Concerns about Holy Power and Holy Shield
Consider this to the pessimistic counterpoint to my previous, optimistic post. Let’s talk about a major issue in the latest iteration of Holy Shield’s design.
But first, two pertinent GC quotes:
So you can use Holy Power for threat, healing or mitigation depending on current circumstances.
We are going to turn both Holy Shield and Shield Block into short cooldowns. A short cooldown is an ability that you don’t save for an absolute emergency (like Shield Wall) but we also don’t want it to be on such a short cooldown that it feels maintenance-y. It’s a tricky number to get right, but something in the 30 sec to 1 min zone feels about right. Then you might use Holy Shield one GCD instead of SoR or you can choose to save it until the next big boss attack.
Right now as it is in Build 12604, Holy Shield could not feel more maintenance-y. It has a 15 second duration, apparently no cooldown, and is optimally used at 3 stacks of Holy Power. With Crusader Strike at a 4 second cooldown, you’re going to be using CS every 4.5 seconds.
For example, a possible single-target rotation is:
0.0 CS (1 Holy Power) 1.5 X 3.0 Y 4.5 CS (2 Holy Power) 6.0 Z 7.5 X 9.0 CS (3 Holy Power) 10.5 Holy Shield (get that 15% block up pronto!)
Then, moving forward, you’d do something like:
12.0 X 13.5 CS (1) 15.0 Y 16.5 Z 18.0 CS (2) 19.5 X 21.0 Y 22.5 CS (3) 24.0 Z 25.5 Holy Shield
With that in mind, I posit this to you: what happens if Crusader Strike misses? Or parried, dodged, blocked? It’s a physical attack, it can be countered with any of those (much like ShoR today).
Do we put up a subpar 10%–or 5%–Holy Shield and live with the possibility that we’re running sub-optimally for another 15 seconds?
How does this sync up with Ghostcrawler’s declaration that,
Warriors get 15% block baseline, so this means the paladin has to work harder for it. Seeing as how the paladin doesn’t have to maintain Demo Shout or Thunderclap’s debuff, this doesn’t seem too great a burden.
Does work harder also mean “live with the possibility of not having the full benefit of a 15% Holy Shield”? Because, if you think at level 85 we’re going to be hit and expertise capped already, I have a bridge to sell you my friend.
The obvious solution is to extend the duration of Holy Shield. Even adding another 10 seconds to the length of Holy Shield’s buff would give you extra time to build up some make-up Holy Power stacks, if need be. And moreover, this would moreover reduce some of the tightness in the emerging rotation, where not CSing on cooldown means suboptimal survivability.
I am sure this is going to be fixed, but this is the worry du jour, for now.
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Rhidach, I heard that Cataclysm is currently in the beta phase and none of these changes are set in stone.
A lot of things have changed with every patch.
@Rhidach
23 July 2010 at 11:55 am #
Oh, believe me, I know! Like I say in my last line, I’m sure it’s going to be fixed, but I just want to raise some awareness here about a possible design (tight rotation with short-cooldown HS) that needs to be adjusted.
I’m not chicken-little-ing here. I swear.
@thorianar
23 July 2010 at 12:26 pm #
I just hope you’re posting those things on the Forums too (right next to GC posts.)
Julio Biason’s last blog ..Loremaster!
@Rhidach
23 July 2010 at 12:38 pm #
My authenticator is at home, I cannot. QQ.
@thorianar
23 July 2010 at 12:55 pm #
Well, do whenever you can, then ;)
I’m just worried that they may oversee those small problems and release Cata with those broken mechanics.
Julio Biason’s last blog ..Loremaster!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tarinae Androlene, Rhidach. Rhidach said: New post: Concerns about Holy Power and Holy Shield – http://tinyurl.com/3628p33 [...]
This seems like something that could potentially be band-aided with a glyph- glyph holy shield to last longer, use a more attractive glyph when your hit and expertise mean you maybe don’t need it anymore.
LabRat’s last blog ..Guilty Pleasures
Well, considering the role that Holy Shield plays in our current rotation, which means it is pressed every 9 seconds, pressing it every 15 seconds actually seems better, compared to what’s currently going on.
Holy Shield provides the least amount of threat of any of our 69 rotation abilities. The only reason we really press it is because of the need to maintain the block increase. It can almost be viewed as strictly a survival button mash, kind of like an extra-small rng-dependant power word:shield or sacred shield of sorts. Looking at current threat leads that we get in ICC, and the fact that it provides no snap-threat at all on new adds (you don’t use Holy Shield while kiting the big slime on Rotface, right?) I am welcoming any sort of increased CD that can be available on Holy Shield. If the CD goes from 8 to 15 seconds, its better than it staying the same but us not needing Holy Power to keep it up.
With that said, I hope they change the way it works as well. Just cause its better than the mindless, every-9-seconds button mash it is now, doesn’t mean the current beta iteration is ideal for survival or fun.