Weather Noct/Noct Shield

Is this shield worth looking into for a PLD?

I do not have the Onion or Allagan shield, just the Holy Shield Zenith. I am aware that the High Allagan shield is BiS (?) but thats a bit out of reach for me at the moment.

Should I go spend the tomes on the Weathered Noct shield and eventually upgrade it, or should I look into other options.

Thanks for your input.

Weathered and upgraded Noct Shield are the best for paladin until High Allagan.

The Weathered Noct Shield is a Tower Shield, meaning that it has a high block strength and a low block rate. For this reason, and mostly because of the abysmal block rate, it is generally considered to be explicitly inferior to any other option out there. This is in comparison to a Kite Shield(balanced block strength and rate) and a Buckler(low block strength and high block rate). Of the new shields available to you in 2.2, here's where they fall:

Tower: Noct Hoplon(100-110)
Kite: Holy Shield Animus(100), High Allagan Kite Shield(115)
Buckler: Wave Shield(95), Tidal Wave Shield(100)

I'd recommend that you first try your hand at getting a Wave Shield from Leviathan. Farming for a mirror to get to Tidal Wave is your choice, but the Holy Shield Animus is the best 100 you can get right now statwise... if you can stomach the grind. Granted, you can upgrade the Shield to Animus with a mere two books. Keep the Holy Shield Animus until the Allagan Shield is within reach. The Noct Hoplon should probably be avoided entirely.

Thanks for the info. Im at work right now and can't check but does the un-weathered Noct Hoplon get better block rate than the weathered version?

This is so so SO wrong.


Block strength versus block rate is a matter of compromise.

Please understand that, as blocking is decided before parried, the more you block, the less use you get out of your parry. This means that tower shield actually offer more average mitigation than others ! If you actually compute the total block + parry Damage reduction for levi i100 shield versus weathered noct, you will see that the first one will provide 10.3% DR, while the second will provide 11.5% DR. The difference is as much as having 70 or 80 more parry. It is NOT negligible.

On top of that, bulwark add a flat 60% to your block rate. Due to this, it is about twice as more potent on a weathered noct shield than on a levi shield; in the first case it will be better than rampart, while in the second it will be way closer to a foresight in potency.

That being said, a tower shield is going to make you block less often for more DR (duh), which means your incoming damage is going to be more spiky. This is worse for your healers, who will have to heal you more at times and less at others instead of a constant amount, which is easier. It is also worse for potentially one shotting combo, like death sentence, since you don't care about overall mitigation, you just want to mitigate part of it, no matter what, to survive.

My take on it is i would use more shield rate on twintania if i main tanked and was feeling a bit low on health, but would use weathered noct on everything else. This shield is bananas. I would understand someone wanting to flatten their incoming damage curve, but saying it is the best choice no matter what is flat out wrong.

Just want to point out also that the "abyssmal" block rate of the weathered noct is 21%, compared to 28 or 29% for holy shields versions. Sure, there is a difference, but abyssmal is a tad much.

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Originally Posted by Casper

This shield is bananas. I would understand someone wanting to flatten their incoming damage curve, but saying it is the best choice no matter what is flat out wrong.

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saying what is the best choice, block rate shields?

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

saying what is the best choice, block rate shields?

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Yes. This was the answer given at first, no ? always pick the highest rate shield because tower shields have abyssmal block rate and are too unreliable.

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Originally Posted by Casper

Yes. This was the answer given at first, no ? always pick the highest rate shield because tower shields have abyssmal block rate and are too unreliable.

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yeah, i was just making sure i understood your post 100%.

The reason I am bringing this up is because with the lower rate on the Noct Shield (which I want for vanity but don't want to waste tomes on so I was hoping it would be useful), I was hoping I could get stronger blocks and then maximize parry (after all block checks first, then parry, then no mitigation) to fill in the gaps.

However, the problem I am having is 2 fold...

