Holy Shield versus Lightning Shield

[Quark]

Shield Block for Paladins.  They wanted something to be similar to the Warrior's Shield Block (which essentially forces Revenge, resulting in a quick one-two combo to generate significant aggro in a hurry), and this is what they came up with.  It combines the defensive effects of Shield Block, along with the aggro generation of Revenge (assuming you're using Righteous Fury/Seal of Fury/Whatever of Pissed-off-ness.)  You are ignoring the fact that Holy Shield's primary purpose is NOT to inflict damage.  Allow me to repeat that AGAIN, just to be absolutely clear: Holy Shield is NOT a damage skill.  It is an aggro skill.  Combined with the aggro buff, it is designed to generate extra hate for the Paladin.  The cooldown is to prevent the Paladin from spamming it in order to rapidly generate scads of hate (e.g. aggro monsters, autoattack, spam Holy Shield.)

So your saying the justification for Holy Shield not really helping much for damage reduction and damage output is its aggro? Okay, so you take 130 damage, that's some aggro there. Looking up Thottbot, I see an Apply of "337" for the highest Judgement of Fury (Holy damage causes more threat). Yes, you're right! Holy Shield was, in fact, designed to cause lots of threat in conjuction with Judgement of Fury, at 467 threat a block.

One problem. They got rid of Seal/Judgement of Fury and replaced it with Righteous Fury, 60% increase in threat from Holy damage. Now that threat per block has become 208. If you have the talents for Righteous Fury, 247. There. Now not only has Holy Shield been move up from 21 to 31 and had its damage potential stripped. It also has lost almost half its aggro potential.

And, don't compare Paladins to Shamans.  They are radically different classes, with two very different purposes.  Paladins are supposed to be able to tank.  Their skills are geared to allow effective generation of aggro (while still being somewhat less than that of a Warrior's capabilities) and efficient, less-powerful heals.  Shamans are less durable, and are geared towards dealing damage, with powerful, inefficient heals.
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Problem with your statement: Paladins can't really tank anymore. It's bad enough with 3 or 4 mobs live. It's going to be even harder when 1.9 comes out, because their aggro generation was nerfed (in more ways than just shown above). A paladin can tank one mob if everyone goes out of their way to make sure they don't get aggro. Because once a paladin loses aggro, it's very hard to get it back.

You may say "well, why did Blizzard do this and this and this with Pally aggro in 1.9?" Paladins can now do more damage while tanking, since they can use a Seal/Judgement while Righteous Fury is up (instead of just using Seal/Judgement of Fury). But the actual aggro generation has gone down.

Yes, I know some Paladins can pull off tanking fairly well if they're in a well organized group that does everything right. But make it a 4 pull, or have anything go wrong, and the paladin doesn't even begin to compare to a Warrior or a Druid. The simple truth is at this point, equally geared and skilled, I'd prefer a non-Feral druid over a Protection paladin for tanking. That's not balance.