Pally tanking in Cata

As I said in the other thread just now, you shouldn't be dependent on Vengeance to maintain threat in 5-player dungeons. Vengeance scales slowly and falls off quickly for that reason -- we don't want that to be the system that lets you stay ahead. It's intended to help with raid scaling, not be a crutch for poor dps.

As we have said several times, we don't want Prot paladins to fill every GCD. You also shouldn't need to in order to maintain threat.

If you are having difficulties in PTR or on Beta, please let us know, but be as specific as you can. Who were you losing threat to? What kind of dps were they doing? Was it an AE or single target scenario? How was their gear relative to yours? We're unlikely to just buff threat generation based on generic "I have threat problems" reports. Specificity is the key here. It could very well be a bug on the side of the tank or the dps that is causing the problem.

Remember that we very recently buffed the threat generation of Righteous Fury (and similar mechanics for the other tanks), so try and base your perceptions on very recent experiences. Things change pretty quickly at this stage.

Q u o t e:
Do you honestly consider it good game design that we have to sit around and do literally nothing? That we have enough empty GCDs that we HAVE to use our AOE abilities in our single target rotation in order to have less than 1/4th downtime while tanking? Isn't this exactly the opposite of your original stated goal of differentiating single target and AOE rotations?

Yes, and we have said this a lot, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. In a nutshell, the problem with filling every single GCD is it gives you no room to do anything else. If you're called upon to do something special or even run away or even look around to see how the fight is going, you don't have the cognitive space to do so. If we give you a proc to use and your rotation is so locked then you can't use the proc, then we have a problem. If you literally can't stand to go 1.5 sec every now and then without hitting a button, then our game has serious problems. :(

I know this is really weird for paladins who just have the muscle memory of always hitting something -- anything -- every GCD. It will take some getting used. Just try to evaluate whether it's truly not fun or whether it's just really different. Having any class that hits a button every 1.5 seconds is something we're trying to move away from though. We don't think it's good for the game.

You should not be using Hammer of the Righteous or Inquisition on single target fights, because there are better alternatives. Holy Wrath is designed to be used in both single target or group fights. (And if you can't use Holy Wrath because of breaking CC concerns, then back the target away or just hold off on Holy Wrath for the time being -- same as a warrior using Thunder Clap). I would use Avenger's Shield on both single target or group fights, though it can be used in a lot of different ways, so if you need to silence a caster, then I would use some common sense there. I would use Consecrate for groups, particularly for spawning or moving groups. If you have the mana to use it single target, then go for it. Exorcism is probably too expensive to ever be a serious Protection ability.

Q u o t e:
But I'd say this, from the personal experience, it happens when you're paired with eager dps that just don't know how to assist or focus on a single target -- but what is aggravating to paladins is that, worst case scenario, a dps will pull off on the mob that is the farthest away from you, blow your taunts and still be in empty cooldowns because you have nothing else to hit and solidify your aggro.

We don't want tank threat to be so high that the dps are absolved of all responsibility. If players are on the wrong targets, that is a L2P problem. If the mage opens with Arcane Blast before you even get a hit in, that is a L2P problem. If your group feels like they have to wait 6-10 seconds before they can start attacking, then that's either a tank problem or a problem on our end. Likewise, if your group feels constantly throttled several seconds or minutes into the fight, then either you aren't generating as much threat as you are capable of, or our numbers are preventing you from doing so.

Q u o t e:
I got a question for you GC: Are you afraid the changes are gonna alienate new tanks, decreasing the total number of tanks overall? What about the changes in the population between all classes that tank?

This is a tricky one, and we are having similar conversations regarding healing. I feel that sometimes the question that is really getting asked is "Shouldn't tanking / healing be so easy that a chimp could do it?" The answer to that is no. We think we probably lost some tanks or healers because their roles weren't as engaging as they used to be. The opposite is extreme is "Should tanking or healing be so frustrating and thankless that nobody wants to do it?" The answer to that of course is no.

