Originally Posted by
eddytheone
It totally depends on the fights. For high magical / bleed damage, Sbar is obviously going to be strong on those.
Things like timing it so you have one stack of shield block up and then use barrier just before a breath, on something like Tsuolong or Elegon is also advisable.
As for flat vengeance scaling, SBlock is usually better for delta reduction up until around 400k vengeance - past that, SBar scales to the point of having more absorb than your incoming DPS, so if you can back to back barriers with hard enough hitting mobs, you are effectively immortal (e.g. Shek'Zeer Heroic, where the other tank died, I picked up his mobs and went to 750k vengeance, my Shield Barrier was @ 1.7 million absorb per cast, the mobs couldn't ever take off more than 1 million).
For most fights though, you are better off just dumping rage into SBlock for Heavy Repercussions and the smoother damage reduction, and using Barrier as a fairly niche spell on high unblockable damage abilities, OR when you are in the SBlock downtime.