Friday, February 25, 2011

Protection Paladin: Incoming 4.1 Changes

Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown
Don't panic, the change is not the end of the world.

Possible Reasons
Currently on 4.0.X, all protection paladins are using 3-holy-power-WoG to heal herself/himself and groupmates because WoG is more important than SotR in most cases.

Another reason could be that retribution paladin is spamming WoG in arena (blame Zealotry). Every time it is about pvp, isn't it?

Result
Rotation
Without cooldown, every paladin is spamming WoG.

With cooldown, we won't keep 3-holy-power idling for just a heal, it's a waste. Took about 10 seconds to accumulate 3 holy powers for protection paladin, so we need to mix in something else into the rotation.

Of course the real impact to our rotation is when we want to save the WoG for incoming huge damage.

Stats
We need more reliable holy power generation, so base hit capped is important for us to ensure most of our crusader strike and hammer of the righteous do not miss.

Talents
Eternal Glory has not been included in this discussion yet, the only reason of 2/2 Eternal Glory is to have another shot on WoG, but the cooldown absolutely removes the reason.

Possible New Rotation (PvE)

More Healing
I preferred this as WoG will not be reliable anymore.

Switch to Seal of Insight and Glyph of Seal of Insight, and to compensate the threat loss of not using Seal of Truth (and the power of Glyph of Seal of Truth).

(1) 3 holy powers
(2) Word of Glory
(3) 3 holy powers
(4) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous (Both of them proc Holy Shield)
(5) 3 holy powers
(6) Word of Glory
(7) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous

Things to verify if
(a) The healing from glyphed SoI >= WoG lost from the new change.
(b) Threat generated from SoI, Inquisition (indirectly) and Shield of the Righteous >= The threat generated by Seal of Truth and its glyph.

Less Healing
Use this if capping expertise is preferred.

Using Seal of Truth and related glyph and glyph of word of glory, but using the rotation mixing with SotR when WoG is still on cooldown.

Less healing but more threat generated.

(1) 3 holy powers
(2) Word of Glory
(3) 3 holy powers
(4) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous (Both of them proc Holy Shield)
(5) 3 holy powers
(6) Word of Glory
(7) Inquisition or Shield of the Righteous

Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2
Reasons
It's a full raid 20% reduced damage (except the paladin who cast it), using it twice within a 5 minutes fight maybe too powerful.

Result
No more 2 Divine Guardians for 5 minutes fight.

Still a good talent for 1 talent point.

All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target.
Another reason not to hit capped.

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