After another night in Dragonsong's Reprise with my static, we decided to mix up cooldowns in order to save my Hallowed Ground for a future mechanic. Where I was previously using it on the tether'd Shield Bash buster during Strength of the Ward (first trio), I've begun using Sentinel+Sheltron instead, with an Oblation from my co-tank and other mitigation that my healer's could spare. However, my group has already discovered an issue with this.

Sheltron, or Holy Sheltron in 6.0, is PLD's quick mitigation tool akin to DRK's The Blackest Night, GNB's Heart of Corundum, and WAR'S Bloodwhetting. It gives a small regen to the PLD, a 15% damage reduction for 4 seconds, and increases block-rate to 100% for 8 seconds (block inherently has a 20% damage reduction) on top of the first. Sounds really nice, and like it would work perfectly for something like the Shield Bash+Holy Blade Dance busters during the first trio, which has an initial very strong hit, and several rapid-fire weaker hits after the first few seconds.

Issue being, PLD's do not block while they are stunned. I have witnessed it over and over, when I use Sheltron, I always blocked the initial hit from Shield Bash, but never the stack damage from Dragon's Rage, nor any of the sword cleaves from Holy Blade Dance. The 4 seconds of damage reduction from the initial Sheltron typically fall off around the end of the Holy Blade Dances if I time it very carefully. But there's been times I didn't time it right and missed the button, got stunned, and just died to the damage. When I did time it right, I still dropped tremendously lower than my co-tank, who was also using their cooldowns for their own tether.

While we can heal through this damage given warning, it still feels rough that PLD just cannot utilize one of the core elements of their kit to mitigate an otherwise extremely powerful attack. I don't want to go back to using Hallowed Ground for this mechanic just because one of my mitigation tools doesn't work for an incredibly specific criteria, which none of the other tanks have an issue mitigating for. It feels like an oversight, or a kick in the knee because I'm playing this one tank, and not the others.