Cooldown usage - Ret Pally

[Bruno 0]

What's the best moment to use them? I've been using in the beggining of the fight then whenever possible...

[NightShade 14]

depends on the length of the fight really. In a raid boss fight that will last for 11 minutes or longer I use within the first minute and try to stack cooldowns to maximize a burst output. So for my ret pally I have 5 holy power, with Inquisition active and then pop both Avenging Wrath and Guardian of Ancient Kings. Then it's time to hit as much as I can as fast as I can. Went into the HOF based LFR's last night and though I am 480 as a holy pally I ran in my ret gear which is 460 and still ended up besting half of the DPS on the damage meters in all the fights and sometimes surpassing even more.

Though wrath and guardian do have different cooldown times I delay one a slight amount so that near the end of a long fight I can capitalize on the double stacking again for near the end of the fight and can generally get two uses of them together.

[Fel 42]

@ Bruno,

As a general rule, you want to pop all CDs at the beginning of any encounter unless there is an encounter-specific DPS increasing mechanic looming on the horizon (e.g. Hagara in Dragon Soul). The reason behind this is that at the very beginning all your trinket and enchant procs are off CD, and will proc shortly after combat begins. Activating all your on-use CDs at the start allows you to gain the maximum benefit by stacking them all. Ret paladins in particular ate noteworthy amongst MoP DPS for benefitting hugely from stacking buffs for 'burst' DPS phases.

As Nightshade mentioned, later on in the fight you will want to watch your CDs closely so that you can time them to stack as many as possible again. Since Guardian of Ancient Kings is arguably your biggest CD, and on a 5 minute timer, that will be the one you want to watch most closely so that you can stack it with Avenging Wrath and/or Holy Avenger. Knowing exactly how long to delay any given cooldown so that stacking it is a nett DPS gain... well, that's beyond my expertise. There may be other sites that can help you, but my suspicion is that the answer to that question will vary greatly depending on encounter length, various mechanics, personal ability, talent choice, and so on. Experiment :D

[intrinsc 5]

I do not have any tier gear for t14, but I have found the best results to pop Guardian of Ancient Kings, wait for 10 stacks of Ancient Power to build, then pop a macro that has Avenging Wrath, Holy Avenger, Potion of Mogu Power, and my trinket in one. This works specially well if it's a rather short fight. If it's a longer fight, I pop Holy Avenger earlier, as it has a relatively short cooldown. I just make sure that the big burst macro coincides with 10 stacks of Ancient Power and with the raid cooldown(Heroism, Blood Lust, Time Warp).

[Krazyito 521]

Knowing exactly how long to delay any given cooldown so that stacking it is a nett DPS gain... well, that's beyond my expertise.

Its actually pretty simple really. Lets look at the CD timers

Avenging Wrath = 3 min

GotAK = 5 min

So you can use AW twice (6min) while GotAK is on CD. Then when GotAK comes off CD, AW will have 1 min left on the CD, so you can delay GotAK by this much and pop them both again to start the process over.

Lets say you have the 4pc that reduces the CD of AW

Avenging Wrath = 115s

GotAK = 300s

So lets say we pop both at the same time. Again, you can use AW twice before GotAK comes off

AWx2 = 230s

GotAK = 70s left on CD

Now if you pop AW a 3rd time, (345s) all you need to do is wait 45 seconds after GotAK is off CD for AW to come off CD.

So to conclude, (Not including points where you should save your CD's for % extra damage) you pretty much want to pop Avenging Wrath (and GotAK at start) on CD and wait to use GotAK until Avenging Wrath comes off CD.

I thought of this off the top of my head, and I do not play a Ret pally. So PLEASE, if I am completely wrong, tell me.

[Vladamyr 169]

As others have pointed out, it is somewhat fight dependent. If there is a burn phase or phase where the boss takes additional damage you may need to coincide and delay cooldowns for this period. Generally you would want to pop Guardian of Ancient Kings, wait 10 seconds and then pop all remaining cooldowns. Unless you have the Sanctified Wrath talent in which case you pop all cooldowns at once. Do not delay cooldown usage to get them to stack after that. Simply use them as soon as they come off cooldown unless it looks like they will sync up with very minimal delay (15 seconds maybe).