Parry: How would you improve it?

[Shurrikhan]

Well, what do you want from Parry, generally?

Do you want it to be a trade off from damage to average (not especially reliable) mitigation? To spot-mitigation or defensive / reactive control? Or do you want it to be just an aesthetic alternative to MT dps gearing? The first only needs a few adjustments at most. The second would require some actual design. The last would be essentially redundant apart from rooting one into MT and anti-physical position, though it would likely take a bit less design work than the second.

I'm personally of the opinion that Parry should just be removed or changed to something like a new stat that accomplishes the same goal of slightly freeing up healer attention but without the elements of RNG or physical niche--for instance a stat called Steadfast which increases Defense, Magic Defense, and Healing Received.

I can throw out some more ideas depending on what people actually want or expect from Parry, but for now I'd rather leave things at that.

That said, things that I don't think will help:
- Making Parry affect both rate and bonus --> Parry just becomes further unreliable, as rate is exchanged for potency, unless the stat is outright buffed.
- Buffing Parry to the point that it absolutely outweighs other secondary stats during progression, especially if only to quickly devalue after.
- Making Parry dps contributor (of an equal or greater value vs. physical, rapidly-hitting bosses than Det, Speed, or Crit). --> Tank jobs are not remotely balanced across Parry, and Parry is wasted against magic enemies and when OT; some jobs will be unable to access optimal gearing and it would be even more important for tanks to establish two ideal sets. There are ways around these issues, but I have yet to see any of the above suggestion for counter-attacks mention them.
- [Again] Letting Parry scale with other secondary stats (without adjusting the over-time/value scaling of Parry itself). --> At some point, Parry itself would provide less mitigation that adding to Crit, Det, or Speed.

Last but not least, there are only a few guards that provide useful momentum from a (stanced) parry with which to counterattack more forcefully or quickly than normal (see DRK stance, if it actually counter-attacked a downward strike with a wheeling downward cut of its own). For momentum to be passed, you must in a sense let the opposing blade catch your own and carry through (albeit in path you control); anything else merely takes the difference, and rather than gaining any sort of power, you merely find your arms numb. Similarly, neither does offsetting the enemy's weapon (be it in a parry or a strike) give a more powerful following strike; it merely increases the time necessary for them to defend against it (more closely emulated by a reduction to Evasion). I can see either as being a mechanic for a particular job, but it doesn't make sense as a rule of thumb to then attach to Parry.

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Edit: inb4 (a very obvious issue with Steadfast)....
Although reliable, Steadfast would require a large stat value to actually make a difference in healer actions, especially against intensive damage. Whereas Parry has a chance (though usually with two little time to be noticed and reacted to) make that difference, or not, Steadfast would be very middle-of-the-road all the time. In the end, mitigation is about healer GCDs second only to survival of tankbusters. In that sense, the only advantage of Steadfast over Parry is that it does not need to be reacted to (it acts consistently and therefore predictably) and works against Magic damage. Though of course, if considered overpowered, the Magic Defense component can always be removed.

I'd recommend against removing the Healing Received component (spitting Steadfast's value between mitigation and recovery) if only because it would otherwise become a way to cheese or save CDs on one-hit tankbusters twice as soon. Whether that is an issue or not would of course depend on the particular fight, but as 3% can often enough make the difference between life and death, especially with our current Vit tanks (for whom that mitigation's eHP bonus is indirectly greater), I don't think it would be impossible for a stat that could potentially reach over 1000 in value to reach that level of power otherwise. Moreover, I just prefer the feel of it truly taking the 'tank' role in stride, as a figure of the raid rather than a mere finite-health wall.

[Valmar]

If they made it so every time you Parried, your next auto attack is a critical.

It would still hold to the argument that Parry is useless when you're the off tank.

