Ret & Haste needs reworking, Causes "hardcap"

I see this comment a lot, but I don't understand it. Can you explain to me why a 4.4 Crusader Strike is not strictly better than a 4.5 Crusader Strike? That might be the case if your rotation was so jam packed that you can't fit in another Crusader Strike until its cooldown drops by an entire 1.5 global cooldown, but we've gone on record saying that the rotation won't work that way. Hitting Crusader Strike even a fraction of a second sooner means a Templar's Verdict comes that sooner, letting you start the rotation again. That's a dps increase.

Haste is valuable above and beyond the Sanctity of Battle talent of course. Swinging more often is a dps increase alone, and can also lead to more frequent Art of War procs or Seal ticks.

Templar's Verdict at less than 3 stacks will almost never make sense unless you're in a situation where perhaps someone is running away (and for whatever reason you can't stun them etc.) so you might as well hit them now.

Q u o t e:
0.0 - Crusader Strike (with 4.4 second cooldown)
1.5 - Judgement
3.0 - Exorcism
4.4 - (Crusader Strike off cooldown) <--------------- what's the point of this?
4.5 - Crusader Strike

If this was your set rotation, then it would be a problem, but this isn't an actual rotation. The next time around, Judgement will still be on cooldown and the Exorcisms are unpredictable anyway. (You could hard cast them, but that would be a dps loss given that it stops your white swings, and it would drain your mana anyway.)

Imagine you did nothing but Crusader Strike and Templar's Verdict. With no haste, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.5 seconds. With enough haste to lower Crusader Strike to 4.4 seconds, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.2 seconds. In the space in between Crusader Strikes you will be able to Judge and use Holy Wrath and sometimes get Exorcism procs. You might also use free cycles for utility abilities depending on the situation. But your rotation should never be so full that every Crusader Strike must land every 4.5 sec or its wasted. It might be wasted sometimes, but not so often that Sanctity of Battle is an unattractive talent.

Q u o t e:
But the problem is you dont get to hit Crusader Strike any sooner b/c of the global cooldown. With a 4.5 sec cooldown on crusader strike the rotation will always be CS, X, Y, CS, X, Y

What are X and Y though? Those abilities don't exist. Judgement can be X every 8 sec. Holy Wrath can be Y every 15 sec. Exorcism can be X or Y when it procs. In Cataclysm, Ret doesn't have a 12341234 rotation. There is more going on.

Q u o t e:
A 0s: Crusader Strike
B 1.5s: Judgement (Won't be back until 9.5)
C 3.0: Holy Wrath (Won't be back until 18)
A 4.5: Crusader Strike
B 6.0: Exorcism (Won't be back until 12+)
C 7.5:
A 9.0: Crusader Strike
B 10.5: Inquisition (won't need recasting until 40.5)
C 12.0: Judgement (won't be back until 20)
A 13.5: Crusader Strike
B 15.0: Exorcism (won't be back until 21)
C 16.5:
A 18.0: Crusader Strike
B 19.5: Holy Wrath (wont' be back until 34.5)
C 21.0: Judgement (won't be back until 29)
A 22.5: Crusader Strike
B 24.0: Templar's Verdict
C 25.5: Exorcism (won't be back until 31.5)
A 27.0: Crusader Strike
B 28.5:
C 30.0: Judgement (won't be back until 38)

I'm going to leave out the Exorcisms, because they aren't predictable.

Here is a 4.5 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.5)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 9)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
9.0: Crusader Strike (back at 13.5)
10.5: Inquisition (back at 40.5)
12.0: Judgement (back at 20)
13.5: Crusader Strike (back at 18)
15.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
16.5:
18.0: Crusader Strike (back at 22.5)
19.5: Holy Wrath (back at 34.5)
21.0: Judgement (back at 29)
22.5: Crusader Strike (back at 27)
24.0: Templar's Verdict
25.5:
27.0: Crusader Strike (back at 31.5)
28.5:
29.0: Judgement (back at 37)

Here is a 4.2 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.2)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 8.7)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
8.7: Crusader Strike (back at 12.9)
10.2: Inquisition (back 40.2)
11.7: Judgement (back at 19.7)
13.2: Crusader Strike (back at 17.4)
15.7: (Hopefully Exorcism)
17.2:
17.4 : Crusader Strike (back at 21.6)
18.9: Holy Wrath (back at 33.9)
20.4: Judgement (back at 28.4)
21.9: Crusader Strike (back at 26.3)
23.4: Templar's Verdict

Like Snozberries, I did that math quickly so I may have screwed up somewhere, but assuming I did not, your hardest hitting ability is available 0.6 sec earlier. Not a huge dps increase overtime, but probably comparable to an equivalent amount of crit rating (given that this is not the only haste benefit).

Q u o t e:
Sorry GC - but many long term rets are really worried with your direction for Ret in cata - tbh most think we're looking pretty weak atm :-(

There's no evidence of that though. You're just fretting. We nerfed Seal damage recently because Ret paladins were beating everyone on damage meters. We aren't spending much effort on numbers yet, but we need them to be reasonable enough so that playtesters don't do unusual things that they wouldn't do when the numbers are tuned more accurately.

