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.