Anyone Have Data on Block and Parry Percentage?

[AugustusSB]

Ok since we're on topic of shields, what do you guys consider BiS for shield? Allagan or onion shield? I'm very curious!

Allagan is BiS, but only because of the ACC vs SS buff when compared to Holy Zenith

[Kitru]

Allagan is BiS, but only because of the ACC vs SS buff when compared to Holy Zenith

It depends. There's loads of Acc scattered around everywhere else so the Allagan shield is only BiS if you actually need that acc to hit the cap. If you don't need the acc because you can make up for it elsewhere, the acc doesn't really come into it.

Honestly, I'd be willing to say that the Onion Shield is a viable contender for BiS because it's got the insanely high block rate: blocking more for less actually smooths out your incoming damage which makes you easier to heal. Even if you end up taking more damage over time, it'll be easier on the healers, which is what mitigation is all about anyways.

[Maelwys]

Honestly, I'd be willing to say that the Onion Shield is a viable contender for BiS because it's got the insanely high block rate: blocking more for less actually smooths out your incoming damage which makes you easier to heal. Even if you end up taking more damage over time, it'll be easier on the healers, which is what mitigation is all about anyways.

I'm fairly certain that it's going to depend on what content you're doing.

The obvious observation is that on T5 or other content where there is a chance to be rapidly "spiked" to death by one or two abilities in quick succession (EM Garuda's 2x Wicked Wheels?), I'd rather have a greater chance to Block for 20% than a lesser chance to block it for 27%... because it'd mean that on average I'd die less often, pretty much regardless of the block chance numbers. On other content where spike damage isn't as dangerous, it'll depend more on which shield mitigates more average damage over time (example: EM Titan. His Mountain Buster isn't all that tough to mitigate and all the other spike-damage mechanics are either unblockable or ridiculously overpowered to the point that a block won't save you).

However that ignores Bulwark. If we can usually rely on Blocks to trigger whenever Bulwark is up, then shields with the lower Block Rate but higher Block Strength become much more valuable... and in practice I've found this to be largely the case (though I still like to pair Bulwark with Foresight 'just in case'). So is the fight going to be one where we're able to mitigate most periods of "dangerous" spike damage via cooldowns, or will we be relying more on the Random Number Generator for Blocks? There's valid arguments to be made both ways here... and I'm pretty sure that which shield is "BIS" is going to depend on the fight.

RE the Parry Tiers comment, I'm fairly sure that Dev post was only addressing the Critical Hit Stat. It's certainly possible that the same logic applies to the Parry stat, but there are occasions (such as additional STR granting additional Parry Strength) where higher stat numbers are technically "better" but certain boundary lines need to be crossed before we see any in-battle benefit from it. If it ends up that (for example) 583 Parry doesn't give you any more benefit over 580 Parry, then the effect is the same regardless of whether it's due to unintentional rounding issues or intentional stat "tiers". Thankfully, PLD doesn't really have anything else that's useful to stack, so this argument is basically moot. The PLD "BIS" Parry builds don't trade anything for +Parry other than +Crit/Det/SS... PLD doesn't need extra Enmity generation right now, and the DPS buff from stacking those other secondary stats is going to be minimal.