edit-------------------
since the most recent patch holy power generation imo isn't so much of an issue, but free GCD's are as i often find myself waiting long periods of time for either AoW to proc instant exorcism or for other abilities to come off cooldown, as such i have posted updated idea's later in the thread so this first post is mostly redundant
------------------------


i've been having a bit of a gameplay issue with art of war, no not the big 'W' that pops up in the centre of the screen when it procs, but the nature of the talent.

the art of war: rank 3/3: increases the damage by 60% and critical strike damage by 100% of your exorcism. in addition, your melee attacks have a 30% chance to reduce the cast time of your next exorcism spell by 100%. this effect cannot be triggered while exorcism is on cooldown.

my issue is that in conjunction with divine purpose:

divine purpose: rank 2/2: the following attacks have a 40% chance to generate holy power:
judgement
exorcism
templars verdict
divine storm
inquisition
holy wrath

exorcism becomes too proccy, if you get my meaning.

in the retribution rotation at the moment our only 100% guaranteed holy power generating ability is crusader strike with a 4.5sec cooldown. so you have to rely upon 3 abilities to generate holy power, judgement, exorcism and holy wrath. all with an independant 40% proc chance to generate holy power from divine purpose. you need to be able to rely on these 3 specific abilities generating holy power to be able to ramp up your holy power stacks in order to perform at maximum efficiency, judgement currently has an 8 sec CD, holy wrath 15sec and exorcism 6sec.

the problem is that exorcism sits in 2 separate roll tables to generate holy power, firstly the art of war needs to proc off of melee attacks whilst exorcism is off cooldown (cooldown part currently bugged) and then it has to proc divine purpose in order to generate holy power. this leaves open a lot of possible free space in our rotations from bad luck if neither procs, as exorcism being our shortest cooldown of the 3 divine purpose abilities will be relied upon most often to proc, and not once, but twice to enable a smooth rotation and reasonably reliant holy power income source.

the most obvious solution in my mind would be to make exorcism an instant cast ability for ret, but that pretty much renders the melee proc of the art of war useless especially since the instant flash of light was removed, however, the proc from melee attacks was a good consistent one and since it's only function as a proc is for exorcism, which i would suggest is made instant anyway, it seems a shame to get rid of such a nice mechanic so i'd like to see this kind of change:

the art of war: rank 3/3: increases the damage by 60% and critical strike damage by 100% of your exorcism. in addition, reduces the cast time of exorcism by 100%

divine purpose: rank 2/2: your melee attacks have a 30% chance for the following attacks to generate holy power:
judgement
exorcism
templars verdict
divine storm
inquisition
holy wrath
this effect cannot be triggered more than once per Xsec

i think this would be an improvement to our current situation as we seem overly reliant on procs, besides it would certainly be easier to balance a rotation around 1 proc rate rather than 2. it would also help a great deal in silence situations to be able to gain holy power through an auto attack. i cant say that this would totally solve our current situation but i certainly think it'd be a large step in the right direction.

---

Q u o t e:
in the retribution rotation at the moment our only 100% guaranteed holy power generating ability is crusader strike with a 4.5sec cooldown. so you have to rely upon 3 abilities to generate holy power, judgement, exorcism and holy wrath. all with an independant 40% proc chance to generate holy power from divine purpose. you need to be able to rely on these 3 specific abilities generating holy power to be able to ramp up your holy power stacks in order to perform at maximum efficiency, judgement currently has an 8 sec CD, holy wrath 15sec and exorcism 6sec.

---

It seems to me you are saying there are these abilities that sometimes grant you a charge of Holy Power, but that in order to get Holy Power as fast as possible you need to get lucky several times, so therefore the abilities should just always give you Holy Power.

The rotation is designed around 3 Crusader Strikes. Sometimes it takes fewer than that and you get to use Templar's Verdict sooner. You're not balanced around a maximum efficiency that is dependent on the stars randomly aligning. You're balanced around average efficiency that corresponds to the averages generated by the appropriate random numbers.

I think there is some tension between Exorcism potentially generating Holy Power such that you're not sure what to do when you have 3 charges -- use the Templar's Verdict and potentially waste the Exorcism Holy Power, or use the Exorcism and delay the next Templar's Verdict -- but that seems like an isolated problem (and perhaps not even a major one) and not a reason to make Holy Power generation more consistent. Consistency is what we're trying to downplay in the Ret rotation because it doesn't allow great players to outperform merely good ones.