Can We Prioritize Shield of Righteousness?

I've been claiming that forcing us to hit Crusader Strike (CS) every third GCD will make our other, signature tankadin spells feel like filler that we hit when we have a spare second rather than cool strikes of awesomeness that we want to hit on CD. To back this up, suppose (as is plausible) that we will prioritize Shield of Righteousness (ShoR) over all other non-holy power related spells. Then there are two possible places we can fit ShoR into a CS rotation: before a cast of CS, or after (there are only two GCDs between CS). In the following diagrams, an * denotes a CD conflict between CS and ShoR.

ShoR before CS:
ShoR | CS | ?? | ?? | CS*

ShoR after CS:
CS | ShoR | ?? | CS | ?? | ShoR | CS | ?? | ?? | CS*

However, there is a a tiny amount of flexibility in our CS rotation, we don't absolutely need to hit it every third GCD to keep holy shield up. We can occasionally resolve CD-clashes in favor of ShoR while still keeping HS up. If we push back CS in the first example, we get:

ShoR | CS | ?? | ?? | ShoR* | CS | ?? | ?? | CS*

Basically, any time we resolve a ShoR/CS CD-clash in favor of ShoR we set ourselves up for another CD-clash as soon as ShoR comes of CD. If we always resolve in favor of ShoR, we fail at generating enough HP to keep Holy Shield up and maximized.

As things stand in the current build, there is no rotation that

(1) Maximizes HS uptime & mitigation;
(2) Always prioritizes ShoR over CS.

Protection Paladin Rotation Revisited

Today's new beta build proves that the developers are taking the protection paladin rotation in a very different direction than I imagined. First, the design of Holy Shield has changed again. It's now got a fixed 15s duration and it's possible to refresh immediately, for 100% uptime. But holy power now affects the magnitude of the block chance effect; you get 5% block chance per point of holy power. Moreover, Holy Shield is now exclusive with Inquisition; you can't have both buffs at once.

This means that, like the 969 rotation of WotLK fame, our Cataclysm rotation will be designed around maximizing Holy Shield uptime and effect. While there may be situations in which we prefer to spend holy power on Inquisition, those situations will not be raid tanking situations. If we need Inquisition to be competitive in generating threat compared to other tanks, this will be a reason to use those other tanks, who don't need to make the same survival for threat trade-off.

This means that we need to generate 3 holy power every 15s. Essentially, this forces us to cast Crusader Strike on cooldown. Well, not literally on cooldown if the cooldown remains 4s, but every third global cooldown, i.e., every 4.5s.

The protection paladin rotation will then look like this, I fear:

1. Holy Shield as soon as holy power = 3, and then every 15s after that.
2. Crusader Strike every third global cooldown.
3. Roll face.*

I find this disheartening. I was looking forward to a priority queue in which we needed to generate holy power, but this was largely taken care of by procs and other random events that would change up a rotation that otherwise consisted of the abilities that protection paladins know and love. Instead, it seems we will need to prioritize Crusader Strike in order to ensure maximum Holy Shield effect and uptime, which means de-prioritizing all of protections cool, role-defining spells like Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous, and Avenger's Shield, making them into "filler" spells that you cast when you have a spare second, rather than "awesome" spells that you want to cast on cooldown. This is not exciting, fun, or dynamic in my opinion.

As I conclude in a post I made over on the official forums:

Tacking holy power onto CS makes it mandatory, but it doesn't make it fun for prot. This is the fundamental mistake I feel that the developers are making with the current prot rotation design.

*For those readers who may not be familiar with this idiom; the retribution paladin spell rotation in WotLK was often described as "faceroll," the idea being that, since it made only a small difference which spell you prioritized casting if two spells ended their cooldown at the same time, you might as well just roll your face on the keyboard to get a perfectly adequate rotation, rather than actively making choices.

Assessing Blizzard's intentions for the Protection Paladin Rotation in Cataclysm

The Cataclysm beta is, naturally, still in a state of flux, but I think the current build has enough information in it that we can infer what Blizzard's design intentions are for the protection paladin's single-target tanking rotation in Cataclysm.

The first things to notice are the importance of two medium-duration buffs: Inquisition and Holy Shield. Holy Shield has been changed from it's current, 100% uptime implementation to have a 1 minute cooldown with a variable duration depending on holy power: 10s base, +10s for each stack of holy power consumed, for a maximum possible duration of 40s. Inquisition is a percentage increase to holy damage, which means a big buff to protection's threat output, with a variable duration of 10s per holy power and no cooldown. These will likely be our top priorities. We will want to get as close to 100% uptime on Inquisition as possible, and we will likely also want to hit Holy Shield every time its cooldown finishes, but only when we have 3 holy power.

This has significant implications for our rotation, because it means that we need to generate holy power at a rate of 9 per minute. That comes to one every 6⅔s, or every 4-5 global cooldowns (GCDs). Since Crusader Strike (CS) is our only attack that generates holy power, that means it'll have to fit into our rotation, despite being physical damage and so suboptimal for threat (since it powers Inquisition, it does indirectly provide holy damage, in addition to seal procs). The new Grand Crusader talent gives Shield of Righteousness (ShoR) a chance to end the cooldown on CS and give it a significant buff to damage, which means we will want to hit CS in conjunction with Grand Crusader procs whenever possible to generate holy power. Since it's only a 20% chance and ShoR has a 6s cooldown, we will have to use some non-buffed Crusader Strikes to generate sufficient holy power.