Q u o t e:
If ret stacks haste in PVP; they'll be dropping huge TVs too quickly... which will result in a PVP nerf and then subsequently a PVE nerf.

If hitting TV after 23 seconds qualifies as burst, then I think we'll be fine. Yes, once in awhile a Ret might get off a 32K Templar's Verdict, but that's not going to global anyone.

Q u o t e:
I just don't understand how all other talents that did this were shifted from talents to baseline, but than Ret is given the exact same thing as a talent. This is the only talent left in the game that directly says Y ability now benefits from Haste. Please just make this baseline, there is no reason for it not to be and no class needs to spec so that a core stat like Haste will scale.

Haste for most melee grants them more resources. Ret still isn't super dependent on mana though. It will be limiting enough that you can't spam heals or expensive spells like Consecrate, but it won't be so attractive that if we incorporated a haste to mana mechanic that it would at all be attractive.

Haste for casters makes their spells cast faster, but again you're doing so little of that that it won't be something you really need.

So neither of those mechanics works for Ret paladins. You'll get more damage from autoattacks of course, but so do the other melee. Tying haste to Crusader Strike cooldown is more consistent with the "haste lets you do more" model for the other melee. (There are no general mechanics that let haste lower the cooldown of something, so you're technically inaccurate in that sense.)

Finally, we could have just made the haste affects Crusader Strike cooldown a core mechanic. We made it a talent because we found in playtesting that some players liked CS at a predictable 4.5 sec cooldown and others appreciated having the cooldown come faster with haste.

Q u o t e:
As someone thats been testing ret, thats been hitting target dummies, and mobs, and pulling packs of 5 things so I can test out target swapping and the like, we do not have an interesting rotation, we do not have a complex rotation, we do not have anything more requiring skill than the current live rotation, only we have to sit and do nothing far more often.

"Interesting" is in the eye of the beholder, so that's sort of a hard point to argue. We do think it's more complex though. Part of the problem is it's rather difficult for anyone to screw up the Ret rotation on live. If you hit things when they come off cooldown, you'll do pretty competitive damage. You have no resource to worry about and it's pretty hard to throw your rotation off for very long.

The change to Holy Power and adding spells like Inquisition and Zealotry means there is a lot more to juggle. If you let Inquisition fall or you aren't prepared to maximize Zealotry uptime, then you aren't playing to your full potential. If you don't hit TV when you get 3 Holy Power, or if you religiously hit TV but eclipse buttons like Judgement in the meantime, then you're not playing optimally.

Basically we are now engineering opportunities for players to make a mistake. If nobody can make a mistake, then there really is no test of skill and no opportunity for anyone to get better. That's the "faceroll" rep that the tree sometimes gets saddled with -- no matter what you do, you'll end up doing high damage. In Cataclysm, that won't be the case.

If you find you can master the new rotation trivially, then congratulations, you'll be one of the better paladins out there. I am very confident however that not everyone will be able to do so, and so Ret paladins who do a lot of damage will get more respect for being good players than for having picked the right class on the character select screen.

Q u o t e:
It kind of feels like Blizzard is in complete denial about some specs being GCD capped. I know death knights have felt like that almost the entire alpha and beta. =(

DKs are often GCD capped on live. That was the primary reason for changing the rune model. They shouldn't be GCD capped in Cataclysm.

Q u o t e:
Is this not what reforging is for? If we can reforge haste into other secondary stats, who cares?

I mean as long as our dps is balanced to be on par with the other classes, haste being our worst stat but reforgeable, it doesn't really matter does it?

It's a matter of degree. Some players will reforge for a sub 1% dps gain, and that's their prerogative. We don't think the stats need to be that close, but they need to be somewhat close. If Ret paladins perfer crit to haste (or Enhacement prefer haste to mastery, etc. etc.) then that's okay so long as crit doesn't provide twice the dps per stat point as haste. If you're willing to take a previous tier's gear because the stat budget is more optimal, then we've got a problem, as we had a few times in the LK content.

Q u o t e:
Holy Wrath and Cons are AoE abilities and break CC. What are we ment to do if there is CC'd mobs around us? /afk ?

This is a consideration for many players though. A Prot warrior can't just merrily Thunder Clap no matter what -- they have to evaluate their surroundings, decide if it's appropriate to move slightly farther away, or if they just need to forgo their AE attack for the time being. If Crusader Strike constantly cleaved everything, then that would be really annoying. Having to sometimes drop a 15 sec cooldown ability out of your rotation (assuming you can't move or anything) shouldn't be that big a deal. There are no fights that I can remember off the top of my head where you need to keep a target CC'd in the middle of the melee for long periods of time, and if there are any, they are fairly rare. You should be thankful for the opportunity to sometimes respond to your surroundings by doing different things rather than always mashing the same buttons like you are dashing out a song on a piano.

