Holy Shield Change - Effect on Pre-Mastery Protadins

[Lansow]

"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.

[yjmark]

I wouldn't call "30% damage reduction to 15% physical hits" a "massive survival nerf for a leveling tank". That is only 4.5% average physical damage increase, and a 0% magic damage change.

In a raid setting where you are stacking stats like crazy, it will make a difference. In a dungeon where you are roflstomping everything and can tank with a DPS spec, it won't.

[Lansow]

I wouldn't call "30% damage reduction to 15% physical hits" a "massive survival nerf for a leveling tank". That is only 4.5% average physical damage increase, and a 0% magic damage change.

*** Before I get into the rest of my response, consider that players who have played through the game many times aren't the primary intended audience for low level content. New players just learning their trade are. ***

4.5% overall is a big deal at any level, especially once the tuning pass happens on low level dungeons to bring their numbers to the right place. More importantly this is a huge change to the amount of burst protection paladins will receive. I also don't think it's actually 4.5% overall. It would be in a vacuum where you only had the 15% block chance, but that 15% chance reduces my chance to be hit for full damage from 75.41% @ level 72 to 60.41%. That is a 19.9% difference in the amount of attacks which would land fully. (my math could be faulty here, I'm no whiz)

You'll notice warriors did not have their base 15% block chance taken away in these notes, just their mastery adjusted. That means pallies will take more damage(and more consistently) while running pre-cap content than warriors, the only other tank reliant on block. This means less time for burgeoning healers to learn their trade of triage, more time spent spamming heals on paladin tanks.

There is a noticeable difference in the incoming damage profile with HS up and HS down.

There's always a chance they expect WoG to make up for the block chance reduction. WoG doesn't do anything about the mana regen change that comes secondary.

*side notes* Not asking for a warrior nerf and have nothing against them. My warrior tank is my main and I love that toon to bits. If pallies are supposed to be superior for AoE threat production pre-cap as a tradeoff for being harder to heal, I would consider this fait accompli. I'm merely worried this nerf might be overreaching like the -10% TG nerf in 3.1. That nerf wasn't needed except for the heroic strike bug. In effect the nerf punished toons with lesser gear more than others.

---------- Post added 2010-11-04 at 01:37 PM ----------

In a raid setting where you are stacking stats like crazy, it will make a difference.

In a raid setting you would probably already have Mastery, thereby eliminating the effects of the holy shield nerf, and actually turning it into a buff. It is a nerf pre-mastery in every way. (still a nerf with mastery, I forgot they aren't currently exclusive)