It occurs to me: a lot of people would stop complaining about Parry if it didn't get in the way of other stats. So if they took Parry out of the stat budget calculation, and just had it as an extra stat that appears on Fending gear without preventing other stats from being there, it very likely go a long way to making it less reviled.

Basically, make it something that's just there uniformly for all tank pieces. Still let us socket it if we're Gary Busey crazy, but don't take away from the other stats for the main stat allocation. Wouldn't do anything to fix its poor performance, but at least at that point, Parry wouldn't be hurting anything.