Consecration

TLDR: Q: Why the long delay on Consecration? A: Because we wanted it to be situational instead of something you always press on cooldown.

Question: [video link] Consecration, it was basically a 12-second cooldown originally and it fit well into the ret paladin rotation. Or it could be a nice starter and continuation for AoE threat generation for prot paladin. What was your intention on taking that to a 1-minute cooldown?

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street: Basically, we wanted Consecration to be more situational where when you have those legendary streaming adds coming in. That's when you want to drop Consecration to try to trap them, when you have a large group you're trying to control.

Once it has a very short cooldown, you can more or less use it when you want. Then there's not much decision-making. The decision is, "Is Consecrate expired? If so, cast it again and cast it again." We want it to be more like, "Is now a good time to cast it, or am I going to need it again in a few seconds from now?" But at the same time, we won't balance the threat generation around having it up all of the time.

Kris Zierhut: We also made a conscious decision in the case of threat to try to reduce the constant AoE damage coming out of their single-target rotation. That was one of the other reasons of increasing the cooldown on Consecration.

Zealotry

TLDR: Q: Zealotry seems to clash a lot with of things like ret's mastery and Divine Purpose. Is there any plan to change it? A: There are still some issues. We're going to stop it from burning the 3 holy power as one fix. We might make other changes. Just because it gives you holy power when other things give you holy power doesn't necessarily means it clashes.

Question: [video link] ... the Zealotry talent. On paper it sounds good, but in practice, I feel like it kind of clashes with both our mastery as well as the Divine Purpose talent. Because if we pop Zealotry and we get Hand of Light procs, it's effectively reducing, y'know, how many Crusader Strikes we can generate. As well as while Zealotry is active, any holy power we get from Divine Purpose is kind of wasted. So, do you think that currently that design is kind of clashing and is there any intent to re-evaluate Zealotry as a talent?

Kris Zierhut: We're still looking at it. There are some problems, like you mentioned. Some people are trying to claim that Zealotry isn't a DPS increase at all. We're a little confused by that. One change that we did recently is that you can activate at the 3 holy powers required, but it doesn't burn the holy powers. So, you can start immediately with being to be able to use those 3 holy powers instead of having to wait to build up again to use it.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street: It's also off the [global cooldown] now.

Kris Zierhut: If it's not feeling like it's good enough or doesn't quite work right, we'll certainly make more polish changes. Like one simple change might make Divine Purpose procs generate 3 holy power while it's active -- if we needed to make some additional change, maybe that.

Ion Hazzikostas: I wouldn't necessarily say that they clash with each other. As long as Zealotry's still a good button to push and talents like Divine Purpose and stats like mastery are desirable on their own. The fact that when one is up, the value of the others is lessened isn't necessarily problematic. It's not different than, say, a combat rogue who has talents and things that increase energy generation and also an activated ability, Adrenaline Rush, that gives them massive amounts of energy. When one is in effect, the other is less valuable, but they're both very, very good in their own right.

Vengeance

TLDR: Q: There's issues with Vengeance not doing well if you have a lot of avoids. Is this intended? A: A bit. If it ends up being a problem, we'll adjust it. However, it's there to help out and not to be required.

Question: [video link] (from Anafielle at Righteous Defense) I was wondering if you were happy with the current implementation of Vengeance? Right now, the way it's working, you can run into an avoidance streak and you won't get enough stacks. It also punishes survival gearing to an extent, because when you're gearing for survival you'll have less stacks of Vengeance. I was just wondering if you're happy with the way that is.

Owen Landgren: So, gearing for survival versus threat has always been a trade-off to a certain extent. Back in the day, you had your block and expertise pieces and then you had your actual just dodge/parry gear. So, having that trade-off and having to make that decision I think is something interesting, certainly. That being said, when Vengeance does fall off, it does feel pretty crappy. But, if it gets to the point where you're just constantly avoiding everything and it's just falling off, then we'll have to re-examine it.

Ion Hazzikostas: And Vengeance is a rolling average over a period of time so that having a couple of dodges or a couple of parries in a row shouldn't seriously impact you. But that said, Vengeance isn't designed to be mandatory. You should be able to get the job done in terms of tanking without it. And it's there mainly to keep you -- to allow tanks to continue to scale with DPS in raid settings and in much higher tiers of gear where you have a fully synergized raid doing massive amounts of DPS. And in Lich King, people relied on Tricks of the Trade and Misdirect being used on cooldown to keep up with that. And we'd like to have that be more on the tank's shoulders and make them feel like they have the ability to put out the necessary threat and also do a good bit of damage at the same time.

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The Light and How to Swing It tries to help paladins cope with the dark times coming in Cataclysm. See the upcoming paladin changes the expansion will bring. Wrath is coming to a close and the final showdown with the Lich King is here. With Cataclysm soon heating things up, will you be ready?

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