Shield Oath makes Sheltron useless.

[Furious]

I think the OP underlines the problem with creating a resource bar but making resources generate very slowly while under Shield Oath. I'll add that Holy Spirit should not generate 20 Oath under Shield Oath, since that forces the design to funnel Oath generation behind that spell to get people to use Holy Spirit on top of focusing on recovering MP (to cast Holy Spirit some more).

I'd probably nerf Oath generation from Holy Spirit, change Shield Oath to generate Oath when you take direct hits (blocks and parries would generate slightly more Oath), along with more Oath consumption from other skills to compensate.

The resource does not generate slowly while under shield oath. I can't believe this is such a hard concept to grasp.

You will be casting 5 holy spirit per minute at a MINIMUM as part of your normal rotation on paladin. 5 holy spirit generates 100 energy. 100 energy gives you two uses of sheltron. 2 uses of sheltron per minute means one use of sheltron per 30 seconds, which is exactly the same rate as the old sheltron was available - only now it can be banked and used back to back if required, where before it couldn't.

As well as this _bare minimum_ of 100 oath gauge per minute, which already equals heavensward sheltron, you _also_ get 5 energy per block (which is only possible because the ability is now gained in small increments rather than on a cooldown or as a chance to reset). At a minimum, you get 10 energy per minute from the two attacks you block while using sheltron, meaning that at its base sheltron is available more often than it was in heavensward through standard play. If you really wanted to, you could shelltron > hs >sheltron > hs > hs >sheltron > hs > hs > sheltron, for 4 sheltron blocks in 12.5 seconds, and come out of that with ~20 gauge remaining. It would use up your sheltrons for a while, but you can do it if a fight pattern demands it - you could never do this before, and you can because of the way you generate sheltron energy now.

Your standard rotations now both use riot blade, which intrinsically regenerates enough mana in the interceeding time to cast your holy spirits, as well as the bigger portion you get back from blocking with sheltron.

Taking it a step further, you have a 100% chance to block with bulwark up, which garuntees you a portion of blocks every time it is off cooldown, and when you aoe pull, your number of blocks also goes up significantly (tanking even two mobs will nearly double your gains from blocking (which we have already established are extra charges that are already more than what you had in heavensward)).

I'm not sure why you think you need to be forced to use holy spirit when it is signicantly stronger than your standard damage rotation; you don't need incentive to use the royal authority combo do you?

Not sure I agree there, from what I've observed on my paladin Oath takes a very long time to generate, and Shelltron eats a good portion of it. I've found it available considerably less often than it used to be.

Sure, this might change once I hit 70, but that still means it's close to useless for at least 12 levels.

Overall I'm happy with the changes to Paladin. We're definitely a lot stronger overall but I guess Shelltron was the trade-off for that added strength.

You get holy spirit at 64, and you don't need it before endgame anyway. Yes, it's marginally awkward before 64. It simply doesn't matter enough to do anything about that though.

Sheltron now is so much better than sheltron in heavensward, it's crazy. It's better in every way.

It's available more often, and significantly more often when you use bulwark or aoe tank. But even at baseline, when you get holy spirit at 64, you have more casts per minute of sheltron available in SB than you had in HW.
It can be used on magic damage.
It can be used regardless of facing or positioning.
It can be banked up to two effective charges, and if absolutely needed can get up to 4 uses within a 12 second window with enough preparation time.

Sheltron isn't the tradeoff for everything else, sheltron is a big part of the everything else.