No shield needed for SW/SR

Drede makes a lot of good points, much of which is in line with our thinking. We don't feel that looking up a macro on a website equates to player skill. He brings up a few other points (such as the HP loss) that make the current system less than ideal as well. Allowing the abilities to be usable at any time and strapping on a shield as a visual effect lets us clean up the way the ability is used while also keeping the original flavor.

The current system also has an interesting effect on balance. When you have an ability as useful as Shield Wall or Spell Reflect, but only a handful of players actually know how to use it, how do you balance that class? If you assume (probably correctly) that the average player won't bother swapping to a shield, you risk making the players who do swap too powerful. On the other hand, if you balance around the players using macros, you risk leaving everyone else behind.

It's a fascinating problem (from a design perspective) that is, ultimately, best resolved by just cleaning up how the abilities work to begin with.