Why Avoid Parry?

[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

[Kosmos992k]

**a great example of why people don't like tanks in this game**

Did it ever cross your mind that people play for many different reasons and do not treat this game as an exercise in math and efficiency?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Did it ever cross your mind that people play for many different reasons and do not treat this game as an exercise in math and efficiency?

Going pure defensive and just holding threat really isn't that hard to do. I can do that watching a movie at the same time. I would have no reason to play a tank class because that just sounds extremely lazy and boring. I had to group with several tanks like that already. If a Warrior or Dark Knight plays like that, they usually are less survivable then ones who focus on DPS because they have overall less sustain, and most don't even actively use their defensive moves often.

However, trying to deal as much damage as possible while tanking is both fun, active, rewarding, challenging.

Most full defensive tanks I meet, pretty much do their threat combo and stack high vit and never use defensive moves. Some don't even avoid AOEs. Its almost like they are watching Netflix more then playing the game.

I mean, sure that probably sounds fun to you but its really not that hard.

[dank1]

Going pure defensive and just holding threat really isn't that hard to do. I can do that watching a movie at the same time. I would have no reason to play a tank class because that just sounds extremely lazy and boring. I had to group with several tanks like that already. If a Warrior or Dark Knight plays like that, they usually are less survivable then ones who focus on DPS because they have overall less sustain, and most don't even actively use their defensive moves often.

However, trying to deal as much damage as possible while tanking is both fun, active, rewarding, challenging.

Most full defensive tanks I meet, pretty much do their threat combo and stack high vit and never use defensive moves. Some don't even avoid AOEs. Its almost like they are watching Netflix more then playing the game.

I mean, sure that probably sounds fun to you but its really not that hard.

Thank you for this, most str based tanks play better overall than those who stack vit spam their 123 aggro rotation because they have to.
Being full str means you have to increase your survivability to full levels by using cooldowns.
Being full str also means you more than likely care about your dps which means you will put in effort into your combos to pump out damage and not play lazily, all this will amount to better aggro management and survivability because we all know a dead tank cant dps, why would we risk dying and wiping the party?

The people who are against tanks dpsing usually have a one track mind and believe there's only 2 diff types of tanks, those who want to tank or want to dps so they to fit into a certain mold. They fail to realize that this is a game where a party all has the same common goal, you need to be versatile to complete and said goals and put the party's interest before your own wants and conceptions of what a class should or shouldnt do

[Jpec07]

Thank you for this, most str based tanks play better overall than those who stack vit spam their 123 aggro rotation because they have to.
Being full str means you have to increase your survivability to full levels by using cooldowns.
Being full str also means you more than likely care about your dps which means you will put in effort into your combos to pump out damage and not play lazily, all this will amount to better aggro management and survivability because we all know a dead tank cant dps, why would we risk dying and wiping the party?

Huge fallacy with this logic when compared to the prevailing argument in this thread (it's kind of ironic, actually).

This thread suggests that people in full Fending gear don't really have that much of an advantage over people in Pentamelds or full Slaying gear. If Parry is utter crap (and I don't think anyone will contend that Vit isn't really that helpful for tanks), then how can you possibly argue that the Slaying tank will tend to play better than the Fending tank? If the prevailing argument in this thread holds true, then the two will be taking just about the same amount of damage, and the only difference will be that the Fending tank has to work harder for enmity. So by this logic, the natural conclusion of Slaying > Fending is that Fending gear actually makes enmity gameplay harder for the tank, while they'd have to cycle their cooldowns just as effectively as the tank in Slaying gear. So if they are able to hold threat and survive in Fending gear, and if the mitigation gains by Fending gear are marginal at best, then it stands to reason that the tank in Fending gear is better at the mechanics of their job than the tank in full Slaying, because they have to be.

[Ralvenom]

then how can you possibly argue that the Slaying tank will tend to play better than the Fending tank?

It's simple. The full slaying tank knows his choices are 1) don't use CDs as often and die OR 2) use CDs often, live, & do damage. When you have less room for error (because you don't have a larger HP pool to fall back on), you're forced to play tighter.

Also, most full Fending tanks tend to require more healing.

Btw, it's worth noting that both myself & dank1 used the word "tends", as in "to be disposed or inclined in action, operation, or effect to do something". So, before you (or anyone else) decides to jump in & go, "But I'm a full Fending tank who uses all his CDs, so I basically take no damage"...remember exceptions to the rules don't make the rules invalid.

Also, think about that concept a bit: a full fending tank who uses all of his/her CDs. As much as you (and others) may dislike it, if you used your CDs all the time AND were in full (or mostly) Slaying gear, how much more damage would you be contributing to the party. I feel it's VERY selfish in this game to NOT contribute as much damage as possible to the party, which means gearing in a manner that ups your damage is key, especially when we have enough CDs to make it such that Fending gear is NOT required in the current meta. I honestly hope this changes slightly in 3.2, because it would be cool to have a few fights where I have to a beefy tank. But, this is still 3.1, so suck it up & contribute as much as possible to the party already.

