I've been following the Ret Thread on the BattleNet forums (it's been hard for the past several pages, ugh), and one thing that Bryiah said really stuck with me. Namely, (s)he said that with Fires of Justice, the following rotation provided us with something to press every GCD:
CS -> BoJ -> CS -> CS -> Judge -> TV -> CS -> TV -> Repeat
So, not being happy to take their word for it, I decided to plot it out:
Code:
GCDs [-11-][-22-][-33-][-44-][-55-][-66-][-77-][-88-]
CS 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 (charges)
CS 3.0 1.5 3.0 1.5 3.0 1.5 3.0 1.5 (cd)
CS x - x x - - x - (usage)
BoJ 1.5 x 10.5 9.0 7.5 6.0 4.5 3.0 (cd & usage)
Judge 6.0 4.5 3.0 1.5 x 10.5 9.0 7.5 (cd & usage)
HP 1 3 4 5 5 2 3 0
TV - - - - - x - x
Well I'll be damned. (Note: Haste does not change this - just reduces the the time between them.) Amusingly, the despite Fires having a HP reduction proc, it's completely inconsequential. If we try to use 2 TVs back to back (Judge -> TV -> TV -> CS), we'll end up sitting on a charge of CS for one GCD (#7) causing us to stall and be unable to hit 5 HP before the next Judgement cycle. Sure, it'll still reduce the price of TV, but we'll be stuck with the above rotation, capping HP be damned.
Of course, this is
with Fires of Justice.
Without it, it's simple to say "we can't build 5 HP per Judgment cycle." This means that our other rotation changing talents (Zeal, Greater Judgment, and Divine Hammer) all will cause us to stall out our rotation with the base 12s cooldown.
This also assumes that we'll have 100% uptime on target. If we don't (or have a target switch in X seconds while we're at the Judgment step) we either have to freeze the whole rotation just plainly get wrecked. Transitioning between single target and aoe will be awkward because any deviation from the GCD locked rotation will cause stalls (eg: waiting for adds to spawn will mean either holding back builders, using builders at 5hp, and if we try to burst down adds by using DS at 3 HP, then we'll be hosed going back to single target because).
By the way, having a lower CD on Judgment (say 6s, equal to its duration) won't really mean much because we don't generate HP fast enough to make use of it. Using it every 6s would make the gap between TVs
longer because we'd be spending more GCDs on Judgment than building HP.
I've been concerned about Judgment's baseline uptime for a while, but I've finally been able to put this into words. Our resource generation is too slow and resource pool too small to make use of it. By having it on such a "high" uptime (50%) we don't have the flexibility to use it intelligently. I still think we (at least) need a larger HP pool so we can continue to pool even when holding off on Judgment is right move. Additionally, I think Judgment should have charges, that way we don't get unduly punished for having to hold off our window. As another option, we should build HP extremely fast, capping be damned. We're already throttled by Judgment's cooldown.
Additionally, I'd like to point out that, unsurprisingly, the majority of our damage comes from our Judgment window - and the gap will increase as we gain more mastery. The consequence of this is that finishing mobs that survive our Judgment window will suck because our generators hit weakly, and using an entire Judgment on a low health mob would be wasteful. It also means that as we gain Mastery, the benefit of using DS (which doesn't scale aside from a single target) to AoE will decrease.
Lastly, as much as people didn't like Inquisition, Judgment is
more punishing than it was. Why? Without Inquisition, we still had Hand of Light that increased the damage of our important abilities. Sure, Hand of Light benefited from Inquisition, but it didn't completely gut our damage if it fell off. With Divine Judgment, it would be as if our old Hand of Light ONLY functioned during Inquisition, and if you let it fall off, your mastery disappeared. That's... pretty damn harsh.
--- edit ---
If the above resonates and sounds constructive enough, could I convince someone to repost this on the Beta forum? @
Ulthane, perhaps?
If you'd like to attribute the post with a character,
this is me.