I understand the message and very much respect the effective HP boost the shield provides, but I must disagree that Noct has a place in current meta based on experience.

I pose a scenario: given a burst comp on other team and you are left alone to freecast while tank, melee and ranged all pounding away at one person without defense buff after your CDs are gone how do you keep that person alive in Noct stance? Unless the 3 mentioned players are terrible or there is severe disruption from your team you cannot outheal this in Noct (or at least I have never been able to, even trying very hard to make this work in the beginning of season 3).

Between equilibrium, surecast, swiftcast, bliz2 and regen in Diurnal I can still manage healing with a melee and tank on me (countering the need for noct bubbles), but I cannot heal through the scenario above in Noct. I can work around not having the bubble, I cannot work around not having raw healing throughput from Noct