ShoR, no more?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist using that awful title. A poet and I didn’t even know it.

To the beta outrage of the day, we go:

We have temporarily disabled Shield of Righteousness.

We’re working on the basic Prot rotations right now, and with Shield of Righteousness in addition to Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Consecrate, Avenger’s Shield and Holy Wrath, there was just a lot going on. Shield seemed like the least interesting of those abilities — really Shield and Hammer just seem to be single-target and multitarget versions of the same ability, especially without block scaling. Shield also felt like a duplicate of Shield Slam, which doesn’t help in trying to differentiate the two Prot trees. Frankly, we’d rather make Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of the Righteous cooler than they are today.

It’s too early to call this a permanent change. We still have a lot to consider, such as the damage of Hammer vs. Shield, how different we want the AE vs. single-target Prot attacks to be, and how much Holy Power considerations occupy a Prot paladin.

If we keep Shield of Righteousness, we need to figure out its role relative to Hammer. We don’t want it to be just swap one button for another for AE fights, and we don’t want you to have to use both on cooldown since we are giving Prot paladins more things to manage in Cataclysm.

Back at the start of Wrath we were finally given something more than the stable of four or so attacks we had in TBC: Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous. ShoR was in essence a carbon copy of a Warrior’s Shield Slam (minus the dispel), and HotR was basically Holy Cleave. in the beginning, ShoR has an amazing scaling curve with Block Value, to the point where it had to be nerfed because it was hitting for too much damage.

Since that snip job (and then the later indignity of being subject to dodges and parries), ShoR just hasn’t been the same. It’s been rather anemic in the last tier of content, no where near the oomph that HotR has had lately.

And frankly, if it was gone, I wouldn’t feel worse off. It had its time in the sun, and it’s time for us to let the old girl go.

In terms of pure flavor I’ve seen a lot of people defending the retention of the ability on the grounds of pure flavor. Granted, the animation of hitting something with your shield is cool, but I don’t really feel that justifies keeping ShoR on life support. If I can take the luxury of hopping in the mud for a second, when I think of a Paladin I see Uther trudging into battle with his hammer at his side. The idea of a Paladin striking with a shield seems anti-thematic, Paladins are about standing ones ground, hunkering down, and raining the wrath of the light down upon their foes through holy power and their trusty mace.

As such, if I had to sophie’s choice between ShoR and HotR, I would always choose the hammer.

But like I said, that’s just me. I wouldn’t expect a design decision to be made upon my pseudo-RP fantasies anymore than I would hope anyone would. You can’t balance around a day dream of what your class should be bashing someone in the face with it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which animation delivers the tps, does it? There’s a reason they call it flavor and not, say, nutritional content.

In any case, if they want to do something meaningful with Shield of Righteousness they should make it more than just an instant attack. Maybe turn it into some kind of Holy Power “finishing move” that does damage based on how many stacks of HoPo (ha, Ana, HA) you have. That would make ShoR much more meaningful, and so much more than just another instant melee attack with a more fun animation.

Right now if ShoR goes quietly into that good night, I won’t miss it. It’s not the same attack we all fell in love with at level 75. And, like someone on the tanking forums said, you can’t make hamburger without slaughtering a few sacred cows.

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.

Holy Wrath is a Holy Thunderclap

Sorry for the stubby post, but another pertinent GC quote from the bowels of the official tanking forums. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you guys after wading through much of that garbage and fit-mongering to find the gold.

When asked if Holy Wrath–now able to hit all enemy types–would apply Vindication, making it a Paladin version of a Warrior’s Thunderclap, Ghostcrawler replied:

This is, in fact, exactly what we did.

Likewise, the same person brought up that Thunderclap was upped in duration to 30 seconds and that Vindication might get the same treatment. Ghostcrawler confirmed this with a simple:

Ditto.

This doesn’t change that Vindication has a sub-100% uptime. I wonder if that’s on the block for being changed as well.

Overall though, it’s instances like these (or the stam modifier disparity being resolved) that keep me from overreacting to any negative beta news that arises. Now, let’s see if they resolve another obvious issue (Rebuke).

More clarifications from GC

Lots of insight from the crab!

On Holy Shield

Holy Shield, it is going through rapid iteration. Our current implementation has it providing 5% block per stack of Holy Power, up to a max of 15%. So you can use Holy Power for threat, healing or mitigation depending on current circumstances. You should be able to keep the 15% block up all the time with a very small amount of effort.

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.

