And then… everything changed
Crusader Strike – 3 sec cooldown. Hammer of the Righteous – 3 sec cooldown. Cooldown shared for both. [source]
For the worse or for the better? Depends on your point of view. Personally, I agree with the sentiment I saw on the tanking forums–it seems they’ve gone from one extreme to the other.
In a world of 4.5 second Crusader Strikes, we were looking at GCD gaps a-plenty. Around 6 a minute. With a 3 second CS, we’re now looking at being GCD locked, with every other keystroke being Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous. How is this an improvement? We’ve substituted one evil for another.
The rotation’s pet name is currently moving through committee, but personally I favor “3X”. I know it sounds like some model of automaton–and, poetically, oh how that fits–but it refers more to the fact that the rotation boils down to: CS > J > CS > HW > CS > ShoR > CS > J > CS > etc.
I appreciate the fact that we’ll be much less ability starved, so to speak, and I commend the devs for working to correct that, but there has to be a better way. 969 was a mindless rotation that was powered purely by muscle memory. A rotation with GCD gaps required knowledge of what abilities to use when to excel, and I reveled in that. 3X I suppose is kind of a halfling in the sense that the 3 will always be obvious, but the X requires enough forethought that if you don’t use the best choice possible at that moment, you’re hurting yourself in the long run. I can appreciate that, I suppose.
There’s also the question if you actually want to hit CS on cooldown, or if sometimes something else will take a higher priority. Then again, with ShoR doing the damage it does, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t want 3HP ASAP.
A part of me is excited we’re going to have no empty GCDs, and another part of me rues the fact that there wasn’t a more elegant way about this. I still feel like a simpler solution was throwing one more single target ability in the mix, an instant Exorcism or something, to fill those gaps in a less shoe-horned way. Or, like Theck advocated, making Judgement generate HP, and thus pushing up the availability of ShoR. I think that would be a much, much better solution.
And of course there’s the dev’s concern that Inquisition will now be up during ShoR, and the implications thereof. I’m deferring (once again) to Theck on this, who doesn’t think it will be a big deal.
I don’t believe that Inq will ever be worth casting on single targets. Even in the old 4.5-second CS model, it didn’t break even. The 3-second model will have a larger physical/holy damage ratio, making Inq even less likely to succeed. The real problem is that even though you’re adding 30% damage to ShoR, you’re not making up the 70% that you’re losing by not casting ShoR, because your only holy damage sources are J and AS (and seal damage).
Ultimately, I think 3X is a step backward. There were more elegant solutions and Blizz took the easy way out to calm the concerns about GCD gaps. I don’t think this solution is viable in the long term, and I guarantee–if it doesn’t mutate again before launch–we’ll be seeing another redesign of the Prot rotation in the near future.
Lastly, there was some unequivocally good news. The first is that HotR is getting buffed to scale with attack power (and thus Vengeance).
We realized that the AE portion of Hammer of the Righteous didn’t scale with Vengeance. While it’s true that Prot paladins gain some spell power, they get it from Strength, not the attack power provided by Vengeance. We changed Hammer to scale with attack power, which should mean it hits harder with Vengeance. That will provide some of the damage boost you are looking for.
The other is that HoJ will be going off the GCD for us, finally giving us a real interrupt. A long cooldown one, but a real one.
While we still think an off the GCD interrupt isn’t an essential tool for a tank, we also don’t think it’s going to break anything for paladins to have one either. Our eventual solution is to let Vindication’s ability to let HoJ interrupt also take HoJ off of the global cooldown. That change will require new tech, so it’s not something you’re likely to see anytime soon, but you can know that it’s in our long term plans. Again, we don’t think the interrupt issue is a critical problem that must be solved today. The rotation one in the previous paragraph is a bigger deal.
I guess it’s better than nothing, eh?
Now… while we’re giving away toys you don’t think are necessary… how about that gap closer?
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@hazmacewillraid
5 October 2010 at 11:37 am #
Any idea if this reduced CS cooldown will apply for all specs or just Prot?
And I think I could jive with the 3X rotation. I’ll have to use more brainpower than I currently do in 969, though…
For example, when I had to offtank with Ana last Tuesday, I wiped us on Saurfang because I kept hitting Hammer of the Righteous out of programmed habit and aggroed some Blood Beasts onto myself. Egg, meet face.
And you DO realize I’m going to lean on you so heavily for all of this Prot stuff come Cataclysm end-game, right?
@Rhidach
5 October 2010 at 12:02 pm #
Bring it on!
The GC quote from the infamous ‘Pally tanking in Cata’ thread specifies that they’re trying the 3s cooldowns on CS and HotR for Protection only.
@PinkRaidFrames
5 October 2010 at 11:47 am #
Overall, I’m happy with these changes. Really folks should be pleased. We build HP faster (something we’ve been asking for), get a fix for HotR and even got some exciting news about HoJ.
I’ll take it.
@Rhidach
5 October 2010 at 12:02 pm #
More HP is definitely clutch, but I’m finding it hard to summon up the enthusiasm for how they went about it.
