Nerf Shields, Foam Protection, and Other Misleading Blog Post Titles

Anecdote:  A couple of years ago, The Kid and I were at Toys R Us, shopping for a gift for my nephew’s first birthday.  The Kid’s a teenager now, and so the demands to visit the toy department were long ago replaced by demands to go to the video game store.  But no matter your age, toy stores are incredibly fun, and I confess, I squealed with delight when I saw a display full of foam shields and swords.  “Oh my god, I’m buying us these,”  I said.  “Oh my god, no,” he said, and blushed with embarrassment as I grabbed one and proceeded to poke him in the belly.  I don’t remember what we bought my nephew that day, but The Kid and I came home with Nerf weapons.  He had a long sword; I had a dagger and a shield.  We ran around the backyard dueling, and I quickly learned several things:

1. Laughing hysterically makes swordplay nearly impossible.
2. It’s hard to get up in someone’s grill to whack them with a dagger if they’ve got longer arms and a long sword and a much longer reach.
3. Foam shields don’t do shit.

Analysis:  Foam shields don’t do shit.

I feel like a broken record in raids sometimes:  “Please don’t shield the tanks.”  “Please don’t shield the tanks.”  “Please don’t shield the tanks.”  “Please don’t shield the tanks.”  I’ve long struggled to get my fellow priests to cease-and-desist, but with the priests’ 4-piece bonus now offering +250 spellpower for 5 seconds after shielding, it’s even more of a battle.

Hey, Holy Priests:  if you raid with a Discipline Priest, don’t shield, ok?  Please?  If you have the 4-piece bonus and want to take advantage of the spellpower boost, shield yourself.  Your job as a Holy Priest is to heal, not to shield.  While the boost to your throughput is nice, I agree, the bonus wasn’t designed for you (I know.  Startling concept:  a poorly designed set bonus.)  PW:S hasn’t been part of your rotation, and this set bonus shouldn’t change things.  It’s not what you should be using your GCDs or mana (~900 mana for you, and I know you don’t have much to spare) to cast.

I had several shields last night absorb 10K damage; most of the time, they absorb at least 8K.  A Holy Priest’s shield absorbs less than half that.  

And that’s not remotely strong enough to absorb my fury when I see your Weakened Soul debuff on the tanks.

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Nerf This!

The other day, my fellow priest BobTurkey commented on my post “Gearing Your Discipline Priest (in 3.1)” that he gears for longevity.  As I’ve never had mana issues, I’ve never felt as though I had to really think much about ensuring Khaeli had enough juice to endure the lengthiest of encounters, even with the changes to Rapture.

Apparently Blizzard noticed that Disc Priests were still ending fights with plenty of mana and were able to cast almost mana-free shields.  So they nerfed us — a stealth nerf, the bastards:   “The Priest ability Soul Warding now only reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 15% instead of 30%. The tooltip for this spell will be updated at a later date.”

I noticed myself low on mana last night and was taken aback (I didn’t know about the nerf at the time), but thought that it was from rezzing folks right before we pulled a trash encounter.  Or from getting Gravity Bomb every goddamn time XT-002 cast it.  I do wonder if I’m too liberal with my shielding now that they’ve removed the cooldown.  

Certainly the increased mana cost of PW:S will give me pause.  And yes Bob, it might just make me think about gearing for longevity.

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