So just got my shadow priest to 610 ilvl and power word shield is like…. 260k shield…. Uhm what. I have 4.7 mil hp… 260k?? Is this right? I didn’t power word shield was so weak.
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Unfortunately it’s the price paid for being such a spammable defensive option.
IMO, best to use it for movement when paired with the shield speed talent (I forget the name).
With Shadow, all the little things add up to good survivability…a damage reduction proc when getting attacked physically, shields, and both active and passive self-healing. That…also means that no one thing is “amazing” for survivability.
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Unfortunately, when paired together, priest has some of the most powerful DR abilities on such short CD’s.
for Example:
Fade - 10%DR
Protective Light - 10% DR
So paired together, thats 20% every 10 seconds. That’s pretty good! Not to mention if you’re a healer, protective light has a 90-100% up time
And while desperate prayer isn’t a “defensive” popping that alone with fade before a big hit can save you for the most part.
I do wish priest had a more definitive defensive. because most of our “defensives” tie into other things. Fade to remove snares, Flash heal for others ETC. PWS on a tank instead of us. So while we have great minor DR CD’s, its just not enough.
This one is at least covered by binding heals, which is a talent very few don’t take on the healing specs and grants you protective light any time you flash heal someone else, too.
Honestly I don’t think priest is really that squishy on the whole considering protective light + binding and fade DR combined with PW:S and DP.
It is squishy under SUPER HIGH or prolonged damage conditions, though because it can’t give itself a longer DR without going disc and choosing to save a Pain supp charge for yourself. And with one of the content branches being M+ which has infinitely scaling damage they eventually just need help before another healer would.
I’m not saying power word shield needs to do a million hp shield. But 260k? That’s barely 5% of our hp…. It just feels awful to press. That’s one mind blast. Atleast 400k? Like cmon….
PS:Shield is not pressed as a shield, its a way to apply the speed boost of Body and Soul but it also has the benefit of giving you a little extra HP in the process.
I’m confused about this, why are you expecting PW:Shield to apply a meaningful shield? /s
In any situation where you are doing Damage to something there is no reason for a Spriest to be pushing PW: Shield, its part of GCD and absolutely destroys your damage output to press it. PW: Shield is for movement times.
In Delves, World or M+ content PW: Shield is entirely for getting from one pull to the next faster and you just get a tiny bit of extra health for whatever the first unavoidable damage you take is.
In Raid content its a button you should be avoiding unless you’re in some kind of oh sh** moment. Movement should be done with feathers and DR should come from Fade to allow you maximum uptime on dmg.
PW: Shield is a Discipline priest spell, similar to Flash heal being a healing priest spell. I don’t think there are any classes in the game where every spell in the class kit is part of the kit for each spec within the class.
Because in every iteration before dragonflight and war within power word shield was a sizable shield. I can see why they nerfed it, and btw u also have feather for the movement speed. Power word shield being used as a movement speed buff is a NEW thing, not the most used iteration of it. And btw I only said it should use a small buff, not a rapture sized shield or the warlock/mage mass barrier or shield. One mind blast damage worth of shield is really sad, thats one global. In cata it’s almost 20-30% of ur hp btw on a 3 second cd (with weakened soul).
( also why would I use a weak shield like power word shield as a oh sheet button, I use desperate prayer or dispersion cause that will actually save me, not some 260k puny shield, I use it for movement now because it’s so weak but I def think it needs a slight buff.)
just so you know /s = Being sarcastic.
That is good to know for future interactions on the internet. Just cause you kind of look silly responding to it like it wasn’t sarcasm.
I agree its super weak and it doesn’t make any sense nor does there seem to be any reason for it. But I also promise that as a SPriest you should almost never be casting it anyway, especially during combat. Its a huge dps loss to blow a GCD on Shield. No amount of buff to the shield value would change it being a very bad spell to cast.
The Oh SHeet moment is something like: very high mobility sections of say Queen Ansurek, where you’re out of feathers, had to do a mechanic that put you in a bad position and now you need to get back quickly, maybe even running through a damaging circle in the process. This is like the only situation in raid you’d ever want to cast PW: Shield as a shadow priest.
Shadow priests should not be casting PW: Shield basically ever, so its not really a big deal that it doesn’t apply a big shield. Which aligns with your own logic of why not just use the better spells that were designed for our kit like Dispersion. You’re kind of answering your own concern, its because PW: Shield is not designed to be part of the Shadow priest kit, its just a basic priest spell that happens to be there.
Idk to me mind flay , shadow word pain and power word shield is iconic to priests and specifically shadow priests, to me thats like don’t use frost nova or rejuvenation, it just feels bad. But blizzard seems to be moving away from shields in general to the removal of rapture so who knows at this point. Kinda sucks mass barrier is so good honestly. I understood ur point I just don’t like it. 
Not really, it’s been since WoD, to be honest.
Legion it was OK, worth casting but not enormous. After that it became miniscule. As it is now it’s probably the best its been in a LONG time for Discipline, it just sucks for the others.
Just come to classic. It feels nice to shield for 30% of your health.
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Or play Oracle
Huh oh… shadow priests don’t have oracle hero talent. I would love it if they did 
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Guess I should read the whole thread before commenting. I saw PW shield title and the last reply ( " come play classic " ) and thought we were talking about holy/disc. My bad.
Kinda weird there isn’t a beefier shadow priest version of PWShield for personal use, but themed shadow with a small CD. Youd think thematically Fade would be better for you guys too but guess blizz still hates all priests equally
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PWS scales incredibly low on Holy/Shadow compared to Disc. Disc is 4-5x bigger absorbs.
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So I find it interesting that on my Mage, My Ice barrier is well over 1 Million absorb and with the fire shield buff that comes along with the Frostfire Hero Path, that is another like 200k+ absorb.
Now of course, Ice Barrier has a longer cooldown of over 20 seconds. So its not able to be used as often as Power Word: Shield.
But then that brings up a good question… why don’t we have a talent option that increased the absorb amount of Power Word: Shield but also increases the cooldown of it? So it becomes less spammy and leans more into an actual damage absorb.
I can see it world where turning Power Word: Shield into a much longer cooldown and used for more personal absorbs for key moments of damage output and less mobility usage via Body and Soul since we can still just use Angelic Feather.
Perhaps talents to reduce the cooldown of Power Word: Shield either just a passive or based on the damage amount absorbed so if it absorbs its full damage, its cooldown is reduced somewhat.
Also talents that extend the duration of Power Word: Shield or have these options as a choice with one or the other.
Its just silly that we don’t really have and Power Word: Shield talents in the class tree that actually affect its primary purpose which is to absorb damage. All we have is things to reflect damage or mobility attached to it lol.
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Disc has Luminous Barrier which is basically Ice Barrier and Chrono Ward, but on a 3 minute cd instead of 2 minutes. It’s worse then Barrier in most circumstances though.
With the upcoming new tier set for Disc they’re trying to force you to use LB because when your absorbs are removed the target receives the Insurance buff that gives them +15% healing taken for 15s.
Well that’s for Discipline Priest so cool I guess?
But what I was getting at was making class talents that all 3 specs can use to actually make Power Word: Shield as useful as it was in the past when all Priests used it and it has actual meaningful weight behind it, not just Discipline.
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Unless it has some oomf it’s pretty much useless and just adds more button bloat. Holy has Symbol of Hope and they just need to make it unsuck in M+.
Personally I want Blizz to stop making the fotm meta comps all about stacking group DRs and absorbs.