Shield Block

It seems that the Shield Block cannot have 100% uptime, here's why.
Every charge lasts 6s and has 9s CD. You can use this skill up to 4 times in a row, without reaching cooldown. After that every 6s, you have to wait 3s for the charge to be refreshed.

So, the uptime is:

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• 100%, for the first 4 uses,
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• 66%, for the rest.
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I've prepared an image describing the way active time corelates with CD, resulting in such uptime.
Shield Block Uptime Graph

First line: active graph (each dash = 1s)
Second line: cooldown graph (each asterix = 1s)
Numbers represent: skill used(charge used) [so, 4(2) - 4th use of Shield Block, second charge]

You can bandage the tank when he pops this... if the boss doesnt do any unblockable damage, that is :)

The new shield block spell ID is 132404 with the T19 2-set bonus. For simple WAs, enter this in the trigger and enable Full Scan.

As of 4.0.1 this ability no longer doubles your block value due to the removal of block as a stat on gear.

or just Berserker Rage.

I don't know, feel free to downrate me, but does attacker's chance to miss an attack on you counts as, well... YOUR avoidance?

Yes, Shield Block now lasts 10 seconds no matter what.

Shield Block is disconnected from the global coolddown. It does not activate it and can be used during it.

This is melee immunity for ten seconds in PvP. With my prot gear in TBC (which was not built for high SBV) I could block 1400 pre-armor damage. Now that block value will go way up, and with the +100% SBV from this buff, that means I could block at least 3000 pre armor damage with that gear at level 70.

Keep em in front of you, and no damage will get through from any physical dps class barring some overflow from aimed shot (maybe) for ten seconds.

Then shield wall.

Then retaliate (+damage shield!)

No more double rogue teams CCing the druid while they gank you.

I meant specificaly this mechanic, which says "if your total chance to block or avoid an attack exceeds 100%, your chance to critically block is increased by the excess.", and now you see, what did I mean.

Shield Block, against regular melee mobs, is more or less a 10 second 30% reduction to damage taken on a 30 second cooldown, assuming it's talented. Critical blocks improves the mitigation further.

As of Mists, this became less of a no-brainer (thanks to the addition of [spell=112048]) but remains a compelling choice in many situations. Not only does this flat-out reduce any physical damage you would take for 6 seconds by 30%, but it gives every one of those attacks a chance to be critically blocked for a whopping 60% mitigation.

When this is best used is a tricky question, because Shield Barrier is so powerful and much more generally applicable, and using both at the same time is usually redundant. In general, though, if you're taking a lot of physical hits in a short period of time, this is a good cooldown to use, so the beginning of a pull with lots of trash or a phase of any boss fight where they make a lot of physical attacks in rapid succession make good candidates. It really depends on how much absorption you can put out with Shield Barrier, though. Blocking all the damage is better than negating some of it, no matter how you slice it.

The devs told us exactly how Prot Warrior abilities work in PvP at the link(s) below.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20747314610#2

I'm pasting it here as they typically delete the beta forums after release.

Focused Rage increases the damage of Shield Slam by 20% in PvP (down from 50%)
Ignore Pain absorbs for 40% in PvP
Shield Block increases Shield Slam damage by 12% in PvP (down from 30%)

In Legion, the term “Active Mitigation” refers to a single, specific ability that a Tank must use as a “counter” to specific boss abilities.

These boss abilities are designated as “Mitigation Checks”. If you fail to use Active Mitigation against a Mitigation Check, you receive an additional negative side effect, e.g. being flung away by a boss ([npc=91007] of Neltharion's Lair) or the boss gaining a shield ([npc=95885] in Vault of Wardens).

Here is a list of the Active Mitigation abilities for each Tank Specialization in Legion:

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• Guardian Druid - Ironfur
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• Protection Warrior - Shield Block
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• Protection Paladin - Shield of the Righteous
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• Vengeance Demon Hunter - Demon Spikes
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• Brewmaster Monk - Ironskin Brew
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• Blood Death Knight - Mastery: Blood Shield / Death Strike / Marrowrend
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Note. Marrowrend grants Active Mitigation via a short Recently Used Death Strike buff. Bone Shield itself provides no Active Mitigation. Also, unlike all other Tank Specializations' Active Mitigation, Blood Death Knight's abilities are on the global cooldown table ("on the GCD") therefore cannot be used at any time.

Not if you're defense capped they can't. Warriors can't become "crush immune" without the use of Shield Block. Blocking even 1 damage of an attack will ensure that it's not crushing so that made Shield Block a vital part of tanking as a warrior. Feral Druids can't become crush immune but they have insane amounts of health to sponge the attack and Prot Pallies use Holy Shield for their crush prevention. Removing crushing blows from the game will make tanking a whole lot easier as keeping shield block up won't decide between life and death of a high end raid boss crushing blow. So technically it

I'm not sure about block values, but u will see a drastic increase in threat because u will be sporting much more attack power. I'm actually very glad they are changing this. i can't tell u the number of times ive pulled agro from the tank on the first heal.

