So, we have been for at least 2 iterations of the spec where this is a still up in the air:
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‘‘This is part of an effort to constrain Shield of the Righteous uptime’’: SotR is still a close to 100% uptime buff that we need to keep if we want a sliver of a chance to survive on the most mundane things related to tanking;
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'‘We want Shield of the Righteous to feel like it makes you strong, rather than an essential component of your baseline passive survivability.’': SotR is as week as it’s has always been post Legion where it changed from being a +%DR and became +XArmor. On its own SotR doesn’t make us feel strong, in fact it’s so weak that we generally have to pair it with something else to properly tank and rotate said CDs on any meaningful content outside of Raiding;
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‘‘transfer some of protection paladins’ defensive power out of Shield of the Righteous and into other cooldowns and forms of mitigation’’: You haven’t done that, in fact you just nerfed our remaining toolkit right before Launch (sentinel, wog, eot, etc);
We went an entire expansion giving the benefit of the doubt to these changes, they still feel bad, Pala was played when the tier set was absolutely op or right after Paladin rework and Sanctified Plates was beyond brokenly op. That got changed shortly after and Protection Paladin went back to a slumber.
With the most recent changes to tanks right before launch (and not taking into account the missing 20% damage increase past +12 key levels btw!) prot paladin has felt worse than it has ever felt. Reduction of Rightheous protector contribuition, Consecration DR nerf, Sentinel nerf and Eye of Tyr nerf.
Not only we are weaker but the playstyle became clunky and unfun.
We don’t want another Dot on Avenger’s Shield, thats boring, irrelevant and wont make pressing it good like it once felt, when it contributed to how your class played and to the resource flow. Avenger Shield can’t go another expansion without generating Holy Power, the reasons you guys gave to remove it resulted in literally nothing, its time to bring it back because if it doesn’t accomplish your goals by any metric (feeling or factual/numbers) then there is no point but to create friction with the playerbase and hindering the fun that the spec should feel.
Its strange that it seems that the lack of understanding that Holy Power on Avenger’s Shield is not about Shield of the Righteous, as proven by data from an entire expansion, that changes nothing when it comes to it’s duration.
The problem is that the spec is build around having a resource that is required to sustain yourself (Word of Glory) and increasing the flow at which you get access to your damage reduction and/or damage windows (Righteous Protector > Avenging Wrath/Sentinel > Guardian of Ancient Kings) then, pressing spells that don’t contribute to it feels BAD, especially when you already have plenty of globals that don’t and shouldn’t (Consecration, Blessings, Cleanse, etc). But, Avenger’s Shield certainly needs to.
Btw, Protection Paladin has never felt this bad to play, both from a power and fun perspective. I’d rather Holy Power be removed entirely than keep playing with Avenger’s Shield not generating it, especially now that Word of Glory costs so much mana (you guys put all the stops in play, just forgot to add Holy power back…).