Increased output = increased enmity, increased hp recovery from moves such as Bloodbath

It's worth noting that increased HP recovery from Bloodbath = increased emnity (~10%+ emnity), so you might as well use this as often as it's up on pulls.

Unfortunately, PLD only has Circle of Scorn to act as an AoE damage dealing emnity generator. (Flash doesn't deal damage, so...using Bloodbath & Flash together is generally not great.) So, it's still kind of weak for PLD, but it's better than nothing. WAR & DRK have enough AoE emnity generation to get significant gains from Bloodbath.

[Februs]

Unfortunately, PLD only has Circle of Scorn to act as an AoE damage dealing emnity generator. (Flash doesn't deal damage, so...using Bloodbath & Flash together is generally not great.) So, it's still kind of weak for PLD, but it's better than nothing. WAR & DRK have enough AoE emnity generation to get significant gains from Bloodbath.

Yet another reason why the changes from 3.1 to shield swipe are awful for Pld's mob enmity. They already had piss poor mob aggro, so, by all means, lets take away the crutch we gave them in 3.0 that was actually working for holding aggro on a mob without spamming flash.

I should point out though, that Blood bath does not provide healing with magic attacks. Unleash is the same as Flash. It provides no healing when used with bloodbath because the dmg dealt in non-aspected magic dmg. That being said, their primary enmity combo hits harder than RoH, so they get a better return off of that than Pld do, and their Siphon Blade combo already self heals, so they can compound the effect using that combo.

[Freyyy]

Oh and I forgot to answer this

It's worth noting that increased HP recovery from Bloodbath = increased emnity (~10%+ emnity), so you might as well use this as often as it's up on pulls.

This is completely false. Lifestealing doesn't generate enmity. Bloodbath only generates the basic buff enmity when you activate it, like any other buff, and that's it (which is 70 I believe). This has been tested back in 2013.

[dank1]

Huge fallacy with this logic when compared to the prevailing argument in this thr

This thread suggests that people in full Fending gear don't really have that much of an advantage over people in Pentamelds or full Slaying gear. If Parry is utter crap (and I don't think anyone will contend that Vit isn't really that helpful for tanks), then how can you possibly argue that the Slaying tank will tend to play better than the Fending tank? If the prevailing argument in this thread holds true, then the two will be taking just about the same amount of damage, and the only difference will be that the Fending tank has to work harder for enmity. So by this logic, the natural conclusion of Slaying > Fending is that Fending gear actually makes enmity gameplay harder for the tank, while they'd have to cycle their cooldowns just as effectively as the tank in Slaying gear. So if they are able to hold threat and survive in Fending gear, and if the mitigation gains by Fending gear are marginal at best, then it stands to reason that the tank in Fending gear is better at the mechanics of their job than the tank in full Slaying, because they have to be.

By playing better I meant more effectively contributing to the party. A tank who provides a higher damage output than the other while maintaining the same survivability by default is the better tank just by helping the boss die that much faster and in some cases being the only reason the boss even died in a decent amount of time(i.e in DF when the dps is doing only around 400dps)

I also mentioned "plays better" due to the fact that a lot of the times full vit players don't use any cooldowns due to thinking they don't need to because of their higher hp pools, while a str tank being aware that they don't have as much of a cushion is more likely to pop cooldowns which in turn is actually better most times, and provides more survivability, than the full vit guy who doesnt think he needs to pop any cooldowns.
Obviously these scenarios arent always the case, there is some cases where full str tanks dont ever pop CDs and cases where even full vit tanks still use CDs effectively, but if we were talking about equally skilled players then the one who deals more damage is better by default because why wouldn't they be?

[Giantbane]

Huge fallacy with this logic when compared to the prevailing argument in this thread (it's kind of ironic, actually).

This thread suggests that people in full Fending gear don't really have that much of an advantage over people in Pentamelds or full Slaying gear. If Parry is utter crap (and I don't think anyone will contend that Vit isn't really that helpful for tanks), then how can you possibly argue that the Slaying tank will tend to play better than the Fending tank? If the prevailing argument in this thread holds true, then the two will be taking just about the same amount of damage, and the only difference will be that the Fending tank has to work harder for enmity. So by this logic, the natural conclusion of Slaying > Fending is that Fending gear actually makes enmity gameplay harder for the tank, while they'd have to cycle their cooldowns just as effectively as the tank in Slaying gear. So if they are able to hold threat and survive in Fending gear, and if the mitigation gains by Fending gear are marginal at best, then it stands to reason that the tank in Fending gear is better at the mechanics of their job than the tank in full Slaying, because they have to be.

He's talking about the general behavior and attitude of players that choose to push their limits by running with lower HP pools, and stance swapping aggressively. His claim is that they tend to be more mindful of the encounter because they are playing in a precarious fashion by taking more damage and having a lower HP pool which decreases the margin of error. As opposed to those who stack VIT and sit in tank stance all day because their job is not DPS.

Although my experiences have been somewhat different. I see a pretty even split between good STR tanks that can use cooldowns and stance dancing effectively vs. bad STR tanks that sit in DPS stance all day, don't use their cool downs and expect the healer to pick up the slack.

Either way, this has little to nothing to do with the parry stat.