Block strength and block rate.

[Cabalabob]

Block rate and block strength are one of the things that fell victim to this game getting constantly dumbed down. It was quite important in ARR as strength increased block strength, wearing strength accs and using a small shield like the diamond shield you could get a 100% block rate during bulwark and still block for 25% mitigation or more making bulwark a better, physical only, rampart.

This went away in HW and instead we got sheltron to guarantee blocks, making tower shields the best choice as they had the highest mitigation and you could basically choose when to block. However, kite shields were far more common and had higher ilvl so it was still ideal to go for those for the extra stats rather than tower for the mitigation.

Pretty much every shield since stormblood is a kite shield so block rate and strength are the same on everything so it doesn't even matter anymore.