Tank IDENTITY

[Lyth]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

[Seku]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

Assuming you're talking to me, that's a different situation, or at least their use is. The people that made that argument probably will still argue that tenacity is a very good stat despite providing almost no actual value in most things. 'Defensive tanking' and 'parry builds' should be going more towards passive damage, which hasn't been a threat in this game for the most part. And you're right in that you can't calculate that damage too easily because it's unexpected in most cases. But it also serves an entirely different style of combat that would only serve a purpose in something like deep dungeons.

On the other hand, using mitigation purposely and with thought for something you know is coming can indeed be translated to a rough estimate of DPS gain and loss or at the very least potency gain or loss. The most simple example without going into too great of details would be that a PLD uses invincible to take a tank buster. Assuming the healer doesn't have any oGCD's up this would be a net gain in DPS as it doesn't take the PLD's action (GCD) and it doesn't take the healer's action ( GCD), thus allowing for the healer to continue their DPS.

[Shurrikhan]

People once made the argument at one point that 'defensive tanking' and parry builds could be used to optimize healer dps as well, back in ARR. It generally doesn't work out that way in practice, and there's no clear cut way to determine a dps equivalence for it.

A parry in a given fight will nullify, on average, X damage prior to non-passive mitigation. Determine, perhaps based on prior fight (HP) resource graphs, the likelihood that the parry could leave one at a survivable health value through that 20% (previously up to 25%) mitigation and thus forgo any healers' average maximum spammable GCD heal. Then, look at the potency of an average healer's filler attack. The product of that chance any attack potency is, pretty much, the parry's rDPS value.

Yes, every parry could end up affecting only an auto. But that is what is what the averages are for.

The problems with additionally defensive builds are primarily just that

1. they have traditionally been tuned too low to be competitive in rDPS (not a fundamental issue at all, but a balance issue), and
2. the value of any GCDs of healing saved is impossible to tap into when no optimized healer is using GCD healing regardless --at least outside of ReciAdloDeployment (which is, again, not a fundamental issue, but a contextual one).

Yes, there is a further issue of "illusion of choice": As content hits more than X over a fight, increasing the rDPS value of a random parry therein, it becomes optimal and short of that point it's inferior. But that is already true for every stat, and typically with far less context-dependence. That's not a problem fundamental to defensive builds, but an incidental problem from content tuning relative to available (free) healing.