In Response to Mint's Question as pertains to many things

As you say, i have never seen that and i do nothing other than tanking ...

If it is a such very very very very rare thing what e.g. happens on 1000000 bulwarks one single time, its not realy a problem. Then its just an unlucky situation and in my eyes it then have nothing to do with bulwark itfelf.

you've never seen bulwark not apply due to recovery? sure when we had 100% recovery it didnt often, but after reforging changes and basically 0 recovery you either dont cast many abilities around the barrage time or you are lucky

if you are lucky, then im happy for you

No there is no problem through recovery, or the general ability cooldown, what you surely mean. Bulwark had and has to no time a recovery time. And no i dont have recovery since it is not more possible to reforge it. I do not use "expoilts" or "semi exploits". Using things so as them are not intented or use bugs means exploiting.

Its a fail of the devs not to remove all reforged recovery things, as it was removed from nowtime reforgings. So a lot of playes have still recovery on old ethereal and firebrand pearl pieces. It is not intended to use this recovery stat anymore, since the removing from reforging, but next addon this was completely removed so its the same for all players then.

Bulwark has and had no problem with applying. The tank have take attention to using the bulwark ability. You can cast this ability parallel to other abilities, but the other ability cast is not allowed to end faster then bulwark cast or bulwark cast breaks up, that was intended sayed by the dev Caith. Thats fully in the hand of the tank, take attention how he use his abilities beside / parallel of bulwark. Now where is the casttime only 10ms it does play nearly no role anymore. But that was to no time the problem of bulwark, it was a thing what the tanks can handle, if them apply it correct.

ABILITIES

• Fixed a bug that could cause the protection provided by Bulwark of Order to fall off earlier than it should.

Bulwark pure and simple was added as a band-aid fix on a gaping wound that has been festering underneath for years. They cannot balance tanks and in order to make them relevant they added this (back in PoP iirc).

I do not even entertain the notion of it being something of a tank skill because its not. There is nothing special about pressing a button in time so you or the group or the raid does not die (challenge content anyway). This is lazy design pure and simple.

Devs need to have enough confidence in their own ability to make challenging content with incoming damage on tanks requiring AA setups/gear/buffs that improves a tank's defensive capability all around. It is not hard, game was bulwark free years ago so no reason why we cannot revert back to difficult content.

Those who think this is a good thing have just gotten used to it and accepted it as part of something they are ok with and do not want the idea challenged - feel sorry for them.

@Arclite
On the one hand I think that no tank necessarily needs bulwark of order to be tank.

Why exactly the devs introduced it, only they know themselves. One of the reasons is certainly that tanks have been replaced by DDs, because the DDs survived the encounters and therefore no tanks were needed for instances and even raids. This leads to the fact that tanks have been replaced by dds in the course of the constant gaze of most players on the dps.

You can already understand the meaning behind the mechanics and you don't have to like these mechanics in order to use them as a tank.

If it were so easy to use, not so many would complain, after all, it is also an additional combat mitigation debuff and a damage proc for the group, so not pure protection. But you have to pay attention and you can't just press it when you want and this timing makes it difficult for inexperienced players and dps fanatics.

It also prevents automatic macros from being used by a tank, people should play and not just turn on macros.

That the ratio of the stats on the gear to the buffs are out of proportion. Just as some mechanics such as shields and blocks no longer work correctly. One just has nothing to do with the other.

As for bulwark, you don't have to like it and you can say that, but you should stick to the truth and not invent problems that don't exist and are more of a problem for the player in front of the screen than the function of ability.

As far as the stats are concerned, the actual mechanics should be brought back into function. It cannot be that mages, scouts and healers have more physical mitigation than all tank classes with the exception of the guard.

In the same way, the shields and the stat block no longer have any real effect. This too needs to be corrected for a long time.