Why Avoid Parry?

[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)

[braneri1]

Couldn't a tank going balanced STR/VIT also be good strategy? That would mean the tank would require less healing but still put out decent damage. The extra MP the healers save would allow them to dps more.

Or is this a case where the extra dps a full STR tank provides trumps the extra dps the healers would provide above?

It can be useful to have a balance of str and vit. This depends on the content you're doing and your gear, like if your left side gear is not so great you may want to still have maybe 2 vit accessories and even use some cheap food like kaiser rolls (a low level HW recipe with cheap, easy to get mats that gives you about as much vit as if you were to swap your attribute points to full vit). As for tank busters in raids, make sure you have enough vit to survive it in combination with proper mitigation, with a bit of room left for any potential auto attacks that may follow after it. Play around with it and see what you can manage while still remaining reasonably comfortable.

It also varies depending on the type of pulls you are doing. If you get into a dungeon and do not have a strong group composition for aoe (like double melee or newer players with less gear), you may be better off doing smaller trash pulls with a heavier str setup so that you can help kill stuff faster without putting undue stress on your healer by doing larger pulls [which you would normally do with a stronger group comp] that will take far longer to kill, thus you will run out of defensive cooldowns when there are still a lot of enemies left. Dungeon bosses do so little tank damage however, that you can easily go full str and even drop tank stance once you have solid aggro, and just pop a cooldown to mitigate what few higher damage skills the boss has. In most cases, maintaining a regen and tossing you an occasional cure is all the healing that is necessary.

Also, having more vit doesn't mean you require less healing. Firstly, it will mean that it would take 1-2 gcds longer before your healer has to start healing you, which is a non-issue because any large pulls you do should be combined with using one of your higher mitigation skills as well as a stoneskin, adloquium, or nocturnal aspected benefic, which will easily provide the extra amount of time for healers to put out dps before having to switch out. (On a side note, having more vit as a drk can be counterproductive if you end up having to use living dead, as if walking dead is triggered, your healer will have to heal more hp to remove the effect, which can end up increasing your risk of death, depending on what burst heals your healer has available and ready to use.) Vit does not provide direct mitigation, it only does so in combination with certain skills that are based on it such as thrill of battle or divine veil. Incoming damage is the same regardless of how much vit you have; vit is an entirely separate stat from defence/magic defence.

Secondly, having more vit will mean that your self-healing will be weaker, thus making your own contributions to mitigation in that way weaker. Clemency, bloodbath, soul eater, inner beast, equilibrium, second wind, storm's path, dark arts abyssal drain...these will all provide smaller returns if you have more vit and less str.

As for the last part of what I quoted, being a full str tank does not in any way make healers incapable of putting out dps. If the tank and healer both know their jobs well, both of you can put out great dps easily while surviving anything. It all comes down to the ratio of incoming damage to incoming heals + self healing.

Having more str is also not only useful for higher dps and better self-healing, but stronger enmity generation as well. Enmity is calculated based on the amount of damage you do, times enmity multipliers of the skill, times enmity multipliers of your tank stance. So the more damage you do, the faster you are able to generate enmity, and this can get to the point where you only really need to, for example, start a boss pull on tank stance for 1-2 enmity combos, and then drop tank stance for the remainder of the fight while never losing top aggro.

I hope all this helps!

[Izsha]

Couldn't a tank going balanced STR/VIT also be good strategy? That would mean the tank would require less healing but still put out decent damage. The extra MP the healers save would allow them to dps more.

Or is this a case where the extra dps a full STR tank provides trumps the extra dps the healers would provide above?

You just discovered penta melded hybrid accessories. About 2/3 the str and vit combined. There's a reason they have been the gild standard for raid tanks since twintania. At the beginning of patch cycle tanks spend millions and millions of gil to make full hybrid sets. Then as their left side gear improves they slowly replace the hybrids with slaying as able and as the encounter demands. What your suggesting is exactly what's always been happening at the higher end.

Broke tanks just mix n matched slay/fend accessories for a gimpy version of the same idea.

[Kacho_Nacho]

You just discovered penta melded hybrid accessories. About 2/3 the str and vit combined. There's a reason they have been the gild standard for raid tanks since twintania. At the beginning of patch cycle tanks spend millions and millions of gil to make full hybrid sets. Then as their left side gear improves they slowly replace the hybrids with slaying as able and as the encounter demands. What your suggesting is exactly what's always been happening at the higher end.

Broke tanks just mix n matched slay/fend accessories for a gimpy version of the same idea.

Hey! I'm learning!

You all are good teachers.

[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.

[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.....

[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.

[Aaliyahrose]

Can someone explain what a Parry of 774 on DRK has to offer. I'm really bad at this math thing but I would love if someone were to at least give me a number or percentage of what I'll be dealing with in 3.2.

[Violette]

Can someone explain what a Parry of 774 on DRK has to offer. I'm really bad at this math thing but I would love if someone were to at least give me a number or percentage of what I'll be dealing with in 3.2.

f̶u̶c̶k̶ a̶l̶l̶ Worse physical mitigation than turning on foresight/dark dance.

The same offensive might as a MT paladin w/ full crit/det gear.

Low blows for days (if you're lucky).