Diamedes

I think shield block can be 1 of 2 things end game.

1. In 5 mans and heroics to some extent it can be overpowered, reducing most of the damage you take, considering its easy to have a high shield block rating and shield block ability makes it overpowered in this setting.

2. Now in a 25 man raid setting, where bosses hit a lot harder shield block value becomes all but useless, I mean its nice takin 500-700 damage off of each hit that gets through but its more of mitigation over time and will never save you from anything really. This is not to be confused with the shield block ability and negating crushing blows, just the actual shield block value.

My idea is to keep shield block rating as is, but instead of a standard shield block value, each shields block
value is set to a certain percentage, say 20% and block value is converted into extra percentages but never getting to be too much. So say a normal mob is hitting for 500, 20% of that would be 100 taken off your mitigated damage from armor, you still get rage, reduce damage and its not overpowered. Now in a raid setting, if your gettin hit for 5k a pop, that would be 1000 damage reduced, now this isn't overpowered but its a much nicer reduction in damage and would scale with damage being dealt. And the shield block value would add small percentages because if your shield block% went over 25-30% range then yes it would start being too good on raid mobs.

I realize since the game is balances around our mediocre block value this would make everything easier right now so it would take tuning but Ive heard rumors of the devs taking out crushing blows altogether in an upcoming patch so if this is true than shield block seems to be the best way to increase our mitigation or druids will be the best tanks hands down.(Not that that would be the end of the world, just that we would need something to compensate)