Spell Focus: Power Word: Shield
Description
Power Word: Shield (Rank 12)
600 Mana, 40 yd range
Instant cast, 4 sec cooldown
Draws on the soul of the party member to shield them, absorbing 1265 damage. Lasts 30 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec.
Power Word: Shield is a nice utility spell that can be used on many occasions. It will not heal, but rather prevent a sizeable amount of damage taken by the target. It helps to ease out spiky damage, protects low-armoured allies from being smeared by frenzied hordes of adds and helps you solo mobs without getting interrupted on every swing.
Strengths
Power Word: Shield is one of the very few reliable damage prevention spells. Additionally it’s instant cast and as such can be used while repositioning or flying through the air. It may be used to ease spiky damage by dropping it in occasionally. Do this only if your tank is rage-capped and you can afford the global cooldown. Other than that it prevents spell pushback which is also very handy on numerous situations.
Weakness
However, Power World: Shield cannot replace healing spells. First and foremost, it has a cooldown of 4 seconds. Additionally, any single target cannot be shielded more than once every 15 seconds. Tanks don’t like to be shielded most of the time. It hinders their rage or mana generation. In conclusion, Power Word: Shield is a rather expensive spell when compared to your other healing spells. Especially when considering that it only uses about 20% of your +healing stat.
When & how to use
Protect the mage that nukes the adds. Shield Aran’s current target while running away from the Blizzard. Protect yourself from damage and spell pushback from that stray add that found your way to you. If damage can be anticipated or may be predicted, popping a Power Word: Shield on the target may be a good idea.
Image Power Word: Shield as some kind of safety belt. If things go wrong you have a chance to instantly stall off incoming damage, buying you time to get off a healing spell that is not instant cast. If someone is assaulted by critical damage and you need to bring him up fast, start with a Power Word: Shield, then Prayer of Mending and then Flash Heal to create a padding.
When not to use
Don’t use it if a target is not in danger of taking critical damage soon. A well-placed Renew is only a global cooldown away too, and it heals more damage than Power Word: Shield may prevent.
As a rule of thumb, don’t use it when there is no emergency situation.
Power Word: Shield is one of those hot button topics for me. The spell has situational use that can be very beneficial. However, I feel that far too many priest aren’t using it as effectively as they should.
First thing? If you consider damage prevented to be similar enough to health gained, you can argue that Power Word: Shield has one of the lowest HPM (Health Per Mana) of almost every healing spell (other than Flash Heal, I believe). As a result, you are more mana efficient actually casting a healing spell than this. Furthermore, it only benefits from 30% of your Bonus Healing (as of patch 2.3), which means that it scales worse than staple healing spells like Greater Heal (87%) and even Flash Heal (42%) as you get more Bonus Healing.
Secondly, Power Word: Shield is only beneficial if it absorbs damage. If it doesn’t, you’ve managed to waste up to 600 mana. Since its use is only limited by the Global Cooldown and your target’s Weakened Soul debuff. In other words, you could easily go through an entire raid and spam it on every person — but it’s only effective if it prevents those people from taking damage.
Far too often I’ve seen my fellow priests bubble player after taking minimal spell damage and then have the shields wear off without any benefit. A lot of this is reliant on experience, since understanding and being familiar with a boss encounter can let you know when the optimal time to use the spell is and who it would be best cast on.
Wonderful points on the talent! A little wrong on the exact amount of benefit it gains from Bonus Healing, but you’re only behind a couple of patches (it used to be 20% and 10% even before then!). One other thing I’d note in any description of Power Word: Shield is how this can adversely affect rage generation; since the bubble prevents damage, rage cannot be generated. It’s not as much of an issue once you progress further in raiding, but for those who rely on rage (whether red or blue!) a bubble at the wrong moment can have adverse results!
Hi there, and many thanks for the feedback.
What are your sources on the 30% coefficient? I tried to look it up on EJ but could not find anything.
I mentioned that shielding is hindering rage/mana generation for thanks. It’s somewhat hidden under “Weakness”.