Talk:Power Word: Shield

"A caution about using this on Warrior type players. Warriors and Druids in their Bear/Werebear form comprise this group. This spell will cut their Rage generation significantly until it wears off, thus reducing their effectiveness as a tank. It will also draw aggro on you which means they will have to come save you and thus have to take a break from killing things (which reduced their utility as a tank further). This should probably not be used on 'Warrior' types unless they are going to die for sure before your heal can be cast on them (ie in less than 4 seconds) and you will have enough mana left over to pop a big heal on them as soon as the shield goes up. If they are tanking the shield will drop very quickly. Think of it as an instant cast, low HP, high mana use heal for these types."

I removed the above, because it is in fact a common myth.- CTerry


 * Agreed CTerry. I have done some initial experiments (regarding threat) and will be posting video evidence on Google in the next few days. PWS does not actually cause threat. Only if a tank has not used an AOE threat generating ability will this actually pull aggro. Also some warriors get much more rage from their own white damage dealing. That ends up being a personal preference. The real reason PWS should not be used is that it is mana inefficient.
 * KarlThePagan 10:10, 25 April 2006 (EDT)

Two sections of the page appear to contradict each other: "This spell does not cause any threat." and "IMPORTANT: You may have noticed that casting PW:S causes a lot of threat and can make things more likely to attack you." - Kalthus

My understanding is this: (1) PW:S draws aggro equivalent to an instant-cast heal. If cast before any mob is aggroed (i.e. pre-shielding), it generates no hate. If cast on the target of an aggroed mob, it increases the mob's hate of the caster. (2) PW:S interferes with rage produced by damage taken, but not with rage produced by damage dealt or by rage-generating abilities. Regardless of whether this qualifies as a 'significant cut' in rage-generation, the tactical point is that Renew is more mana-efficient than PW:S and has no impact on rage. PW:S's best uses are (1) as a precursor to an emergency heal and (2) as relief from interrupts. - Seofon

PW:S most defintately does cause threat, even if its not enough to pull aggro in many situations. It also most defintately limits rage generation (from dmg taken) for its duration. I'm not sure if all of you are disputing those points, since some of the things quoted contain multiple problems, or confusing wording. Regardless im going to put effort into cleaning up the page a bit since a lot of the ideas are a bit fragmented. -Jillli

Shielding does inhibit rage generation. I'm surprised that this point is under discussion, since it is so easy to test. I encourage anyone who doubts it to do so! -Amadh 1/4/07

Agreed with Amadh, Blizzard has posted saying this is intended because shielded damage is "damage not taken". Its also very easy to test, just shield a warrior and let a mob hit them without attacking. They will generate 0 rage until the shield goes down. -Cecelia 13 Feb 2007

Revamp
I've brought the page in line with the other spell pages. Furthermore I've removed almost all of the tips & tactics, as these were either wrong or biased (obviously, there was no consensus on how to use PW:S correctly). If someone feels that I removed valueable content, please let me know. --bfx 15:47, 13 February 2007 (EST)
 * I'm confused by the line "PW:S is actually a holy spell." Uhh, no it's not.  Counterspell and kicking a Heal will not stop you from shielding, right? --Bendyr 15:06, 14 February 2007 (EST)
 * That's wrong, it does. There is no discipline school. A common mistake is to mix up counterspell effects and Shadowform. Counterspell effects affect school (of which only 6 exist, apart from physical "school"), Shadowform affects tree. As a result, many people infer from one to the other. --bfx 01:47, 15 February 2007 (EST)

cant cast on other people?
for some ungodly reason i can only cast power word: shield on myself and not other people?? have any ideas??

Nevermind they have to be in your party..

Style and Content
Is it really helpful to include a lengthy section on tips and advice on a page about a spell? This information is subjective and of an advisory nature, and doesn't really jibe with the page: it's also much more difficult to maintain across patches. (As illustrated by the fact that, before I updated it, most of the "tips" were from Wrath.)

