[Prot] What is the point of Shield Barrier?

[Tonks 0]

Hello

 

Im a new Prot Warrior, and im having a really hard time seeing the usefullness of Shield Barrier as an active mitigation.

 

If i pool 100 Rage and activate it, ill get a 30k Shield, which is obviously something, but it seems so incredibly lackluster. It´ll stop 1 swing at the very max.

 

Whats the deal with it?

[Mystwalker 0]

It's more obvious when you look at it in terms of healing done on logs.

 

For example, just looking at one of my recent Imperator attempts, over the course of the fight my shield barrier did 1.52mil shielding.

 

As a tool to actively mitigate a large blow it's not intended to soak up the entirety of it, although sometimes that can be possible (Dependent mostly on current amount of resolve, my bottom end is around 32k, but I've had shields as high as 90k). It's meant to smooth your damage, and over the course of the fight, reduce the total amount of healing and therefore mana that healers have to send in your direction.

 

Also worth noting you say if you pool 100 rage and use it, it has a maximum cap of 60 rage per use.

[Estarriol 167]

Make sure you're never capping your rage out, you're just wasting rage when you do that. As Mystwalker noted, SBar has a maximum of 60 rage that it can use.

 

Sbar is not about smoothing. Smoothness reduces a % of your damage taken to keep your damage intake relatively even. Smoothness is about reducing less of each individual hit, but reducing some amount of a greater number of hits. SBar is scaled such that it reduces approximately one melee swing. It's in a bad place right now. Essentially, it's only usefulness is as a filler between SBlks. It makes the gameplay significantly less engaging and hopefully the devs will bring themselves to see that soon. I do not have high hopes. That isn't to say you shouldn't be using it. It still reduces damage, it just will never compete with SBlk unless you are taking unblockable damage (magic damage, DoTs). So make sure you do use it between SBlk charges and make you you're not capping your rage.

 

Meanwhile, I'll be over here in my corner mourning the complexity that was MoP's relationship with SBar that provided a dynamic and very important choice between active mitigation types.

[dyylan 0]

I'll weigh in a tad on this... I agree with the fact that Sbar is in a sad spot, but I've been using it on Imp HC to help with things like force nova ticks, and it seems to add a little bit of cushion as I recover from mark of chaos (I take all of them using heroic leap... something that IMHO all prot warriors should do) and get back in to taunt the boss. Another instance is pooling a bit of rage and using it (along with other CD's) on Bracken's necrotic breath. I've been able to pop 2 60 rage Sbars during that, which is also nice.

 

 

So I guess I'll also turn this into a question, since we're on the topic of SBar usefulness... What do you other experienced ProtWar tanks think? 

Edited January 20, 2015 by dyylan