Parry...

[Menae]

Err, no, that's not how percentages work.

War going from 25% parry to 26% parry is an increase of 1.35% (.75/.74)

Paladin with 25% block and parry going to 25% block and 26% parry is also an increase of 1.35% (.5625/.555)

Your argument is misleading. A warrior going from 25% parry to 26% is now mitigating damage from an extra one hit per 100 swings; a paladin with 25% block and 25% parry going to 26% parry is now mitigating damage from an extra .7 swings per 100 (assuming your numbers are right; I didn't double check them). It's an equal increase in the relative number of mitigated attacks, true, but if both tanks have the same parry percentage and parry strength, the warrior will gain more absolute damage reduction. Parry is better for warriors, assuming both classes have same formula for how it works.

[ZDamned]

Your argument is misleading. A warrior going from 25% parry to 26% is now mitigating damage from an extra one hit per 100 swings; a paladin with 25% block and 25% parry going to 26% parry is now mitigating damage from an extra .7 swings per 100 (assuming your numbers are right; I didn't double check them). It's an equal increase in the relative number of mitigated attacks, true, but if both tanks have the same parry percentage and parry strength, the warrior will gain more absolute damage reduction. Parry is better for warriors, assuming both classes have same formula for how it works.

Your both going about it wrongly.
If you look at it from a purely mathematical stand point, you need to ignore all blocked attacks.
The only difference is you are taking less hits overall. Throw away all Shield Blocks, and the chances to parry between both are the same. This is why Paladin mitigates more than Warrior. They just have another layer to defend with. In the case of the shield Blocking first, you just deflected damage with the outer layer first, but when you don't block, the attack "pierced through" the outer layer, and your chance to parry is now equal to what it would be on a warrior with the same amount.
Just because you don't get as many opportunities to parry, doesn't mean you have a lower chance to parry.
It's all perspective.
And when talking about the Noct Hoplon, you basically want to block more often than not, but with a Buckler, you want to parry more often, because Parry deflects more damage.

[Menae]

Zdamned, that's... not exactly the point. I'm well aware that paladins block, and then parry. My point is that BECAUSE they block first, that damage cannot be affected by parry, and thus they inherently reduce the benefit they gain from parry:

Let's say a paladin blocks 25% of the time, and parries 25% of the attacks he doesn't block, and let's say a blocked hit reduces damage by 20% and a parried hit reduces it by 20%.

An attack that normally does 10000 damage will hit this paladin for:

10000 damage 56.25% of the time (attack not blocked or parried)
8000 damage 25% of the time (attack was blocked)
8000 damage 18.75% of the time (attack was not blocked, but was then parried)

This means, on average, we expect this paladin to take 9125 damage per attack.

Let's say a warrior also parries 25% of attacks he doesn't block (this is all of them) and parries at a 20% rate. This warrior eats 10 k damage hits for:

10000 damage 75% of the time.
8000 damage 25% of the time (attack was parried).

We expect the warrior to take 9500 damage per attack on average.

Now each of the tanks get a super weapon drop that is exactly like their current weapons except that the new drops have waaaaaaaay more parry rating. So much so, that now both tanks parry 50% of the time instead of 25%.

Now the paladin takes:
10000 damage 37.5% of the time (no block or parry)
8000 damage 25% of the time (blocks)
8000 damage 37.5% of the time (attack not blocked but was parried)

for an expected damage of 8750 per swing, which is an absolute reduction of 375 and an relative reduction of ~4.1% damage taken. Nice.

The warrior now takes:

10000 damage 50% of the time
8000 damage 50% of the time (parries)

for an expected damage of 9000 per swing, which is an absolute reduction of 500 and a relative reduction of 5.2%. Nicer.

By blocking first, the paladin has effectively removed the chance for some of his incoming damage to be affected by parry.

[ZDamned]

You completely missed my point. Parry IS equally effective on a paladin if not more effective purely because it theoretically gives a very small chance for the paladin to never take a straight hit.
You need to throw away the blocked attacks to find the parry chance, your not doing that, because once an attack is not blocked, it has the exact same chances of being parried as the warrior does. The warrior doesn't suddenly get a boosted effect from the same chances, he is just missing the first chance to reduce damage.
You literally read my post, and then changed what I was saying in your head. My point was NOT the blatantly obvious "Block comes first" statement. It was that you need to throw away blocked hits, and then re-run the Paladin Parry numbers.
Say you did a 100,000 Hit test, and 3000 were blocked, then you need to keep going until you fill in those 3000 hits with non blocks in order to see the actual parry chance.
The only thing what you said proves is that paladins effectively will gain a small chance to NOT take a straight hit if both Block and Parry are theoretically high enough.