Upcoming cata rotation thoughts.

Overcomplicated?
I'm not on beta, I don't have the invite and with my real life I don't have the time. I do hit up my favorite sites and see what the people who are on beta are saying. I see for the most part a very complex and bulky to say the least rotation. I also think the warrior and paladin are starting to mirror each other way too much. I jumped on to MMO-Champ today and see what I think is a streamline of our talents and rotation. I hope you all have a minute to check it out here. I do want to highlight some of it for you. Thank you to mmo champ for their work they do. While I do read blue posts and the tanking forums its hard to sort thru some of the trolling.

New build that is in the works.

Shield of the Righteous -- Now consumes Holy Power to cause damage.

Holy Shield -- Now a passive ability that causes your Shield of the Righteous to provide 5% block per stack of Holy Power consumed. In other words, you never click Holy Shield. You just click Shield of the Righteous and buff yourself.

Yay! SotR is coming back in! and in a good way. I do wonder if we are only getting 5% block now with this and a passive 10% but this was alot better than what was going on with the removal and our only usage of the new "holy power" ability that wasn't my favorite thing. I think using an offensive ability to create a def mechanic is really a novel thing. I hope this stays.

Hammer of the Righteous -- Now generates Holy Power but shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike. Almost all talents that affect one or the other will affect both. The intention is you use Crusader Strike -> Shield of the Righteous for single target and Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of the Righteous for multitarget.
Avenger's Shield -- No real change, but it still hits pretty hard. Both CS and HotR can proc Grand Crusader to lower the Avenger's Shield cooldown.

Let me just clarify something - Hammer of the Righteous will generate 1 Holy Power per cast, or 1 Holy Power per target hit?
One per cast. Otherwise we think paladins might want to always be hitting multiple targets, like "Let me tank the boss and one of the adds or my Holy Power generation will be low."

So now CS and HotR share a CD and create holy power? Could it be that the dev's are getting it now? We have a multi and single target attack, a choice of what to use while attacking (and maybe we will have to plan ahead on burning this CD for what is coming at us) and the chance that either of these will shorten the CD of shield throw. This really sounds like a rotation that is on the right track.

Vindication -- can be caused only by Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.
Holy Wrath -- With the above changes, we think Prot paladins have enough rotational buttons to hit, so we are downplaying Holy Wrath. Holy Wrath is really intended as a Ret filler spell (for when other attacks are on cooldown). Prot could technically use Holy Wrath, but we aren't providing any talent hooks.

Is Holy Wrath going to have the same model it currently has? As a split damage ability?

Yeah, we like the split damage because it lets Ret (and Prot if needed) use it in most situations.

Seems fair to me. It takes out of the warriors mold and still in a way allows us to not uses holy wrath every time we want to apply vindication. My concern, what becomes of holy wrath? does it go back to the old version that only is usable on undead or does it get set to the back burner due to its high mana cost (guessing on that) and another way to attack that causes more threat? I see holy wrath getting changed if the rotation that looks to be coming out stays the same or falling out of use completely for prot.

Consecration -- Now on a 10 sec duration with a 30 sec cooldown. The Hallowed Ground talent makes it cheaper and hit harder -- it does not affect duration. Use Consecration when you need it, but you can't spam it. This is consistent with the AE changes we are making to all tanks.

I was never a spammer of conc, even in TBC when it was one of the best threat spells we had. To me this is a welcome change. Maybe tank won't "rely" on conc to be a primary attack. I wonder what the new build is going to look like, but does this change make it a must have talent point due to the "cheaper and harder hitting"? I like this.

Maybe people who understand and play paladins at Blizz are now working on the rotation for us! That would be a nice change. I really like the looks of these two rotations. Its not a face roll and seems we can weave in other things besides whats posted above.

With these changes in mind, Prot will be thinking about buttons such as these:
Single Target: Judgement, Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield.
Multi-target: Judgement, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, possibly Exorcism.
None of this includes things like Seals, Inquisition, defensive cooldowns, Word of Glory, etc.

So with Vindication off of Holy Wrath, is it intended that Prot Paladins are the only tank without an AoE Physical Damage debuff, or will similar changes be made to the Warrior/Druid/DK mechanics?



Hammer of the Righteous will be AoE enough. It hits many targets. It may not be as widespread as Demo Shout on a pull like a jillion Onyxia Whelps, but we don't really expect you to debuff pulls of that size.

 
This speaks for itself.


Summary...
To me it looks like we are starting to get our own identity, keeping some really cool abilities (or have them put back in) and maybe Blizz is starting to get a handle on our rotation. I really like this build, I hope they stay with something like this and make it better.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well.