Zealotry

Note: I made this post in the suggestions forum as well, but I am posting it here as well in the hope of hearing more people's opinions.

I'll preface this by saying that I believe the basic concept of zealotry, which is a skill that increases the holy power generation of retribution paladins, and does so reliably, is a solid one. However, I believe that the current implementation is not ideal. Note that throughout this post I will assume that zealotry would be changed to make it effective, even if it retained a similar implementation, when I am making comparisons. Currently it is not, and I am aware of this, but I will assume that it would be. There is a TLDR version at the bottom, but I would appreciate you reading the entire post and my reasoning first.

At the moment zealotry is a moderate dps cooldown that increases the generation of holypower from crusader strikes to three per strike, allowing you to get off some extra holy power moves during its duration, with most of them presumably being templar's verdicts. I believe there are a few fundamental issues with this approach however. First, the most obvious.

Zealotry will be the second dps cooldown for retribution paladins. In and of itself this isn't odd; rogues and warriors for example have several as well. However, retribution is rather infamous for having, shall we say, far more burst than was reasonable in the past. Naturally this will lead to a feeling of apprehension from giving them a second dps cooldown, which could presumably be stacked with avenging wrath for greater burst.

This could undoubtedly be balanced; seal of truth, or indeed, holy power itself, are good examples of this. However, were it changed from a dps cooldown to something else instead, then the issue could be avoided entirely. Retributions burst would not then need to be balanced around the assumption that the paladin may have used both of their cooldowns, and avenging wrath, and by extension hammer of wrath, could simply be what paladins extra burst is balanced around.

Furthermore, zealotry has an unfortunate effect on the retribution rotation. It may have been the hope that zealotry would change the retribution rotation while active. It accomplishes this if that was indeed considered a goal, but consider what it changes the rotation to. You hit crusader strike on cooldown as per the usual, except always followed by a templar's verdict where allowing, with presumably fewer of the filler moved used inbetween. This in fact makes the paladins rotation even more binary, which surely isn't a good thing if allowing skill to make a bigger difference is truly the goal as stated.

Now, on to that something else zealotry could become that I mentioned before. I believe the class would be better served if zealotry became a strike. A very special strike. A strike that would generate holy power much like crusader's strike, but instead of only one charge, it would generate three, much like a crusader strike under the effect of zealotry will do currently. With a reasonable cooldown, say fifteen to thirty seconds, I believe it could make the player more engaged in the retribution rotation, and allow the more skilled paladins to display their skill. There are three major reasons for this.