Something else to note. For warriors parry>dodge You gain rage from parrying, but not dodging

As of the last patch Shield Block increases your block chance by just 25%, but
if your total avoidance exceeds 100%, the excess goes for your critical block.
So basically, if you have say:
20% dodge, 30% parry, 40% block and 25% crit block,
using Shield Block makes you with:
20% dodge, 30% parry, 65% block and 40% crit block
But the question is, can you really exceed these 100%?
Not with the current gear, I presume... Unless you use a trinket

I found that I was forgetting to activate my [item=77117]. Rather than abandon the on use completely, I macroed it with Shield Block, which I use whenever it's available:

#showtooltip
/use Shield Block
/use Fire of the Deep

The cooldowns don't match (30s for Shield Block with [spell=84608], 1m30s for Fire of the Deep), but that's not a big deal. The end result is that one in three applications of Shield Block is on steroids and also gives me an extra 13% dodge before diminishing returns. I know it would be better to activate them separately and distribute my damage reduction, but I had trouble integrating the Fire into my cooldown rotation. This way I benefit from its effect and can forget that I even have it.

I logged in just to say thank you! My WA broke when I got the 2 pc bonus and I did not know why!

oh and for any1 that didn't notice......IT COSTS NO RAGE

it's a novel idea, but if you have 2 rogues on you, i doubt you're gonna be able to keep them both in front of you even if you try to back into a wall.

I am wondering if this ability block all physical damages or all auto-attack damages.

Another way to ask this: Do all physical damages blockable? Auto-attacks can be blocked, but what about boss mechanics like gruul's inferno strike[spell=162322] or oregorger's acid torrent[spell=156297]. They are physical but can we mitigate their damge by shield block?

I can confirm too. I was trying to setup the TellMeWhen addon for player buff scan, and 132404 [spell=132404] is indeed the right spell ID. (SL 9.1, no T19 2-set bonus.)

If you want to track the buff of Shield Block and to improve its uptime, here is a TellMeWhen icon that you can import:
^1^T^SShowTimer^B ^SType^Sbuff ^SName^S132404 ^SShowTimerText^B ^SStates^T ^N1^T ^SAlpha^N0.75 ^t^t^SEnabled^B ^t^N102301^S~`~| ^Sicon^^

Does it also block magical melee attacks? It doesnt say anything about "physical".

according to http://thottbot.com/s2565 it has no global cool down. If anyone can verify this then please make a new comment and rate this down.

An excellent tanking ability, obviously. I would advise even Arms or Fury warriors to invest at least 12 points into Protection for Last Stand and Improved Shield Block, which extends it's duration by 1 second and gives an extra block. With 12 points invested into protection, all Warriors can tank pretty well.

Anyhow, whenever this skill is not cooling, it should be up while tanking. It can also be used preemptively in PvP; if you see a hunter casting Aimed Shot, stance-dance to Defensive, wait till it almost fires and hit Shield Block to absorb a goodly amount of damage! This can also be used in conjunction with Revenge(especially Improved Revenge) for a good cheap source of damage/threat.

As far as I know ranged attacks can't be blocked O.o

this move appears to be unafected by the focused rage talent i respecced yesterday and it stayed at a 10 rage cost instead of reducing to 7 rage

In WotLK this ability will recieve a major nerf -> 100% chance to block and 100% increased block value, but ONLY for one attack (one attack that you block, you could still dodge and parry as they take higher priority than block no mater how much you increase the chance). The cooldown gets increased to 30 seconds (you can take away 10 with Improved Shield Block).

No more free avoidance for warriors, and if they remove crushing blows, you won't really need it that much. Anyway, Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now, ensuring that you would at least block .. a lot of damage.

It still is a big nerf, especially in lower tiers. Before we would take (hit-blockval) damage for 99% of the hits that actually landed, normally. Now, that's (hit-2*blockval) damage for 25% of the time. Unless there's some kind of heavy block rating gear that gets forced on you (which most people would not normally use), you are still not-mitigating 50% (ballpark figure - it's probably nearer 20-30%, but still) of the damage you would mitigate in BC with blocks. Blocks in TBC were, with Def Stance, what closed the gap between druid armor and warrior armor, especially in T4 and T5. Hopefully

It also looks like they're removing the Block Value stat from all pieces of gear that aren't shields, so I don't think that block value numbers are going to be that drastically changed (in relation to what they would be if block value was still in lvl 71+ gear).

Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now

No doubt, it's an enormous nerf, but it's hardly a panic button. Even with the cooldown decreased by talents, spending just ten rage every twenty seconds will make it a spammable action that gives the healers a buffer.

However, I can foresee bosses that hit the tank extremely hard at a specific time, requiring the block to be available and its use well-timed.

ALL tank gear (from the past and in the future) is being reworked to include more strength. Take a look at any of your old favorite peices of tanking loot on the regular wowhead and compare it to the wotlk stuff. Across the board almost all pieces are gaining some strength and losing other stats (like hit, defense, shield value, etc)

For example:
Battleworn tuskguard in TBC
Battleworn tuskguard in wotlk

Aldori Legacy defender in Wotlk
Aldori Legacy defender in TBC

This also disproves xiron's comment

It also looks like they're removing the Block Value stat from all pieces of gear that aren't shields, so I don't think that block value numbers are going to be that drastically changed (in relation to what they would be if block value was still in lvl 71+ gear).

What happened to "but will only block 1 attack"? The live tooltip specifies that, but this one doesn't. Does the buff actually last the full 10 seconds now, regardless of how many times you block?

You gain rage from parrying, but not dodging

No, we dont.

I dno if you shall call this a nerf or a power up now, indeed it gets a long CD, but in mind of that this can be a panic button for tanks is good, since you will block all atacks and your BV is increased it's basically a immune shield to melee normal trash mobs, but that's if you got a high BV

Imagine a boss like Prince Malchezzar, who in phase to hits you with a lot of strikes right after each other. Popping shield block, which then doubles your chance to block AND block double amount of damage - that is pretty nice. Critical Block only makes this even better - and with the change to Devastate which can reset the cooldown on your Shield Slam, I can see a lot of big Shield Slam incoming.

Overall.. nice change.. gonna be fun to try out. :)

I've made the following macro for my warrior since the 3.0 change to Shield Block

#showtooltip Shield Slam
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam

This attempts to use Shield Block everytime I use Shield Slam to ensure I use it as soon as its cooldown is up and get good uptime from it, and Shield Block comes first in the macro so that the Shield Slam benefits from the increased SBV.

or just Berserker Rage.

Then 10 seconds later when you need Enraged Regen, you wont get lucky enough for a crit from MS and thus, no enrage, no heals, no hp.

Wonder if you can use this to block instant kill abilities.. like, that last execute, or a overpowering blow, that would no doubt kill a low level?

Less. Block only reduces damage by 30% (and crit block by 60%). Whether you have an insanely low block value or Shield Block pushes you into crit block, you're still only getting additional damage reduction of 25% * 30% = 7.5%. That's not to say that this is useless; on the contrary, I pop it whenever it's up. I just don't bother with anything more complicated than "it's up and I'm being attacked". The extra block does help to generate rage with [spell=12725].

It definitely can. I'm a tauren warrior barely geared for heroics, and I have paperdoll 75.96% block+dodge+parry+miss when buffed with Kings/Wild, Battle Shout and Mastery food. That means that when I gain 0.65% more block+dodge+parry from gear, my Shield Block will begin to overflow into critical block against heroic 5-man bosses (or 1.45% more for raid bosses). Less lazy warriors than I are already there, as are night elves (damn OP racial). And don't forget dual-wield bosses, which gain an additional 25% chance to miss.

It does, yeah.

Errh, I don't actually think it counts towards this ability though. The nelf racial won't sum up with your dodge, parry and block.

It appears to factor in the base 5% miss, but not the extra 2% from the night elf racial. I fiddled around with gear until i had 100.01% (~93% dodge/parry/block + 5% base miss + 2% racial). At this point the buff tooltip indicated +23% chance to critically block. This implies shield block figured i had 98%. This all assumes the ability talks in terms of an equal level attacker.

Huh, I don't see it listed anywhere, and I don't know if it's possible yet even if you stack Mastery everywhere in full T12 heroic gear, but if your passive (without Shield Block active) block+avoidance exceeds 100% would the excess be converted to critical block, or is that mechanic only available for the 10 seconds Shield Block is up? The spell details and tooltip would appear to indicate you would get no benefit to critical block unless Shield Block is active, but they don't rule out the implementation of a separate mechanic that does this.

At that point you would be reforging a bit of Mastery back into avoidance, because dodge/parry>mastery for mitigating damage. That's after you get to 102.4% of course; optimally you want to retain 102.4% but lower the amount of Mastery you have while increasing the amount of "pure" avoidance you have. And no, exceeding 102.4% with extra block % is just going to push it off the combat table and not grant critical block once you're over the cap. ctc priority (for a mob hitting you) is Miss=Parry=Dodge (doesn't matter what the order is there, they do the same thing) > Block > Critical H

Yes, we do have to wear a shield.