It's so damn obvious that GC only listens to whiners about paladins and doesn't actually know anything about them. Oh, you say your paladin friends are out aggroing you? Nerfed. What's this about paladins and cooldowns? Meh, whatever, you can have a crappy glyph on an ability that dunks your threat.
Personally, I enjoy the holy shield mechanic; I like having buttons to press that make me a tougher tank (I often Sacred Shield myself too). I enjoyed the old shield block on my warrior, but it's also nice having it as a nifty cooldown useful in unusual ways (perhaps because my paladin just lacks cooldowns).
If you don't think Shield Block is interesting enough today, that's a fine discussion to have. I'm a little surprised to see any nostalgia for the old model though. Hitting a relatively common dps button that plays into other talents and abilities is one thing. Having to constantly mash "make me slightly more survivable" is another. I'll grant you that it was fun on Illidan, but it took that mechanic specifically to make it fun.
Imagine how you'd react to this scenario:
GC: Good news, everyone! We lowered the cooldown of Shield Wall to 5 sec and balanced assuming you hit it every 5 sec.
Tanks: Um.... Thanks? Could you maybe just make it a passive at that point?
GC: But hitting buttons is fun!
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