Does the ancient plate shield have more normal defence than the volcanic plate shield? And, does normal max on the ancient plate shield do anything?
ancient plate shield
Actually, Ancient Plate Shield has the exact same amount of Normal Defense as Volcanic Plate Shield.
Node 83801 post #10 states that APS withstands more normal damage hits than VPS with normal low uv.
I can only speak for the actual armor pieces myself, as I don't have a VPS and have always sold my ancient plate shields before giving them decent use.
The armor bar for Ancient Plate Helm is twice as long as the armor bar for Volcanic Plate Helm. The defense bars in the personal loadout screen scale and do shennanigans and lie, but I compared them while using 3* scale mail as my reference armor when equipping both helms. Add together the normal and elemental defense on the V.Plate helm and you get the Ancient helm's normal.
I see no reason why the shields don't follow the same design, except that VPS doesn't have elemental defense and instead has fire immunity.
Kathrine-Dragon, you are right. Also, to note that I -had- (rolled for you just to confirm it) Normal Medium on my Volcanic Plate Shield but there was no difference between Normal Medium and a non-UV'd Volcanic Plate Shield. Same applies for a Level 3 Ancient Plate Shield on those spikes:
69.9% Dragon Scale Shield
75.8% Crest of Almire/Dread Skelly Shield/Grey Owlite Shield
77.7% Volcanic Plate Shield
79.9% Ancient Plate Shield
80.5% Omega Shell
83.8% Aegis/Barbarous Thorn Shield(N.Medium)/Royal Jelly Shield(P.High)
95.8% Ironmight Plate Shield
So, rather interesting stuff here:
First of all, the Spikes do inflict split Piercing and Normal Damage. So that link you posted lied about it doing just pure-normal damage.
Secondly, Volcanic Plate Shield saw no difference from Normal Medium compared to no-UV. Yet a Grey Owlite Shield saw a 1.9% Difference with Piercing Medium. I believe there's some threshold on the Shield.
So unless I'm missing something here, either Ancient Plate Shield has much higher Defense than Volcanic Plate Shield (I'd assume it's equal to about a Maximum UV if anything.) or there's something more.
APS does have more normal defense as far as we're concerned. Normal Max should do something but in actuality base your main shield on what needs defending. I plan on farming FSC. Status resist is more valuable on a shield than regular defense so I got VPS and have not regretted it. It has among the next highest normal defense (unless the aegis is higher). And then there's bowser (omega shell) which has the highest health and thus resists every type of damage well, something that plates can't say about bullets.