Bulwark

[Synestra]

Honestly the worst part of Bulwark is its Recast time. All tanks have cooldowns that are a little on the dicey side and not intended for mitigating TBs (if you use Bulwark on a TB and nothing else... yeah.) but when used properly smooth out incoming damage and provide spike mitigation. But none of them have a fucking 3 minute recast.

This! Afterall its only 60% and lasts 15s so having a 3min recast on CD that is meant for fluff damage is too much for my taste, 90-120s would be more in like with DD and RI. 120s would be good recast as it would synch with Awarness and Foresight because you want to combo those 3 CD to make most out of them(they have pretty awesome synegry imo).

[Februs]

This! Afterall its only 60% and lasts 15s so having a 3min recast on CD that is meant for fluff damage is too much for my taste, 90-120s would be more in like with DD and RI. 120s would be good recast as it would synch with Awarness and Foresight because you want to combo those 3 CD to make most out of them(they have pretty awesome synegry imo).

I totally agree with you here, but the problem with Bulwark's long ass CD timer is the gradual increases in block rate/strength over the course of the patch, which is probably why SE refuses to adjust it's obnoxious CD timer.

Someone else in the forums pointed this out to me once before. As we get further and further into the patch cycle, shields improve. By the end of it, the amount of mitigation provided by our blocks increases quite a bit. At the end of the 2.x cycle, for example, the mitigation provided by a Pld's block was very near to the mitigation provided by Sentinel. Some people would consider that a little overpowered, even if it is only for physical dmg.

I definitely agree that the Timers for Bulwark and Awareness should be adjusted to provide better Pld synergy. Awareness is a Pld move, for crying out loud. There's no reason why Pld's should get the least utility out of it. However, I can kind of see why it hasn't been adjusted (even if I don't agree with it). I don't think SE wants to overpower Pld's physical defense by, essentially, giving them an extra Sentinel cast every ~120 seconds (coupled with an Awareness every 90 seconds, in an ideal world). That said, SE is also the main peddler of that myth in which Pld's are somehow the king of physical mitigation. So, really, it wouldn't be too out of place with what they've tried to sell us in the past if they did do this.

[Synestra]

snip

Well to compensate CD reduction they could always lower block % from 60% to 55-50%, that should be reasonable tradeoff.

[Februs]

Well to compensate CD reduction they could always lower block % from 60% to 55-50%, that should be reasonable tradeoff.

I agree. It's not the only trade off that they could have done, as well.

Like every problem facing Pld's, there are multiple ways in which SE could have made adjustments to make it agreeable. Even the idea of having sword and shield effects depending on the type equipped would have been fine, especially because it was the direction they seemed to be going in before they decided to homogenize all of the Pld gear. Instead, they choose to put their heads in the sand and ignore it. I was really hoping that they were going to come up for air in 3.2 and address some of these long standing issues, but I kinda knew that they wouldn't.