Parry vs Block math

[Earthcake]

2, And no, SnB tanks don't need DD anymore(imo). Dodge/Disrupt is irrelevant for guard, and you have HtL. Why would you burn 20RR on DD?

100% agree

[BluIzLucky]

Spoiler:

What're you, my **** math teacher telling me to show my work?

A, Your "formula" is whack. On many levels. You're just picking arbitrary numbers, and even then you're looking at the same 1% difference between the 2. Guard damage is not lowered by ability damage reducers like Challenge, Vigilance, or Detaunt btw. Morales lessen it though. Plus there are undefendables, times when you get debuff stacked(how many parry debuffs in the game? how many for block?), strike-through(plenty of mdps have parry strike-through on gear, how much block strike through?), what % of the damage coming at you is from guard vs AoE? etc. Plus, the old fashioned you get punted and enemy Z tries to stagger you. How much would you trade for an extra 2% chance to NOT be stuck 100ft+ from your team for 6s? Hard to quantify these in a 4piece formula...

2, And no, SnB tanks don't need DD anymore(imo). Dodge/Disrupt is irrelevant for guard, and you have HtL. Why would you burn 20RR on DD? I mean if you want too, but KotBS don't have to fight BWs or AMs. Sham/Sorc/Magus/Z stagger doesn't seem like a good reason to burn 20rr on a tank to me. But I haven't played since TB was reinput. But the build is slightly open. Especially, when as the OP said, they only really die to mass guard damage/zerg swarms. So, 1% either way means **** all.

D, I don't care enough to theory-craft the exact amount of melee/guard vs magic/ranged damage required. Since, y'know, we're just making up the numbers, and this game has a frightening amount of variables at times.


TLDR: Personally, I stack whichever I can get the highest. I prefer Block for the reasons you stated, and I get why you are trying to say Block is king, but if you can get Parry high enough, you literally don't need Block, hence 2h tanks. So...

(Bonus points if you get the A, 2, and D reference)


Edit: Check this post out It's super old, and is a comparison of 2h vs SnB evasion rates, plus other stuff. I argued against some of the take-aways, but Annaise16 knew their ****. The block/parry formulas are probably out of date, but it's still a good breakdown, and might offer you a better system to formulate the math you're looking for. But you gotta look at more than just raw block/parry %s.

Hahaha I don't have much skin in the snb game, only go snb when specifically asked to in organized city groups, since for 2h parry is king and SM can stack a lot of parry (and mostly Ignore DD, would still probably take it over FS/TB but that's another convo).

you don't have to show your work, but it is literally what OP asks for and I was curious.

Thanks for the link, I'm aware of the additional calculations, however since he is assuming (on first post) such low values for block/parry/dd, he kinda misses the point..
Since block and parry/d/d diminishes each other as they both increase you want to stack one high, either is fine, but shield gets a lot of inherent % making it the go to for snb.

And the formula seems fine from a perspective of pure dmg reduction, not sure adding more complexities would make much difference, if OP thinks he takes more dmg from guard/morale he can adjust the above to fit, but as you say so many variables, it would just be theory.

And yeah I do agree not getting hit is much more important than pure mitigation, but at 50% block 6% parry effectively becomes 3% reduced hits, meaning against 2% block you give up 2% dodge/disrupt for 1% parry.
And at 66% block you just lose 2% d/d and gain nothing.
do I care about this little difference? Not really, but it's why people/minmaxers say block is better.

[detrap]

All situational of course but in keep/fort sieges when tanks are gonna have a showdown in funnel town, I prefer 4 Block 4 Parry and 3 DD. I always like to factor in counters to debuffs such as Pierce Defenses + Furious Howl stacks, even Drop Da Basha from Choppas removes a flat 50% from your block and parry. The best fights I've experienced playing a tank is when you can live long enough for your warband to recover and swing momentum in your favour.

[tazdingo]

again please keep in mind that guard dmg only uses block & parry now for all sources, this was changes a few months ago and is the reason for the belief that parry has parity with block when it comes to guard dmg, which is by far your biggest threat as a tank. OPs original question was "why is 2% block on the first roll better than 6% parry on the 2nd" and i think that even maybe his friends didn't know that ranged avoidance is no longer used

also as detrap mentions you have to keep debuffs and also strikethrough in mind. you're averaging maybe -10% to everything in open battles as well as maybe 20% hard strikethrough (not stat contribution) for dps in bis (idk how correct this number is, conservative guess), which increases the avoidance roll

so to my understanding

you have 40 block
you have debuff for -10
attacker has 20 strikethrough

so you roll for 1 - 30 on a 1 - 120 giving you a 25% chance to block dmg, not 40

also taking into account that block is a 90 degree cone and that classes such as slayer and bw don't even care about your avoidance you can see that block is absolutely NOT flat dmg reduction, not even close. maybe just under half of the number in practical terms, even if you manage to keep front towards enemy

i remember talking to malice's chosen back on live when he switched to a 2h for orvr and asking him why, he said "i stack 40 block but then read combat log and see maybe 2 blocks in 100 hits." it's a much better situation on ror but block isn't a coverall

