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Shield Block

Shield Block
60 Rage

Instant cast	12 sec recharge

2 Charges
Requires Warrior (Protection)
Requires level 18

Requires Shields
Raise your shield, blocking every melee attack against you for 6 sec. These blocks can be critical blocks. Maximum 2 charges.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

60 Rage

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

1.5 seconds

GCD

0 seconds

Effect

Dummy
Value: 100
Server-side script

Flags

Guides

Overview of
Tanking and
All Tank Specs

Protection Warrior Guide [6.0.2]

Warlords of Draenor
Warrior Changes

Comments

Comment by Khereth

See Block for more detailed information.

Comment by malcontentus

according to http://thottbot.com/s2565 it has no global cool down. If anyone can verify this then please make a new comment and rate this down.

Comment by Archangel

An excellent tanking ability, obviously. I would advise even Arms or Fury warriors to invest at least 12 points into Protection for Last Stand and Improved Shield Block, which extends it's duration by 1 second and gives an extra block. With 12 points invested into protection, all Warriors can tank pretty well.

Anyhow, whenever this skill is not cooling, it should be up while tanking. It can also be used preemptively in PvP; if you see a hunter casting Aimed Shot, stance-dance to Defensive, wait till it almost fires and hit Shield Block to absorb a goodly amount of damage! This can also be used in conjunction with Revenge(especially Improved Revenge) for a good cheap source of damage/threat.

Comment by biggamer155

this move appears to be unafected by the focused rage talent i respecced yesterday and it stayed at a 10 rage cost instead of reducing to 7 rage

Comment by MeanMachine

In WotLK this ability will recieve a major nerf -> 100% chance to block and 100% increased block value, but ONLY for one attack (one attack that you block, you could still dodge and parry as they take higher priority than block no mater how much you increase the chance). The cooldown gets increased to 30 seconds (you can take away 10 with Improved Shield Block).

No more free avoidance for warriors, and if they remove crushing blows, you won't really need it that much. Anyway, Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now, ensuring that you would at least block .. a lot of damage.

Comment by Gruneun

Shield Block becomes more of a panic button now

No doubt, it's an enormous nerf, but it's hardly a panic button. Even with the cooldown decreased by talents, spending just ten rage every twenty seconds will make it a spammable action that gives the healers a buffer.

However, I can foresee bosses that hit the tank extremely hard at a specific time, requiring the block to be available and its use well-timed.

Comment by Pyroshen

ALL tank gear (from the past and in the future) is being reworked to include more strength. Take a look at any of your old favorite peices of tanking loot on the regular wowhead and compare it to the wotlk stuff. Across the board almost all pieces are gaining some strength and losing other stats (like hit, defense, shield value, etc)

For example:
Battleworn tuskguard in TBC
Battleworn tuskguard in wotlk

Aldori Legacy defender in Wotlk
Aldori Legacy defender in TBC

This also disproves xiron's comment It also looks like they're removing the Block Value stat from all pieces of gear that aren't shields, so I don't think that block value numbers are going to be that drastically changed (in relation to what they would be if block value was still in lvl 71+ gear).

Comment by unrulymonkey

What happened to "but will only block 1 attack"? The live tooltip specifies that, but this one doesn't. Does the buff actually last the full 10 seconds now, regardless of how many times you block?

Comment by Gymble

You gain rage from parrying, but not dodging

No, we dont.

Comment by blackout99

I dno if you shall call this a nerf or a power up now, indeed it gets a long CD, but in mind of that this can be a panic button for tanks is good, since you will block all atacks and your BV is increased it's basically a immune shield to melee normal trash mobs, but that's if you got a high BV

Comment by Nishika

Imagine a boss like Prince Malchezzar, who in phase to hits you with a lot of strikes right after each other. Popping shield block, which then doubles your chance to block AND block double amount of damage - that is pretty nice. Critical Block only makes this even better - and with the change to Devastate which can reset the cooldown on your Shield Slam, I can see a lot of big Shield Slam incoming.

Overall.. nice change.. gonna be fun to try out. :)

Comment by Cirdin

Figurine of the Colossus works absolutely great with Shield Block.

Macro the use of the Trinket with Shield Block and you have a great formula for 10 seconds of great healing on yourself!

Comment by Kaaosa

I've made the following macro for my warrior since the 3.0 change to Shield Block

#showtooltip Shield Slam
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam

This attempts to use Shield Block everytime I use Shield Slam to ensure I use it as soon as its cooldown is up and get good uptime from it, and Shield Block comes first in the macro so that the Shield Slam benefits from the increased SBV.

Comment by ir0npanda

This is melee immunity for ten seconds in PvP. With my prot gear in TBC (which was not built for high SBV) I could block 1400 pre-armor damage. Now that block value will go way up, and with the +100% SBV from this buff, that means I could block at least 3000 pre armor damage with that gear at level 70.

