"Holy Shield now increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 10% for 20 sec instead of increasing your block chance by 15%."
I'm concerned this will be a massive survival nerf to protection paladins below level cap. At level 71 my prot paladin's avoidance/block chances read as follows:
Dodge: 10.41%
Parry: 9.18%
Block: 5%
Currently my block chance is 20% if I keep holy shield up. Losing the 15% block chance means I will be hit for full damage much more often. It's also a better than 50% nerf to my in combat mana regen from sanctuary:
"Santuary 3/3 - Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6% and reduces all damage taken by 10%. In addition when you block or dodge a melee attack you gain 3% of maximum mana."
This problem will have an even greater impact as most plate tanks will be using DPS gear while leveling(before they can learn Mastery), lowering their total avoidance/mitigation by an even larger percentage.
Is the block chance increase going to be baked into the protection tree as a baseline, or is something else in the cards to bring the prot pally block chance up?
Perhaps you could leave the "15% block chance + 10% block amount" in HS before Mastery is learned? The prot Mastery itself move the block chance from Holy Shield to baseline leaving only the +10% behind. It still makes holy shield attractive because it continues to buff your block amount.
Maybe this could be done by having Mastery and Holy Shield block chance generate the same hidden buff, with the greater of the two overriding the lower? The greater would always be mastery, wouldn't it?
I don't have a level 80 or 85 paladin(no beta), so I can only approach this from the perspective of a level 71 tank.
Thanks in advance for any constructive responses.