, and based on what I've seen from other posters, it seems to affect both physical AND magic. Evidence is purely anecdotal, though.

What you think are magical attacks are actually physical, the game is weird like that at times but Parry only works on Physical attacks. I know what you mean but trust me when I say you haven't parried a single magical attack.

Even so, isn't it still more valuable for a tank to stack anything that will reduce incoming damage? Even if only by a little bit? Sure, encounters right now don't really make mitigation valuable (because of how little damage is going out), but as a general rule, isn't anything you can do to even have a chance of slightly reducing incoming damage worthwhile?

The problem is that it's RNG based and extremely unreliable. The scaling is so bad it's best to rely on skills that boost Parry chance rather than the parry stat itself. Parry is negated by Critical hits and you have to wrap your head around the idea that one of the best ways to mitigate damage in this game is to kill whatever is hurting you faster. Giving a boost to a stat that gives you a more sizeable boost to damage is more useful than a stat that MIGHT give you a small boost to your defense. On top of that most big fights are scripted so big reliable mitigitations are far more important than RNG mitigation.

[Risvertasashi]

The cap on parry is better than what foresight offers lol. That said, parry isn't all that great outside of Raw Intuition.

Actually no, Foresight is better. Foresight offers a 20% boost to p.defense, which translates to about 8% p.damage mitigated for its duration. This is not really useful for tankbusters and yeah it's a weak CD, but it helps smooth incoming damage just a bit.

Parry (the stat)... it's difficult to even get to a 1% difference for the encounter and it's active full time.

Now obviously the CDs that give very high boosts to parry/block are good, but the stat... well, see my post above.