So, after the patch, how goes it with Paladin?

[Shurrikhan]

First of all, no it's not. Swapping is a loss of at least 500 potency (in and out, average RA potency with slashing debuff). In those 3 GCD, you get .2*250*3+55*(3 or 4)+30 or 40 so you get about 350-400 potency.

Second of all, that's actually all the more reason Halone should be at least 300 potency. They should be encouraging us to use it for the STR debuff if we're OT or when we're MTing and have already established aggro. Making it so low discourages its use except for hate when absolutely necessary.

But the only time when someone would swap (well, half-swap) at 2 steps into a combo for dps reasons is in dropping Shield Oath before GB/RA for their full potency (followed by popping Sword Oath, before having lost more than one AA bonus)... Though it makes no sense to drop Sword Oath early, moving from Shield Oath to Sword Oath isn't necessarily done all at once. Normally you'd need 3 GCDs in Sword to make up for a swap if both oGCDs are up and doing so won't delay GB, 4 otherwise, but it's not because you're dropping a combo. You drop combos only in case of emergencies, which aren't really the situations we make broad rules upon...

As for Rage of Halone, consider the weight of its mitigation vs. your own damage. 10% vs. a Thordan his is a very large difference, much more than 20-40 of your potency, especially in Shield Oath. The problem is mostly that there are no flat-value suppressors/enfeebles in this game to attempt to equalize those ranges in value. Also, keep in mind that the enmity mod for both SB and RoH are both .5x less than equivalent abilities (SS/SS and PS/BB) in the other two jobs. We can always mess with those, or even Shield Oath's enmity multiplier, in order to make to give it a more reasonable value relative to other options (RA) or tanks (relative to DRK or WAR's average enmity during high-potency combos with their minimum mitigation). By the time you place RoH within 40 potency of RA, however, the real choice becomes simple -- Shield Oath MT PLD will use RA no more than once every third combo, period, Sword Oath MT PLDs will drop RA for ROH outright, and OTs PLDs will be sure to include RoH exactly every third. At 270/280, their still a choice to be made in most situations, especially with if SB enmity were increased by .5 to 1x (100-200 ePot) and RoH modifers left the same or reduced by .125-.25 (still an increase of up to 30 ePoT).