Concerning "Shield Swipe".
Hello there forums and whomever of SE there might end up reading this post :)
I wanted to address an issue that has been bothering me for a while and judging from some of the comments I have seen on different parts of these and other forums,
bothering some number of tank players.
The issue being Paladin's skill Shield Swipe. Concerning this thread, I assume most are familiar with the skill in question. For the reference, here is the basics of the skill:
Cost: 40 TP
Damage: 210 Potency
Additional Effect: Pacification
Is on the GCD, can only be used for a few seconds after successfully blocking an attack.
Disclaimer
At the moment, this skill is extremely unused, called by many "a useless skill". Now even though this is not entirely true for the skill does work a role in conserving
TP and also is Paladin's strongest attack in terms of Damage/TP, these factors still does not make it an appealing skill to use.
Below I shall touch these two points in more detail and add my own suggestion of a possible way to make the skill appeal.
First of all, conserving of TP so far hasn’t been an issue. In most of the fights there are moments of rest and movement where tank will regenerate enough TP to
keep the basic Rage of Halone combo rolling on and on. Should TP become an issue, Paladin can always Flash a few times, regenerating TP over the course of a few GCDs.
To add to the usefulness of this method, so far the data points out in the direction that Flash with Shield Oath will “outhate” Shield Swipe.
The pacification effect of the skill is mostly useless in boss fights that matter (Coil and Primals), the bosses being immune to it.
Concerning the Damage/TP, since the skill still is on GCD, a tank player uses the same amount of GCDs over the course of given time
and even though the skill would deal more Damage per TP used, as of factual numbers the Rage of Halone combo does more actual DPS, never to mention the EPS (Enmity per Second).
All in all the skill is a lackluster compared to the toolkit of Paladin’s overall, which in my eyes is a huge shame for the skill holds an amount of thematic value for warrior using a shield:
Bash them in to the face with it! :)
I am not entirely sure what has been the original design intent behind Shield Swipe, and has it lived up to that idea yet/at all.
It is still just a skill and I don’t generally consider each and every ability of any class in question to be useful in every given situation,
but unfortunately there seems very little spot for Shield Swipe to be used in its current implementation.
Suggestion
And as to the end of this post, I present and idea and a suggestion to add more appeal to this underused ability:
Maybe Shield Swipe could be off the GCD, serving both as a more interruptive ability where possible with its pacification
effect and also adding more interaction to the Paladin’s gameplay, especially for players who don’t macro the rotations (such as I).
Giving the ability a recast time of for example 6 – 10 or even 15 seconds and keeping the requirement of a successful block
would keep the ability naturally “un-spammable” and would not affect in any particular amounts on generated Enmity.
As of some purely example numbers, putting the ability on a 15 seconds recast we would get the following:
With Shield Oath active the ability would add 420 Hate Potency to the normal rotation => 420/15 = 28 HPot/second.
Now comparing this to the general Rage of Halone combo which would run twice its course over the 15 seconds (with Shield Oath active):
((300 HPot(Fast Blade) + 1200 HPot(Savage Blade) + 2600 HPot(RoH)) x2) / 15 = 546,666… HPot/second.
As you can see the increase in Hate Potency per Second is around 5 – 10% depending on would the ability be on 7 to 15 seconds recast.
These numbers of Hate Potency are taken from Valks data.
The ability could still have a TP cost, which could cause actual TP starvation should the ability be used on every time it is up during a long fight.
This possibly would add an aspect of planning and make “burying the ability to the basic macro” not so appealing option.
So to summarize as of a TL;DR sort:
Shield Swipe is extremely underused and unfortunately weak ability for numerous reasons.
My suggestion is to move it from the GCD to be an off-GCD skill that has a certain recast time and still has the same prerequisites of use (successfully block an attack).