So, after the patch, how goes it with Paladin?

[Brian_]

snip

What "facts" are you talking about? Because I don't see any regarding the points I took issue with.

It's not anecdotal evidence that Shield Swipe adds to your DPS if you use it. How is that anecdotal. You said "this is not a reliable change to Paladin damage." I pointed out that if that's your reasoning, neither is crit. Over a prolonged fight, it is a reliable and consistent increase in PLD DPS.

How is it anecdotal evidence that a shield that stacks with all other mitigation actually helps you mitigate damage. By your logic, Path is also not needed. Delirium / Reprisal are not needed. In that way, PLD's raid mitigation is no longer worse than DRK or WAR because it's all not needed anyways. Makes sense.

Here are some actual facts. Splash is ~2600 damage per splash. Cascade is ~12000 damage. Fluid stike is ~60000 damage split between targets. Divine Veil is ~1700-1900 HP worth of shield. Is that anecdotal mitigation? It mitigates a much larger amount of damage than Path, Delirium, and Reprisal for those abilities. In terms of raid mitigation, DV does a better job. But, LIKE I KEEP SAYING, the issue is the CD and the resulting up-time, not some irrelevant babbling about redundancy, clunk, or how it doesn't shield the PLD. I'm not even saying the ability is fine. I'm just saying that you're completely oblivious to the actual weakness of the ability.

What is the point of a free temporary 10% HP shield? Really? Staying alive as a raid is not only the healer's responsibility. It is everyone's responsibility. That's why you have abilities like Path, Delirium, Reprisal, Dragon Kick, etc. The only difference with PLD is their raid mitigation is activated / casted rather than applied. If you are going to argue that a free shield is not worth it, then applying Path, Delirium, DK, Reprisal, etc. are also not worth it. Your healer just needs to git gud.

How DV costs you damage is beyond my understanding. It has no cast time. And like I said regarding SS, you use it when you cannot deal damage or when the added damage is inconsequential and less important than staying alive.

And, I don't get what is so hard to understand about block.

If a DRK wants to proc Reprisal or Low Blow more, they need more Parry stat. More parry comes at the cost of other secondary stats.

If a PLD wants to proc Shield Swipe more, they will naturally do so as ilevels increase. More block-rate does not come at the cost of other secondary stats.

I didn't think I had to do this but I guess I need to spell out the result -- assuming gear progression and stat valuation is the same as it was in 2.X, 6 months from now DRKs will still have roughly the same proc-rate on Reprisal and Low Blow. Why? Because they will still be stacking Crit and Det instead of Parry. PLDs will have a higher proc-rate on Shield Wipe. Why? Because while they're still stacking Crit and Det, their block-rate naturally increases because of shield ilevel. Is that really so hard to understand?

Now, you're probably wondering why that matters? Well, like I originally pointed out -- Swipe scales better than its equivalents. So, while we might have low up-time based on natural block-rate now, it will change naturally in the future. Like I referenced earlier, it's like everyone forgot 2.X happened.