So much for a 66% Holy Shield. The new plan seems to be a return to the old “use Holy Shield as soon as it falls off” with the added twist of accumulating 3 HP first to push block chance up to 15%. I hope that the duration of Holy Shield will be long enough for us to accumulate at least 6 HP, 3 to either use Word of Glory or Inquisition depending on situation, and then another 3 to max out the next Holy Shield.

On Raidwall

Divine Guardian doesn’t affect the paladin. Otherwise we feared it would just get used as another tank cooldown instead of for the raid utility for which it was intended.

This makes sense, but saddens me.

On Bubblewall

We’re strongly considering changing Divine Protection into a short cooldown. It is currently a clone of Shield Wall. Considering the paladin 85 also offers strong emergency damage reduction, we thought they could use a short cooldown ability (say 30-60 sec). Shield Block for warriors is being repositioned more as a short cooldown ability.

The mirroring of warriors continues a-pace!

On Grand Crusader

Grand Crusader no longer affects Crusader Strike. That was an older model we were trying.

I wonder what the new ability will be? Probably not Judgement, the cooldown is too short. Maybe Avenger’s Shield, or a free/instant Exorcism (Art of War: Electric Bugaloo)?

On Avenger’s Shield

Avenger’s Shield silences as a baseline effect. It no longer dazes, since all that seemed to accomplish was making pulling take longer.

Good change! Very good change!

On threat in general

Righteous Fury now affects all threat.

Also an excellent change. Needed to be done with Crusader Strike coming into our toolbox, and Vengeance affecting Attack Power.

On stamina

Since I am sure it will be asked based on that info, paladins and warriors have the same Stamina curves now. A naked warrior and paladin of the same race will have the same health at 85. Both Protection trees get the same amount of Stamina as a passive. That number will likely be something like 10 or 15% Stamina depending on tuning. (In our current build it is 15%.) In similar gear, their health should be very similar. We’ll provide the differences in their cooldowns and how they tank. DKs and druids are likely to have different amounts of health as well.

While I never freaked out about 10% vs 15%, it’s good to see–as rational minds suspected–that was not going to be anywhere near a final design.

Build 12539 brings a flood of changes

Finally we can begin to tinker with our talent trees. It looks like pieces are starting to fall into place and–as you might suspect–there has been much change visited upon the Protection tree. Some talents are gone, some are revised, some are new. I’ve broken down most of the changes into key themes or trends, rather than going tier by tier through the tree. I think it’ll be easier to give an effective overview of everything this way.

Mana

How we manage our blue bar is changing. To whit,

We also cut the Spiritual Attunement mechanic… Instead, Prot gets Judgement of the Wise (sans the raid Replenishment effect) as a passive, just like Ret. In essence, the melee paladins should rarely run out of mana, and if they do, they always have Divine Plea for emergencies.

So this is how things stand on the mana front: our mana will naturally regenerate, and should stay ahead of our consumption provided we don’t sit there and constantly recast Consecration. If we do run into a tight spot, we have Divine Plea as a mana “cooldown”. We probably won’t be as obsessed with keeping the effect up, because it will be overkill.

In light of this, I’m confused about Guarded by the Light. For 2 points, we get a no-cooldown DP coupled with an auto-refresh on hit. I would posit that if this talent made it to live, we very well might skip it. I just don’t see the point if DP isn’t going to be constantly used. Using it as a cooldown would preclude two talent points being spent in reducing cooldowns and extending durations.

I suspect the talent will be either changed or removed, but for now feel free to skip it in your drawing board builds.

Edit: Something I completely blanked out on that Kaelandros brought up in the comments was that GbtL autorefreshing gives us a constant 3% damage reduction via the glyph, which would be reason enough to go 2/2 GbtL. Assuming the glyph makes it to Cataclysm, you’d probably having to stick with GbtL, which is a particularly stupid design/reason to have to spec into a talent. I suspect the glyph will not make it to Cata untouched.

Rebuke, the greatest insult of all

Holy crap, Paladins get an interrupt! A real interrupt! … oh wait, it’s in the Ret tree. Four tiers down. Out of reach.

Dammit.

This needs to change. Call to arms!

Grand Crusader is our Sword & Board

Interesting, a proc! I like this, as you can imagine. I’m a sucker for procs.

I can forsee a future where Crusader Strike will only be used when proc’d by this talent (since as just physical damage it will be weak without the benefit of Righteous Fury upping threat, and we have harder hitting single target attacks), which will then flow Holy Power into our coffers.

