Incoming Shield Block Nerfs

I seem to remember commenting on the Beta forums about 3 weeks ago that an awful lot of items have Shield Block and were very desirable for tanks. Fireflyte said he would probably be reducing it on some items. Well…

Originally posted by Fireflyte:

I’m making a number of changes to the items currently available for purchase with void shards. The majority of the changes are improvements to the advanced armor sets, however I wanted to drop in a quick warning about a couple of changes that could affect the desirability of certain items:

The Shield Block effect is being removed from all tank-usable items. It’s being replaced with mitigation modifiers that equate to roughly the same % increase in damage reduction.
Shield Block is being left on the Righteous Rage jewelry set. These items, however, will no longer be available to crusaders. If you are a crusader, please do not purchase the Righteous Rage jewelry pieces, as they will be retroactively hotfixed to exclude your class.

These changes will hopefully be hotfixed early next week.

and further…

Originally posted by Fireflyte:

I created these items several months ago, and have been busy with raid gear design up until now. During this time, Aeralik has been involved in some revamping of the way tanks are being balanced, which includes bonuses to their mitigation and avoidance. In addition, I did a sweep of all the TSO items and found the Shield Block effect on far too many non-shields, to the point where players could nearly double their shield’s effectiveness. There are still a number of armor pieces with Shield Block on them, but I’ve tried to limit which slots they occupy, as well as the ease in acquiring them (void shard armor is not difficult to attain).

The mitigation bonuses I replaced the shield block with translate to nearly the exact same % increase in defense. The only difference is that you get that % added to your mitigation rather than your avoidance. Since this reduces spike damage, most players are going to find it a favorable change.

and last…

Originally posted by Fireflyte:

I could have removed the shield block here and replaced it with a mitigation bonus, but the set is actually intended for priests, and those that use Shield Ally highly prize shield block ability. I chose to leave it in and just remove crusaders from the usable classes.