Awareness

[Brannigan]

Hi,

let's talk about Awareness. I think that this ability and its associated trait are pretty much useless. Monster critical strike rate is not that high (about 10% from a lv 50 vanguard iirc), and I'm fairly certain that nothing in the Binding Coil of Bahamut is even able to crit.

Among level 50 bosses, Titan is the only one who comes to mind who crits pretty often, but I'm pretty sure that even he can't crit his big attacks like Mountain Buster.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out why this ability exists and why it has a trait. Critical strike immunity is good, but even paladins can only have it active for 20% of the time, during which time you might not have been crit anyway.

[Kal-El]

I put it on with Foresight so 2 less than average skills give an average buff.

[Sephirah]

Yoshi has mentioned several times that while he thinks we should learn the fights, he also thinks players should use their instincts.

I agree this ability is fairly useless 90% of the time, but maybe you just have a feeling that next punch after a mountain buster is gonna crit. Pop this, and now you might not. Unfortunately because the game doesn't tell you, you avoided a crit, nobody can ever really know if it even did anything. But I do kinda think it adds a nice bit of flavor to the class.

Not gonna lie though, I hardly ever use it.

[Garnatian]

I don't see the issue, it's perfectly fine.

[Tyrial]

I know for a fact I've been crit in Turn 1 and 2 by Cadaceus and ADS. That aside, I tend to use it in tandem with Foresight to try and get the most effect, Awareness works really well to normalize the damage you're taking.

[Sapphidia]

I thought similarly about Awareness. I found I was never really using it because in situations where I needed damage reduction, Rampart, Sentinel, Convalescence and Bulwark all served enough purpose, and even though i used awareness/foresight as a kind of ghetto rampart, i was rarely ever using it. Saving it for when other cooldowns were unavailable just meant it was getting used maybe once every 3 instances.

So I macroed Awareness to Fast Blade.

I don't regret it in the slightest. Awareness has a 25 second duration and 120 second cooldown which gives it incredibly long uptime compared to most of your cooldowns. By popping it constantly I'm suffering noticeably less crits over the course of an instance. Does it make a difference? Not hugely, but it's an overall less drain on a healer. Also by popping it automatically it means that I wont be suffering any nasty spike damage at the -start- of a fight which is when spam-happy healers might end up riding my threat.

Since I macroed Awareness into my basic rotation there hasnt been a single time ever where I thought "damn, if only i'd saved awareness so I had a cooldown now". I know technically it's bad practise and I'd never recommend other paladins do it as a matter of course, for me personally it feels like it was a good choice. It's up constantly and my overall toughness is improved.

The problem with Awareness is that it's a smoother of damage. It ensures you dont take any massive spikes if RNG doesnt favor you, but as said if you pop it specifically for certain situations mob crit is so relatively low that it could end up having been useless. It's probably much better on big trash pulls as the number of hits you suffer there will be much more normalised... but being macroed into the basic rotation anyway you'll end up popping it during huge WP trash packs as a matter of course.

I think it's the duration increase trait that makes me think it was intended to be popped pretty constantly like Fight or Flight. 25 seconds is a LONG time for a cooldown that doesnt have that much impact when it's up.

So yeah... don't save Awareness. Pop it constantly. I can pretty much guarantee you wont mourn its loss in Oh No situations unless you're specifically expecting a huge trash pull, by wish point you'll be popping probably all your cooldowns anyway.

[Wyndam]

So I macroed Awareness to Fast Blade.

I've avoided doing anything like this because of animation delays, though now I'm wondering. If you put Fast Blade in first with a /wait and then Awareness after that, you might get around it. It might also be better since Awareness is typically best used while AoE tanking to put it on Flash instead of Fast Blade. The only drawback is it might interfere with Circle of Scorn, which I almost always try to use as a follow up to Flash.

[KittenJitsu]

I've avoided doing anything like this because of animation delays, though now I'm wondering. If you put Fast Blade in first with a /wait and then Awareness after that, you might get around it. It might also be better since Awareness is typically best used while AoE tanking to put it on Flash instead of Fast Blade. The only drawback is it might interfere with Circle of Scorn, which I almost always try to use as a follow up to Flash.

Why not cast CoS first in the macro?

/ac "Circle of Storm" <t>
/ac "Flash" <me> (or is it <t>?) I haven't tested this yet.
/ac "Awareness" <me>

You can smash the marco to make sure you cast CoS flash and cast awareness after everything.

[ShujinIhdura]

It has decent uses in pve, but like mentioned previously, it will definitely shine in pvp. Being uncrittable for such a long time is extremely valuable.

[Wyndam]

Flash is more threat, I always want to lead with it. So perhaps make the macro Flash, CoS, then Awareness. If you were mashing it, Awareness wouldn't go off until after the second flash, but better late than never. Either that or simply put the buttons all next to each other to remind me they go together.