Guidelines for when to use Holy Shield

[koriolis]

So I'm currently discussing with my raid team to bring my paladin out of retirement; like a week after Firelands some things changed and I decided to level my Alliance Prot Warrior instead, and he's been my main ever since - I'm now 7/7, 1/7H and he's in almost full non-heroic T12 BiS gear. I sometimes miss the utility I had on my Paladin though, especially as my team moves into Hard Modes, and I'm going to be gearing him up as fast as possible with the intent of possibly switching back to him as my main.

My question is whether there are any good guidelines on determining when to pop Holy Shield. It looks like Shield Block, it feels like Shield Block, but Shield Block is meant to be used every time it's up unless you aren't taking direct damage (and even possibly then due to Heavy Repercussions). I've been doing research and it seems that while Holy Shield looks like a duck and walks like a duck (as the saying goes) it's not a duck, and shouldn't be treated like Shield Block.

In a typical dungeon pull when mobs are beating on me constantly during a fight, should I still be saving Holy Shield for specific damage spikes, or using it as it's available? How about on bosses? The only example I've seen of how to manage Holy Shield deals with an uncommon scenario where you take a magic damage spike and then a melee immediately after, so you should save HS for the melee (I did the same thing on my Warrior with Shield Block), and otherwise it seems to be just guessing where it would benefit the most to pop it. If it's meant to be like Shield Block, shouldn't it be treated in the same fashion, or is there something I'm missing? They seem to be essentially an exact copy except Block is 25% block and 20% magic, and Holy Shield is 20% block only.

[Calleana]

You should be working towards full CTC with your paladin and then Holy shield becomes like a mini cooldown. I tend to use it when off cooldown and taking heavier damage (i.e. not just before a transition is raggy or when in a tank swap bit).