Ascending the roller coaster track once more

Ready for another drop on the roller coaster? More big changes coming in the next beta patch of two, apparently. After getting in to beta this past weekend, I felt like I reached a point of comfort with our attacks, and was planning to write a particularly detailed post about the “rotation”, but obviously I nearly spoke too soon. Ghostcrawler has come out with a raft of future changes to our abilities, so instead I’m going to go through each and add some insight from how these currently work on beta.

Shield of the Righteous — Now consumes Holy Power to cause damage.

Holy Shield — Now a passive ability that causes your Shield of the Righteous to provide 5% block per stack of Holy Power consumed. In other words, you never click Holy Shield. You just click Shield of the Righteous and buff yourself.

ShoR currently does not exist on beta, and I’m glad that it’ll soon be back. I was excited about this reintroduction when it was hinted at a few days ago, and I’m moreso now that they’re going to give it a whirl on beta. Right now HP is incredibly boring–you stack it to three then hit Holy Shield for a buggy block chance increase (sometimes it was doing 1.5%, sometimes 180%!) or give yourself a quick, boring heal. ShoR using Holy Power for an impressive single-target attack with add some much-needed flair to the system.

My biggest worry is whether we’ll expend the Holy Power if ShoR misses. That’d be pretty killer in a tight spot when previously we never had to worry about Holy Shield missing.

Also, not to try to reinvent the wheel here or anything, but… wouldn’t it more sense to–instead of making Holy Shield passive and bring back ShoR–but make Holy Shield an attack? Wouldn’t that be less work?

Hammer of the Righteous — Now generates Holy Power but shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike. Almost all talents that affect one or the other will affect both. The intention is you use Crusader Strike -> Shield of the Righteous for single target and Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of the Righteous for multitarget.

I’m assuming this means Hammer’s cooldown is going to get reduced to 4 seconds, or the two abilities will meet somewhere in the middle. Likewise, I’m curious if HotR will retain its 100%-50%-25% damage spread in this new iteration. Hammer was hitting for about 3000 damage this weekend on its primary target, while Crusader was hitting for less. They’ll have to redesign Hammer (probably an equal damage spread among all three targets) to make it attractive for multi-target pulls and unattractive for single/bosses.

Avenger’s Shield — No real change, but it still hits pretty hard. Both CS and HotR can proc Grand Crusader to lower the Avenger’s Shield cooldown.

Let me just take a moment and proclaim my undying love for Avenger’s Shield as it is on beta now. When that ability comes off cooldown, you want to use it immediately (pronto!) because it’ll hit for around 7500 damage on each target it hits. No spread, 7500×3. Not only that, but I’ve seen it crit for 15,000, which is just breathtaking. I don’t think I usually crit for more than 10k in ICC 25 while fully buffed, and this ability can crit for 15k while soloing! More like Avenger’s Freight Train, eh?

They absolutely hit the nail on the head with this one. AS is fun to push, and when you see that Grand Crusader proc, you want to immediately indulge in some Captain America’ing. Probably the most tragic thing that has happened to me on beta so far is pushing back using Avenger’s Shield to get another CS off, and therefore generate some more HP, only to have that CS proc Grand Crusader, robbing me of an Avenger’s Shield. I’m man enough to admit I weeped.

Vindication — can be caused only by Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.

Not very consequential, considering Vindication was bugged on beta to basically apply from anything. I’ll miss the brief shining moment that we had Holy Demo Shout, though. It’s going to be a pain to be the only tank class that can’t debuff an entire massive pull.

Holy Wrath — With the above changes, we think Prot paladins have enough rotational buttons to hit, so we are downplaying Holy Wrath. Holy Wrath is really intended as a Ret filler spell (for when other attacks are on cooldown). Prot could technically use Holy Wrath, but we aren’t providing any talent hooks.

This is probably a good idea. Right now our “rotation” (I keep using quote marks because it’s not a rotation, as I’ll explain shortly, and I can’t think of a better catch-all word) has a lot to keep track of. Holy Wrath is good for massive pulls to immediately build threat on a mob of tiny murlocs charging at your healer, or on a single target where it’ll hit for more than half of our abilities.

Once you get to three or more enemies though, it’s lightweight, and unless you can’t be arsed to tab around and build threat equally with more powerful attacks, there was no real incentive to using HW. Phasing this out for general purpose is a good idea, it should remain situational.

Consecration — Now on a 10 sec duration with a 30 sec cooldown. The Hallowed Ground talent makes it cheaper and hit harder — it does not affect duration. Use Consecration when you need it, but you can’t spam it. This is consistent with the AE changes we are making to all tanks.

There goes the UI element, I suspect!

From the limited time I had this past weekend I found myself just about never using Consecration. It hits for a piddling amount and often (thanks to Hallowed Ground) outlived it’s target by a wide margin. As such it was pretty deprioritized in my rotation. In Throne of the Tides, on the other hand, it was very hand for boss fights (fire and forget!) or for what few AOE pulls I could live through. All in all, I think a better design direction is a short-lived, harder hitting Consecration, over a long-lived, weaker version. The short duration and longer cooldown will make dropping the spell a much more meaningful action as well.

One last worry: with Holy Shield gone, ShoR’s return, and the combined cooldown of CS/HotR, that’s one less button to push. I wonder if we’re going to have some free GCDs now. On beta there’s always something to hit, so that’s not a worry but we’ll see with these changes if that remains the case.

Don’t call it a rotation

The version first I did (after the other first thing) in beta was I found some target dummies and tried all of our abilities to see how much they hit for. I had a legal pad in front of me, scribbling down numbers, and taking notes. I then plotted out a timeline of GCDs to try to figure out the smoothest rotation possible. Basically, some kind of analogue for 969. I quickly realized this was impossible, because there are so many intersecting tracks and cooldowns, and even a proc, that the only way to approach our rotation is to recognize what it truly is: a priority system.

Here is, based on what GC just proposed and what non-changing abilities are like on beta, what I suspect the priority system will soon be:

1. 3HP Shield of Righteousness
2. Avenger’s Shield — hits like a truck, and you don’t want to miss a Grand Crusader proc
3. Crusader Strike/Hammer of the Righteous — depending on size of pull
4. Holy Wrath — for single targets, assuming it still hits for around 2700
5. Judgement — only hits for around 1300, very weak. Moreover you really on need to use it once every 15 seconds or so, to make sure you keep the attack speed debuff up. If mana retains being a non-issue, then Judgements of the Wise is not a good enough reason to prioritize this.

Not sure where Consecration will fit there (I’ll have to see how damage it does). I suspect it’ll be under Hammer of the Righteous for large pulls.

I have to honestly say that I am loving Paladin tanking in beta. It’s reactive, there are choices you have to make on the fly to be a more effective tank. Furthermore, you have to make the right choices to put out the most threat and thus be the most effective tank. It rewards you for playing smart.