Buff shields.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't mind that they tried to make stats a bit more approachable. I do mind that they did a crappy job of thinking it through, and made what feels like arbitrary decisions surrounding how different stats work and interact.

To be honest, the only two factors were pretty reasonable ones -- strength for more block strength, dexterity for more block rate... The only way that might have been improved upon would be if Vitality also provided a bit, while Strength provided less, if paired with a few other Fending Accessory balancing changes (seriously, our tank accs provide no survivability increase once reaching minimum eHP...). That, or, as Brannigan said, giving us some actual secondary stats to play around with as tanks. To be honest, though, I'm not certain I want PLD's physical mitigation to scale *that* much better than the other two tanks as gear improves, least of all where it might later prevent them from being reasonably buffed in other, less RNG-dependent areas. As long as their physical passive miti is fine right now (they're already top in true passive phys miti), I'd really rather seem them get as close as they can to on par with the other tanks in other ways.

Pipedream: I wish blocks weren't just parries with a different scalar. Also wish parries worked a bit more like, well, parries. Would have loved to see Blocks, Dodges, and Parries modified into an enemy accuracy reduction system (deflection/evasion) and flat absorb (guard), and then being able to gear into any of those 2-3 defensive stats.

This would have to go hand in hand with the same change on the player side of the accuracy system as well, though, which would allow for percentile hits (glancing blows) according to accuracy (whereas all hits right now vary within a SD of 5% iirc, this would assume you're hitting for the maximum, but then you'd have a negative range that decreases as your accuracy nears cap. Accuracy beyond the opponent's cap would give additional critical strike chance, though at a far lesser rate than the actual Critical Strike stat).

[Februs]

Honestly, they could do something similar with that worthless Parry stat and increase it's ability to block/parry to something significant while using the characters ilv vs mob's ilv difference to scale it's maximum potential. At least it wouldn't be a totally dead weight stat when tanks are forced deal with it when upgrading gear.

As things are now, when I see Parry on Pld weapons/shields the first thought that goes through my mind is "wasted stat."The reason for this is because Parry scales for crap, and Pld's have shields! Why the heck would I want to increase my Parry rate when I could just lift my left arm up?! Further, given that Pld's have the absolute lowest Dps of ... well, everyone, when I see anything other than Det and Crit on a sword I can't help but cringe. One stat is useful. The other is crap.

Now, if it worked the way you specified here, I may have to actually change my thinking. I'd probably still prefer that Det/Crit split on my sword, but if I saw Parry on my shield I might not immediately think it's a waste.

[SwordCoheir]

That's pretty much my mindset Februs. Parry is such an underwhelming stat the thought of it on any piece of gear is cringeworthy. If they do a STR to VIT changeover in 3.2 like many of us are hoping will happen, then I wouldn't mind if Parry takes up STR's place, so even if Parry is worthless we won't have to deal with the loss of a secondary stat as well.

[SpookyGhost]

The problem with +Block STR/+Parry STR is the existence of Raw Intuition/Sheltron. Sheltron especially would become a bit insane, since you could use a tower shield and couple that with high "Parry".

Shields are actually fine, though I'd like them more if there was a Tower/Kite/Buckler for every ilvl.

The Parry stat is a different story. There's a bunch of ways to fix it, but anything involving +mitigation becomes a problem in any fight where you're not tanking all the time - though it'd still be better than what we have now.