Why Avoid Parry?

[Kosmos992k]

This pretty much sums it up logistically. I the content where parry would be relevant (raids) the events are scripted and good healers precast. The healers know hen the damage is coming and start their cast before it arrives based on their knowledge of the incoming damage so the damage is healed almost instantly as it's taken. Often times the parry leads to an over heal and wasted mana in that case. Also the mitigation properties of dps shouldn't be understated. Moves like souleater and cool downs like bloodbath give back health at much larger rates with higher damage output.

Hold on, the logical conclusion of your thoughts here would suggest that a Dragoon could be a viable tank since healers can pre-cast everything in scripted fights and you're leaning heavily on dps output as a form of mitigation by proxy.

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.

I'll go ahead and say it....If this is the future of tanking in FFXIV, I'll be hanging up my sword and shield, and focusing on WHM and Bard in future. Which is a real pity since I actually enjoy tanking, but if it all boils down to superior DPS == tanking, I'm gone.