Q u o t e:
Too much of this discussion feels like both sides going "Well, here's my rotation estimate. I've left out or very crudely modeled the RNG part.", when the RNG part has an enormous impact on it.

Now, I think if GC's point was to show how having one cooldown hasted amidst a bunch of unhasted cooldowns could still lead to damage increases, his estimate was fine. Some people are arguing against that, so it's a useful point to make.

Yeah, my example was not intended as a mathematical model. It was just an example for how lowering CS cooldowns can provide TVs more often. There are a lot of other variables that can affect the actual rotation, and many of them are very sensitive to rapidly-changing things like proc rates and other separate variables, which is why we need to see it in action. That does work both ways though, and why I wasn't buying the insistence that it's impossible for lowering CS cooldown through haste to be a dps increase.

Q u o t e:
1) What happened to the old model that I believe was tried in an early beta build, that had rets with a chance on white hit to gain Holy Power? Something like that also allows resource scaling with haste, in a way that is slightly less disruptive to the overall rotation (only really causing clashing cooldowns when crusader strike comes off cooldown at the same time that a white attack proc grants a 3rd stack of holy power). It honestly seemed like it was potentially more fluid that way.

Holy Power on white attacks was too unpredictable to the point of annoying. Imagine you have 2 Holy Power, start to push Crusader Strike and then at that instant get a white attack proc. Now you have wasted your 1.5 sec GCD *and* wasted Holy Power because you're technically at 4 now. Having Holy Power tied to yellow attacks is at least the kind of thing you can train yourself to watch out for. If you aren't hitting any buttons, then you aren't going to get Holy Power for example. You can notice after every button mash if you got that extra proc or not -- they aren't just happening out of the blue.

Q u o t e:
I have to say..I'm a little saddened. You want us to make mistakes? Is that fun for the player?
Please understand I don't say we should be given everything on a silver platter but designing the trees and so on with the idea that failing is more than likely...does not sound fun to me.

I didn't say "more than likely." I said "more likely than today."

Have you ever played an electronic game on god mode? (UUDDLRLRBABASTART.) It's cute for about fifteen minutes. Then you realize there is no challenge. You don't have to keep on your toes. You can't strive to get better at the game. I can load up my personal copy of WoW right now and go through and death touch all of the bosses in Icecrown. Guess how much time I actually spend doing that. It's just not very compelling.

We don't want playing your character to be a horribly frustrating and unforgiving experience. But we do want there to be some challenge to it. If Ret was a miniature golf course (oh boy) we want to put some little windmills and castle drawbridges on the course that you need to use your elite putting skills to navigate. If every course was a two foot green with a big hole at the end, your chance of failure would be near zero and also, I'd argue, would be your enjoyment of the course.

Q u o t e:
GC, on this note, the current talent that provides random Holy Power on Beta has far too much of a delay to really "watch out" for. The Holy Power gained from abilities other than Crusader Strikes does not instantly generate, making it very awkward. Will that be something Ret will have to deal with in Live, or is that merely a bug or otherwise incomplete coding? I've found it exceedingly difficult to keep track of Holy Power because when I use an ability like Judgement, it takes longer than the GCD for that extra Holy Power to actually register. This does not seem to be the case with Crusader Strike.

This is a technical limitation of the proc system. Crusader Strike's holy power isn't a proc but Divine Purpose is. Rogues using Seal Fate for example are pretty familiar with the mechanic. There are some things we could try to improve it since it sounds like it is pretty noticeable.

Q u o t e:
The problem is, despite the changes to the rune model DK DPS specs are often GCD capped in the current Cataclysm beta. It's one of the major mechanical issues DKs currently have. Unholy is frequently GCD capped even in frost presence, which presumably isn't the presence the spec is intended to use.

I don't want to turn this into a DK thread, but this point is relevant to other classes as well.

The DK GCD lock you are describing does not happen to level 83-85 characters as far as we can tell. It does happen to players who copy over their level 80 characters and find themselves with very large amounts of haste as a result of the stat conversion. Think about it. Your character (through no actual decision you made) has only haste and crit instead of haste, crit and mastery as you will when you're higher level. Similar mechanics affect other specs. Feral druids at level 80 have insane crit levels because all of that armor pen became crit.

If you're in greens in Deepholm at 83 and can't spend your GCDs fast enough (for any class), please let us know.

Q u o t e:
if history has taught us anything, RNG is bad. when its low, its useless - when its too high, it defies the point of having a proc the first place.

That's not what my history book says. RNG is very, very good for the game. Without it, every single combat outcome could be predicted with absolute certainty. RNG can be frustrating to deal with as a player. It's a challenge you must learn to navigate and overcome. I would argue the primary source of skill in a WoW player, in PvE anyway, is being able to handle situations that they did not predict.

Art of War will proc often enough to be a significant dps increase (too large in beta at the moment, to be honest). But over the course of a long fight, it will proc with almost 100.0% certainty. If Art of War was a talent that had a 5% chance to proc per battle, then yeah, it would be hopelessly frustrating. It will proc though, so then the issue mostly becomes can you react to the timing of the proc?