With Improved Judgement, you can up your steady state DPS to:
50 + 5.67%+dmg SoV DPS + 75 + 5.4%+dmg JoV DPS
for 125 + 11.07%+dmg DPS.
SoR will be at:
30 + 9%+dmg + 27.5 + 9.2%+dmg
for 57.5 + 18.2%+dmg DPS.

This puts the +dmg breakpoint at:
125 + .11dmg = 57.5 + .182dmg
dmg = 937.5.

It's also interesting to consider the effects of Reckoning - an early Reckoning proc has the potential to drastically shorten the ramping-up time of SoV; on the other hand, a Reckoning during the steady 5 -stack state adds nothing except white damage for SoV, whereas it's very beneficial to SoR.

I really don't understand the disscussion here, trash is better to have SoR dou to the snap aggro, while 1 mobs and bosses are much better to hold aggro on using SoV.

SoV is a very nice move to a paladin arsenal mostly because it offers more variety then its horde's counterpart (SoB is very similiar to SoC), when I was holy/prot spec I used it exlusively while questing and grinding. Now that I am prot/retri it varies between SoC and SoV depending on the mob, with a 2-hander you'll get a SoV proc everytime and the judgement is very nice, find SoV quite usefull against melee type mobs, Caster type mobs tho its SoC/JoC all the way.

From a tanking stand point SoV just stands out on boss encounters, been tanking all 5 men (Non Heroic) dungeons besides CoT and Mechanar (Former was dou to group restrictions and the later I just haven't been to yet) and aggro was the last of my worries. I never really think a paladin tank will ever have that much spell damage to make SoR in any way a higher threat move on a single target, the amount of item points spell damage takes is pretty big, and mitigation is allways the more important stat to get. Out of my gear I have only 3 items that are purely paladin's "tank items", that extra aggro is quite meaningless most of the time. The only time I can think of having more spell damage has oppose to mitigation more usefull is while aoe tanking certain mobs, but I don't really feel like carrying 2 sets of gear just for that (Bags are too full allready).

Bottom line is, the way I see it a palatank who doesn't use SoV miss on a lot, it really is a great seal that really ups your aggro and gives you constant scaling threat. The real question that should be asked is, how to tank a boss without the use of a Holy Shield? But thats a discussion for another thread. (We'll get to that tommorow too tired now ;))

Im still hoping someone can answer some of the questions in my first post, but until then I will run with the model I built.
I will try and build in a reckoning style proc but it is hard to simulate, I will probably put in a pseudo enemy swing timer. Given that in my model the stack very rarely drops I would think that over the time scale I was modeling reckoning will seriouly favour SoR, the damage bonus will be something along the lines of: 2*0.1*10/enemy attack speed, or 2/enemy attack speed. Its overly simplistic but fairly accurate as an esitmate.

Of course that does not include judgement damage.

I think the whole point of this thread is to debate this very point.
Its not clear you do actually lose anything by not using SoV except on very pure "tank and spank" fights where the tank is never stunned, feared, or knocked back. The effect keeping SoV competative is that the base judgement damage is far better than the base SoR judgement damage. Purely on the effects of the procs, without reckoning, my model is showing that SoR matches SoV at around +200 damage, and that is easily achievable with an epic spell damage sword, spell power enchant, and spell threads on your legs. With reckoning and a 3.0 boss attack speed that gap is going to close to almost nothing.

I will try and fix my model up with reckoning, and then post some numbers to show the results I am basing these views upon.

I actually dissagree, SoV is a preferable move in a boss that gives you a short stun or a knockback, as it still ticking during that time. The real question is how frequently is that certain stun and how many people it affects, I doubt if a boss stuns only you constantly that half the time you don't even damage him (Or block) you would be able to keep aggro with SoV or SoR, maybe with a bit of conse spam its achievable but very rarely you will actually do that in a boss situation (Usually the is just no need and its a waste of mana).

Here is a sample output from my programme.
This assumes:
1) SoV is resistable but SoR is not
2) The paladin has 5/5 reckoning
3) !% melee hit and 1% spell hit

So, infact, even at reasonable levels of +damage SoR is beating SoV.
None of the above includes the judgements.