ShoR, in addition to providing a buff to CS, will also likely be our hardest-hitting spell once more in Cataclysm, and so will probably be our highest priority spell once holy power is taken care of. The new Shields of the Templar talent makes our ShoR crits cause our next Judgement to automatically crit, Judgement has always hit relatively hard in our rotation, and of course Judgement is important for keeping our attack speed debuff up on our target, so Judgement will probably be next in priority.  It's possible the numbers will be such that Judgement will be higher priority than ShoR, but I imagine that this is not their design intent. (Evidence: we have a talent that makes ShoR crits buff Judgement, and if Judgement is too good, getting the cooldown reduction talent in the retribution tree may seem mandatory, which I don't think they want as it's not easy to get.)

Hammer of the Righteous (HotR) has had a 6s cooldown ever since being introduced, but for now it has no cooldown in the Cataclysm beta. This suggests that it is meant to be a low priority spell, used to fill GCDs when ShoR and Judgement are on cooldown and holy power is taken care of. It will probably be better for threat than CS if we don't need holy power, being holy damage.

Based on the above, it looks like protection paladins will want to rely on the following priority list for single-target threat in Cataclysm (with the caveat that things can certainly still change dramatically):

1. Make sure Inquisition is up
2. Holy Shield if holy power = 3
3. Shield of Righteousness
4. Judgement
5. CS if you have a Grand Crusader proc or if the duration of Inquisition or cooldown of Holy Shield is almost up and holy power < 3
6. Hammer of the Righteous

Of course there is some vagueness in this list, because of the "almost" in #5. You may want to start prioritizing CS over HotR with even about 12s left before you need holy power, if you have 0, because of the 4s cooldown on CS and possible cooldown conflicts with ShoR and Judgement.  But you also won't want to prioritize it immediately upon reaching 0 holy power, because ideally you'd like to use CS only when Grand Crusader procs.  This might be the "too much complexity" that Ghostcrawler is worried about.

A simple way to fix this to make protection's rotation less complex would be to make HotR generate holy power.  Since protection uses holy power only to maximize buff duration, this wouldn't be overpowered, and it would simplify things a lot.  They'd need to then give us another reason to hit CS occasionally, presumably through a proc mechanic (Grand Crusader might not be enough on its own).

On second thought, I think a more elegant solution would be to make Grand Crusader increase the holy power generation of CS from 1 to 3, in addition to or instead of buffing its damage done.  A 20% proc rate on ShoR, if ShoR is used on cooldown, would translate into an average of 2 Grand Crusader procs per minute, or an average rate of 6 holy power per minute.  This is not enough to both keep Inquisition up and use maximized Holy Shield on cooldown, but perhaps that would be a good thing from a design standpoint.  It would force protection paladins to make choices during battle: do you change up your rotation to work in extra, unbuffed Crusader Strikes, or do you forego the some of the threat bonus from Inquisition or some of the mitigation from increased Holy Shield duration?

Holy Power in Cataclysm

Last Friday's developer chat contained, big, big news about the paladin class.  Ghostcrawler had recently said

If we do one thing for class design in Cataclysm, it will be changing the paladin (all 3 specs) rotation up a bit!

He wasn't kidding! As a long-time player of the paladin class, I have often felt that the developers haven't had any great ideas about what to do with the class, and have thrown a bunch of band-aid fixes at it and second-hand abilities from other classes. We've never had an interesting core mechanic; for a long time protection and retribution have been just about watching cooldowns and that's about it.  While it was nice in Wrath of the Lich King that we finally got to be powerful, I can't say that we were the most interesting class to play.  I have stuck with it because for some reason it's what I chose on launch day, and I've enjoyed being along for the ride, trying to make the best of whatever they give me.  But it seems like the days of feeling like the afterthought class are over.  Cataclysm is giving us some interesting mechanics to call our own.

 Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc? 

A. 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 

We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory. 

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at one or two of the new Retribution abilities or talents? 

A. Templar’s Verdict: An instant weapon attack that causes a percentage of weapon damage. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:
1 Holy Power: 55% Weapon Damage
2 Holy Power: 125% Weapon Damage
3 Holy Power: 225% Weapon Damage

Word of Glory: Consumes all Holy Power to heal a friendly target for a specific amount per application of Holy Power (0 mana cost, 0 cooldown, instant cast).

As I said, this is big, big news.  People are already calling it a knockoff of the death knight's runic power and the rogue's combo points, but while there are similarities,  holy power is not the same as either of those mechanics.  More importantly, it promises to make combat for retribution and protection paladins much more dynamic, as we shall see in future posts exploring the likely rotations that will result from the new design plan for retribution and protection paladins. (I haven't given as much thought to how holy power will affect paladin healing, mostly because I haven't played a holy paladin in a long time.)

One thing that the developer's haven't said explicitly, but which seems like a safe inference from the information we have, is that we can have a maximum of 3 holy power at any time.  It's not clear how it decays if not used, but I'm guessing that it doesn't decay in combat, and it's possible it won't even decay out of combat.