Holy Shield is our primary Holy Power dump

Holy Power will now extend the duration of Holy Shield by 10 seconds per charge consumed. Baseline, Holy Shield increased block change by 30% for 10 seconds. So, generating 3 HoPo stacks (I feel dirty having written that) and then casting Holy Shield will dump our… HoPo… and push up a huge amount of block. With a 1 minute cooldown, that’s 66% uptime, nothing to sneeze at.

Combined with Mastery giving block, I wonder how much block we’ll have with this ability up. 45%? 50%? More?

We’ll also have the new skill Inquisition (which replaces Blinding Shield as our lvl 83 ability), that can be used to dump Holy Power. Increases holy damage done by 30% for 10 seconds per Holy Power charge.

Sacred Duty/Protector of the Innocent are beyond boring

1% or minute per talent point. 3 talent points to cap. Yawn. This is precisely the kind of talent we were told was going away in Cataclysm, and I expect these are just placeholders.

Raidwall survives the cut

A big sigh of relief from me, for now. I love the raidwall effect of Divine Guardian, and I’m glad to see it in our current tree. I hope it continues to dodge any further changes and stays just as it is from here til live.

… as does Reckoning

Rumors of this talent’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. And, color me surprised, I really thought this was the last we were going to see of this talent. The question now is, with its effect reduced to just blocks having a chance to proc it, how much threat will this talent be. If we’re blocking 35% of hits with Holy Shield up, it’s probably not going to be a lot of threat. At 50% we’re starting to see the chance of a more beneficial uptime.

This is definitely a talent that’s going to need to be mathed out to prove its worth. But, I have a nagging suspicion that because as gear gets better this talent will too, it’s eventually going to be worth it. The question is if it’s going to be worth taking off the bat or not.

How is AOE getting reined in exactly?

So, Blinding Shield is gone. Ok, that’s one less AOE spell. However, Holy Wrath now hits all enemy types. And Consecration is nigh-infinite when talented through Hallowed Ground.

I need to know exactly how the devs are planning to tone down AOE. Between our buffs and Warriors getting their own Consecration (oh yes), it seems like Cataclysm has the potential to become another massive AOE-fest.

I suppose mana costs can be tuned to make AOEing prohibitively expensive, and mobs can be designed that cannot be tanked in a huge pile–but the tea leaves seem to be pointing towards a different future.

10% vs 15%

From the linked GC quote above comes the news that we’ll be getting a +10% stamina modifier not from some talent, but rather

Prot paladins get +10% Stamina at level 10 for choosing Prot spec.

Believe me, unlike some delicate flowers on the official tanking forums, I understand that Beta does not equal final, so I’m not going to freak out in a glorious flash of italics and bolds and poetic similes. However, it is concerning that warriors at the moment have a 15% stamina modifier, while ours is down to 10%. And this is with classes have different initial stamina values.

This will probably change. I hope.

Ardent Defender still is gimped

I’m withholding judgement on this talent until we see what a more realistic/tuned iteration looks like. Obviously, I like the clickability,  but the timing in which is can be active seems off. There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. The health range should probably also go up to 50%.

Subject to further balance tweaking of course.

Update! Ask and ye shall receive:

Ardent Defender – Activate to reduce damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. While active, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health. 3 minute cooldown. Off the GCD.

Two specs, one tank: Trash and Boss Builds

While screwing around with wowtal.com I came up with two builds. One is primarily for trash tanking, 0/34/7, and has Wrath of the Faithful and Reckoning. The other is more boss-tanking oriented, 3/31/7, and has Divinity and only 2 points in Reckoning (because I can’t think of a better place of them).

I can definitely see myself just juggling two different prot specs in the next expansion. Even while dual specced now I barely ever use my Holy spec… or is it Ret? I haven’t switched specs in about four months and can’t remember while I currently have as my offspec. With only 41 in our pocket, talent points are a precious commodity, so it makes sense to me to have two different specs for two different tanking roles, and not “wasting” points on a talent that I might not need at that moment.

Likewise, I’m seriously considering dumping Pursuit of Justice if run speed enchants return in Cata. Doesn’t seem worth 2 points when an enchant can provide half the effect and those points could be spent on talents more directly affecting our threat.

All in all

I’m pretty happy with the tree. I’m not one for doom and gloom–er, generally–and I know none of this is final. It’s a good step towards the end game (and a huge improve over the last tree!) and I’m sure it’ll only improve and tighten up from here.

Ten of one, half-score of the other

I had forgotten how much fun 10man is. And no, that isn’t sarcasm, last night’s ICC-10 was the most fun I’ve had in WoW in a while.