It's true that if tanking and healing have more going on, then we might lose some bad tanks and healers that were only capable of doing their job when things were super easy. I don't think we can be held hostage by those players though. We want tanking and healing to be fun for people who like to tank and heal -- not so easy that victory is assured for anyone.

I used simple comparisons like easy vs. hard above, but it's not quite that simple either. A better word is "engaging." When threat is trivial, then tanking becomes a lot more boring. When mana is irrelevant, then healing becomes a lot more boring. Driving a car, even in a race, isn't about just mashing down the accelerator as hard as you can. There are a lot of decisions to be made about various sorts of resources. Managing them well lets the good drivers maximize their overall speed.

Q u o t e:
What about prot warriors. Whenever we aren't shield slaming, shockwaving, revenging, or charging around, we're devastating. In fact its important that we revenge/ devastate as much as possible in order to maintain threat, and with Impending Victory, survivability towards the end of a boss fight and a healer's mana bar.

And yet we can still function. We can still respond to fight mechanics. The only difference I can perceive between prot warriors and prot paladins right now is that no matter what, whether there's something else to do or not, we have a button to push that intertwines with our overall rotation.

If you have enough rage that you can always push something no matter what, then you have too much rage.

Q u o t e:
Let me preface by saying that I think Single Target is pretty close to fine. The gaps don't feel like they hurt me too much and I usually have things to do. However, if the goal was to get AE abilities out of the single target rotation, I think you might have missed the mark on that, as their is not real reason not to hit Holy Wrath and Consecration in a single target setting. However this is problematic when faced with a boss like Isiset in HoO, when she's together i feel i need to save Holy Wrath and Cons and some HP to make sure that I don't lose the adds, and yet i need them for single threat or I'll lose her.

This keeps coming up, so let me just spell it out.

Single target abilities: Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, Judgement, Holy Wrath, Consecrate (maybe), Avenger's Shield.

AE abilities: Hammer of the Righteous, Inquisition, Judgement, Holy Wrath, Consecrate, Avenger's Shield.

That's ignoring things like Divine Protection, Word of Glory, Hammer of Justice, Hammer of Wrath, etc.

I wouldn't just hit all of those on cooldown though. Sometimes you want to position Consecrate, as you point out, or save Avenger's Shield to deal with adds. Sometimes you risk breaking CC. Sometimes you might want to blow a cooldown or use a Hand or something else.

Q u o t e:
Would you PLEASE reconsider this design. This is infuriatingly UNFUN. SItting there tunnel visioned on your cds waiting for a spell to light up is boring. Running up to a mob and having all your abilities on cd is frustrating. Desperately struggling to hold threat and then hitting two dead global cooldowns make me want to throw my computer out the window. THIS IS HORRIBLE. Poster after poster has said this is unfun. I thought that is what you wanted for your game to be fun? How can you be pleased by this design with all this negative feedback?

Also could you add a rotation feedback option so that i can submit this in game too. Because i HATE this rotation.

Reconsider dead gcds please.

You shouldn't have to desperately struggle to hold threat. That's not the intent.

Player feedback is nearly always negative. Folks with an axe to grind easily outnumber the folks who like something or are indifferent. It's never as simple as just trying to divine the ratio of negative to positive feedback. When the feedback is as simple as "I want to hit a button every 1.5 seconds in order to have fun" then that's going to be very hard to address, given our design for players not to do that.

Q u o t e:

Wouldn't a better design plan be that we're able to hit 2 or more buttons every cooldown and you really need to decide which one is the best at that moment to push - wouldn't that make for more interesting gameplay?

We don't think so. It might be fun when you're looking at a target dummy, but then in an actual encounter with other players, you might find yourself sitting there looking at those two buttons without realizing that everyone else in the group is dead. Because you have such little time to look at anything besides those buttons, you aren't really playing as a group. You're just focused -- solely -- on maximizing your own rotation.

