Holy Shield versus Lightning Shield

[Quark]

Besides them destroying any idea of a tanking Paladin by further reducing the aggro they can generate (wow, their plate is real useful now), there's one thing in particular that has bothering me about the 1.9 patch.

Holy Shield is now a 31 point talent, and for its push up got no improvement. Of course, another problem is that now Holy Shield doesn't recieve +spell damage bonuses. Caydiem's word on this?

I asked about Holy Shield as well, and why +holy or +spell damage didn't apply to it while applying to other abilities. The response I received is that, under certain easily achieveable conditions and combinations, Holy Shield was devastating with + spell damage applied. Rather than decrease the effectiveness of the base ability and still have the problem later on, they changed it so + spell damage no longer applies to it. I'm aware this is unpopular -- as is any reduction in power -- but please understand that we don't make such calls unless they're absolutely necessary. They tested these changes time and again and the results with Holy Shield were unbalanced. I realize this sort of change is particularly unpopular with Holy Shield's move to a 31-point talent, but I do want to stress that the talent trees are primarily about giving players more options as they go deeper into a tree rather than becoming more powerful.

So we take:

Holy Shield (Rank 4)
320 Mana
Instant cast 10 sec cooldown
Requires Shields
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec, and deals 130 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.

And let's compare it to:

Lightning Shield (Rank 7)
370 Mana
Instant cast
The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lightning. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for 198 Nature damage. This expends one lightning ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 10 min.

Paladin Benefits:
Costs 50 less mana
Reduces incoming damage
One more charge

Shaman Benefits:
Doesn't need a shield (read: don't sacrifice damage to use it)
Affects all, not just blockable
Affects 100%, not block+30% (block+60% if a paladin's specc'd for it, "lucky" and criticalled)
No Cooldown
More base damage
Damage can be improved through talents
Lasts 60 times as long (i.e can buff before battle and still have a use)
Recieves bonus from spell damage

Now if you wanted to just ignore the issue as a whole, you could justify the fact that Lightning Shield is innately better than Holy Shield because Shamans and Paladins are meant to have totally different skill sets. You may also justify Holy Shield being a talent compared to Lightning Shield being a skill in similar fashion to Blade Flurry and Cleave.

However, can anyone really justify Lightning Shield getting a bonus from +spell damage given the developers exact reasoning shown above?

As a side note, Lightning Shield says Only one ball will fire every few seconds, is this actually true? I've never observed a delay in damage intake from it, though I've never paid too much attention.