Friday, July 23, 2010

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.

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