I think you are taking my post out of context. The context to which I was posting was a response to showing how the "new" HS is superior to DP as far as physical damage reduction goes. However, when block chances are lower then, probably close to around 85%, then HS will not reduce as much physical damage reduction.

I also agree, but the only disagreement is that I was not clear enough about what I was talking about, and you took my post out of context because of my obscurity.

But for the sake of argument, and on a slightly more practical note, tanking in 5 mans is much different from tanking in raids as far as trash is concerned. Sometimes a lower geared tank in a heroic may not have players who can cc as well as they should. In this case it can put stress on the healer, not because of burst damage, just because of overall damage taken. It is possible fore lower tier healers to run out of mana because the lower tier tanks were taking too much damage. True, CC is an option, but in some cases a flat 10% is better than 20% when damage is steady and overwhelming instead of spike and overwhelming.

You can take that last paragraph with a grain of salt. I'm not willing to defend it anymore than I already have, as what I said earlier was talking about HS vs DP and not HS as a nerf by itself.

Moving on....

I'm not for dumbing down mechanics, but I do think the best criticism of the new HS is that it's just another button to press. There are already tons of abilities in WoW, adding another ability doesn't make the game anymore "smart". Yes, it further distinguishes the good from the bad players, but honestly how many buttons do we need to show who's skilled? Is being skilled only about teaching your fingers muscle memory for keybindings in certain situations? I think the "passive" aspects of tanking (and dpsing and healing as well) can sometimes be more "skillful" than the "active" if only because the passive aspects require much more subtlety and keen observation of circumstances. As Malthrinn said,

There seems to a rather large discrepancy between the statements made here and reality. A person reading this thread would surmise that reaching the block cap is a trivial act and that mastery capping is a serious problem. However, when you look at armory links, even of characters that are extremely well geared, none of them is block capped or close to that. Most are hovering at roughly 90% for dodge+parry+block+miss.
In any case, I don't see mastery capping (now or in future tiers) as a serious problem. Mastery can be reforged off, and warriors have a soft cap on it has well. Consider the parallels: beyond a certain threshold, paladins and warriors both gain less from mastery - warriors by only benefiting from critblock and paladins by reforging to avoidance.

Certainly I agree that "passive" does not necessarily mean bad, and there needs to be some passive element to our gameplay (base mitigation, seals, etc.). But Holy Shield is a pretty iconic talent, and it deserved better than to be a passive element of our mitigation, in my opinion.

The question of "how passive and how active should the class be" is going to be a very subjective line though. And judging from the response to the HS change, we're probably approaching the boundary line. I and many other tanks think this is a great step, because we want more active mitigation; a lot of other tanks don't, because they feel it's too active or will make their passive mitigation too weak. I think there's a valid conversation to be had on that topic, and Blizzard is probably going to be paying close attention to how this change is regarded once it goes live and people get to play with it.

That said, I think that the new HS will actually make it easier for me to pay attention to other things. I frequently get into a situation where I want to use a cooldown, but have to quickly run through my options and remind myself what I'm "allowed" to use and what's reserved for boss mechanics later in the fight. Now I'll have to do that less often, because I'll be able to mash Holy Shield without thinking too hard.