The parry thread (after reading it several times) has me confused as to how much parry actually benefits me, especially since the acc cap set (that I checked on XIV DB) has us net losing parry (by about 20 i think). So in the end I am thinking that the noct shield won't really be that much of an upgrade since I am losing block rate and parry at the same time considering a lot of the gear loses parry.

Maybe my interpretation of it is all wrong. But I don't think that the Noct shield will be a good stopgap (without altering the way I play out in fights) until the High Allagan shield.

Remember that new gear has more strength on it so your parry and block will stop more damage. To compensate for this, SE seems to have itemized the gear for slightly lower rates. You will be spikier over short durations but mitigate slightly more over time.

but mobs will do more damage (?) I haven't tried T6 yet but how much (if mobs hit harder) will that strength offset the increased damage?

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Originally Posted by Lord_Zlatan

but mobs will do more damage (?) I haven't tried T6 yet but how much (if mobs hit harder) will that strength offset the increased damage?

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As you get more of the new gear you gain higher def and vit as well so it's best to look at things from a broader scope. So when they design the content they likely use a target for mitigation rate. If they allow you to get obscene mitigation on top of increased health, and your usual bag of tricks then it can lead to certain things becoming trivial. So when factoring losses on specific pieces you also have to factor your gains (or potential gains) in other areas as a whole. Sometimes downgrade in one area today can become an upgrade the next when paired with another new piece.

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Originally Posted by Ricdeau

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yeah thats the problem... i don't know what to downgrade. Since the raw mitigation from +Def/STR and Higher VIT is unavoidable, were obviously gonna max that. The Parry is the stat that we are getting less of. They offer less parry across your selections. I was hoping to get the Noct shield and get MORE parry so that when I blocked it was strong and then the higher % chance that I would parry...

now I don't know what to do...

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Originally Posted by Casper

This is so so SO wrong.
Block strength versus block rate is a matter of compromise.

Please understand that, as blocking is decided before parried, the more you block, the less use you get out of your parry. This means that tower shield actually offer more average mitigation than others ! If you actually compute the total block + parry Damage reduction for levi i100 shield versus weathered noct, you will see that the first one will provide 10.3% DR, while the second will provide 11.5% DR. The difference is as much as having 70 or 80 more parry. It is NOT negligible.

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First, please provide the math you used to get these percentages and reasonable proof that it is correct. Second, it is not a bad thing to parry less. Blocking is decided before parried, sure, but that means that PLDs get two chances per attack to mitigate something for "free". That looks to me like a high block rate + a high parry = a high number of mitigated attacks. Using your Parry less doesn't make it useless. It's the "last resort" to mitigate damage.

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On top of that, bulwark add a flat 60% to your block rate. Due to this, it is about twice as more potent on a weathered noct shield than on a levi shield; in the first case it will be better than rampart, while in the second it will be way closer to a foresight in potency.

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Closer to foresight? Every time I hear about foresight, I hear that it reduces damage by approximately 5%. Should this be true, this statement is wildly false. On a high level buckler, Bulwark raises block rate to a happy value that is probably above 90% while providing a mitigation of ~20% per block. Almost every attack gets blocked for 15 seconds, and the total mitigation is clearly greater than 5%. Less than 20, of course, but greater than 5. A Tower Shield might directly benefit more from Buwark, but that's 15 seconds of good blocking every 180 seconds coupled with not so okay blocking the rest of the time. This is compared to okay blocking with any other shield and excellent blocking with bulwark on.

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That being said, a tower shield is going to make you block less often for more DR (duh), which means your incoming damage is going to be more spiky. This is worse for your healers, who will have to heal you more at times and less at others instead of a constant amount, which is easier. It is also worse for potentially one shotting combo, like death sentence, since you don't care about overall mitigation, you just want to mitigate part of it, no matter what, to survive.

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Twintania isn't the only boss or enemy that has a single powerful attack or just generally powerful attacks that you really want to mitigate. For example:

Garuda EX: Wicked Wheel, particularly the Double Wheel
Titan EX: Mountain Buster
Ifrit Ex: Incinerate(I believe I've blocked/parried this before... somehow)
Caduceus: Everything above 3 stacks.
Turn 4: Everything the 4 stack Dread throws at you.
Leviathan Extreme: Dread Tide
Twintania: Death Sentence

You want a high block rate for all of these.

