Divine Shield

Divine Shield
Divine Shield Level 10 paladin ability 5 min cooldown Instant Grants immunity to all damage, harmful effects, knockbacks and forced movement effects for 8 sec. Cannot be used if you have Forbearance. Causes Forbearance for 30 sec.
Properties
Class	Paladin
School	Holy
Cooldown	5 minutes
Other information
Level learned	10
Improvements	[Final Stand], [Resolute Defender], [Unbreakable Spirit], [Uther's Counsel]
Related buff
Magic Divine Shield Immune to all attacks and harmful effects. Duration: 8 seconds
Related debuff
Forbearance Cannot be affected by Divine Shield, Hand of Protection or Lay on Hands. Duration: 30 seconds

Divine Shield

Empowered by the Light, paladins can surround themselves with an impenetrable barrier of positive energy. While they are encased in it, physical and magical attacks cannot do them any harm.

Divine Shield is a level 10 paladin spell that prevents all damage to the paladin for a short period of time. Divine Shield also protects the paladin from all unfriendly spells (except [Mass Dispel]), acts as a universal "cleanse" removing nearly all debuffs, and can be cast even while affected by most crowd control effects ( [Polymorph], [Fear], etc). Using Divine Shield also causes [Forbearance], preventing the paladin from being affected by Divine Shield, [Hand of Protection] or [Lay on Hands] for 30 seconds.

Tips and tricks

• Divine Shield is also referred to as "bubbling".
• Divine Shield cancels virtually all crowd control effects, including a silence from another player. The exception is when the paladin is currently affected by holy school lockout, for having a holy spell casting interrupted by an interrupt effect.
• Divine Shield cannot be cast under the effect of [Cyclone] and similar effects.
• The only abilities in the game that can dispel Divine Shield are the Priest's [Mass Dispel] and the Warrior's [Shattering Throw].
• Divine Shield prevents all damage, including (unlike most other bubbles of other classes) falling damage, and even drowning damage. It is not uncommon for a paladin to leap off a high cliff or despawn their flying mount in the air and bubble before landing, preventing damage or death. [Hand of Protection] does exactly the same thing for falling damage, and a paladin with good timing may bubble himself and a party member.
• In the Arathi Basin battleground, you cannot use Divine Shield and then attempt to capture a node, otherwise known as a flag or base. Similarly, when you capture a flag in Eye of the Storm or Warsong Gulch, the use of Divine Shield will cause you to automatically drop the flag. You cannot continue to carry it while under the spell of Divine Shield.
• Divine Shield does not wipe threat, but mobs will ignore targets under the influence of Divine Shield unless there is no other valid target for them, which can lead to death of raid/party members if used in the wrong situation. On the other hand, if a paladin healer or DPS pulls aggro, they can use Divine Shield to make the mobs ignore them.
• It sometimes is helpful if a tanking paladin activates the shield and then immediately remove the Divine Shield again (best through a macro) to instantly remove all harmful spells. A good paladin should have a taunt immediately ready for such a case (often referred to as a "bubble-taunt"). This is best done through a macro (/cancelaura Divine Shield) followed on the next line by (/cast Hand of Reckoning).
• Holy and Retribution paladins can use Divine Shield to avoid being killed when casting [Hand of Sacrifice] on a tank about to take an extremely high amount of damage.
• When fighting alone against a mob that uses primarily a ranged attack, Divine Shield will cause the mob to run up to melee. Combined with another ranged attack, such as [Avenger's Shield] or [Exorcism], this can be used to solo pull a mob in a somewhat crowded area (if you hit only one mob with the shield, that is).
• Paladins can use a tactic known as "Bubble Hearth" to escape combat. When Divine Shield is active, the cast time for  [Hearthstone],  [Garrison Hearthstone], and  [Dalaran Hearthstone] is halved, taking only 5 seconds instead of the usual 10.

Trivia

• Divine Shield originally appeared in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and was used by the Paladin hero unit. The highest level divine shield in allowed for 45 seconds of immunity every 65 seconds with no attack speed penalty and disallowed any units from attacking it. It is also worth noting that the Warcraft III version could not be dispelled, whereas the World of Warcraft version can.
• Divine Shield is one of Uther's Heroic Abilities in Heroes of the Storm.

Patch changes

• Patch 10.0.7 (2023-03-21): Now also prevents movement forces (such as pushbacks) from affecting you.
  
• Patch 9.0.1 (2020-10-13): Now learned at level 10 (was 18).
  
• Patch 7.0.3 (2016-07-19): Damage penalty removed.
  
• Hotfix (2015-02-26): Paladins can no longer use Divine Shield on players holding an orb in Temple of Kotmogu.
  
• Hotfix (2012-10-12): No longer incorrectly removes [Battle Fatigue].
  
• Patch 5.0.4 (2012-08-28): Mana cost removed. Received a new visual spell effect. Now learned at level 18 (was 48).
  
• Patch 4.2.0 (2011-06-28): [Rebuke], Divine Shield and [Divine Protection] have new icons.

  Divine Shield's old icon:
  

• Patch 4.0.6 (2011-02-08): The duration of Forbearance has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
  
• Hotfix (2011-01-06): Paladins using Divine Shield are now able to cast on targets within the same [Smoke Bomb] effect area, as well as heal others.
  
• Hotfix (2011-01-03): Divine Shield prevents all damage from the Sparks in the Mechanical Nightmare.
  
• Patch 4.0.1 (2010-10-12): Duration reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. Now learned at level 48 (was 34).
  
• Patch 3.0.8 (2009-01-20): The 100% attack speed penalty has been replaced by a 50% reduction to all damage caused.
  
• Patch 3.0.2 (2008-10-14): Now costs 3% of base mana.
  
• Patch 2.1.0 (2007-05-22): This ability no longer removes or prevents the Weakened Soul debuff.
  
• Patch 1.12.0 (2006-08-22): Due to the haste effect change, the tooltip has been changed to 100%.
  
• Patch 1.9.0 (2006-01-03): Targets of [Divine Protection], Divine Shield, and [Blessing of Protection] will now receive the "Forbearance" effect, preventing another of these three spells from being applied to that target for one minute.
  
• Patch 1.4.0 (2005-04-19): Fixed race condition where damage would sometimes be applied after Divine Shield was activated.
  
• Patch 0.7 (2004-06-15): Mana cost increased. Moved to level 34.
  
• Patch 0.6 (2004-04-13):
  • The cooldown times for [Divine Favor] and Divine Shield have increased.
  • The durations for Divine Favor 2 and Divine Shield 2 have both decreased.
  • Divine Shield slows the Paladin's attack speed.
    

See also

• Divine Shield, TCG card

External links

• Wowhead
• WoWDB