WotLK Threat Cycles

[Slept]

I did some theory crafting on possible threat cycles paladins will be using in WotLK.


Abilities

Holy Shield: 10 second duration, 8 second cooldown, causes a GCD.

Consecration: 8 second duration, 8 second cooldown, causes a GCD.

Hammer of the Righteous: 6 second cooldown, causes a GCD.

Shield of Righteousness: 6 second cooldown, causes a GCD.

Judgement: 8 to 10 second cooldown, does not cause a GCD.


Since Judgement does not cause a GCD and doesn't consume the paladin's active seal in WotLK, it can be used every time the cooldown is up. Also, due to the change in mechanics, seals no longer need to be refreshed as frequently, and can be refreshed during free GCDs in the paladins threat cycle. Because of these changes, Judging and casting Seals will not be considered in the threat rotation.


Holy Shield's Overlap

The reduction in Holy Shield's cooldown gives a 2 second overlap between the the ability coming off cooldown and the ability expiring. This is notable because the overlap is longer than the 1.5 second GCD, allowing the paladin to squeeze in another ability before needing to refresh Holy Shield.


Skill Priorities

Since the relative threat generation of each ability is unknown at this time, a generic approach to the threat cycles was taken. Each ability was given a priority level for a given cycle. The aim was to maximise the number of times each ability could be used, provided it did not interfere with a higher priority ability.

This approach identified two possible threat cycles:


Simple Threat Cycle

The priority order for the Simple Threat Cycle is: Holy Shield > Consecration > Hammer of the Righteous > Shield of Righteousness

The resultant threat cycle repeats every 8 seconds and has complete Holy Shield coverage. The cycle requires 4 GCDs, giving a period of 2 seconds free to use other abilties, such as refreshing Seals or Exorcism. Four GCDs requires 6 seconds, so the cycle has a 75% "GCD duty."


Optimal Threat Cycle

The Optimal Threat Cycle has the following priority order: Holy Shield > Hammer of the Righteous > Consecration > Shield of Righteousness

This produced a threat cycle that repeats every 18 seconds and still maintains complete Holy Shield coverage. The cycle requires 10 global cooldowns, resulting in 83.33% GCD duty. The higher density of GCDs indicates a greater ability usage, which should produce higher TPS. There are two 1.5 second intervals available every cycle to use additional abilities.





Threat Cycles in Practise

Assuming the following keybindings:
Holy Shield: 1
Consecration: 2
Hammer of the Righteous: 3
Shield of Righteousness: 4

The Simple Threat Cycle requires the following input: 1, 2, 3, 4 every 8 seconds.

The Optimal Threat Cycle requires these inputs: 1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 1, 4, 2, 3, 4 every 18 seconds. While this may appear daunting, the rotation is determined by the first 4 buttons presses. After which, the abilites are used as soon as their cooldowns and GCD allows.


Final Notes

Since Holy Shield and Consecration have 8 second cooldowns, they are effectively interchangable. Similarly, Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness have 6 second cooldowns and can be considered interchangeable as well. Changing the order of the abilities may be beneficial for initial single-target threat versus initial multi-target threat.

Latency was not considered in this analysis.

[Teloc]

Nice data there, now even with the optimal one you can still weave in extra things, which with AS being a .5 cast might be useful to toss in every 30 if we have the guarded by the light buff up. Since it will give us a chunk of burst threat weaved in there.

Basically every 18 seconds we get 2 GCD to play with. Now if seal weaving SoR and SoV on bosses is useful..we could use those 2 gcd to weave until 35% or if its a undead/demon mob.

[QuantumDelta]

Even with a 100% proc rate SoV weaving wont work very well with only 2 spare GCDs so you'll have to budget an extra G-....... Wait.

No one will be using consecration anyway.

[Slept]

Why would you not use consecration? It's still going to be our main AoE tanking ability, and it will still be decent single target TPS.

[Teloc]

Cause it costs almost 2k mana to use at max rank. Other skills are scaling in other ways. Its all theory right now. So who knows we might still toss some consecration out there, just don't think we will be spamming it now.

[Slept]

Rank 7 is 1250 mana, but many of the spell tooltips are incorrect on Wowhead, so it seems a little premature to write the ability off. I imagine rank 6 would be perfectly servicable even if the rank 7 tooltip turns out to be accurate.

It would be odd if Blizzard gave us a nerfed rank 7 and did nothing to rank 6. Perhaps we'll see some further adjustments.

[edit]Rank 7 would actually be a rather nice mana dump in it's current form, which would allow for more threat generation from spiritual attunement when tanking hard hitting bosses.[/edit]

[Teloc]

yeah, my bad, must of been thinking of another skill. rank 8 is 1475.

Maybe blizzard increased the mana cost so we don't use it and afk tank.

[QuantumDelta]

Why would you not use consecration? It's still going to be our main AoE tanking ability, and it will still be decent single target TPS.

It's going to cost 20% of your mana pool every 8 seconds.

1475 mana
Requiring 2459 DPS income to keep it up (alone, just consecration).


HoTR and ShoR = 6% base mana on 6 second CD = (Lets assume base mana doesn't go through the roof for the benefit of these abilities) 300 Mana = 500 DPS required each, Holy shield is about that, so 1.5k.

Already we're up to 4000 DPS requirement for a rotation and that's not including Judgement/Seals/Salv/Avenger Shield (also expensive)...

If every boss hits as hard as Brutallus, we'll be fine.
Lol.

[Slept]

Holy Shield has the same mana cost for the final 3 ranks, so don't take those mana costs too seriously.

[Teloc]

This is why I said, its all theory right now since we don't know what were going to do for a rotation yet, and if costs are going to stay so high, and were we are going to get a mana pool from.

[Obrimos]

This is why I said, its all theory right now since we don't know what were going to do for a rotation yet, and if costs are going to stay so high, and were we are going to get a mana pool from.

Most of the mana theorycrafting also can't take into account the talent that reduces costs by half for a few of our abilities since we don't know what boss tanking looks like yet.

With the amount of BV we could be getting from Strength, tanking may become less chancy and more about a constant flow of damage. (Unless you're a DK)

[QuantumDelta]

In a standard tank and spank fight the reduction that talent represents is 4% mana over the entire course of a fight with average gear for T5 content this expac.