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My take on it is i would use more shield rate on twintania if i main tanked and was feeling a bit low on health, but would use weathered noct on everything else. This shield is bananas. I would understand someone wanting to flatten their incoming damage curve, but saying it is the best choice no matter what is flat out wrong.

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According to this, it sounds like you're saying that a Tower Shield is best for use against single bosses in which there are no big, spiky attacks that can be blocked. I admittedly have no experience in the Second Coil, but judging from my evidence above you're stating that a Tower Shield is something you absolutely should not bring to Raid content. If you are not raiding, than who cares what shield you're toting along? It won't be difficult to survive either way.

When you need to block a spiky attack: Not Tower
When you're taking a lot of attacks in a short timeframe: Not Tower
Engaging a lot of enemies: Not Tower
Taking consistent damage from a single enemy: Tower

The fact of the matter is that a Tower Shield is the "best choice" in far fewer situations than any other shield type. Therefore, it is the least valuable shield type to have.

As far as total mitigation is concerned: If your per-block mitigation is greater or equal to your per-parry mitigation adding more block rate will never lower total mitigation. This appears to be at a block strength of a bit less than 150? After you block for that much it's preferable to block rather than parry no matter what.

If you block for less per-block than you parry for there's some tipping point in block rate/amount you don't want which you could figure in a speadsheet.
This is based on the data I've seen which shows Block and parry as sequential events (check for block, if not block check for parry. Rather than check for both with block overriding parry). That is, parry rate seems roughly constant when controlled for blocks (IE, the chance for a parry per unblocked attack is the same no matter the block rate).

Of course you may not actually care about total mitigation just that mitigation happens at all. Then you want block rate above all else.

Frankly, worrying about it too much just isn't worth it. Secondaries aren't the end of the world unless you don't have enough acc or mana to get through an encounter.
Weathered Noct gives you a way to get i110 in a way others don't. High allagan appears to be a final-boss drop at i115.

There are a ton of studies and numbers you can dig up on this. But just in a very very simplistic way we'll discuss the Twin fight since it keeps being brought up.

D.S is coming up you blew your sent, ramp, and have no time to get off that stoneskin... bam bulwark. Bulwark becomes almost a 15 second (physical mitigation) sentinel while wearing this shield.

The weathered noct shield blocks 38% of damage (only 370 str). This is around 21% of the time (you can look up the numbers I'm not doing the work for you). When upgraded it's been shown to block 40% + (dependent on str) with also an increased rate of blocking.

I used to main an onion shield, and blocking 20% of damage was nice, but only on certain fights and certain instances was it actually noticed (speed running it's pretty useful). I have 612 parry, so I parry fairly often and the fact that my parries mitigated more damage than my shield was disconcerting.

A second and smaller point I'll dip into this argument are the secondary stats. The noct shield is parry/acc... not much more to say.

It blocks 10% more damage than any other shield (kite) at around 10% less often than the highest rate shield (buckler). But gets the most out of your parry, and actually makes bulwark incredible. All this while providing the best secondary stats of any choice.

(this is assuming high allagan isn't a choice... and it's turn 8 for that)

Been using this shield on t6 and t7 the past few days. I recommend it highly. Overall, I get a few % more parry a fight, and 2% less blocks than when I used the onion shield. Seems like they equal out, but they don't, because the noct shield is 38% mitigation, and will be more when upgraded. The shield opens up room to allow more parrying, and when it blocks, it blocks big. Definitely the best shield aside from high allagan. Levi shield is probably second best to the noct. Not to mention, using bulwark with the onion shield is kinda lame. Using bulwark with the noct, its like having a second sentinel cool down now. Absolutely worth the 390, especially since you can upgrade it, and would be the best possible accessory upgrade.

thanks for all the information provided here.

I have made the decision to go with the Noct Shield. I will be purchasing today ^^

Good info for sure.