25s is all business for me (I can’t help it, I’m too focused on the success of the raid to really ever enjoy myself), but 10s is where I let down my hair. So to speak.

Last night was the first time in a long time I’d managed to get “Team Alpha” together for an ICC run. We initially were going to go and bang out some more hardmodes, and hopefully catch up to the much-more progressed Bravo Team. Unfortunately, the OT didn’t show, so Cendra got on his 232-geared Druid tank and we still went through the first three hardmodes. We opted to skip Saurfang’s hardmode, because the general consensus was both Cen’s Druid and the healers weren’t equipped to handle a frenzied Saurfang mashing up some bear paste.

As we were headed towards Princes to maybe get the guild first heroic kill for that (our 10s are woefully unprogressed, as you can see) the OT logged on. We did a quick roster shuffle with Gulliveig dropping out, since he was having router issues. Cendra got back on his hunter, and Nordic came in to OT.

We then proceeded to one-shot heroic Princes.

It was a little hairy, with Princes being one of those fights that is markedly harder on 10man than 25. The room stays the same size, and you have to cover orbs that spawn throughout the width and breadth of it with fewer people. Rather than having one pet class watching each corner of the room, I had one on each half. A little too close for comfort!

Having two melee for the attempt made it a lot easier. Rather than a pack of floor-huggers-to-be scattering like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on, I had to worry about two Rogues breaking in opposite directions every time Valanar went to do an empowered vortex. Indeed, tanking Valanar is a pretty boring affair. I mostly spent the encounter just watching other people and agonizing over perceived eventual demises that would be visited upon them. And judging when possible to get the Heart of the Crusader debuff up.

We then plowed through heroic BQL, Festergut, and Rotface until we reached Putricide. The goal was to put away an actually meaningful hardmode kill, and match Bravo Team in the tennis game we call competitive progression. It was about an hour before end time so we’d have to move fast.

It’s a pretty hectic fight, to say the least. But a lot of fun. There’s so much crap going on you’ll find your head spinning.

We did about six attempts, getting it to 27% our last try. The biggest thing we need to work on execution (obviously) considering this fight is like an execution ballet.

What usually did this in was diseases being passed to the wrong person, or hitting one person in melee, then another immediately, throwing off the order. We got six solid attempts in, making progress each time. Despite having to call it, we’re all pretty pumped for future attempts and will probably end up downing the sucker on Sunday.

And then the 264 Unidentifiable Organ will be mine. Oh yes.

We’ve got the power

Imagine my surprise when I read the leftovers of the Twitter Q&A from Friday and saw that our world had suddenly been turned upside down. Well, that might sound a bit dramatic, but what was announced was a tectonic shift in the play style of the Paladin class. Right now, as it stands, we just throw abilities at the boss while attempting to sync cooldowns and maximize output.

To say the least: Boring. Overly simple as well.

Something had to give and I’m glad to see that we’re finally getting that much-needed complexity that many of us have been clamoring forever for.

All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:
An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power

969 is dead and rightfully so. We’ll be shifting to using a more priority-based system in Cataclysm that builds on using abilities when the payoff is at its apex. For example, say Crusader Strike builds Holy Power for us, then we would do some normal attacks, mix in CS, and build HP to 3. Once Holy Power is maxed out, that’s when we would pop Holy Shield for a longer damage reduction “break” (which begins to make sense of GC’s assertion that you would only use Holy Shield once a minute or so, it becomes much more manageable when there’s a clear point to use it).

Or, you could opt for casting Inquisition and going for a threat boost (probably more useful for trash or farm content?). In any case, choices! And priorities! We’re not just doing A, C, B, D, A, E, B, C, etc, anymore!

Has it been properly conveyed how excited I am about this system yet? I realize this is a weird reverse of Rogue combo points, where we’re stacking these on ourselves, but I am sure in the end it will be just the tonic class needs.

Likewise, this GC quote from this weekend is pertinent:

We felt like we needed to add several new spells to the paladin rotation, including making Holy Wrath a real part of the rotation. With all of those changes, we thought it was hard to justify having a mechanic to choose your Judgement when you were already choosing your Seal and Aura. It’s just a different model. If anything at the moment I’m worried that we made paladins too complex and might have to reign it back in a little. We’ll see when players can try it out in beta.

Yes, wait and see! After the long time we’ve spent wallowing in “easy mode”, erring on the side of complexity is not a bad thing. Just go with it.