I was looking forward to having a gap in my rotation. I like the time to look around or cast a hand spell.
I was very disappointed by this change. The QQ about a empty global would have probably faded within a week if the paladin was balanced well enough. So 969 is back, now its 363. Woohoo :(
@Rhidach
5 October 2010 at 12:03 pm #
Completely agreed :(
@PinkRaidFrames
5 October 2010 at 12:05 pm #
Ugh. That’s true. I didn’t even think about that. Well, I think I’d rather have a full rotation than a boring one but honestly, I’m not sure it’s as bad as the 969 was.
I’ll be eager to try it out.
Yeh i was thinking that point too…be nice maybe if we had another proc, like art of war for that instant exorcism prot side too, along with grand crusader to kind of shake things up
I believe what i read on tanking blue posts, is that Ghostcrawler said the 3sec CS will only apply to prot, so i’m guessing it is going to be baked into one of our talent points. I am all for a harder rotation and yeh I want to build holy power faster, but they could of came up with something better then just lowering CS cooldown…maybe our Judgements have a 50% chance to add a stack of HoPo, or ShoR crit adds a stack, or if AS gets deflected or dodged with get a stack to try and make up for that threat that is gone or something just a little more creative.
Mmmm. I found the empty GCDs incredibly frustrating. I’ve never had a problem in raids with using hand spells because threat wasn’t so much of a problem I had to use every single GCD for the best threat-generator available to me, and I dislike the sensation of twiddling my thumbs looking for something else to do.
That said, I like the warrior model of having a filler ability that is prioritized behind the procs you want most- Devastate for tanks, Slam for arms warriors. Not thrilled about returning to a nearly static rotation, but at least there’s now a difference between single and multiple target rotations…
LabRat’s last blog ..More Screwed Than We Thought
@Rhidach
5 October 2010 at 12:37 pm #
A filler ability would be great, I completely agree. Almost anything would be better than the currently proposed “solution”.
In GC’s comment about the changes, did anyone see that he has a “secret mountain hideaway for a discussion of paladin tanking mechanics” and then picture GC sitting in an underground bunker, code-named Crystal Palace, playing tic-tac-toe on a huge monitor with a computer named Joshua?
I agree with your comment, the changes aren’t over, but these changes should make a lot of paladins a lot happier.
I think one thing to remember is that Ghostcrawler had to pick a very easy to implement change in order to make it into the release of 4.0.1. It’s only a week off, most likely.
@thorianar
5 October 2010 at 1:51 pm #
Honestly, I’m kinda happy with the change like Doxa, but I understand your point. I’d like to test it, but it didn’t land on Beta yet.
Honestly, I always saw Exorcism (well, after they change it to hit anything) to be our filler/lower priority attack. The problem is that, even if it was spammable, it would clash too often with Crusader Strike (due its “short” cooldown) and we would end up with the same rotation problem you just described.
I see that the change won’t stick. If we CS too fast, we’ll build holy power too fast too and we may end up never using it. Also, with more CS, more Grand Crusaders and more Avenger’s Shield and more QQ from the other tanks ’cause our two more damaging attacks will be quite spammable.
Not sure if that also gives Blizzard what they always wanted: To force us to use Word of Glory. We build HoPo too fast, SotR is in cooldown, what do I do? WoG!
On the other hand, I wonder what kind of mess would happen if they change CS cooldown to 3.5 or 4 sec…
Julio Biason/Thorianar’s last blog ..Pre-Cataclysm To-Do- Update
@thorianar
5 October 2010 at 2:04 pm #
Honestly. I use “honestly” too much. Honestly. >__<
Julio Biason/Thorianar's last blog ..Pre-Cataclysm To-Do- Update
@Rhidach
5 October 2010 at 2:15 pm #
Honestly!
@Orthien
5 October 2010 at 2:23 pm #
While I agree that it could of been fixed better, I would rather this the the large empty spaces to before. Hopefully the shorter CD with the buff to damage on HoR with also greatly improve our AoE tanking until we get Inq at 81.
Orthien’s last blog ..Changes are a coming
@Anafielle
5 October 2010 at 2:55 pm #
The new rotation looks a lot like the old one dressed up and reheated and labeled like something new.
I’m not excited.
As usual, you hit the nail on the head: We’ve gone from one extreme to the other. There HAS to be an in between solution, somewhere.
Personally, I thought the in-between was what we had with the 6 free GCD’s a minute. I was all for that. Meant I had time to look at the bad stuff in the room, make note of it, keep an eye on omen for HoSalv or HoProt someone that needed it, keep watch for add spawns, and all that jazz. After playing for 2 years with the 969 rotation, I’m all for going back to the less than hectic solution we had in BC.
But, eh, I guess all the players that go ballistic if they aren’t pushing a button and seeing something shiny pop up every second got their wish.
