Quick question about Blocking

[Panzerbull]

Hi,

I can't find the answer in the 4.2 patch notes (just says Holy Shield is now an activated ability), and since block value and all that is long gone please tell me what does blocking an attack do now?

Is it a flat 10% damage reduction? And activating Holy Shield boosts that to the old 30% for 10 seconds?

[KysenMurrin]

Block reduces the damage of a physical attack by 30%. Holy Shield increases that to 50% for 10 seconds.

[Panzerbull]

Block reduces the damage of a physical attack by 30%. Holy Shield increases that to 50% for 10 seconds.

That suprises me... I thought the whole problem with Blocking pre-4.2 was that Blizzard considered it too powerful because it provided 30% damage reduction, so when block capped Paladins were taking far less damage than other tank classes?

[Koatanga]

Holy shield used to increase amount blocked by an additional 10%, for a total of 40% blocked with HS active (which was usually 100% of the time). That was considered OP, so it was redesigned as a cooldown. Now, you get an additional 20%, but only 10 out of 30 seconds.

Used on cooldown (which is not recommended) that would work out to an additional 6.67% block (on average) so on the surface it's a 3.33% (repeating, of course) nerf.

However, there are many situations where you are not being hit by physical attakcs (during a cast, channel, kiting, tank-swap, whatever) where you don't need any block. If you can time your HS use so that it is down in those times and up for times when you are being hit by blockable attacks, you get even more effective block than when HS was passive.

It is also extremely useful to use after a damaging event (so that you take less damage while healers are topping you back up) or after a tank-swap (to reduce damage while healers are building up HoTs on you).

[Panzerbull]

Ah , thank you for clearing that up for me.