BS will not overwrite BoM, unless BS is improved and BoM isn't

No point to me posting this as it's already covered 100% by the first post in the thread

The 'penalty' you refer to is illusory. That's precisely my point. I'm a big hands-on kinda guy, so I'll take you up on that challenge. (I did this some time ago, but I just went back to the dummy and did it again.)

After Several 1 min tests:
J-CS-Cons-DS = 8 J, 8 CS, 5 DS.
J-DS-CS-Cons = 8 J, 8 CS, 5 DS (But fewer ticks of cons).

There is no big win in the long run as you suggested earlier. Sticking a random ability in between J and CS basically means CS gets delayed for a couple globals every-other judgment cycle instead of one second each cycle.

Using CS-J-Cons-DS, on the other hand, results in 8 J, 10 CS, 5 DS, and the same ticks of cons as with the standard priority system.

And what magical cycle are you talking about? All I did was map out the typical FCFS system, one with your suggestion, and one using CS first. How is 'use CS before J' any more 'magical' than your suggestion of 'Use DS between J and CS?'

I guess you're referring to Banka's rotation, which had been dismissed before your first post on the subject. But maping out 6 minutes worth of a cycle that repeats every 21 seconds seems rather pointless in any event...

When you priorize Judgement (This is necessary, because it is the far most dmg spell), it is not possible to cast more CS then judgements(7second J). You can try to think up every possible rotation you want, but this won't change anything, that you cannot cast more CS then Judgements.

Even if you delay CS after judegment, you have the same cooldown clash 7 seconds later.

So it doesn't matter when you cast CS after your judgement. it is only interesting to decide when to cast CS if you have the Gladiator libram.

On fancypants theorycrafting versus the reality of raiding

Yup, it's me again with the 21 second rotation. This time I'm going to change gear by bashing on it a bit

While it looks awesome on paper to have a rotation like this it falls apart due to the nature of fights requiring you to move and focus on other things rather than blindly looking at your cooldowns and tracking what point in your rotation you're currently at.

1)Moving

Movement often means that you find yourself in a position where you cannot use an ability at the time point stated in the rotation, which makes a FCFS priority system much easier to manage

2)Paying attention to things around you

Watching for void zones on the ground and the like makes it very hard to remember the little oddities and quirks baked into the rotation, such as when to use divine plea and when to reseal etc

When faced with having your seal about to run out or having your mana attrition rate being a bit higher than you'd expected you're most likely better off just smacking those abilities in whenever a gap where you don't have a DPS ability available pops up

So basically we're really back to square one with FCFS again, with a couple of twists

1)when after judging you find that both CS and DS are available, use DS first and CS second. This will prevent a clash between DS and judgement later on and improve your DPS
2)when after judging you find that both CS and Consecrate are available, use consecrate first and CS second, for the same reason as above (except with consecrate causing the clash)

Now. Most paladins seem to have already been using either the former or the latter of the two, but feel free to try out BOTH for a potential whooping 1%+ increase to overall damage done with really no disadvantages attached


While it pains me to bash on my own beautiful rotation, it really ended up serving no purpose but potentially confusing you as to which ability you should be using at what point etc.

Only possible exception would be a silly fight where you can just stand still and watch your rotation 100% of the time, such as patchwerk.
Having said that, the other points of the rotation offer very slim benefits (less than 1%) over just using FCFS with the priority system stated above

Regardless: the actual difference in DPS is so small that it won't matter much either way.
Setup, gear and RNG will end up changing it up a whole lot more

Ok, long post, hope you all can understand the jumble of words I've typed.

A FCFS rotation list with 4-pc bonus:

0.0 Judgement
1.5 Cons
3.0 CS
4.5 DS
6.0 ability (HW)
7.5 Judgement
9.0 CS
10.5 abiity (exo)
12.0 Cons
13.5 ability (DP)
15.0 Judgement/CS (clash)
16.5 DS (to avoid further Judgement/CS clashes)
18.0 CS
19.5 ability (??)
21.0 ability (??)
22.5 Judgement

You'll probably run out of abilities to use at the 19.5 and 21s slots, so it may be simplified to:

16.5 DS
18.0 CS
twiddle your thumbs (enough to fit in another ability if present)
22.0 Judgement
23.5 Cons
25.0 CS
26.5 DS

Etc, which is essentially a repeat of the same cycle again after 22s.

Every 22s this will net you: 3 Judgements, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 cons, and 4 GCD slots for various abilities.
Compared to Banka's 21s cycle which gives: 3 Judgements, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 cons, and 2 GCD slots for various abilities.

In fact for every such GCD slots you do not use an ability (and choose to wait out the 1 sec instead), will shorten the FCFS "cycle" by 0.5s. So if you skip 2 such GCD cycles (i.e. the first and 3rd one), you'll essentially get Banka's 21s cycle.

However, question is, is lengthening the cycle by 1s worth the 2 extra GCD slots? I'm really not sure. Would the sheer damage we get from Judgements mean that we should strictly cast it every 7s without delay? Or would it be worth it delaying it a little here and there to squeeze in other abilities?

I'm tempted to go with the longer, FCFS cycle, i.e. its ok to delay Judgements by a little. Without the T7 bonus, with Judgements on 8s CD, by FCFS principle, we do not always cast Judgement every 8s anyway, yet this has been proven to be the way to get the highest dps. Similarly, even though now we get the 4-pc bonus, it doesn;t mean that strictly casting Judgement every 7s will net you the highest dps. I would think the old FCFS principle still holds true to achieve highest possible dps.

