Reflective Shield is a 4th Tier Disciplinepriesttalent. It causes 22/45% of the damage absorbed by [Power Word: Shield] on behalf of the casting priest to be reflected back at the attacker.
Although the tooltip is unclear, this talent only reflects damage absorbed by the priest's own [Power Word: Shield] when cast upon the priest herself. It does not reflect damage absorbed by Power Word: Shields cast on others, nor damage absorbed by any other priest's Power Word: Shield.
Damage caused by Reflective Shield causes no threat.
Reflective Shield can crit, effectively causing 33/67.5% of the original attack's damage to be reflected.
Reflective Shield's damage is increased by [Twin Disciplines], reflecting up to 47.7% of damage absorbed, or 71.6% if Reflective Shield crits.
A priest with a 15% crit chance and 3 points in Twin Disciplines can therefore expect the talent to reflect an average of 26.8/54.86% of damage absorbed, around 22% more than stated.
Damage reflected is in the form of Holy damage, and so cannot be resisted.
Damage caused by this talent will not break crowd control effects such as Polymorph.
Reflective Shield reflects almost any type of damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield, but not self-damage caused by [Shadow Word: Death].
Reflective Shield has unlimited range and does not require line of sight, and so will continue to reflect damage caused by DoTs regardless of the distance of the attacker.
Mobs slain solely using Reflective Shield cannot be looted.
Tips[]
The usefulness of this talent depends largely on how much damage the priest herself is expecting to take, since only damage absorbed on the priest's behalf will be reflected. It also depends on the priest's emphasis on damage dealing.
This talent potentially produces a significant increase in the priest's damage output, but priests may prefer to spend points in other talents to instead improve healing, mana efficiency or survivability.
In PvE:
In groups this is of limited use, since the priest will usually be taking a relatively small amount of damage, and will often heal himself using [Binding Heal] or AoE heals rather than with Power Word: Shield.
When soloing this talent can be very useful, as all attacks are directed at the priest.
In PvP:
This is a very useful talent for PvP, especially in organised PvP such as arena or rated battlegrounds, where skilled players will often be focusing their attacks upon the priest. In such situations Reflective Shield can contribute a significant amount of damage.
By reflecting DoT damage, Reflective Shield can be an effective way of preventing opponents from leaving combat in order to drink or resurrect, as the regular reflected damage will keep them in combat, regardless of distance or line of sight.
This is arguably most effective against ranged opponents, whose lighter armor is compensated for by their increased ability to evade most attacks.