Make parry more useful

[Sunako]

I heard parry will work like determination in future like how vitality work like str right now.

[Kosmos992k]

A good way to encourage use of parry would be for a successful parry (by a tank in tank stance) should make the attack that follows it cost 0 TP. This has the dual benefit of helping TP management without altering other skills, work the same for all tanks and doesn't alter the balance of the tanks. Alternately let parry grant a 0 TP attack cost on success for all DoW classes and jobs. Tanks who stack Parry have a higher parry rate and so see a greater benefit, as they should.

[Freyyy]

A good way to encourage use of parry would be for a successful parry (by a tank in tank stance) should make the attack that follows it cost 0 TP. This has the dual benefit of helping TP management without altering other skills, work the same for all tanks and doesn't alter the balance of the tanks. Alternately let parry grant a 0 TP attack cost on success for all DoW classes and jobs. Tanks who stack Parry have a higher parry rate and so see a greater benefit, as they should.

The thing is that WAR and DRK already don't need any help TP-wise right now, and PLD can only run out if there is no downtime during the fight (which is rare). So it would still be useless compared to crit and det, and I'd also add that with the same number in the parry stat, a PLD will parry less than a DRK or a WAR because of the block getting the priority over it. So there really would be no point.

If they want to make parry really useful, they'd have to make it benefit the tank even when not tanking since most of the end-game fights revolve around both tanks alternating between MT and OT and having at least one tank spending a large amount of time not actively tanking. Which would really be difficult if they still want to name it "parry". Det and crit benefits all tanks 100% of the time, if parry stays a purely "MT" stat it would only benefit one tank 50% of the time at most. See the pattern here ? They need to completely revamp and rename the stat for it to make sense. They also could make it a quite potent "counter-attack" kindof stat to make it worth stacking over crit and det and add a mechanic tied to the stances of the tank which would do like Cleric stance does: when in SwO/Deliverance/Gritless, parry converts into Det or Crit, or 50/50. That way, a tank which isn't tanking would get more det/crit from its parry stat being converted, and while tanking it would either be in tanking stance and benefit from the counter-attack thingy, or be tanking out of tanking stance with the same det/crit boost as the OT, so the stat would be useful 100% of the time.

[Brannigan]

Just change parry into cooldown reduction for abilities. Alternatively, turn parry into mastery and have it do something different for every tank. These are just off the top of my head, but something along the lines of

war - increases the attack power bonus of Berserk, the mitigation of Inner Beast, and grants a chance to add an extra stack of wrath/abandon when generating it,
drk - allows a portion of your dark mind mitigation to work on physical attacks, grants a chance to cast Dark Arts for free, and greatly increases the HP absorption of Soul Eater/Abyssal Drain
pld - allows a portion of your block power to work on magic, reduces the cooldown of Sheltron, and your attacks have a chance to reduce the recast time of your Spirits Within.

Basically all of our stats are boring which leads me to believe that the battle team is either afraid of minor imbalances or just devoid of creativity. I really hope they don't just make parry a counterattack or critical hit v2.0. A worthwhile defensive stat is desperately needed.

I am expecting them to just increase the returns on the stat though.

[Shurrikhan]

Just going to repost the same ideas as I put on all the other "make parry useful" threads.

Any attempts to increase the (esp. offensive) value of parry face four issues:
(1) The revised parry stat shouldn't be stronger on average for offense than assigning those points into Crit, Det, or Speed; nor likely should it be stronger much in combined healer and personal dps, except where conditions are specifically favorable. On average, it should be equal. To make it stronger would merely reverse the meta, making the others "useless" especially on any physical fight that can be solo-tanked.
(2) Increased offensive value should therefore come at a cost to defensive value; if undertuned enough currently, that doesn't necessarily mean a nerf, but certainly less of a buff.
(3) Increased strength of defense comes at cost of rate, which can then cut into reliability unless new systems are added to directly increase it.
(4) Parry is innately niche, usable only against physical attackers and dependent on the frequency of attacks taken. It further stands at odds with your own evasion and enemy accuracy loss.

