Prot Pally Change

[Borigrad]

Guarded by the Light no longer allows your Word of Glory to grant Holy Shield.
Holy Shield now costs 3% of base mana and has a 30 sec cooldown - Increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 20% for 10 sec.

Oh blizzard you so scandalous. Now change Word of Glory back since it doesn't effect Prot's play style anymore. Or admit it was a Ret change all along.

[Vintage]

I'm pretty sure they are making these holy shield changes to make the tier gear more optimal. I don't think it really matters THAT much, just mastery becoming less valuable. I could be wrong, but we'll see I guess.

[zealous]

GbtL is now officially a piece of useless poop.

We'll need an encounter design with lots of downtime and then huge damage spikes for the bubble to be useful. And we don't have such encounters anymore (okok one - Chimaeron but he's getting nerfed and becoming irrelevant soon anyway), they were left behind in ICC.

And since the talent now only give a 10% increase to WoG and the absorb which will almost never be useful... underbudget talent is underbudget.

---------- Post added 2011-06-02 at 10:35 AM ----------

I'm pretty sure they are making these holy shield changes to make the tier gear more optimal. I don't think it really matters THAT much, just mastery becoming less valuable. I could be wrong, but we'll see I guess.

The HS change doesn't impact mastery itself too much so far.... we'll have to see if they change anything else.

[announced]

Not much diff but ok, make us more like warriors with shield block. lol.

[Gallahadd]

Yeah, tbh I still think this change wont make it live, as last time I checked it wasn't even on the PTR yet, I'm hoping this is just another case of Blizz releasing notes too early, and it'll all be changed into something that makes sense soon

[Selgar]

Guarded by the Light no longer allows your Word of Glory to grant Holy Shield.
Holy Shield now costs 3% of base mana and has a 30 sec cooldown - Increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 20% for 10 sec.

This was done to address all the whining about pallys being able to block cap and the others not being able to. Block cap + 100% uptime on Holy Shield made us slightly better at reducing and evening out incoming damage than the other tank classes. However since the nerf to our self healing we are now going to be worse at self healing and no better at mitigation making us slightly worse than all other tanking classes.

[Nyghtfall]

This makes sense now that HS it is a activated spell. But honestly the talent change probably would of been a better way to nerf WoG usage as prot than a CD.

[Corjha]

No more buttons please. I like how we have more but this will be my....... 7th cd?

[Nobleshield]

So as near as I can tell they're making this into our Shield Block. I'm... okay with that. I've played a Warrior Tank until 81 and he felt a lot more reactive and dynamic when tanking than my Pally ever did, having to constantly watch for cooldowns and be aware of everything is a good thing. I kind of miss the simplicity but I'll wait and see how this turns out before I judge.

I'm more curious as to how it affects our talents... Eternal Glory is already pretty much useless with the WoG nerf, and that makes 2/2 GBTL useless since the absorbtion can't be used often enough (1/2 is still good so it will proc HS currently), this change basically renders it as totally useless.

[kosechi]

no we're still the easist tank to play.

the holy shield change may turn out to be a buff. i don't know. i've not played with it on the ptr.

my issue however is that they are changing it despite that of all three paladin specs prot was the least broken ( and boy are paladins broken right now). holy shield worked fine before. after the wog nerf we were in line with all the other tanks survivability wise. we've had a major change to holy shield pretty much every patch since they redid the talent trees at the end of wrath.

the holy shield change just turns us into warriors with out heavy repercussions or critical block

if i had wanted to tank on a warrior my warrior would not be fury.

[Kewi]

In order for holy shield to be a buff, the boss has to cast for more than one third of the time, in a predictable pattern that allows for a full 10 seconds of taking melée attacks.

Otherwise, the boss needs to have a semi significant enrage mechanic that lasts for 8-12 seconds and is not dispellable...

This change may be "useful" for some end game raiders... I can't think of more then like 2-3 tier 11 fights that this is not a nerf for... And an annoyance with yet ANOTHER button to mash regularly... I'm seriously running out of keybinds...