We had a lot of complaints in LK that the complexity of managing a class rotation was at odds with the complexity we also add to the boss encounters. If anything we want to buy more space for the boss encounters, because those are at least varied, rather than simplify those while complexifying your rotation, which just makes every encounter feel the same. At the very least, we want to slow the game down a little so that you have more opportunity to make decisions with your head instead of every wipe being a mistake of the fingers.

This is a subjective call, and we don't expect everyone to agree with it, but that's where we're coming from.

Q u o t e:

And what about the Affliction warlock or the Elemental Shaman or the healer who always has something to push? Sure, cast time - but honestly - always something to push.

That's an important distinction in our minds. Cast times means you aren't pushing something every GCD. A class designed to cast a spell every 1.5 sec I think would be dreadful to play. When you're casting a spell you (as a player) have downtime, even if your character does not.

Q u o t e:
I did run into periods of 4.5 second gaps. I think that's a little much to ask a tank to wait. It's also a little much to ask DPS to wait 13.5 seconds before starting DPS (which is currently the case with paladins).

Nobody should have to wait that long. If you open with Avenger's Shield and follow that with a Judgement or Crusader's Strike, you should be fine as long as the dps aren't blowing all their cooldowns immediately.

Make sure your feedback includes the 125% threat modifier. It doesn't help anything if we buff something that was already sufficiently buffed.

Q u o t e:
Why do we have a rage dump then? If we shouldn't have enough rage to always be able to use something, we shouldn't need an extra ability to burn off rage...

You're quibbling. Rage isn't a constant resource. Sometimes you have a lot. Sometimes you don't have enough. When you have a lot, use Heroic Strike. When you don't have enough, use a shout or wait until you have enough. If you always have enough to hit everything, then you don't really have a resource. We want every class to have a resource . Prot paladins generally don't run out of mana, but they do have to manage cooldowns and Holy Power.

I see two different arguments keep coming up.

The first is that you can't generate enough threat without more buttons to push. This isn't our design and it sounds like threat may still just be too tight in some circumstances. More GCDs does not have to be the answer to threat situations though. If Avenger's Shield hit for 60K then you'd have a healthy threat lead for a long time.

The second argument is that you just like having to hit something every single global. This isn't a "I can't function" complaint like the one above. It's a personal preference. We don't think there is anything sacred about the 1.5 sec GCD. I think current paladins have just grown accustomed to hitting a button every 1.5 sec. But we don't think the current paladin plays well. We don't like the 969 rotation. If you do, I understand, but it isn't coming back.

Let's get the threat situation ironed out and see how the Protadin plays for you then. At worst some of you may find the spec boring, but a lot of players find it boring on live, so we're not really out much there. If playing it is less EZ mode on the other hand, it might be more interesting to you or perhaps to other players who never paid the class much attention before.

Q u o t e:
A lot of this problem is due to the fact that we can't hold off on using AS for interrupting purposes, because holding aggro is insanely hard (read: impossible) without it. Although if it does too little damage, Grand Crusader ceases to be a proc to react to.

My solution is because tank DPS is too low relative to damage dealers, buff CS (and similar abilities on the other tanks). If CS hit harder, we could possibly delay using AS or other abilities for pickups.

I'm kind of against buffing seal damage. Nobody REALLY thinks passive damage is fun, do we? If we did, might as well put it back on Holy Shield.

That logic makes sense to me. If you have to hit every ability NOW NOW NOW then you can't save anything for the right moment. I also agree that Crusader Strike would make more sense to buff than passive damage. We have a lot of room to bring Crusader Strike up for Prot since you're always using a one-handed weapon.

Q u o t e:

That's just the problem, Consecration and Holy Wrath are TERRABAD whenever CC is in play. There are far too many places that are so small you can't just say "Hey guys, move over here and kill that thing WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY over here away from everything else". Examples include HoO, Tol'Vir, some places in ToT etc etc. Until Holy Wrath OR Consecration gets to a point that they dont break CCed targets, they require far too much work to consider part of a single target rotation (that goes double for Ret because you'll be an LOLadin if you break your own CC!).