In addition, the means by which you give it offensive value can determine whether it enhances only single-targeting (despite likely needing a mass pull's worth of attackers for an obvious effect, if balanced) or is equivalent to the situation (e.g. reflecting a percentage of the pre-mitigated attack as parried, thereby having an equal effect against swift and slow mobs, etc.).

[shao32]

i alwais feel parry need to grant us extra armor and magic armor to us or you know SE increse our resistances, yeah that second page in our char status window, of course this mean a nerf in the tank armors to make that change relevant, or make something like every time yo parry a attack all you defensive skills in cooldows reduce a 0.2-0.5 seconds
healers are so powerful now so meaby they need some checks to make every extra mitigation made by stats useful in combat too

war - increases the attack power bonus of Berserk, the mitigation of Inner Beast, and grants a chance to add an extra stack of wrath/abandon when generating it,

no please no, war is already the best in ofensive and defensive fields.

[Xenosan]

For the secondary stat, I think they could start with increase scaling rate of it per point relative to player level. Then put a hard cap on it at ~35% parry rate based on character level or enemy iLVL (think accuracy)..

Most common sense itemization route I can imagine is for tanks to want to put in just enough seconary in to reach a parry cap (which shouldn't be that much), just as we do with accuracy. But then there's the 2nd problem to solve.

That 2nd problem being why would tanks sacrifice any DET/CRIT/SKS for that small amount of Parry secondary (that puts them at the parry cap). My thought was an Enhanced Parry trait for Tanks:

WAR: +15% Attack Speed for the remaining and next GCD.
PLD: Next Weaponskill guaranteed Crit
DRK: Blood Price equivelent MP return --or-- the recast of the next Ability used is reduced by 20%.

And every tank from here on gets their own trait too.

I heard parry will work like determination in future like how vitality work like str right now.

yeah probably v.v

If they want to make parry really useful, they'd have to make it benefit the tank even when not tanking ... if parry stays a purely "MT" stat it would only benefit one tank 50% of the time at most.

I appreciate this concern, but I err on the side of not doing this, because like mentioned, it just flips the scenario so Tank just stack Parry indiscriminately opposed to actually expanding itemization. That's why I'd hope they changed how the secondary works: base amount needed off player level or enemy level, put a cap on it, and increase the amount of +rate per point parry based of that first variable.

[Brannigan]

Wouldn't that just basically be a Mastery stat (or whatever label you wish to assign to a stat meant to increase certain motifal elements of the class, whether or not that be specifically for defense)?

That would be why I said to turn parry into mastery, yes

no please no, war is already the best in ofensive and defensive fields.

again that was just an example off of the top of my head. The important thing is to do something interesting with the stat because the current stats we have are

+damage with no effect on gameplay: crit, det, speed (actually affects gameplay at very low threshholds and maybe if you stack a ton of it)
lets you hit the monster(then nothing after cap): acc
basically worthless: parry

So your stat choices are damage or nothing.

Besides, the numbers on that could be tuned however they needed to be to prevent imbalance.

[Shurrikhan]

That would be why I said to turn parry into mastery, yes.

Yup, right in the... very... first... line... Damn, I am so sorry about that. I should refrain from posting when that tired, apparently. >.>

At any rate, what I'd meant to imply was that it'd be more a removal of parry entirely, and then the addition of a new stat to the game, rather than a parry replacement, no? The same concept (having both offensive and defensive merit through job toolkits) can be as easily applied to dps and healers as well.

That said, it would also end up pointing out exactly what it is that makes the given job job-like, so there's a lot to be careful of. As Mastery values increase, you could inadvertently limit playstyles other than one's included, and someone's bound to complain that it's targeting the wrong element of the job unless it's immensely pervasive. At the same time, if it makes or opens up zero difference in playstyle, it's going to be a dull stat. /Conflicted.

At present parry is one of the few ways to gain survivability or raid (healer) dps with little or no increase to personal dps. But with tank Masteries including anything offensive or counteroffensive, you kind of lose that. Yet another dilemma.

[Reinha]

I heard parry will work like determination in future like how vitality work like str right now.

So for each point in parry you gain flat mitigation and flat attack damage? Or just attack damage and a chance to mitigate? I would prefer reliable damage reduction.