PS: Anyway to change my quote to coureir font ?
Edit: Tthanks Apate

use code instead of quote

Slightly misleading, in that JoV has a lot more base damage (At 5 stack) than JoR, which would make a major difference in the +dmg break even point. There's also no reason to not judge either seal.


SoV is 20 PPM. Weapons slower than than 3.0 AS have 20 swings per minute or less. Thus, they would have a 100% proc rate in order to be as close to 20 PPM as possible.
(My experience is that my 3.8 AS 2H gets procs every time it connects)

JoV is 600 damage when applied to a full stack, SoR is 231 on average.
So if we take a 17% resistance, and improved judgement, that is (369*.83)/8 = 38.3 dps difference. with my numbers posted above, the differnece between SoV and SoR is going to be minimal if anything at 200 spell damage, and if there is a difference it is likely to favour SoR.

Slightly related but extremely annoying point I got confirmed today:

One more interesting tidbit for SoV and weapon speed to consider:

Assuming we start with a 1 stack, there's a

(2.5/3)^4 = 48% chance for a 2.50 AS weapon to build up a 5 stack on the next 4 consecutive hits.
(2.6/3)^4 = 56% for 2.6 AS
(2.7/3)^4 = 66% for 2.7 AS
(2.8/3)^4 = 76% for 2.8 AS
(2.9/3)^4 = 87% for 2.9 AS


Since these weapons are all slower than 3.0, they have a good chance of building up a 2 stack before the first tick of the SoV DoT. This essentially lowers the ramping penalty over the first 12 seconds by 120 damage.
ie:
0 second - 1st stack applied
2.X second - swing, 2nd stack applied
3 second - 2 stack damage tick.
. . .


On the flip side, for weapons slower than 3.0 AS, (ie: 2H weapons) there is no ramping penalty on SoV (in terms of damage done; there is still the higher risk of a miss) until AS equals or exceeds 15/3 = 3.75.

example: 3.7 AS weapon

0 second - 1 stack SoV applied
3 second - 1 stack SoV tick
3.7 second - swing, 2 stack SoV applied
6 second - 2 stack SoV tick
7.4 second - swing, 3 stack SoV applied
9 second - 3 stack SoV tick
11.1 second - swing, 4 stack SoV applied
12 second - 4 stack SoV tick
14.8 second - swing, 5 stack SoV applied
15 second - 5 stack SoV tick


If you look back at section III, where I examined the ramping penalty for a 3.0 AS weapon, you can see that the damage done over the initial 12 second ramping period is identical with a 3.7 AS as with a 3.0 AS weapon.

Bit of a side question but I've been away on holiday and I'm only just installing the xpac today... Have they fixed imp sor in the holy tree to work after +dmg from gear/items yet or does it still apply before?

Indeed, I'm already starved enough for talent points in a tanking build as it is, iSoR scaling with gear would make this even more so.

I thought I would add, after a mana tombs run with a shaman, that windfury will increase SoR damage, while it will not (noticeably) affect SoV damage.

Interesting tidbit about SoR: Seal of Righteousness hits are also considered an additional melee strike for the purposes of additional weapon procs; for example, a Fiery Weapon enchant has a chance to proc off both the white hit and the SoR hit. Flametongue totem acts the same way: With Righteousness up, a paladin will get two Flametongue hits per swing, as it's adding damage for both the swing and the proc. Other weapon procs are presumed to work the same fashion.

Edit: SoR acting like a melee swing also explains why it's affected by Weapon Spec talents.

In case anyone's interested, I've got two combat logs recorded from using Seal of Blood on a Servant of Razelikh. One armed combat log, one unarmed combat log. I do not have anywhere to upload them, and I doubt the moderation would appreciate me posting over 3000 lines worth of combat logging, so if anyone can point me to a simple place to upload them I will.