Sorry. In this case it just sounds like you want to just be able to hit your buttons no matter what the circumstances are. Even back when warriors were the only real tank, they had to make sure not to break CC. "Too much work" with regard to heroics doesn't strike me as a compelling argument.

Q u o t e:
I am *VERY* *EVER* *SO* *FRUSTRATED* that one of my best threat tools, my best long range attack, my ONLY Multi target threat tool that doesn't break CC is apparently my interrupt too.

And NEWS FLASH: Grand Crusader DOES NOT FIX THIS. If anything else, it makes me think Blizzard isn't listening to us every time it pops!

You can use HoJ too.

Q u o t e:
Except you've accomplished the exact opposite. Protection Pally "used" to be a great spec where you didn't have to stare at your action bar so you could actually instead watch the raid debuffs, boss cooldowns, and "don't stand in the fire" type of events.

This was a problem though, because the Protection paladin was a fairly easy spec to play well while the other 3 tanks had a lot more they had to manage. It was frustrating for the warriors, druid and death knights to have to give it their all just to keep up with a novice paladin. (To be fair, the other option is just to make everyone more autopiloty.)

Now don't get me wrong. We often ask a lot of tanks in terms of moving the boss, knowing when the big hits are coming, and so on. We don't want the paladin rotation to be John Madden, and we don't everything to collapse if you fail to hit Crusader Strike at the right time. I'm getting the impression that threat is on the razor's edge for a lot of you, which is going to make everything feel too restrictive and frustrating. It could be a level 80 issue (since we have spent most of our time balancing at 85) or it could be that players are doing different things that we are doing internally or seeing on the beta. We watch a lot of dungeons, but we don't catch everything.

Q u o t e:
Why is the global cooldown 1.5 seconds if you don't want players doing something every 1.5 seconds

Sometimes doing something every 1.5 sec (which paladins can do) and always doing something every 1.5 sec are pretty different situations. Nobody is describing a paladin rotation where you hit a button every 3 sec. Even the biggest complaints are that you sometimes hit 2 or rarely 3 GCD gaps if you don't get enough procs.

Q u o t e:
I think most Rogues would disagree that pressing a button every GCD is "dreadful", as well.

Rogues don't push a button every GCD. They can use up a lot of GCDs, but they often have to wait for energy as well.

In my experience, only some warriors, paladins and DKs are complaining about not being able to hit a button every global, because most other players have always played that way.

Q u o t e:
Judgment is considered AE? How so? Consecrate is perfectly fine for single target, and actually seems worthwhile with points in HG. HW is fantastic single target as well, and AS is well awesome.

Judgement doesn't do AE threat, but since it's not competing with anything else and gives you mana and perhaps haste, you probably want to push it anyway.

Consecrate doesn't do very high threat in Cataclysm. Its utility is the fact that it is constantly ticking. That can be really useful in an AE situation. It's not strictly needed single target, but if you have the mana, it's not going to hurt anything either.

Q u o t e:
AS (on pull) judgment CS (nothing) (nothing) CS (nothing) (judgment) CS shield of the righteous

Can you honestly tell me that the above rotation will hold threat for single target? I can barely hold threat using the filler AE added in. Perhaps if the abilities hit harder that might work.

If threat is tight, I would try and position the mobs so you can use Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield procs. If that is impossible, then yes, your rotation should be more than sufficient for single-target threat.

I've become convinced reading this thread though that something is going on threat-wise that we're not seeing, so we'll look into it in more detail.

Q u o t e:
I think the gaps he's talking about happen not at the beginning of the fight but in the middle of the fight.

Threat shouldn't be so dodgy in the middle of a fight that doing nothing for 2 GCDs will cause someone to pull. Think about it -- few tanks are hit and expertise capped, so they are going to fail to connect sometimes.

If your threat is that tight, then something else is going on.

Q u o t e:
If Paladins are to be expected to interrupt as much as any other tank class, then they should be given rebuke or something like it at a baseline.

