Libram Swapping and Libram of Truth

There's been some discussion on Maintankadin regarding Libram swapping while in combat to maximise the effect of each and I remembered a genuine EH-increasing Libram way back from my BRD days (first Libram I ever owned :)) which increases the Armor from Devotion Aura by 110. Not a lot in itself, but is worth around 280 Effective Health based on my own gear stats using the Tankspot EH Calculator.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting we all run around with Libram of Truth as our only Libram as no doubt the others offer greater effects, but if macro'd into the Libram swapping macros on our abilities it could enhance what we already have. Let's take a standard 969 and add in Libram swaps at the appropriate times:

Quote:

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/equip Libram of the Sacred Shield
/cast Holy Shield

/equip Libram of Defiance
/cast Hammer of the Righteous

/equip Libram of Obstruction
/cast Judgement of Light

/equip Libram of Truth
/cast Shield of Righteousness

/cast Consecration

/equip Libram of Defiance
/cast Hammer of the Righteous

/equip Libram of the Sacred Shield
/cast Holy Shield

/equip Libram of Truth
/cast Shield of Righteousness

/equip Libram of Obstruction
/cast Judgement of Light

/equip Libram of Defiance
/cast Hammer of the Righteous

/equip Libram of Truth
/cast Consecration

/cast Shield of Righteousness

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Now my understanding is that in order for a Libram swapping to work you need a very lag-free environment to avoid triggering additional GCDs but it can work. Is using four different Librams overkill? Would it lead to too narrow a margin for error?

I guess my question is twofold: could Libram swapping to this scale work and is the extra 110 Armor from Libram of Truth worth getting, even if only used in parts of our rotation, due to it being our only true Effective Health Libram?

I'll try this on a Target Dummy when I get home to see if it ends up causing too many GCD clashes or if it could be workable.

Thoughts, discussion, blatant flaming all welcome :)

Don't libram switching trigger the gcd? Or even plain forbidden in combat? I remember that kind of stuff has been battled by the devs since 2.2

I believe you're able to switch Librams in combat as they're treated as a ranged weapon (unless they changed this in 3.2, but it was definitely the case in 3.1). As for them triggering a GCD, my understanding (not having tried it yet) is that the GCD only occurs if you're a little late with your rotation, hence my comments about a low-latency environment being necessary.

I'll have a play around with it tonight and see if/how it works and report back here. I'm not sure I necessarily like it (seems somewhat outside of the spirit of what's intended by Blizzard) but purely as an experiment in min/maxing the value of my Librams I thought I'd open up a discussion and play around with it.

I tested it for you.
Libram swapping is possible in combat.
It starts a global cooldown.
You can do it while a global cooldown is running, in that case it restarts the global cooldown.
So, as far as I can see, to not lose any time due to libram swapping, you have to use the libram immediatly after using a skill.

Note that I've read somewhere that a lot of gear with on-equip effects seem to have a hidden 30second cooldown built in before being active. (I think the thread was about shamen swapping totems, but the same principle does apply.)

What's more important to me is the question of whether you should do it at all. You don't need to do so to tank well, and Blizzard has been pretty vocal that this is not a game mechanic they want to see used.
Is minmaxing things so important for you that you feel the need to force the game designers to heap up restrictions on a system that works reasonably well?

I'm also wondering if it even works with procs. If you use a trinket and un-equip it out of combat, you lose the effect. Do you lose a libram effect buff as soon as you swap it out?

New patch notes on the PTR. Might check out the last one. A lot of Tanks were doing this.


Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.

• Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Protection

• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
• Hammer of the Righteous: The damage from this ability is now considered physical instead of Holy. The threat generated by the ability has been increased such that it will continue to do approximately the same threat it did when it was Holy damage.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Retribution

• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

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Originally Posted by Martie

What's more important to me is the question of whether you should do it at all. You don't need to do so to tank well, and Blizzard has been pretty vocal that this is not a game mechanic they want to see used.
Is minmaxing things so important for you that you feel the need to force the game designers to heap up restrictions on a system that works reasonably well?

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In short, the libram restrictions are a result of shaman trading relics during casting in BC. It was originally possible to trade a relic during spell casting, thus shaman loaded up macros such as "/cast Healing Wave, /equip Healing Wave Relic" to maximize the effectiveness. The GCD reset occurred during spell cast, so any spell with a cast time longer than 1.5 seconds 'hid' the GCD. However, since the relic was equipped prior to spell completion, the effect was added upon the spell.

In 2.4, the GCD was set to trigger during any item swap. The above macro's died, as the rest interrupted spellcasting. (It also let me clear half the macros I had at the time on my shaman :o)

Note in the current 3.2.2 PTR, the buffs given by librams (and relic, idols & sigils) are lost upon switching. I advise against even starting to rebuild UIs as long as that change is present. If your librams don't have a buff effect, then you could still macro them, but I do believe Blizzard is going to continue this trend. It may be necessary to lock the relic slot like other armor items, but that would probably interfer with non-relic classes' weapon/wand slots as a consequence.

As for "reasonably well", Blizzard has stated (repeatedly) they don't want the game playing for the players, and macros/add-ons can perform the decision that is the responsibility of the player. Is it fair that a player can have multiple minibuffs over someone else, merely thanks to a class specific item (relic) & macros? Note that switching itself isn't bad, and currently still allowed on 3.2.2 PTR.

I do have macros set to trade relics (/castsequence through a list, specifically), so I can adapt within a GCD by tapping that button. For my shaman, I flip to the primary healing I'm doing (either AoE spam or focused, single target). On my DK, I manually flip when I want to use a threat sigil instead of the usually avoidance sigil.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Martie

Is minmaxing things so important for you that you feel the need to force the game designers to heap up restrictions on a system that works reasonably well?

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Not at all - as I said, this is purely an experiment to satisfy my own curioscity and nothing more. I'm curious about the class I play and how certain things could work more than I am intending to use this in any real situation (for one thing, I'd be too worried about additional GCD triggers affecting my rotation).

There's also the part we haven't really touched upon which is whether there is any remaining benefit at all to the Libram of Truth and its small EH bonus in certain physical-damage fights over, for example, Libram of Obstruction. What if you weren't block-capped with raid buffs? Is having a little bit more armor more attractive in that setting?