Lastly, I would like to /sign the suggestion given by many on the official forums, as well as by Rohan and Sucidal Zebra: rename Holy Power to Zeal. Holy Power is an undeservingly lame moniker for something with so much potential.

Art for the sake of awesome art

I first saw Vidyala’s artwork on Anea‘s blog (whichever one of her many sites she was operating at the time, haha) and I was immediately struck by how great it was. At the time, I was looking for a new header image for Righteous Defense. Something other than Graccus, that stalwart TCG character. Something of my own that couldn’t be forced down with a C&D letter one day.

So I hit up twitter, and asked if anyone knew someone taking art commissions and Vid (of Pugging Pally fame) dm’d me back in short order offering her services. I took her up on it and I am so happy I did. As you can see above, I have definitely gotten the deal of a century. I’m pretty sure Italian princes used to have to pay small fortunes to get this kind of quality back in the day.

I’ll stop before I get accused of flattery.

In any case, if anyone is wondering the meaning of the new banner above, it’s a drawing of yours truly standing before a burning block in Stratholme, looking all righteous and “defense-y”. Fitting, I would say.

If you’re looking for someone to do an art commission of your character for a blog, or what-have-you, I cannot recommend Vidyala enough (you can find her email address on her about page). The whole process was a joy to proceed through, and Vid was very patient with my many, many tweaks and requests. She took my bizarre and vague description of what I was looking for, and turned it into the amazing banner that now adorns the top real estate of this blog. All in all, I could not be more satisfied with the process or the final result. Thanks Vid!

Prot tree is dead, long live the prot tree

On the official forums, someone asks a question about a few talents. Ghostcrawler gives up that Improved Devotion Aura is dead, Eye for an Eye’s new incarnation is dead, and then just lets the cat out of the bag:

I’m going to regret saying this, but the paladin trees are the most changed in the game. There are only a few of the current beta talents that survived the, um, cleansing.

Well then.

3 trends you can see in our “new” tree

I did one pass with wow-tal.com this morning and came up with this selection of talents. A complete waste of time, though, because our tree is obviously a work in progress. Everything is subject to change. Yet, there are still some trends you can see through the fog of war.

1. A radically different Consecration

Consecration on the beta server right now lasts for 15 seconds and has no cooldown. You drop it in one place, then can move and drop it in another immediately. Old one disappears, new one comes up. Then, the talent Hallowed Ground increases the duration by 15 seconds and damage by 15% for 1 point, and 30 seconds/30% for 2. A 45 second Consecrate.

Basically, the ability shifts to almost like a harmful aura than an actually ability in a rotation. I think this is a good change for sure, especially once you consider point #3 of this post. It’s shifting to more of a “fire and forget” ability. Moreover, even if the 45 second duration doesn’t stay, it’s obvious what the new path they want Consecration to take is.

2. Clickable Ardent Defender

This was probably one of the biggest complaints masochistic Paladins like yours truly leveled at Ardent Defender in the past, that it was automatic. At the beginning of Ulduar, we begged Blizzard for a second cooldown and instead we got the grotesque god-mode that has hung over our class ever since.

As of this latest build, Ardent Defender is now an on-click ability. Finally, some reactivity. Nonetheless, I sincerely doubt this is anywhere near the final version of this ability. Especially since 35%-0% seems too small a window to have for AD, you’re either going to misuse it or miss using it.

I’m still heartened that we’re being trusted with activating our own cooldowns now.

3. Many more buttons to push

Holy Shock, Crusader Strike, Exorcism. Those are three new single target abilities we’ll be juggling next xpac. Well, probably not Holy Shock.

The talent Improved Exorcism returns to us our precious instant Exorcism, though it’ll be a tad late if Hand of Reckoning retains its damage component. And Improved Crusader Strike… removes the cooldown entirely. Um. I can’t imagine this’ll will persist through later builds, unless it’ll be a lingering stupid trap for Paladins that think spamming a physical damage ability is a good idea for threat.

The biggest downside of all these buttons is a severe case of GCD-lockage, which will hamper us with attempting to throw out helpful abilities like a Hand of Freedom, a BoP, a self-Holy Shock in a pinch, whatever.

I would advise against obsessing too much about the tree and spending more than necessary (like I did) trying to finesse a spec with Righteous Vengeance (this will be must have, mark my words) and other major Prot talents. Next build may see a radical shift in talent placements and cost that will change the picture completely. Save your energy for then!

Bonus: What the hell is happening to Holy Shield?

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.

Sigh.