If you do heroics regularly, I will be surprised if you don't see the Crest at least once before you replace it in a raid. It took me 1 day to get the Crest, and I've seen it a half dozen times since -- as well as seeing it on every Paladin tank I've ever healed -- and it took me 6 weeks to get a shield out of ICC or TOC, despite running them every week. (I can not tell you how excited I was to finally get Neverending Winter on my pally after wearing that damn Crest for the last 6 weeks, despite replacing every other piece of my gear.)

PLEASE!!
do yourself a favor and go for the ROYAL CREST OF LORDAERON since its one of the most beautiful shields blizz has ever made.

@ crschmidt - It must be a YMMV thing, because I rarely get placed into CoStrath for the random and, even then, I don't see the Crest drop very often. Also, like you said, every 80 Paladin in the game has worn that shield at one point or another (our MT wore it throughout ulduar and into ToC25 progression for at least a month or two, drop rates hate him). That's just me, though. Things like "not everyone has it" and "it's not ugly" are fairly high on my stat weights. The scaling of "I've been wearing these stupid boots for 6 months" can also push me into grabbing an item that may otherwise be a side-grade. Should the Crest drop, I'll take it, but it'll likely sit in my bank with the other shields I'll collect simply because they're unique or cool looking.

Yeah, the ToC and ICC shields may be far less accessible, but my guild runs both regularly so I'll get my hands on them eventually. Besides, it's just an alt. If I don't get rid of the Shield Wall the week I hit 80, it won't hurt my feelings. It's pretty. =)



@ Wolf - Unique, certainly. The most beautiful shield Blizz ever made? . . . eh. I need to start digging through Atlasloot and planning my trip through OL, but I'm a firm believer that BC weapon design was far more interesting and appealing than most of the bland and muted colors we see in Wrath. There are exceptions, of course (mostly raid drops and tier), but the spell shield from normal Pit of Saron is a perfect example of "get this ugly thing off me!"

I don't know, maybe I just got sick of looking at it on every non-raiding paladin and warrior in the game before they finally introduced a clear upgrade through heroics in 3.3.