Protection Paladins and Sacred Shield

I know this doesn't have to do with Death Knights and I will post some general thoughts on the new expansion and Death Knights soon but I wanted to start with Protection Paladins and Sacred Shield.


For those who don't play a Paladin, here is what it does: 

Protects the target with a shield of Holy Light for 30 sec, which increases the critical chance of your Word of Glory on the target by 30%.  The shield also absorbs (1 + 0.366 * holy spell power) damage when the target takes damage, but no more than once every 6 sec.

Can be active only on one target at a time.

Based on the current talent configuration for Protection Paladins, Sacred Shield has to change if Blizzard wants to introduce meaningful choices for this particular spec.

I've only tanked a couple Temple of the Jade Serpent runs so far but I feel this for the following reasons.

1) I feel like I have to take it. It costs very little mana, its increases the effectiveness of WoG (which is pretty weak now without the overheal shield) and it adds some damage absorb. Compared to Selfless Healer or Eternal Flame, both of which are very nice and useful in their own rights, I don't feel they are that useful for Prot. Take Eternal Flame for example; I won't spend 1 Holy Power on that over Shield, and I definitely won't use it over WoG (front loaded heal vs hot.)

(I could see myself taking Selfless Healer in 2 Tank situations but I think those individual cases will be rare.)

2) Then because I feel like I have to pick it, I feel like I have to keep it up 100% of the time, simply because I can. It feels very maintenancey. Tanks are already asked to do a lot, I don't think they should be asked to maintain this type of ability, like you could ask a DPS to do.

They would have to do one of two things for me not to take Sacred Shield in 95% of cases:

1) Change Sacred Shield.

-or-

2) Buff Eternal Flame/Selfless Healer so they are just as appealing.

Since buffing the Eternal and Selfless could cause balance problems for the other specs, I suspect they'll change Sacred Shield and be done with it.

They can add a cooldown, add a meaningful resource cost or add an absorb cap. They have to do something before it effectively becomes a Protection Paladin staple.

The purpose of this blog!

Some of you might have ended up here and wonder, why am I here? Why do I do care?

Well chances are that you found this blog from a friend or from my twitter. However you got here, thank you for reading.

So what is the purpose of my blog?

Its simple; to state clearly and plainly my opinion on a wide range of topics.

You might disagree with what I write and I'm ok with that. Everyone has a right to what they believe and should stand up for it.

I hope that you find my rants on politics or gaming or sports or technology interesting and worth your time.I generally will stick to those topics as those are what I know best and I have several passions about. If they don't interest you then I'm not sure this is a blog you want to read.

If you disagree with me on any ideas, posts, etc, let me know on twitter or in the comments. I won't heavily moderate comments (if I even can) unless they are so far off the topic that they are irrelevant to reasonable discussion.

So what might I blog about first? Since I just got into the beta for the next World of Warcraft expansion, I might use that for my first blog post. I have a bunch topics that I want to touch on. For now, I plan on playing it by ear.

Feel free to post suggestions to me on Twitter (@PennyRush) or in the comments of what topics I should write about.

P.S. I know the layout and design of the blog kind of suck. I'm working on it.