Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
I don't think pre-6.3 was particularly good at it, honestly. Maybe if we go back to SB? In ShB, you had Atonement change up the rotation, though it wasn't terrible in the sense it replaced a 1-2-3, but it was also weird in that you were supposed to drop Atonements, which isn't at all intuitive and there's no real way to determine that without using parsing/illegal 3rd party add-ons. That is, there was no way just using the game itself to determine that unless you're manually going to record videos of you with a target dummy for hours and then do the math all by hand.
Actually, back in ShB you would drop a Holy Spirit in req and used Confit after 3 HS casts, buffed Atonement via FoF was stronger and with some planning (and enough SkS) you could fit 4 Atonements in a single FoF window. This could change from fight to fight based on optimizations, and wouldn't be possible if you started with the Req opener, but the standard FoF opener would do Atonement shifting.

I would also echo Roe here in that I think pre-6.3 PLD was much better at easing you into the rotation, albeit I think it didn't get "good" until lvl 68 when you finally get req > HS spam. But at the very least the basic flow of Goring > RA > RA > Goring was available by lvl 60. Then by 70 you had Req phase replace an RA > RA every minute with HS spam. Then by 80 you added a big finisher at the end of the HS spam and every second RA combo was Atonement spam instead. It all felt additive.

For current PLD, I actually find lvl 70 somewhat more enjoyable than 80 since I don't think Atonement fits into current PLD all that well. Atonement worked because it merely replaced a RA combo, and with some slight optimization, you could shift and move 1 of those stacks from an unbuffed window to a buffed window.

Current PLD changes rotation weirdly after you get Atonement, it goes from a pseudo 123(4) combo with HS spam every 60s, to having to use up those Atonement stacks, which makes the next HS proc feel delayed. Not to mention all that extra MP just goes to waste. Confiteor makes sense at 70, but then the blade combo makes Req nothing but blade fodder where before, it was your Holy Spirit phase with a big hit somewhere in there. It builds up the habit of "I should use this on Holy Spirit" to "Use 1 stack on Confiteor" and then replaces that with "only use this on Confiteor". Old PLD had a better Req phase IMO, it made sense for your HS phase to continue being your HS phase but with a big finisher at the end, then that big finisher does a RDM and keeps finishing.