Does it scale with anything besides level for shadow priests? It only lasts 1-2 hits. I get having it be reduced when applied to others but it feels minuscule on my health bar, as though its barely worth casting.
For Shadow pretty much yeah. Its only ever been worth casting much for Disc, or for Body and Soul movespeed for the most part.
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I would round it to be equivalent to 1/5th of your health back in classic as let’s say you have 5k health at max level then, Power Word: Shield would have somewhere between 900-1400 absorb or so.
It also lasted 30 seconds with a 15 second weakened soul debuff.
Over the years it just became weaker and I can first recall going into Cata that at max level it couldn’t or just barely absorb 1 ability attack from a warrior. It was at that point and moving forward that playing the absorb damage game started to fall off and it was moving forward to avoiding damage outright with the Mind Blast critical strikes activating Paralysis (Apathy’s Predecessor) which rooted your target for 2/4 seconds and then going into MoP and WoD we gained access to Surge of Darkness to make us more mobile as well as Spectral Guise to set up ambushes or to avoid attacks outright.
From Legion onwards it was a crap shoot lol.
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It’s been this week since legion.
This is the lowest amount of scaling PWS has been in recent times because we had a ~40% stamina boost this expansion.
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PW:S is basically a disc only ability now. It’s laughably small for holy as well, not even worth using. It was that way in DF as well.
People saying it was trash like last xpac are wrong. It held up to more dmg than this.
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Honestly I feel power word shield is puny for holy too.
Does bugger all absorption, feels like it just triggers a GCD and does nothing lol
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PWS is still worth casting, because throwing away free mitigation isn’t something we can afford to do. That said, it is weaker for shadow because it’s a quick CD, and we have the ability to cast heal on ourselves.
Not ideal, but it seems to track with Blizzards intention for self sustain provided to dps.
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For holy, you’re really only wanting to benefit from it through PoM. So it’s absorb is just icing rather than something that meaningfully contributes to your throughput.
Seems like we should have a talent option to restrict the usage of Power Word: Shield but increase its effect dramatically.
Here are some ideas…
- Power Word: Shield absorbs 100% more damage and makes you immune to interruption effects while the shield holds. You longer are able to cast this on targets other than yourself.
- Power Word: Shield damage absorption amount and weakened soul is increased by 100%.
- When you cast Power Word: Shield, you and up to 4 allies each receive a Power Word: Shield but it’s cooldown is increased by 200%.
I use it solely to alternate Body n Soul with feather. Not the best mobility, but it gets the job done.
Yeah, I mean in rather quick-trick spells in desperate times when all other ‘insta-spell’ avenues are closed. 
Especially in PvP.