Blizzard
A few changes to Protection in an upcoming build. Mostly focused on smoothing out issues in the core rotation and active mitigation.
- 奉献 no longer buffs 正义盾击 and
- 奉献 cooldown 4.5s (from 9s) and duration 12s (from 9s), but you can only have one down at once
- Mastery: Divine Bulwark reduces all damage you take while in 奉献 (instead of increasing 正义盾击 effectiveness)
- 复仇者之盾 increases the effects (damage and armor) of your next 正义盾击 by 20%
- will be replaced with a new L15 talent
Listing all at once because they're all pieces of the same goals. First, Avenger's Shield is back to having some baseline defensive value, which pulls the rotation together by making you care about both hit and
正义之锤 other than for pickups/damage.
Second, Consecration is easier to work with. If you don't have to move, you have to replace it less often, and if you do have to move, you can replace it much more quickly. While standing in
奉献 still has some value, your core buttons no longer rely on it, and the loss of mitigation from being outside it is much smaller than Legion. It also provides a small source of baseline magic mitigation.
Finally, the gap between
正义盾击 uptime and downtime, in terms of mitigation, is less dramatic. The previous mastery made that gap get wider and wider as the expansion went on, leading to the problem of increasing moments of vulnerability when active mitigation was down.
正义盾击 will now have more consistent value across the expansion. The spec will be tuned expecting slightly lower
正义盾击 strength and uptime compared to Legion, which helps avoid the problem where there were windows of very poor mitigation compared to other tanks.