Keep em in front of you, and no damage will get through from any physical dps class barring some overflow from aimed shot (maybe) for ten seconds.

Then shield wall.

Then retaliate (+damage shield!)

No more double rogue teams CCing the druid while they gank you.

Comment by makron

This is immunity to Gouge.

Comment by strajo

You can bandage the tank when he pops this... if the boss doesnt do any unblockable damage, that is :)

Comment by Daiemio

Wonder if you can use this to block instant kill abilities.. like, that last execute, or a overpowering blow, that would no doubt kill a low level?

Comment by safafawgar

Can this block http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=51722#comments:id=1011153 ?

Comment by kemikalkadet

As of 4.0.1 this ability no longer doubles your block value due to the removal of block as a stat on gear.

Comment by korvhuve

Shield Block, against regular melee mobs, is more or less a 10 second 30% reduction to damage taken on a 30 second cooldown, assuming it's talented. Critical blocks improves the mitigation further.

Comment by mmaniac

As of the last patch Shield Block increases your block chance by just 25%, but
if your total avoidance exceeds 100%, the excess goes for your critical block.
So basically, if you have say:
20% dodge, 30% parry, 40% block and 25% crit block,
using Shield Block makes you with:
20% dodge, 30% parry, 65% block and 40% crit block
But the question is, can you really exceed these 100%?
Not with the current gear, I presume... Unless you use a trinket

Comment by G00dG4m3

I don't know, feel free to downrate me, but does attacker's chance to miss an attack on you counts as, well... YOUR avoidance?

Comment by G00dG4m3

I meant specificaly this mechanic, which says "if your total chance to block or avoid an attack exceeds 100%, your chance to critically block is increased by the excess.", and now you see, what did I mean.

Comment by petre

Huh, I don't see it listed anywhere, and I don't know if it's possible yet even if you stack Mastery everywhere in full T12 heroic gear, but if your passive (without Shield Block active) block+avoidance exceeds 100% would the excess be converted to critical block, or is that mechanic only available for the 10 seconds Shield Block is up? The spell details and tooltip would appear to indicate you would get no benefit to critical block unless Shield Block is active, but they don't rule out the implementation of a separate mechanic that does this.

Comment by CucumberGH

I found that I was forgetting to activate my Fire of the Deep. Rather than abandon the on use completely, I macroed it with Shield Block, which I use whenever it's available:

#showtooltip
/use Shield Block
/use Fire of the Deep

The cooldowns don't match (30s for Shield Block with Bastion of Defense, 1m30s for Fire of the Deep), but that's not a big deal. The end result is that one in three applications of Shield Block is on steroids and also gives me an extra 13% dodge before diminishing returns. I know it would be better to activate them separately and distribute my damage reduction, but I had trouble integrating the Fire into my cooldown rotation. This way I benefit from its effect and can forget that I even have it.

Comment by Shrikesnest

As of Mists, this became less of a no-brainer (thanks to the addition of Shield Barrier) but remains a compelling choice in many situations. Not only does this flat-out reduce any physical damage you would take for 6 seconds by 30%, but it gives every one of those attacks a chance to be critically blocked for a whopping 60% mitigation.

When this is best used is a tricky question, because Shield Barrier is so powerful and much more generally applicable, and using both at the same time is usually redundant. In general, though, if you're taking a lot of physical hits in a short period of time, this is a good cooldown to use, so the beginning of a pull with lots of trash or a phase of any boss fight where they make a lot of physical attacks in rapid succession make good candidates. It really depends on how much absorption you can put out with Shield Barrier, though. Blocking all the damage is better than negating some of it, no matter how you slice it.

Comment by KobraPL

It seems that the Shield Block cannot have 100% uptime, here's why.
Every charge lasts 6s and has 9s CD. You can use this skill up to 4 times in a row, without reaching cooldown. After that every 6s, you have to wait 3s for the charge to be refreshed.

So, the uptime is:

100%, for the first 4 uses,
66%, for the rest.

I've prepared an image describing the way active time corelates with CD, resulting in such uptime.
Shield Block Uptime Graph

First line: active graph (each dash = 1s)
Second line: cooldown graph (each asterix = 1s)
Numbers represent: skill used(charge used)

Comment by sylancer

i think the machanism of

DK runes,
Roll,
Shield Block, Double Time,
Savage Defense,
Conflagrate, Hand of Gul'dan(Chaos Wave), Demonic Slash, Demonic Gateway,
Angelic Feather and
Clemency

(or is there any others?) are similar.
so can anyone explain what's the cd of these "2/3 charges" system spells? (the cd of Angelic Feather, Demonic Gateway, Double Time and Clemency are clear)

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