We don't balance anything around the assumption of frequent, off the GCD tank interrupts. Prot paladins can occasionally interrupt when they want to reposition a caster or when everyone else is snoozing or whatever. It's a quality of life issue at best, but not a balance one.

Q u o t e:
Here's a more concrete example: the big pulls in Grim Batol with the elemental minions where there are up to 6 or 7? mobs in the pull. CC pull, start off with judgement, once mobs are getting close Consecrate, back up then Avenger's Shield before they reach me, when they do CS the skull and then Holy Wrath. Now unless I get a Grand Crusade proc, most DPS will pull threat off of me before I get to 3 HP to get a Shield of the Righteous off. And like I said, it gets even worse when I need to save Avenger's Shield and/or Holy Wrath to pick up extra stuff.

Consecrate's threat isn't huge, so let's just ignore that one. So in essence you are using Judgement to pull then using Avenger's Shield when it's safe (meaning it won't break your CC). There is nothing wrong with that pull. A warrior in a similar situation would use Heroic Throw or Charge in and back up before using Shockwave. If the dps aren't waiting for your Avenger's Shield, then they're just being impatient. If they are waiting for your Avenger's Shield and still pulling aggro, then it sounds like it's a threat modifier problem on our end somewhere.

Q u o t e:
edit: Threat is fine on the latest PTR. It's just boring to have 2 GCDs in a row where you can't do anything.

A lot of players in this thread seem to disagree with you though. In their environment, they are constantly at risk for someone pulling off of them. I can see why that would be nail-biting.

Q u o t e:
Avenger's Shield ---- doesn't ---- break CC

Yes. You are correct. That was a rogue buff -- otherwise paladins would only run with mages and others who could execute their CC after the pull

Q u o t e:
Serious question here GC. Are you at all concerned that this about face with tank threat versus the typical "the tank has hit it once so now I'll open up with my OMGWTFPEWPEWPEWPEWPEW attacks" has come far far too late to realistically fix?

No. We aren't going to make tanking and healing so numbingly easy that you can compensate for dps being as terrible as they can possibly be. That isn't fair to the tanks and healers.

Dungeon Finder is a great part of the game. But its existence isn't going to cause us to design everything for the lowest common denominator. If you get a bad player in your group, give them some pointers. If they refuse to listen, kick them. If you can't kick them, then bail. You're a tank -- your queue is short. They have a lot more to lose.

Q u o t e:
DPS aren't waiting because for the last year they've been trained not to. It's hard to even get a feel for threat on the PTR. I have tanked on my warrior since the game came out and I have a pretty clear recollection of what it was like to tank before we all became AoE tanking godlings, and I can tell you that with the DPS not giving you a few seconds to get threat on everything on the PTR I can't tell where my threat is

So... we have to let you be able to generate titanic threat because you might get in a group with really bad players? :)

If paladin threat was terrible and warrior threat was awesome, such that players in pugs groaned whenever they got a paladin tank, then we'd have a problem. I don't think that is going to be the case though. It's really not the case on live today for any tank.

Q u o t e:
You missed my point. I'm saying that on the PTR at present it's really hard to even get a good feel for threat. The overtuned DPS can unload on mobs and kill them so fast it's hard to tell if you have them under control or not. It's not like back in Vanilla or BC when a mob would take off running at a player and if your taunt was on CD and said player wasn't smart he was dead. Now they simply kill it before it takes more than a few steps. How is threat supposed to feel in that environment? We won't get a good feel for it in heroics until Cata ships.. that's why I said maybe anyone still raiding when the patch goes live might give better input.

Okay, I see where you're coming from. On the PTR, you're probably running content that players have individually run dozens and dozens of times and that there is a good chance everyone outgears. Even if the dps get sloppy and pull, they probably won't even die before you get the situation under control again.

Running 85 heroics in quest greens and dungeon blues is going to be a pretty different experience. It will put stress on Dungeon Finder, for the heroics anyway -- of that we are pretty and unfortunately confident.

