not an avid Taric player but i am pretty happy they are bringing a true cleric paladin character to the game
just curious on what people think about his losing the shield in favour of him looking more like a magic based warrior instead of a hard shelled wall tank like 
http://orig15.deviantart.net/15c1/f/2010/326/9/4/taric_by_makani-d33egxj.jpg
He didn't lose his sheild. They just moved it to his name...
The only skin I think it really had an impact on was the Bloodstone skin. Without the shield they needed something to make him fit the theme, and since there was less room for Bloodstones they just turned him into a vampire instead.
On the other skins I think he is perfectly fine without a shield.
The whole rework seems over the top and I feel like they reworked him into an inferior champion.
I mean aside from his model his new abilities and weapon just look... I don't know, He just feels inferior for some reason. The design is fine but the kit and abilities feel over complicated for no reason. They honestly could have just updated the model/skins and tweaked the same abilities he had and it would have been a far better rework in my opinion.
But I might just be biased because I love taric's old abilities.
I feel like he was pushed more to the archetype of a cleric instead of a paladin,though I can understand that considering that leona also has some paladin-like elements(being a knight in golden armor with light related powers) and that they are both targon related.
In the end I won't miss his shield since I think the VU is awesome in general and a shield wouldn't really fit it.
I have no issues with him losing the shield. He looks gorgeous, and they really did a great job at peeling off his armor to make him man candy. Honestly, I love that he lost the shield and the armor because it just made him very generic. Bloodstone on Pizza Feet was, in my opinion, an atrocious looking skin, and the gods awful overabundance of crystal growths on him, his hammer, and shield were just plain tacky. The Alucard look he's got going now, with the gem embedded in his chest and those wicked looking gems floating over his pauldrons keep him in line with the beauty driven thing he has and has always had going and pull him from trailer-park-front-yard-Christmas-decorating level of tackiness he had before into the sleek, sophisticated elegance of a knight who truly believes in "Functional, yet stylish."
