Sword AND Board: Looking at Paladin in a different light

[TouchandFeel]

@Shurrikhan

I find it better to swap Oaths then pop HG as it means you don't use up that first gcd with an oath swap. You might get hit by an auto-attack or two but those can be pretty negligible damage.

Also, two other potential things to keep in mind. First if you stack FoF and BldBth with the Oath swap you will increase your gains. Second you can time the oath swaps so you do it during a time in which you wouldn't be hitting the target/boss/etc anyways, such as when you have to move out out of an aoe or the target moves to another position and you have to go to them. That also can help minimize any loss of dps due to losing a gcd from the swap.

The calculations are pretty good, although they change if you factor in the stuff listed above, but also don't forget the damage ticks from Circle and Fracture, iirc those are affected by the ShO damage debuff as well and FoF too I think, been a while since I last checked that.


I feel that a lot of people are getting bogged down on their definition of "stance/oath dancing", so let's get past the semantics of the term and instead just call it strategic oath swapping.

[Wintersandman]

snip.

Shurrikhan and you highlighted my points exactly. Battle conditions have to be perfect to make oath dancing worth while. For me personally I have to be able to be out of the respective oath for an extended period (longer than 10 seconds). Sure you 'may' be able to squeeze in 10% damage but timing, aoes, etc all have to be perfect. I am far from a perfectionist and most tanks I see are far from that as well. If Oath's were oGCD and didn't interrupt combo's it would make more sense. But as it stands for real gains you would have to make it longer than 10s.

Edit: This is also ignoring potential lag.

[Shurrikhan]

@Shurrikhan
The calculations are pretty good, although they change if you factor in the stuff listed above, but also don't forget the damage ticks from Circle and Fracture, iirc those are affected by the ShO damage debuff as well and FoF too I think, been a while since I last checked that.

Since all damage(application is snapshotted, there will be no damage loss to a Fracture/CoS applied in Sword and ticking in Shield.

And I agree that in anywhere but bleeding-edge content one ought to swap Oaths before hitting HG, but it was just a place to start calculations from.

The point at which Sword Oath becomes reasonable will then be one step earlier, and the lead greatly increased each time the player has a multiple of 3 + 1 offset GCDs in Sword.

Edit: 4 GCD sample of swapping oaths after HG up.