Q u o t e:
This being said, SKC (SKS) would love you to come to an instance run or ten with us. We (those of us currently awake) all have and play, at the top levels, Paladins, and have, since this game existed. You can bring a Prot Paladin and show us that we are wrong (you have to put up with me talking about rets "rotation" though). We just passed a unanimous vote in vent. We're also posting in this thread with you.

You know that would actually be a lot of fun. Just have this fake character that I could jump around and play with various groups without having to worry about concealing my identity.

I'm sure there would be a ton of "Check out this parse -- GC doesn't know how to gem for Affliction - no wonder locks suck" too.

Q u o t e:
The problem is (and Ghostcrawler very much disagrees with me on this) is CURRENTLY Inquisition is King. I have never found a place where I would RATHER use SotR over Inq. NEVER. Yes, SotR is capable of giving you really big numbers, but I can holy threat without any problems as long as I keep Inq up. Heck, I am always coming behind our monster Warlock as #2 or MAYBE #3 on DPS. I simply dont have threat problems.

It's hard for me to disagree that that is your experience. I can say it's not our intent that you just use Inquisition for everything. Shield of the Righteous should out-perform it on single targets. It could be that it doesn't out-perform it enough, or it could be that your threat is sufficiently high with Inquisition that there is no need to go higher. I haven't seen anyone math out yet why Inquisition would beat Shield for single target, but it's possible we're missing something. I saw a tank use Seal of Insight the other day, so players definitely do different things than we anticipate.

Q u o t e:

You guys don't... do... this?

No wonder there's such a huge disconnect between the players and the developers.

If I played, as Ghostcrawler, don't you think you would have heard about it? I play a lot of characters, but I try to keep my identity secret. We also watch a lot of runs, typically without you knowing about it.

Q u o t e:
The overall threat is not the problem. The inability to react during dead GCDs is a problem, and has nothing to do with overall threat generation.

If my Crusader Strike generates a million, billion threat with one hit, that doesn't help me when DPS pulls aggro on a new mob and all my abilities are on cooldown. In those situations, all I can do is taunt, autoattack, and apologise when they die within my rotational deadzone.

I can understand if you think it's fun to fill every GCD. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that you're at a huge liability if abilities happen to be on (short) cooldowns when things go awry. A Prot warrior can't assume Shield Slam will always be there for them, and they certainly don't hold it just in case. Even if emergencies do happen, that is exactly what taunts are for. This kind of logic reminds me of the "streaming adds" scenario that warriors tried to make a big deal of in LK mostly because, I suspect, they were jealous of Consecrate.

Q u o t e:

Was that a careful choice of wording? Are you trying to say that the person you replied to only thinks it's fun to fill a GCD?

I was saying this makes sense to me, even if we disagree with it as a design:

"I don't like having gaps in my rotation."

This, on the other hand, I think is just a weak attempt to try and bolster the above opinion:

"If I have gaps in my rotation, I can't pick up adds."

Q u o t e:
This is a really odd example, because prot warriors will be able to press Devastate, or Revenge, or Mocking Blow, or Thunderclap, or Shockwave, or anything they really want until Shield Slam comes back up.

I don't think this is a winnable argument, because each side will just bring out the "but you're discounting X" point.

However. Mocking Blow is gone and Revenge requires that the target already be beating on you. TClap and Shockwave have cooldowns. So the warrior in our increasingly contrived example literally has Devastate that they can hit. I will concede that by virtue of having more cooldowns that paladins are more likely to be in a situation without anything on cooldown. If they are in such an unusual situation that even HoJ is on cooldown ("I already used it!") and they can't use Righteous Defense or Hand of Reckoning ("Er, there is another tank so I can't taunt.") then they might have to wait a few seconds before they can hit the target.

Call me cynical, but I still don't think this is a compelling argument. I think it's "I want to have a button I can hit every GCD" masquerading as a compelling argument. Which is fine. Not every argument has to be about mechanics. It's okay just to have a subjective, personal preference for something.