I'm also not sure it's helpful to include information on "expired" item bonuses. What are the chance that this information will be of actual use to anyone? It seems to add only marginal value and clutter up the article. (And, I might add, the PVP bonus is no longer true: some healer sets include it in places other than the 4-piece, and some don't include it at all.) --Mja (talk) 19:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)


 * ~ Please excuse the following lengthy discourse on the subject of Style and Content on Wowpedia ;) ~


 * Tips and tactics sections are found on most spell pages throughout Wowpedia. The information is of course subjective, although we do our best to keep it generalised and/or factual. This information is useful. I can't tell you how many times I've found valuable tips and info while editing pages on here; that's how I started editing in the first place.


 * As for being up to date, this is a problem faced by all pages on this site. Every bit of information stands to change with future patches. Spell pages in particular are prone to massive changes, and this is one of the major areas of work that needs doing on the site. However, responding to this by limiting ourselves to commenting on that information which is sure to remain the same through the next several patches would leave us with half a site. Every bit of information on this page has change with 5.0.4; the mana cost, the cooldown, spell power coefficient, improvements, formula... if you would like not to post information that is likely to change, we are limited to featuring roughly a single sentence - the one found in the spell's tooltip. And even that is subject to change.


 * The reality is that in order to post information of any value, we have to post information that is likely to change. Yes, this will one day be out of date too... that's why, so many years after the release of the game, we are still editing the same pages, trying to keep them up to date (people have been editing this page since 2005). But if we reduce the page to only that which is unchanging... there will be little point in having such pages at all.


 * As for the tips, the truth is that these of all things are some of the only things that haven't changed in the last few years; that's probably part of the reason why many of them were written in Wrath. Regarding set bonuses... Dreadful and Malevolent bonuses are apparently as stated ('4-piece' was a typo)... I don't know what other PvP 'healer sets' you're referring to, but by all means we can be more specific and say Dreadful and Malevolent sets specifically. It turns out the Gladiator info was out of date (what are the chances) and that set too now offers the stated bonus, so I've removed that one. The Tier 8 is not the most crucial piece of information, sure. I'm on the fence about such things, but I don't really see the harm in adding an extra line and a half to the page.


 * While the aspiration toward making the page stylish and uncluttered is laudable, I would personally place more importance on the content. This is not Noxxic or some swish guide where we present a few sparse notes without explanation. This is the encyclopedia of World of Warcraft. It is, by definition, encyclopedic. People don't have to read through these pages if they don't want to - the really important info is at the top of the page, and the rest is there for those who do wish to read tips and tactics, detailed information about spell interaction and what improvements are available. It's a pain keeping it all up to date, and some balance must be struck between detail and durability, sure. But I wouldn't take that so far as to strip all the ability pages down to a simple infobox. I'd say the page as it stands is about right. -- Taohinton (talk) 13:04, 9 February 2013 (UTC)


 * What value is a page which contains tons and tons of information which stopped being relevant several years prior? Verbosity is not a virtue. --Mja (talk) 19:46, 9 February 2013 (UTC)


 * That has nothing to do with anything I said, or indeed anything you mentioned when you started this topic. So I'll take that as an entirely new point.


 * Out of date information should be removed, or at least flagged as out of date. "Tons and tons of information" could be useful, depending on what those tons consist of. Information which has stopped being relevant several years ago should be removed. Of course, what you might personally consider to be irrelevant is another matter. Tips and tactics that are 100% up to date, useful and directly related to the subject of the page on which they are found are not, in my opinion, irrelevant. Verbosity is not a virtue. Neither is minimalism.


 * Updating content is great. Simply deleting content which is out of date is fine. Deleting content which is up to date, useful and relevant, simply because it was written several patches ago... not so good, in my opinion. If you find "tons and tons of information which stopped being relevant several years prior" then by all means delete it. -- Taohinton (talk) 20:28, 9 February 2013 (UTC)