Parry, or rather, Parry-haste

Since you people have been so good, I decided to reward you with another post :)

Here's all you ever wanted to know about parry. What I'm interested in talking about, is this hidden mechanic all tanks used to know and fear (ok maybe not all, there will be some scrubs who choose to remain in the dark about important things): Parry-haste.

What Parry-haste simply means, is that when you parry an attack, the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed, unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining.

For example, I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and have just started my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. My swing speed for this next particular attack, will now be reduced by 40%, leading to a new speed of 1.80 seconds.

As another example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.00 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. The remaining time on my swing timer is now 1.00s, and according to parry mechanics, this is reduced by 40% of my weapon speed which is 1.20 seconds. However, this violates the rule "unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining," and therefore, my new remaining swing timer is instead reduced to 20% of my weapon swing speed, which is 0.60 seconds.

As a third example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.50 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. 20% of my weapon swing speed is 0.60 seconds. Since I have gone beyond 20% of my weapon swing speed remaining, I will instead continue to land my attack 0.50 seconds later. It's like the game says (and I quote Disquette from EJ here): "Hey, parry can't reduce you below 20%, so just let the swing land like it's supposed to."

This has been extensively verified, especially at EJ here, starting from post #7, and I hope that clarifies it a little for you people new to this.

Lets reverse the situation a bit, and imagine you were swinging at a boss, and the boss parried your attack. (Yes I can hear many of you going "Aha!")

If the boss is one with an infamously fast weapon swing speed, such as Prince Malchezaar in phase 2, or Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC, you could find your main tank dead very very fast even without crushing blows, if you constantly attack from the front and aren't expertise capped. Now, in Wrath, crushing blows no longer exist, but raid bosses are hitting harder and harder. Imagine having your main tank take 12k 5 times in two seconds from XT-002 in Ulduar. Bad, isnt it?

I can't stress it enough: Never ever DPS from the front of a boss unless you absolutely have to, such as in Kologarn or Mimiron in Ulduar. You lose DPS, and risk killing your tank. If you absolutely have to do so, any extra expertise gear you have lying around will be doubly or even triply valuable.

As a tank, trying to reach the expertise cap of 13% for Parry is unwise and ill-advised, because it will more than likely gimp you in other areas. Strive for as high a number as you can get, without compromising other stats. Parries are to be expected, so try to minimise them as much as possible. Your healers will thank you for it.