Prot Pally Holy Shield nerf question.

[Tapzer]

Now i know pre 4.2/firelands mastery was very good due to holy shield being up all the time. But now that they nerfed it (30 second CD, 10 second duration) I feel block/mastery isnt as good. So i reforged/regemmed everything towards parry/dodge. I was at 14% parry and 12% dodge and 50% block. Now i am at 18% parry 14.50% dodge and 37.84% block.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Lanaric/simple

That is my armory, could really use some tips from other serious raiders. Anything helps (Except trolls)

[lichslaped10]

well if you had your prot gear on it would be helpfull but i am stacking mastery u just got to know when to use holy shield when u know that a big hit is about to come the u use holy shield we are on the same thing as wars have been on since the start of the game just know when to do it and you should be fine

[silvertitan]

With the DR on parry and dodge and with the combat tables the way they are dropping block is a bad idea. We still go by the unhittable numbers and reducing your block means that you will take alot more unmitigated hit's and get your sh!t pushed in. Doing a couple of the fireland Hardmodes i have found that i need to stack even more mastery then before. I have also found i am using holy shield alot, blizz need to take another swing at it...i hate it so much.

[Orthien]

Holy Shield has not been nerfed, if used right the chance is purely a buff.
As many have said already, yes you take more damage over all but this damage will be soaked by the over-healing you already are receiving. The new holy Shield is a buff for situations where there is heavy melee damage or where you are hit by massive burst and melee at the same time.
The closer to block cap you get the stronger HS becomes as such Mastery is still king, especially since it does not have diminishing returns where dodge and parry do.
I recommend you reforge back to Mastery and use Holy Shield as your personal free CD to help take that edge off things. I.e. Nef Breath+melee, or Balerocs regular melee between blade attacks.

If you need further reference I recommend ether the Maintankadin forums, the Sacred Duty blog or read anything by Rhidach on WoW Insider or his blog Righteous Defense.

[Tapzer]

My prot gear is on. and why have more mastery when its only up for 10 seconds? I feel more avoidance is better than extra block which is truly only effective for 10 seconds every 30 seconds.

[Darky23]

Well Holy Shield increases your amount to block not your chance to block. The Chance to block outweighs dodge/Parry anytime. The higher your block chance is, then the more dmg mitigated when you block even if most of the time is 30-31% decrease in dmg based on meta gem preference. If you use holy Shield, then your block mitigated dmg incoming is 50-51% which is pretty decent and with a high amount of mastery/Block rating, you can block alot more when you use holy shield so you get alot of benefit to mitigate dmg. hopefully this makes sense haha.

[lolterribads]

Mastery increases your chance to block attacks. Holy shield doesn't increase your chance, it increases the amount of damage you block.

I beleive warriors/paladins get a base 30% damage reduction on melee strikes each time they succesfully block (This is what I heard when block value was removed. If I am wrong please let me know). Add holy shield and you can soak up 50% damage during that 10 seconds. Having that on a 30 second cooldown is not bad, especially when you know that some hard hits are about to come your way.

Dodge/Parry ratings have bigger DR than you will get on mastery, so it makes sense to keep stacking it just as you would have before 4.2 - If you drop it then you will start getting hit for more than your healers would like.

Tanks with shields generally want to use them to their advantage to mitigate incoming damage. Save the parry stacking for DKs and Dodge for the feral droods.

[Deleted]

You are massively nerfing yourself by gearing out of mastery. The new holy shield is good if used appropriately, however if you deliberately drop mastery you are making it's effect weaker all round.

[MestHoop]

I feel block/mastery isnt as good.

Don't mean to be rude here, but your feeling is wrong.
Blocking a hit still reduces the damage taken by 30%. Block is not subject to diminishing returns (which both dodge and parry VERY much are) and controlled use of the new holy shield will reduce the damage you take during spikes more so than the old version would.

I could explain the math to you here, but it's already been done by people who are much better at math than me. You can find it both here and over at maintankadin.failsafedesign.com or any of the known prot paladin blogs.
And just to show that I'm no troll: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uharu/advanced

[Deleted]

lol nice loging out in your 'lightbringer' shoulder

but as said above, a block is stil 30% damadge reduction for that attack.
due to DR on parry and dodge but no DR on block geting to the cap first before then reforging to dodge/parry will help your healers more.

[Guzug]

It's a math problem and not a hard one. The old number was 952 and that assumed 40% blocked. So at 952 dodge or parry there was no argument but mastery is always better. Smoother curve, more over all reduction.If you just macro the new shield to all attack and get the 33% up time (so an average block amount of 36.7%) the new number is 1483. Even in no raid gear you will be way over this. If you never touch the button the number is 2817.If you use it as a cool down the I guess it's value varies on how well you use the cd and how often.

[Deleted]

Stick with mastery. It makes your incoming damage much smoother for healers to manage, and they will love you for it.

Unpredictably high damage spike at the wrong moment = dead tank.

[cncrules45]

Holy Shield also has a significantly higher uptime on 2 tank, taunt fights, like Argaloth (not that he is hard or progression-oriented), since the time you are not tanking the CD is ticking but you aren't experiencing tanking w/o a CD. If the tank swap occurs every 15 seconds, then you should have a 66% uptime on Holy Shield, which is massive.

Because Holy Shield has such a short CD, it should be used every time you are tanking a mob or set of mobs that hit reasonably hard, unless you are positive that there will be a better time to use it in the next 30 seconds. The same goes for DivProt unglyphed now, but even more so with our 4 piece.

The Holy Shields make paladins more powerful sometimes and slightly less powerful in others, but the second category is either not very deadly anyways or not very common.

[jimmy valmer]

i was in the same boat as you op. At first, it just seemed useless to me. But after testing without mastery, i went splat pretty quick, lol. So i put mastery back on and used holy shield at the right times and the difference was awazing !

I sound like a dodgy tv salesman :/

[Deleted]

I sound like a dodgy tv salesman :/

haha.. xD
(10 chars)

[Kashydan]

there's this great post on Theck's Blog, i'll just gonna link it here:

http://sacredduty.net/2011/06/23/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-new-holy-shield/

i think just about everything i would want to right now is said in there <3

[Avelias]

Now i know pre 4.2/firelands mastery was very good due to holy shield being up all the time. But now that they nerfed it (30 second CD, 10 second duration) I feel block/mastery isnt as good. So i reforged/regemmed everything towards parry/dodge. I was at 14% parry and 12% dodge and 50% block. Now i am at 18% parry 14.50% dodge and 37.84% block.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Lanaric/simple

That is my armory, could really use some tips from other serious raiders. Anything helps (Except trolls)

I'll answer you with some quick math.

Before you dropped your mastery for avoidance your CTC was: 14 + 12 + 50 + 5 (miss chance) = 81% chance to block or avoid an attack

Now after you dropped your mastery this is what you get: 18 + 14.5 + 37.84 + 5 (miss chance) = 75.34% chance to block or avoid an attack

So just by playing with your reforging you actually lowered your CTC by almost 4%. You gained no additional survivability.

[Rambard]

Even if we assumed that mastery is terrible (which it isn't), being a spiky tank is a terrible terrible thing to heal. Avoidance is just too unreliable and it's damn near impossible to fill the CTC with just avoidance. Mastery is just purely a better rating point for point in filling the CTC up.

[Inclusion]

If you have a brain, the new Holy Shield is incredible. Mastery is still our best stat. /thread.