Things I've noticed:
1. Seal of Blood is effectively an extra swing dealing 35% of the melee damage listed on your character screen. The Seal can crit, and can also proc Judgement of Light (and presumably Wisdom, but I used Light to be able to beat on the mob practically indefinitely). However, since it's an extra swing effectively, it can also be blocked, dodged or parried. It's fully affected by melee stats and only melee stats.
2. Seal of Blood procs on every attack if you get a Reckoning proc.
3. The Judgement seems to have a 43% spell damage coefficient, it's on physical crit and spell hit, much like Judgement of Command.
4. The self-inflicted damage from using the Seal and Judgement is the stated percentage of the damage dealt (Including that it deals more damage in case you crit with either the Seal or the Judgement). The self-inflicted damage is incapable of critting. The self-inflicted damage is reduced by Spell Warding and Improved Righteous Fury.

I just grabbed a high DPS 1h with 1.5 speed, With my "Warrior" tank gear with Strenght on, SoB hits for just about the same SoR with 0 +dmg.

Then again i had about 850 AP.

Back to SoV/JoV does crusader strike refresh the sov stack? I've only been leveling for 2-3 days since I got back from holiday so haven't been able to test it yet.

Sorry for the slight derail, but I didn't think this warranted its own thread.

Does Seal of the Crusader actually have any use aside from giving a moderate single target +holy damage boost via judgement? I suppose it could be used in situations where mobs are magic immune, but aside from that it seems an awfully useless spell. Anyone done math on how much of a dps increase it actually is?

A little history..

Good old Seal of the crusader, at release of the game 2 years ago seal of the crusader was 40% attack speed buff with no downside. Everyone used it for everything full power white hits at near double speed. Blizzard called it a bug hotfixed it to it's current state, it's was clearly over nerfed and is practically useless for use as a seal as you have noticed.

It only has two uses as a seal in it's own right now..
Down ranked (eg: Rank 1 is like 5 mana and still 40% attack speed) vs a purge happy shaman (if you don't have Seal of Command in your spec)
Rank 1 in pve on a mob debuffed with judgement of wisdom for mana regen.

Considering that the tooltip always said it reduced your attack power, I'm pretty sure it actually was a bug.

Crusader Strike does not proc damage-dealing seals, so no.


On the SotC discussion:
SotC's tooltip is confusing, but currently, it does 2 things:
1.) Adjusts weapon speed/damage so that you swing 40% more often, without increasing damage output at all.
2.) Adds X AP. Every 14 AP adds 1 DPS, and this part provides the damage boost of the Seal.


At the baseline, SotC adds more damage than SoR, but the bonus damage is mitigated by armor, and SotC does not scale with regular stats.
ie: SoR is around 30/38 base DPS with 1h/2h weapons; SotC adds 500 AP (with the Zangarmarsh Libram), or 35 DPS.


As noted in a previous post, SotC was bugged at release - I didn't understand game mechanics when I played then, but apparently SotC was not implementing 1.) properly, so you got X bonus AP, AND 40% increased white DPS (something like that). They actually broke SotC again shortly after the paladin patch, such that it added 40% of your weapon's DPS, though not affecting the AP DPS bonus. (Not sure whether the release version of SotC affected the AP bonus or not) It got fixed in what of the followup patches.


Currently, SotC has 4 uses:
1.) Does more damage than SoR/SoC in low-end gear w/o +dmg. SotC does more damage (on low-armor targets) than baseline SoR, though baseline SoR + JotC does more damage than SotC.
2.) 40% increased swing speed increases use of JoW/JoL, provides more crits/minute for higher Vengeance uptime, and increased cast-time delay for casters. It's not clear whether this can be used to increase the # of weapon procs. My experience suggests that weapon proc rates are adjusted so that it maintains the same PPM.
3.) Leveling up weapon skill.
4.) Judging. Probably 95% of the seal's use after L60.


The only real "problem" with SotC is that its damage does not scale. Before gear is considered, it compares favorably with SoR. However, I doubt this will be changed as there's no niche for it to fill as a damage seal. SoR procs every hit and is our reliable damage seal, while SoC provides burst damage. SotC does not have any "coolness factor" associated with it since it does not make big numbers pop up, and the tooltip confuses everybody. (Many think it decreases the damage you do, since you get more, smaller hits)

Oh yeah I totally forgot about weapon skell leveling w/ sotc.. goes and trains a blasted lands servant to nethergrade keep.