That’s the point and what I am talking about. Power Word: Shield SHOULD be impactful for all 3 specs in becoming a good damage absorbing ability. Perhaps baseline is out fo the question. But having talent options to adjust the absorb amount by sacrificing the short cooldown or other modifiers to it to better suite your intended purpose of it be it triggering movement or absorb major damage moments or other ways make use of it.
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If only we got oracle. 
But even then as a dps spec you’re going through 2 steps and charges just to get a shield maybe close to a mage’s one barrier. For 3 times the work
I’ve been saying this. The fact that Luminous Barrier is a 3-minute CD and competes against Power Word: Barrier in a choice node is silly as well.
I’d personally love to use Luminous Barrier, but the CD makes the spell hardly ever worth taking with the absorb amount. It’s very niche.
LB is worse then Mage Barrier and Chrono Ward.
If they gave LB a 2 minute cd it would be more usable.
Dps have better aoe barrier than the shield spec and shadow priest shield is puny, one pet attack eats it.
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Yeah, I agree, it’s a problem
Why does shadow priest have these abilities when they do very little? Even at high item level. Shadows off healing and power world shield are pathetic. The only thing shield is really useful for is the speed boost, and when you have nothing better to do.
They need to tune these abilities better or have talents that actually utilize them in a meaningful way.
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Could restore Power Word: Shield to its major absorb damage default state with a 15 second Weakened Soul debuff.
Then taking Body and Soul would reduce the absorption amount, remove Weakened Soul debuff and suppress movement reduction while the shield holds so you can never drop below 100% movement speed while retaining the +40% movement speed it gives.
So without taking Body and Soul = Major damage absorb with weakened soul to prevent spamming on same target.
With Body and Soul = More utility mobility tool and less damage absorb.
Example…
-
Power Word: Shield
Draws on the soul of the party member to shield them, absorbing Major damage. Lasts 30 sec. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec. -
Body and Soul
Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith increase your target’s movement speed by 40% for 3 seconds and prevents the targets movement speed from being reduced below 100% while the shield holds. Power Word: Shield no longer affects the target with Weakened Soul and its absorption amount is reduced by 60%.
Doing this would build in a separation between Holy/Shadow and Discipline as Holy and Shadow would use Power Word: Shield mainly for the damage Absorb aspect and less of the speed bonus it provides and wont be that much negatively affected with Weakened Soul while Discipline can get the bonuses from Body and Soul while also having spec talents that enhance Power Word: Shields capability and Absorbs so you can spam it more often compared to Holy and Shadow.
The only issue is Weakened Soul preventing other priests from casting Power Word: Shield on the target that has weakened soul from another Priests PW:S cast. So perhaps Body and Soul will “Ignore” weakened soul targets where as normally you will have to content with the Weakened Soul debuff regardless if you caused it or another Priest did.
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No real point to doing this unless they wanted Disc to also play Weakened soul.
If they wanted to buff PW:S for shadow, they can just aura buff it in the shadow priest aura.
It’s already buffed in the disc aura, which is why it’s so weak on the other specs.
Power Word: Shield used to be good when it was more restricted. The base cool down it has currently is not restricting enough to justify increasing the absorption value. So that is why it’s really only useful alongside Body and Soul.
Retaining the low cooldown while empowering the absorption amount to actually become noticeable outside of Discipline is challenging because of how often it can be reapplied. This is why the Mages Absorption effects are much better because they have a lengthy time application which through talents can be manipulated in multiple ways if chosen.
I’ve taken a liking to a lot of of classes talents that actually transform abilities by making them passive or work differently instead of just slap on an additional buff/mechanic.
I think it would be healthy to put more transformational talents within the Priest class and Power Word: Shield would be a great spell to add transformative talents for to actually make it be more meaningful to use for all specs an not limited to basically just Discipline outside of Body and Soul minor speed increase.