Blizz has said that they don’t expect prot pallys to have Shield of the Righteous (SotR) up at all times. This will mean that there are times when prot pallys will go squish if SotR isn’t timed well.
Are other tanks going into DF going to have this same philosophy or is it just prot pallys getting hit with this garbage?
I don’t think Blizzards idea for Active Mitigation was ever to have it up 100% of the time. It was always intended to use it for big hits. Regardless Prot Pallies couldn’t keep it up at all times at the beginning of any expansion if I remember correctly, it wasn’t until mid to late expansion that you get enough haste to maintain it.
As for other tanks, not all tanks can maintain their active mitigation at all time now. Blood DKs are reactive tanks and rely on healing themselves after a big hit to get a shield for the next. Warriors have limited charges of Shield Block. I think Druids and Monks can maintain their respective armor buffs 100% and I’m not sure if that’s changing.
Monks have celestial brew which has a 1 minute cooldown and it is not possible to keep up all the time. Other than that they just have to try and manage their stagger levels.
Oh, I must have been thinking about an older iteration of Ironskin brew from BFA.
That sounds closer to our Ardent defender which is a 2 minute CD, but with conduits can be gotten every 1:30ish
EDIT: scratch that - the conduit extends its duration, leading to only about 1:30 downtime.
None of the tanks handle active mitigation in exactly the same way, if anything pallies being able to maintain Shield of the Righteous at or near 100% is the outlier and reducing it’s uptime brings it back in line with the others.
I thought the idea of “oh crap” buttons was so you could press them during “oh crap” moments.
I never really felt the armor bonus from SoTR was really as detrimental to survival, especially compared to Consecration. It’s nice and all, but as a plate tank lugging around a fancy shield… I don’t see how its anything more than icing on the cake after standing in your holy pee puddles.
Closest I can think of anything close to this would be DKs and Boneshield, they always want a charge up, preferably enough charges to get the haste bonus, but I would say this is closer to Paladins standing in their puddles…
This was always my understanding. It goes back to complaints in BC about “I have to keep pressing this button all the time or I die” not being fun.
It’s pretty clear you don’t play Protpal OR BDK…
Blood literally DOES have 100% uptime on a MUCH more powerful active mitigation than SotR and that is just a fact, it’s the reason BDK is several tiers above every other tank right now. The fact is, in SL, Protpal IS tuned to require 100% uptime on SotR. It literally requires it in order to not die. The idea is that in DF protpal will be tuned to no longer NEED 100% uptime therefore they don’t want you to HAVE 100% uptime because then you would be TOO tanky. OK?
What remains to be seen is if Paladin’s base mitigation and other kit in DF are tuned correctly to a point where Protpal isn’t getting globalled as soon as SotR drops - which is exactly what was happening all too frequently in SL and is the reason for the most recent buffs to armour and block.
Personally I don’t see the issue with requiring - and enabling - 100% uptime on SotR, so long as the class is tuned around it. Seems like the general consensus amongst prot paladins right now is that they would rather stay dependant on 100% uptime than lose the HP generation from Avenger Shield.
Pallies needed enough haste in order to keep their Shield of the Righteous up, which wasn’t possible during the first raid tier of any expansion, but was always the case by the end. Blood DKs active mitigation works completely differently from other tanks in that it works reactively to the damage taken in the previous 5 seconds, that being said you aren’t going to maintain 100% uptime on your blood shield. With Blood DK it all comes down to timing to make the most out active mitigation, and I think tanking would be more interesting if all tanks benefitted from properly timing their abilities.
Edit: BFA used a charge system for Shield of the Righteous, it was still reduced by haste But I don’t remember if you were actually able to maintain it 100% by the end.
Yeah, after it got severely buffed from 4 set. Once the 4 set goes away Blood is going back down. Do you not remember it being the unwanted tank in season 1/2?
Celestial Brew is not brewmaster’s active mitigation. That’s just a cooldown. Our AM is Shuffle and Purifying Brew.
It’s clear you don’t play BDK either, because otherwise you’d know blood’s uptime is only due to their tier set. Take that away, and they’re suddenly much less impressive. They’re going to be losing uptime on that in Dragonflight already as the duration extension is being nerfed and haste levels will be brought down to where 100% uptime is less feasible. Sure, DS is being added to Everlasting Bond, but the priority for DS is going to be keeping the blood DK alive early on in the expansion.
Ironically, paladins already lug a shield that is generally a tad weaker then BDK but not by too much, on top of ignoring a good % of ALL damage by standing in a puddle. Those alone are > then BDK bone shield. (and they also get a Block chance).
Even without the SoTR, Paladin’s trump Blood on survivability of a big hit. Blood’s real advantage is that it doesn’t have to choose between damage/threat or healing with its runic power.
Vengeance is possibly the worst, I don’t tank enough to know. But that spike ability isn’t able to be up all the time from what I could tell.
Shuffle/Stagger is passive so I don’t really consider that part of monk’s “active” mitigation. Purifying Brew clears some stagger but doesn’t actually mitigate any damage.
Celestial Brew is an active ability that actually mitigates damage. I guess we also have a fortifying brew, but the long cooldown really makes it an emergency button.
But I guess it is really semantics.
Except, of course, for Druids on pull…
Shuffle is “passive” in that we don’t have to do anything special to activate it, but it’s “active” in that it goes away if you’re not actually hitting buttons. Purifying brew absolutely does mitigate damage by removing it entirely. 
Better than just being a mana sponge like they use to be, where all they had going for them was more health than any other tank.
I mean that’s back in the super-old-days, where tanks got hit to generate resources to attack.
The whole thing about active mitigation is that it did a 180, and now tanks attack to generate resources to defend.
I used to heal during those days and I loved bears for that feature. I actually think its kind of a cool way to do it. Sure hes down to half health… thats like 3/4 a health bar for other tanks though. I have a bit before I need to panic.