Awareness

[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.