by Abazzagorath » Sat Oct 11, 2008 10:40 am
Shielding is overrated, particularly for the non-raiding paladins who are usually the ones forced to make a choice on shielding vs something else.
If you have a choice of, say, a 3% shielding aug or a 25 ac aug, I'd go ac even if under shielding cap. Mob damage bonus hasn't scaled up nearly as high as mob DI over the last 4 years, so its value has diminished outside of raids. Obviously, you want the most you can possibly get, but I don't feel that sacrificing ac is worth it for it. Sacrifice hp if you have enough to take full advantage of heals from whomever is healing you without being 2 rounded, sure.
Squires are probably the roughest mob you will face as a non-raider, for example (other tougher mobs like geartop are only tougher due to adds), and its DB is only around 600 or so (DI is around 340? something like that), meaning even 10% shielding is saving you 60 hp per hit, meaning 240 dmg on a quad round where all 4 hits land. So how much ac would you have to sacrifice for 10% shielding as a grouper? A lot, and it isn't worth it.
Without high DB/DI ratio mobs (probably still some raid ones, but not really anything that comes close to things that were around years ago), shielding becomes more of a dps taken over time efficiency stat, rather than something that is truly necessary to survive one shot tanking of named mobs.
The point? Be careful on gear choices and if you have the choice between being at 25% shielding or 35% sheilding and 200 less ac, keep the higher ac and lower shielding, it will help you more where it matters.