I don’t mind the changes. I mean, I totally agree there are more elegant changes that could have been made, and if the 939–as it has been dubbed in Maintankadin’s 4.0 guide–ends up being our most efficient rotation than I’m sure I’ll be sick of it pretty fast, just as I was the 969. On the other hand, I do see a number of positives. The 969 was great from an awareness standpoint, in that I didn’t need to focus on my rotation, and instead could watch for people taking damage, being in the wrong positions, unexpected adds, etc. I had no issue breaking rotation to throw Hands (including Lay on) and the 969 afforded me an excellent platform from which to watch for when they were needed.
On the other hand, the PTR rotation felt almost too busy. I had set up Power Auras and updated Event Horizon to consolidate things on my screen, but I still felt as though my situational awareness had taken a pretty big hit. A lot of it was that I still had to think about my priority, which would be less and less true as time passed, but it still was a little annoying.
On top of that, dead GCDs made me feel helpless to build threat. When people pulled off me during those dead GCDs I felt like I wasn’t doing my job, and it wasn’t particularly fun. When they pull off me and I can do more than taunt and pray something will come off cooldown and hit hard, then at least I feel like it’s something I have some control over, which means when I succeed I feel good and when I fail I aim to improve. That’s how I feel it should be.
I have to admit, I was personally dismayed at having so many gaps. Part of this was because threat was so under-tuned on the PTR that without any buttons to hit, I could not hold threat against some of the excessively buffed DPS. As someone who also plays a warrior tank at end-game, I’m used to both classes always having a button to press as I’m tabbing through targets or if something gets loose or a patrol is pulled. Since I’m not on the Beta I don’t get to see how it all works at 85 with balanced numbers unfortunately.
I appreciate that Blizzard is willing to address the unpleasantness that Paladins expressed, but I do wish they had done it by making Judgment generate Holy Power. They could have just baked it into Wrath of the Lightbringer or something so other specs wouldn’t get it. That would solve the front-load threat problem because if we opened with J>CS while closing, we have the potential for a crit proc which would allow for an immediate ShotR and if not, it wouldn’t take very long to get that 3rd HoPo anyway, even with a 4.5s CD. And ShotR would be available more often in all cases.
The gaps really were a problem in practice. During Isiset in Halls of Origination (spoiler alert!), she twice splits into three images which all require tanking. It was incredibly frustrating to have one or two of them run off to healer or DPS and attempt to regain aggro while cycling taunts, but having nothing to hit them with during rotational dead zones. (Yes, I know how to use Hands of Prot and Salv too!)
Having said that, this does seem like a quick and dirty fix. It solves some of our immediate problems but we’re almost back to exactly where we were.
My personal favourite solution is a 1HP model, where holy power abilities cost 1HP to use instead of consuming all. SotR could be balanced as filler, and if you chose to pool your holy power you’d have something to hit if needed in those specific situations.
Still, better than it was by far.
Before everyone gets too excited about the sky falling, bear in mind that the worst thing about 969 wasn’t that it was so mindless to maintain (although it was), its that if you got out of sync, you had to restart yourself and try to get back into sync.
With this, CS always being the 3sec ability, it means that if you want to do something besides your threat rotation for a GCD or two, just do it. There’s no law that says you can never deviate from your rotation, and I doubt there’ll be many fights where threat is so tight that you can’t.
And deviating from the 3X rotation is going to be much easier to do than deviating from 969.
@Anafielle
6 October 2010 at 8:48 am #
Actually, the argument on Maintankadin is precisely the opposite of what you’re saying.
One of the nicest thing about 96969 was its flexibility – you could change what 9′s and what 6′s went where, to an extent, to suit what you needed to do at any given time. You could leave things out, skip abilities, as needed, and just hop right back into the next 6 or 9.
939, however, is very much locked. You HAVE to do the attacks in a certain order and if you skip one, you just get right back to it.
In some ways, 939 (in its current incarnation) is more mindless than 969, which had an element of flexibility to it in that you did NOT have to push things in a certain order. For 939, you do.
I’m not trying to call the sky out for falling or anything – When they fix GC (which they will), there will be more unpredictability in 939. When they do a numbers pass or five, the rotation will probably get a little bit more unpredictable. I have faith things will be different in the future.
But flexibility is not one of the strengths of 939. That is something we are losing, not gaining.
I do not agree with this proposed change as the method of solving prot paladin’s issues with holy power and a less linear form of tanking than the current 969 rotation. With that said, however, my opinion seems to be a bit backwards from most of the responses here.
With the 969 method, you could indeed forgo almost any ability in the chain (generally a judgement) in place of something outside it with little to no negative consequence.
What I don’t understand is how any flexibility is now lost from a cooldown being lowered. Rather than forcing you to use a few GCD’s every minute not in your standard rotation, you now simply have the option to, or the option to continue with a closed chain for maximum threat. You merely have the choice now, much like the 969 rotation, of using a spell outside your rotation over one currently in it.
Will it produce less threat if you wander outside of the now-locked chain? Absolutely. But then that’s really part of any locked rotation, whether they give us new abilities or not. On the plus side, even though I do agree GC needs some work, at least it’ll proc more now.
Again, I’m not advocating that this change is in any way the kind of thing the prot spec needs to function as a tank and be fun, but at least it’s better and not worse?