I went through stages of shield upgrade.

Three weeks ago I finally got the Allagan Round shield. Looked cool and it seemed dmg intake was rather consistent. I got my weathered noct soon as I had the tomes for it. It was a worthwhile investment. The statement about bulwark with it is absolutely spot on. Here and there I see some spike dmg, but noting heals can't handle.

I recommend this shield for sure!

Syn

While it's evident that only a hit that has bypassed shield can be parried is there any evidence that parry chance is calculated only for hits that bypass block?

Imagine that you have two sets with the same parry but one set lacks shield.

First you estimate you parry chance for a set without a shield and get some probability P1.

Then you equip your set with a shield (same parry rating) and estimate the probability of hits that has bypassed the shield to be parried.

The question is: will it be close to P1? In other words, in case of shield is P(parried) = P1 or is it rather P(parried|^blocked) = P1?

As far as I've seen parry is checked second - if the attack is blocked you will not parry. So the absolute parry rate goes down. However parry isn't overridden it's checked separately. Thus the parry rate of *unblocked* attacks is constant.

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Originally Posted by Synestr

Good info for sure.

I went through stages of shield upgrade.

Three weeks ago I finally got the Allagan Round shield. Looked cool and it seemed dmg intake was rather consistent. I got my weathered noct soon as I had the tomes for it. It was a worthwhile investment. The statement about bulwark with it is absolutely spot on. Here and there I see some spike dmg, but noting heals can't handle.

I recommend this shield for sure!

Syn

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I am very much enjoying the shield too. Looks great, the 38% BS on it is great, and with Bulwark it might as well be sentinel.

Noct plus a parry build is what was used to tank t9. Great in game example of what works in a high damage fight. If you don't plan on doing animus shield weather noct is a great choise. If you do plan on Animus spend your sol to upgrade a different slot first.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

As far as I've seen parry is checked second - if the attack is blocked you will not parry. So the absolute parry rate goes down. However parry isn't overridden it's checked separately. Thus the parry rate of *unblocked* attacks is constant.

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It's quite interesting because if P(parry) is a function of Parry stat (and some parry events are masked by block events) then statements about lowering block rate to increase parry rate are plain invalid. However if that function of Parry stat rather represents a conditional probability of parry given that hit is not blocked those statements could be relevant.

I'll probably parse logs to verify that...

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

Noct plus a parry build is what was used to tank t9. Great in game example of what works in a high damage fight. If you don't plan on doing animus shield weather noct is a great choise. If you do plan on Animus spend your sol to upgrade a different slot first.

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I thought about this, but in the end the animus shield is long term and the shiny-itis kicked in. In addition, no matter which shield i actually wear, I needed the Noct Shield for vanity

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Originally Posted by Jitenshazuki

It's quite interesting because if P(parry) is a function of Parry stat (and some parry events are masked by block events) then statements about lowering block rate to increase parry rate are plain invalid. However if that function of Parry stat rather represents a conditional probability of parry given that hit is not blocked those statements could be relevant.

I'll probably parse logs to verify that...

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Well, be careful there. You do increase the total number of parries if you decrease your block rate. That's important if the per-instance mitigation of parry is greater than block. Which is the case with the highest block rate shields. You could calculate per each sheild's block strength what the maximum desirable block rate is. (obviously if you block for more % damage than you parry you want more block rate always)

I'm basing my assessment mostly off of this chart. http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/a...BlockRates.png on this page http://valk.dancing-mad.com/methodology/#BnP
Which is, admittedly, a bit outdated. But I haven't really seen much new that would suggest otherwise.

The quick rule (at lvl 50) is this: You always want more parry and you always want more block rate on any shield with a block strength of about 150 or more.
That covers either parry calculation.

Very nice info on T9. Long ways from it but I have been working on this, parry and noct shield combo.

Good to hear I am moving in the right direction.

Syn

hmmm i just bought the tanking ring. sounds like i should have bought the shield :(

he ring is awesome... acc and parry. The shield is awesome too.