[Deleted]

Well the old HS is "increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 10% for 20 sec". And activated by usage of Shield of the Righteous or Inquisition, and Word of Glory with talents.
And the new 1 is a 10% increase of the amount you shield blocks and lasts for 10 seconds. With a 30 seconds Cooldown.

Normal blocks are 30%, with the new HS it would bring it back to 50%. But that with a 66% nerf on the uptime(with a 6 min encounter).

But i don't get this change to be honest. They wanted us(paladins) to block more often steady amounts then Warriors, while warriors occasionally blocked bigger amounts(Block Crit). But as i see it now it nullifies that purpose. We don't gain anything special with this. We still block at the same rate and without holy shield it's making the warrior mastery/block much but better then the paladins.

[MoonZapdos]

Word of Glory was never a good idea for a spell in the first place. A small heal, based on resources that you would rather use to keep up threat and improve your block chance (well, not now, considering Holy Shield will be a standalone CD)? Also the way it's currently made so it's mandatory for Retribution survival also quite gets on my nerves.

Although, being able to control when you want that 20% extra block value can become pretty handy for those enrages.

[Danish]

Gonna be interesting to see where this leads, if it reaches live or not.

[Corjha]

Gonna be interesting to see where this leads, if it reaches live or not.

I really hope not. I don't want to play a warrior. I want to play a paladin.

[Nobleshield]

I could see the next logical step being that Grand Crusader lets us automatically do a 3HP Shield of the Righteous (i.e. Sword & Board).

I don't know. I'm fully convinced Blizzard has, and has had, absolutely no idea what they want the Paladin to be in the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't we the class with the most changes in the game throughout it's history, going back to the Vanilla Beta? It seems like every Patch there's some new Paladin changes or something "has been redesigned" instead of just tweaks to abilities. I'm sure they intend well but it really comes off as "We're just grasping at straws and hope that something seems right" in regard to our class design.

[FredMaHead]

No more buttons please. I like how we have more but this will be my....... 7th cd?

Yeah, that explains why i find Cata prot palas so much easier to play, than i did in wrath ? :S

[Calibar]

I'm fully convinced Blizzard has, and has had, absolutely no idea what they want the Paladin to be in the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't we the class with the most changes in the game throughout it's history, going back to the Vanilla Beta? It seems like every Patch there's some new Paladin changes or something "has been redesigned" instead of just tweaks to abilities. I'm sure they intend well but it really comes off as "We're just grasping at straws and hope that something seems right" in regard to our class design.

Yes.

Oh my god ten characters how annoying!


Then maybe you should try to say more? - Hitsurugi

[Ninurta]

Yeah, that explains why i find Cata prot palas so much easier to play, than i did in wrath ? :S

Really Wrath prot was the 696969 rotation. Could be done with a macro, a imple macro at that.
/cast avengers shield/consecration
/cast holy shield
/consecration
/cast avengers shield
/cast hammer of the righteous
/cast avengers shield
/cast judgment
/cast shield of the righteous

Don't think its in the right order not at home now, but you get the picture Wrath=smple Cata=Less simple (but pretty easy still) lots of cd's now

OT: I don't mind the change to holy shield it gives me a feeling of mre control of the damage coming in.

[zealous]

This was done to address all the whining about pallys being able to block cap and the others not being able to. Block cap + 100% uptime on Holy Shield made us slightly better at reducing and evening out incoming damage than the other tank classes. However since the nerf to our self healing we are now going to be worse at self healing and no better at mitigation making us slightly worse than all other tanking classes.

As far as we can tell from the information currently available this has NOTHING to do with being able to get to CTC.

It does not solve this problem at all.
It doesn't even visit the neighborhood, the CTC/mastery scaling problem is sitting at home making dinner, while this change is somewhere in Vegas stuffing singles down a stripper's panties.

It's a minor nerf to theoretical overall mitigation and a moderate nerf to effective practical mitigation, since no boss is going to be attacking in such short-cycle bursts for this "mini-cooldown" to be effective.

This change was like a pigeon taking a crap on your head - completely out of the blue.

I still can see no logic behind it and they don't want to explain their actions either.