Hey Blizz!
(tldr: all tanks are being homogenized, and what makes sword and board tanks unique has been removed for naxx)
So recently been doing some theory crafting for the new sanctified gear, T3 and their interactions with the Seal of Dawn trinket for my Prot Paladin, as many are currently doing. Everything is looking awesome, good damage and excellent threat.
Then I realize.
Block Value. Not a singular mention of Block Value or its use in Naxx. Honestly it DOESNT have any use in Naxx, especially in the HM where we’ll be getting slapped for presumably TENS of THOUSANDS of damage. How much block value is a full mitigation BiS prot paladin going to have? 200. 200 Dmg. That’s it. That’s less Block Value then we had in Sunken Temple.
Sure we get a flat % dmg mitigation when we use T3, but that’s so uninspiring. I didn’t play Prot paladin to be a sack of hit points that just happens to take X% dmg less then everyone else, if I had I would of rolled a Druid. You’ve taken what makes the sword and board tanks unique and homogenized them with all the other tanks.
The majority of Prot paladins simply wont be using abilities like Shield of the Righteous, because its dmg is based off of Block Value, which we simply don’t have any access to with the new sets, and no way to scale our BV with the sanctified sets.
Solutions:
A solution could be as simple as just adding BV scaling to the Seal of Dawn trinkets. Just giving a flat % increase to BV. This would benefit all Sword and Board classes.
Another option is modifying abilities like Shield of the Righteous and give it some sort of scaling option (example: Gain 5% of your HP as Block Value. It would have to be something that would interact with the Seal of Dawn trinket in some way).
Without a change, every paladin is just going to be using Righteous Vengeance on their cloak. Blocking an attack with a shield barely different then getting smacked in the face.
Paladins have always struggled with scaling, needing SP, Strength, BV, Crit, Defense, AP. I cant imagine it’s easy to balance, I’m just asking that you do what you can.
(I’m not knowledgeable enough about the warrior/shaman tanking kits to know how much this is going to effect them, so would love to hear others thoughts on this.)