Edit: GG me, someone alrdy said it. -_-

[Jpec07]

Fun thought exercise. I'd focus on improving the defensive properties of parry; it's the only raw defensive stat we have, so why not make it worth taking for defense purposes? I'd probably do something like the following:

1. Block Rate += Parry - for Paladins in Shield Oath, have the parry stat apply directly to block rate. Paladins have shields, so instead of trying to bat attacks away with their swords, it makes more sense for them to hold up their shields.
2. Base Mitigation - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry also increases physical defense at .5*parry, and magic defense at .25*parry (coefficients subject to change). Parry would still have a chance to proc increased mitigation on physical attacks, but would also provide baseline mitigation.
3. "Magic" Parry - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry can also mitigate magic damage. The rate and amount would be 50% of the rate and amount for physical damage (coefficient subject to change).
4. Better Scaling - either double the rate at which parry affects parry rate, or have parry also affect the mitigation provided by parry while in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit.
5. Critical Block/Parry - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, give tanks the ability to critically block/parry, based on critical strike rating (so a 15% critical strike rating would also give you 15% chance at a critical block/parry, which would block/parry at (145+15)% strength).
6. Parry/Block Critical Strikes - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, let tanks parry/block critical strikes. A blocked/parried critical strike deals damage equal to if it had not been critical.
7. Awareness - to account for above changes, Awareness now also provides +15% parry.
8. Riposte - in Defiance/Shield Oath/Grit, parry now also provides a chance to deal a 25 potency attack following a parried/blocked attack (chance equal to current parry rate).
9. Battle Mastery - new trait for all tanks, which applies 50% parry to accuracy and 50% parry to critical strike, regardless of current buffs/debuffs. Given at level 30 with job soulstone.
10. Stat Budget - Parry on gear no longer counts toward the overall stat budget of the item, functioning like Def and M.Def, as a bonus for tanks.

EDIT: even though I'm crazy and I try to get as much parry as I can on my gear, I recognize that the stat is relatively weak. This is partially due to the desire of developers to reduce instances where secondary stat allocation caused older pieces to outrank newer pieces for BiS (such that more primary stat is always an upgrade), but it feels like they went just a little too far with that in this case.

[GranZero]

Thank you for all the insightful responses!

You mistook me with someone else :P
My opinion about parry didn't change since 2.0 when they nerfed main stats affecting parry str/rate.

I said that too xD

You're both right, my bad. And with the changes to Parry, I'd expect some skills would also be changed, namely Keen Flurry.

a new stat that accomplishes the same goal of slightly freeing up healer attention but without the elements of RNG or physical niche--for instance a stat called Steadfast which increases Defense, Magic Defense, and Healing Received.

Oh wow, imagine a tank with 1000+ Steadfast stat --- a Scholar can just DPS all day on Cleric Stance, only stopping to heal other party members. Then again, maybe I'm oversimplifying it there...

My only matter of contention with Steadfast is that it becomes a polar opposite of Parry: excellent in parties but is poor in solo (maybe with healer chocobo). But if we're thinking endgame, that's a stat I'd love to have as a tank.

Fun thought exercise. I'd focus on improving the defensive properties of parry; it's the only raw defensive stat we have, so why not make it worth taking for defense purposes?

If I'm going to narrow down the two worst issues Parry have, it'll be that it's unreliable and it's useless as an offtank. I do agree that tanks still need a defensive stat, but it has to eliminate the aforementioned problems.

I love your ideas too --- you buffed the tanking stances which is opposite of what I suggested in buffing offtanking stances. I would think Riposte as a skill a Fencer/Red Mage class would have, but it's great to see it mentioned here nonetheless.

[Donaria]

I would first rename "Parry" to vigor, tenacity, awareness(name to be determined) and change its effect. The changes would include evasion, block, and parry "rates" for all three. I think this would bring some harmony to the three tanks while also making stand out from each other.

[Krissey]

What if we increased Parry to help on a tanks given role? Every time a Warrior parries they are healed for 100% of the damage reduced...Paladins would perhaps gain in defense, the more you hit them the tougher they get even as they take less and less damage...same for Dark Knights, except they can parry magic and absorb it to increase their magic defenses...like a Dragon Ball Z fighter swatting energy balls away, or a Jedi Knight deflecting laser beams with their lightsaber sword.