However, this then brings us to another related issue: 4-pc vs best-in-slot.

The 4-pc bonus by itself nets us about 3% additional dps. However, since we are not strictly using Judgements every 7s when using the FCFS principle, we are not strictly increasing our dps by 3%. So the question now is, by not actually giving us 3% more dps, would it still be better to use the 4-pc bonus instead of best-in-slot gear?

Lol

Should have waited for this post before posting my own lengthy one.

FCFS is still the way to go for me, even for fights like patchwerk. 21s rotations is just a bit much for my feeble mind to remember in the heat of battle.. ;p

But my second question still remains, with FCFS, we're not Judging every 7s, and hence technically we do not get a 3% dps increase from the 4-pc bonus. Would best-in-gear items come close to equaling or even surpassing the T7/7.5 sets then?

This is fallacy is repeated so many times it really intrigues me. Prioritizing CS results in the same number of judgments over a period of time. The 5th judgment is pushed back one second compared to the standard FCFS judgment. The only way this could possibly net a loss in dps is if the mob died precisely during that 1 second. But you're also doing an extra CS for every 4 judgments. So by the 16th judgment you have done 4 extra CS. So even if the mob dies during that one second of pushback, prioritizing CS nets a damage increase... (CS-J-Cons-DS doesnt repeat as early as the standard FCFS, so it may be that the 16th judgment is actually pushed back 2 seconds from the standard. Still puts CS-J ahead...)

edit: spelling

4part T7 versus best in slot off-set gear:

Getting 4partT7 is a LOT easier than getting those best in slot items, and going best in slot REQUIRES having both the best in slot chest AND the gloves.
Both of which will most likely have to be pried out of the cold, dead hands of your fellow raiders.

Having said that, even grabbing those 2 items to replace set gear ups your DPS by less than 2% assuming optimum gear across the board (according to RAWR anyhows).
Having acess to the gladiator libram will increase this (albeit very slightly) due to the 7 sec judgement resulting in fewer crusader strike casts.

Now. Even if the 4-part bonus should end up giving less than a 3% benefit, it is highly unlikely that it would drop down to below the 2% required for the best in slot items to pull ahead

Simply put: With the current gear selection, 4 part T7 is king, though not by an astronomical ammount.
Personally I really prefer the rotation made possible with 7 sec judgement, but I'd assume this point will become moot once T8 gear comes out (would be boring if they put the SAME set bonuses on there)

Having said all this, do pick those items up if able.
Once Ulduar comes out you'll no doubt quickly find options strong enough to replace the T7 parts with, so during a transition period having those items available may well result in a nice boost to your DPS

And answering the post above: show me the rotation that gives this result if you please (with 4part T7). I'd be most interested in comparing it to mine and seeing how they actually compare

Seeing as how you seem to enjoy making 1 minute DPS tests. Here is mine:

1 minute of boss dummy: 9judgements, 9CS, 6DS, 6 consecrate casts (the actual rotation would end at 63 secs, but the last damaging ability, which was CS number 9, is cast at 59.5 secs, so you might opt to not include it depending on latency etc)

It's not a rotation. It's FCFS-- CS-J-Cons-DS.

Since those results don't even appear to be possible on paper, I have to question your method of keeping time...

Agreed. My original post ended up proposing a rotation that was too complex.
The part that would make it extraordinarily hard to maintain was adding select positions on where to use abilities apart from the usual judge, CS, DS and consecrate.
Any benefit from doing this would indeed be of purely academic concern (and most likely well under 1% DPS boost for a MONSTROUS ammount of hassle) and thus it's no longer anything I'd be advocating

The rotation instead boils down to the following: Standard FCFS with highest DPS on prio
on 20%+health this will always be judgement.

Added to this I recommend to adhering to 2 rules regarding cooldown clashing that I've described a few posts prior to this one.
So really it's not so much about a rotation as it is clashing resolution setup in such a manner as to achieve (near) optimal results

These rules become void once HoW comes into play as maintaining 7 secs on judgement will be suboptimal from this point on. FCFS takes over from here

as soon as you have to move around etc the rotation will fall apart.
However, once you get one of the aforementioned cooldown clashes you're actually BACK IN ROTATION, which means they ALWAYS apply

When facing a non-undead opponent you'll be down to pretty much resealing and divine plea as far as additional abilities go. The 2.5sec gap at the end of the rotation pretty much BEGS to be filled with those, enabling you to sustain a 21 sec rotation

Target dummy testing continued: The rotation in itself is infact very robust. The only thing that causes it to average more than 21 seconds is your average time to cast judgement once it comes back from cooldown.
Assuming that is 100ms, the 9th CS will infact land at 60.5 secs or so, causing it to fall out of the 1 min window.
Mine indeed landed at 61 seconds due to latency etc

It works, mate, it really does

Anyhows. Not gonna make any more posts on the subject as I've already covered the finer points of the rotation several times over and I'm agreeing that it's starting to feel like beating a dead horse.
From this point onwards, just feel free to PM me with any questions regarding the rotation.

Feel free to ignore the mammoth essay one, though. It just ended up being too impractical to ever apply in a real boss encounter


Edit. Actually, I misread my logs and failed at remembering my own rotation. I hit the 9th CS at the 60 second mark. In the ideal circumstance (with 0 delays and latency, which won't happen) the ability would have hit at the 59 second mark. You really DO get 3 judges, 3 CS, 2 DS, 2 consecrates in every single 21 second rotation.