[BluIzLucky]

Spoiler:

again please keep in mind that guard dmg only uses block & parry now for all sources, this was changes a few months ago and is the reason for the belief that parry has parity with block when it comes to guard dmg, which is by far your biggest threat as a tank. OPs original question was "why is 2% block on the first roll better than 6% parry on the 2nd" and i think that even maybe his friends didn't know that ranged avoidance is no longer used

also as detrap mentions you have to keep debuffs and also strikethrough in mind. you're averaging maybe -10% to everything in open battles as well as maybe 20% hard strikethrough (not stat contribution) for dps in bis (idk how correct this number is, conservative guess), which increases the avoidance roll

so to my understanding

you have 40 block
you have debuff for -10
attacker has 20 strikethrough

so you roll for 1 - 30 on a 1 - 120 giving you a 25% chance to block dmg, not 40

also taking into account that block is a 90 degree cone and that classes such as slayer and bw don't even care about your avoidance you can see that block is absolutely NOT flat dmg reduction, not even close. maybe just under half of the number in practical terms, even if you manage to keep front towards enemy

i remember talking to malice's chosen back on live when he switched to a 2h for orvr and asking him why, he said "i stack 40 block but then read combat log and see maybe 2 blocks in 100 hits." it's a much better situation on ror but block isn't a coverall

Hahaha yeah remember that patch.. Got so excited, have barely touched snb since, must not have realised the parry change also applied to snb.

Alright, I take your points for they are good, if you can't crack 50-60% block after debuffs, like for this kotbs and in this case of 2% block vs 6% parry, parry likely comes out ahead.

Well.. there you go boys and girls, wisdom of the forums

[Klod91]

Alright, I take your points for they are good, if you can't crack 50-60% block after debuffs, like for this kotbs [...]

How do you get 60% block?

[BluIzLucky]

Alright, I take your points for they are good, if you can't crack 50-60% block after debuffs, like for this kotbs [...]

How do you get 60% block?

On Knight?
31 from gear (sov 4p, 2p inv, onslaught boot, block belt,13 from jewelry), 10 from renown, 10 from skill, and 10 from block rating (422/850*20) and don't get hit by block reducer

Or just play BO..

[Klod91]

On Knight?
31 from gear (sov 4p, 2p inv, onslaught boot, block belt,13 from jewelry), 10 from renown, 10 from skill, and 10 from block rating (422/850*20) and don't get hit by block reducer

Or just play BO..

Why not go for 7p sov instead? Or does the proc not stack with selfbuffs and tactics?

[tazdingo]

doesnt stack with shield rush no, but would stack with a tactic if knight had one

[Uchoo]

When taking Guard damage, Block gets checked first, then Parry.

The result is that they are multiplicative. If you have 40 block and 30 parry, of the 60% of the time you don't block, you will parry 30% of that.

.4+(1-.4*.3)=58%. So you have a 58% chance to avoid melee and Guard damage. That 30% Parry is the same result as having 18% Block instead.

What does that tell us? It tells us that it's drastically better to have one of those strongly stacked vs both of them. Having both 50 parry and 50 block is the same result as having 75 of 1 and 0 of the other, but you are investing 25 less points in avoidance to achieve it.

Stat contention is something to consider as well. Block Rating of a shield is a lot stronger than Parry from Weapon Skill as you shouldn't be achieving as much WS as you are Block Rating. Also, there's a hard cap on Guard Damage Avoidance from Stat Contention; 50 for Block and 25 for Parry. Again, Block is favored.

The formula for that is DefensiveStat/OffensiveStat * 7.5. DefensiveStat refers to Weapon Skill for Parry and Block Rating for Block.

You know there's a 6% Block tali for Sent jewel, right? Just run that, Gunbad 2% and Genesis 3% if you want to maximize Block. Pretty sure that's not BiS but it's a lot of Block.

P.S. Ignore anyone who says that Block Rating is any flat value. It's not, it's part of the Stat Contention formula. The Character Sheet is also very inaccurate in this regard.