So it would go WARRIOR: The higher the stat the more likely you are to parry, with better scaling, reduce incoming damage by 20% (physical only) and then if you say parry 1,000 points of damage you are instantly healed 1,000 points of damage.

PALADIN: The higher the stat the more likely you are to parry (80% chance to reduce incoming physical attacks by 20% via Parry), reduce incoming damage by 20%, take 1,000 points of damage and a % of that is converted into Defense for a duration that can stack.

DARK KNIGHT: The higher the stat the more likely you are to parry, including magical attacks, so -20% damage from magical and physical attacks and it is absorbed, so if you parry 1,000 magical damage a % is turned into magical defense for a duration that can stack.

A timer like greased lightning or you know the ninja wind move or w/e.

That way it enhances their identity and role and highlights their "special thing"

[Valmar]

We could change how Mitigation works in general like.

If you have 24% chance to parry.

45% chance to block.

15% chance to dodge.

you have 84% chance on all enemy attacks to Mitigate the dmg in some way, instead of how it is now.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh wow, imagine a tank with 1000+ Steadfast stat --- a Scholar can just DPS all day on Cleric Stance, only stopping to heal other party members. Then again, maybe I'm oversimplifying it there...

My only matter of contention with Steadfast is that it becomes a polar opposite of Parry: excellent in parties but is poor in solo (maybe with healer chocobo). But if we're thinking endgame, that's a stat I'd love to have as a tank.

Steadfast's power should be whatever the meta determines to weigh roughly equally to the damage opportunities lost with reduced Crit/Det/Speed. 1000 Det or Crit on a tank is certainly not going to make nearly such a noticeable difference; Steadfast would then be unlikely to either unless already pushing within 1-3% of death.

As for soloing, the only loss compared to traditional parry is in-class synergy with parry procs and that there isn't a forked path of possibilities (outside of being crit). Their average mitigation would be identical, and due to (percentile) boosted healing taken (including from one's own effects, such as Souleater, Clemency, or Bloodbath), would not necessarily perform any worse while soloing. What I mean by this fork is that whereas a tank could choose to forgo a minor self-healing ability (in favor of damage, etc) to avoid overcapping health after a parry, or a SCH could DPS for an extra GCD after using Adlo when the tank parries a 20k hit, Steadfast itself gives nothing to really work around (it will simply be basically 2% less damage taken, 2% more healing received at, say, 1000 Steadfast - numbers tbr). Inversely though, over a larger window, that measly 2% could skip a Physic. The main thing is where the parries would have hit--against a trash AA, little is saved, against a tankbuster, savings are tremendous.

That said, this is all over-debate; since even at 1000+ Parry I haven't heard of anyone's increasing their actual parry rate by more than 5%, compared against a much larger base parry and skills that guarantee the parry or increase rate by a flat chance amount (30% DD) as to devalue the parry stat itself, it seems that the portion of one's parry chance actually caused by the Parry stat is rather tiny, and that's the only part that would be replaced here.

[keyburz]

That said, this is all over-debate; since even at 1000+ Parry I haven't heard of anyone's increasing their actual parry rate by more than 5%, compared against a much larger base parry and skills that guarantee the parry or increase rate by a flat chance amount (30% DD) as to devalue the parry stat itself, it seems that the portion of one's parry chance actually caused by the Parry stat is rather tiny, and that's the only part that would be replaced here.

I have 997 parry on my warrior, and after several tests on lvl 60 mobs, its about 40% chance to proc a parry on melee attacks.

[Violette]

I have 997 parry on my warrior, and after several tests on lvl 60 mobs, its about 40% chance to proc a parry on melee attacks.

Can you provide your data please? I've been building my own set and have been unable to reach that high, so it would be interesting to compare.