Shield Swipe is Even More Useless - Suggestion: Copy DRK Low Blow Mechanics

[Ladon]

Sorry, time to bring this up again.

The new skills post 50 have actually make Shield Swipe usage even less desirable. There is simply no room for a skill that randomly goes off and consumes an entire gcd window. Paladins will be focusing on timing Rage of Halon and Goring Blade and Shield Swipe has no room in the rotation. Additionally you are far better off simply pushing for Royal Authority rather than spending a GCD window on Shield Swipe if you are looking for damage. And of course an off tank Paladin will never use Shield Swipe.

The enmity bonus added is too unreliable to be useful. In fact it actually blows my mind a bit that this effect was even added. First, you can't reliably open up with it, even with Shelltron because many mobs use spells or other unblock-able attacks such as breath attacks. Second some mobs open early with telegraph moves meaning they aren't attacking you to set off Shield Swipe. Finally, it can't get aggro back because if you are trying to get aggro back, that means the enemy isn't even hitting you to proc the skill in the first place.

I appreciate that a lot of enemies are now effected by Pacify but the window of opportunity to actually make it useful to stop a skill (taking into account the GCD and random activation) simply is not there often enough to make it all that desirable.

Suggestion:

Rework Shield Swipe to function much like the Dark Knight Low Blow mechanic. Simply take it off of the global cooldown and make it an instant skill, add a 30ish second cooldown on the skill, make it always available and give it a 20% chance to reset the cooldown on a successful shield block.

This change would make it far more usable for the main tank and actually make it usable for an off-tank Paladin. It would also keep with the spirit of tying successful shield blocks to the skill.