As you might have surmised, I spent a lot of time in this thread gathering information because we were concerned about player perceptions of the paladin rotation. That conversation in turn spawned additional, less-public conversations and ultimately resulted in our convening a distinguished panel of experts in our secret mountain hideaway for a discussion of paladin tanking mechanics.

While we still have grave concerns about players being able to fill every GCD, we also don't want to change paladin tanking so much that it is unrecognizable for long-term paladins. Therefore, we are going to try Crusader Strike on a 3 second cooldown for Protection only. Hammer of the Righteous will have the same cooldown. This will allow Protection to fill in almost every gap in the rotation and not be waiting so long on every cooldown, which should help the rotation feel more active. It will also allow Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous to sometimes be up at the same time. That change is pretty significant and will no doubt invite all sorts of theorycrafting on the right way to manage Holy Power. We still have additional grave concerns that once paladins can have both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous up simultaneously that they will feel underpowered and therefore frustrated whenever they lack sufficient Holy Power for 100% uptime on both. We'll just have to see how that feels.

While we still think an off the GCD interrupt isn't an essential tool for a tank, we also don't think it's going to break anything for paladins to have one either. Our eventual solution is to let Vindication's ability to let HoJ interrupt also take HoJ off of the global cooldown. That change will require new tech, so it's not something you're likely to see anytime soon, but you can know that it's in our long term plans. Again, we don't think the interrupt issue is a critical problem that must be solved today. The rotation one in the previous paragraph is a bigger deal.

I have to add the standard no promises clause to all of the above, because I have learned that I need to do that.

Q u o t e:
will CS and hammer of the righteous share a cooldown? I'm not really understanding...hotr keeps it's current cooldown or does it share the 3 second one with CS?

Crusader Strike - 3 sec cooldown. Hammer of the Righteous - 3 sec cooldown. Cooldown shared for both.

Q u o t e:
FWIW, Hammer of the Righteous is pretty damn weak. Not Thunderclap weak (for that you have my condolences) but it alone has a hard time holding off of incidental AOE like Chain Lightning at the moment. Whether or not this is slated to be changed, I don't know.

We realized that the AE portion of Hammer of the Righteous didn't scale with Vengeance. While it's true that Prot paladins gain some spell power, they get it from Strength, not the attack power provided by Vengeance. We changed Hammer to scale with attack power, which should mean it hits harder with Vengeance. That will provide some of the damage boost you are looking for.

Q u o t e:
Was AOE threat lacking enough to lower HotR cooldown as well, or was the mechanic of locking out hotr for 3s when using crusader strike while maintaining its 4.5s cooldown too complex to implement over just lowering the CD of both?

It wasn't a threat concern. We just wanted you to be able to use one or the other based on the situation and not have to also keep the cooldown in mind. Once of the big concerns brought up in the thread was feeling reactive -- being able to deal with a runner or before it becomes a runner. Having Hammer on a shorter cooldown will also help with that.

Q u o t e:
I'm sorry I disagree with people here, but I don't like bieng GCD locked, its not fun, its not a test of skill, its a test of your ability to get your rotation into muscle memory and alternate CS with other abilities. I see no reason that cast random doesn't fill in the second half of our rotation as it stands...

We agree, Llowelyn. Our hope is that the changes I described above still provide some gaps without crossing the line into too many unpredictable gaps, which is it how it felt for a lot of paladins. I do have concerns that several months from now we're going to see "Stop making me use Judgement! I don't have the GCDs to use it, and I CAN'T delay Crusader Strike, or I am missing out on Holy Power generation and my threat goes to pot!"

Unrelated, we like Inquisition as an ability for Protection. It means that all your Holy Power doesn't automatically go to Shield of the Righteous. You might sometimes be able to have both layered now. That was a concern we had, but it also may prove interesting as long as one isn't always the right choice and as long as paladins don't start complaining when they don't have enough Holy Power generation to always power both.