Shield of Deflection needs a hit from the buff stick.

I'm mainly starting this debate because one of surprisingly effective build, Ranger Spike.

Unless everyone in your team is a Warrior, the damage taken from 4 Rangers attacking at the same time (well within 1/2 second) is massive, thus the Healing Hands and Infuse Health most counter-spike monks carry. Both have a 1/4 second cast, which is very nice since, if used correctly, can negate one spike. Both of those skills are healing monk skills, but that leaves out my greatest profession/setup in the game out in the dust.

Let's analyze:

Say you're running a Pure Prot (16prot/13 divine) and you have unlimited energy (no need for /Me~/E subs), what will you do?
RoF will negate around 42 damage with Divine, and another ~ 30 depending on what triggers (may be Kindle, Orders or the actual shot itself), to actually get a decent result, you have to time it (which is nearly impossible unless you're Jesus) so that it Reverses a Punishing shot (if people still use them).
Another option is Guardian. 52% chance to evade or block (don't recall) attacks, but the 1 second cast time makes it so you'll most likely cast it at the end or near the end of the spike (unless the 20% faster casting from the bonus is triggered).
Shielding Hands is also a very decent skill, taking off ~19 damage off every hit. Then again, 25 second recharge and 1 second cast time means you need to get lucky to REALLY stop a spike.
Protective Spirit is not so really useful. Most casters have ~450 health. With 60AL, they'll be taking around ~30 damage a hit (on average), perhaps more with RtW. It would only really be useful for Punishing shot along with RtW.

Now, the counter to all of this? A buffed up Shield of Deflection. The lesser energy cost was decent. But what it is now, it's just a better Guardian with some added Armor. Don't get me wrong, it's useful, but the 1 second cast is too much. That's right. It should be used as a primary counter to Ranger spiking. Having 2 Mo/Ws with Shields Up! is nice, but I wish to see less Prot Monks just running Martyr/Restore.
All it needs is a 1/4 second cast time. Hell, even remove the Armor bonus, as long as prot monks can be used to counter ranger spiking. All a Prot monk can do now is cast RoF during a spike. Keep everything else the same way, 10 energy, 5 second recharge, etc, but as I stated for Guardian/Shielding Hands, a 1 second cast (meaning your target is going to get it on him after about 1.25seconds) is way to much do actually be that effective.

Feel free to agree or disagree and please explain why.

PS: I'm also pretty sure the animation is wrong. When you cast it, the caster gets the "Shield" animation on him, whereas it'll make much more sense that the one who got SoD casted on him, gets the shield animation.

IMO all the Protection elites need looking at...

Amity: rediculous recharge
Life Barrier: remove the "<50% health ends" part
MoP: disable all prot skills for 10 secs? Are you crazy?
Restore Condition: Should be target ally, not target other ally.
SoD: casting time too long (as you say)
SoR: too expensive (15 energy)

The fact I can always find a better/more useful elite than one from my main attribute skill selection is just plain wrong. I don't even have to um-and-ahhh about it. No brainer.

Yes if there's a Martyr monk in the party then Martyr/Restore Conditions combo is powerful, but the fact that I would never even take Restore unless there's a Martyr monk is wrong. Elites should stand out on their own, they should be skills you can build a good skillbar from, not have to rely on other team members.

Sorry for hijacking...

/rant mode off

i cant really put in much input because you both summed it up. Good post overall.

Unbelievable, I was thinking of the exact same thing yesterday. 1/4 casting time would be good indeed, because Infuse and Divine Intervention are the only decent reactive counters to a ranger spike.

You guys forget about Aegis. (50% block(evade i forget) but a good protect monk can usually tell when a spike is going to occur. Whenever i am playing a protect monk and facing a ranger spike i cast aegis just after the poeple start fighting giving me an extra sec to respond to a ranger spike, then as you said can cast guardian, or watever you want to help out (i like to use shielding hands). And bout the elite skills (MoP in particular) you have to disbale the protect skills. Cause think about it protect sprit plus MoP that person cannot be killed for 10 secs. Restore condition has to stay target other since (draw conditions= major heals from drawn conditions) But other than them i agree.

I totally agree. Amity is basically a PvE skill more than a PvP as with Life barrier. Shield of Regen is bad in the current metagame but is still pretty useful in PvE. Mark of Prot I use on my R/Mo because I only carry 2 prot skills. And at 8-9 prot its 38 dmg So the person I casted it on can take 76 dmg and yet it evens out to none. But btw thereal use for Mark of Prot in PvP for EoE bombs.

at the moment SoD has a very niche role in protecting the Ghostly Hero from attack interrupts as he captures. it would be worth bringing if it wasn't elite, but right now that it's an elilte it needs some utility use as well. 1/4 second cast time on it would be good - it's such a short duration protection anyway.

Shields up doesn't work. I was spiking in a team against another team that had shields up, guardian, rof, infuse, healing hands, we flawlessed them. ( and they had just won HoH, so they were a good team )

You just need... to nerf ranger spike. And run around behind shit alot. Yeah.

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