After doing some tests and trying different gear setups and trying to wrap my brains around that Seal of Blood thing. I found something that surprised me....

Just a bit of background first, i am deep prot spec, lvl 66 and i do not hold the truth in all matters =P

But here's what i found out:

Seal of Blood effectively counts as a melee strike (double dmg on crit, can crit, can be dodged parried etc...) That we knew... But the interesting thing is it's scaling mecanics.. It's damage is calculated from the white damage your weapon swing would deal before the mob mitigation.

So Seal of Blood scales with AP and Strenght, (agi and crit to some extent).

Now here i am tanking, with mostly "warrior gear" as most of the tank gear avaible to me right now has strenght on it..

So i sit around 1k AP in my tanking gear, with MoTW (and about +100 spelldmg)... And i just got a 1.5 speed 53ish DPS sword. So with that sword i try Seal of Blood.. it does about 15-20 holy dmg less per swing than SoR with a 41 DPS sword and +53 dmg on it, and JotC on the mob.

So instantly i tell myself pshaw less dmg and cost in life.. useless seal...

But i was wrong, oh so very wrong.

Unlike SoR, SoB's holy dmg portion can trigger JoL and JoW. Each swing i did with SoB had 2 chance of procing JoL, 4 chances when Reckoning was up. Now not only can SoB crit for more threat, but the threat added by JoL'S healing more than make up for the little 20 holy dmg loss per swing using SoR with JotC.

Not only that, i realised that using JoL and SoB instead of SoR + JotC helps my mitigation. The healing received from SoL FAR outweighted the dmg i took from SoB, and JoL is more mitigation than JotC.

And the rest of the group benefits more from JoL than JotC....

I do realise however than when i get my hands on a high +dmg sword things will change, but it'll be interesting to see with a higher dps weapon too...

We'll see it it plays out but atm, SoB + JoL is my tanking seal/judgement combo.

If you want numbers, i'll try and gather them up tonight as i am at work now..

Quick thoughts:
Using SoR, it takes 1/.09 = 11~ +dmg to add 1 Holy DPS to the seal portion.

Using SoB, it takes 1/.35 * 14 = 40 AP to add 1 Holy DPS to the seal portion. (And the AP adds 2.9 white DPS; so to add 1 overall DPS, you only need 10~ AP )


For threat, SoR takes 1/.09/1.9 = 5.85 +dmg to add 1 TPS.

Using SoB, assuming 30% mitigation on the white DPS, 10 AP will add 0.5 white DPS, 0.25 Holy DPS, for a total of .975 TPS. (~1.19 before mitigation)


This comparison is favoring SoB, since +dmg boosts other Holy damage abilities, but it would be interesting to look for a talent build/gear set that maximizes SoB. (Throw in some melee crit%, and SoB looks even better; you could do a 0/4x/15+ Prot/Holy build for +parry and conviction)

Incidentally I would really like to see numbers on PPM using SotC; specifically, if it would be the best seal to use if you were using the Nightbane replacement(whatever it's called, +15% spell damage on proc for the raid). My intution suggests the opposite as yours; that PPM procs are based on base weapon speed and wouldn't account for SotC(nor other effects such as Reckoning, Slice n' Dice, or Flurry), thus making a paladin actually fairly effective at the "keeping up weapon debuffs" role. But I have absolutely no proof and it would be nice if someone collected some data. I call "Not It."

It's odd that we have librams dedicated to increasing SotC's AP bonus; it suggests the devs still view it as serving a dps function. Sometimes I picture them scratching their heads, trying to figure out why statistically no paladins are using their ingenious seal.

As for SoB, for some reason I was instantly jealous of this seal when it was announced, despite all the boos from the (horde) crowd. It would be interesting to see it in a serious tanking perspective, self-inflicted damage aside. How would using a high dps "warrior" tanking weapon (Honor's Call or somesuch) compare threat-wise vs. a traditional paladin tanking weapon such as the Continuum Blade?

Theorycrafting aside, just from experience I find I am using SoV very rarely indeed, pretty much limited to grinding single mobs as protection spec. I have never seemed to get a firm aggro lock as compared to regular old SoR, and the utter lack of syngery with reckoning is really the final nail in the coffin.

I dont know if real tanking perspective applies but i used SoB and JoL mainly to tank all the way Mana tombs @ 65. (even using SoB + JoL on final boss and keeping the humanoids adds too.

My 53 dps 1.5 speed sword and "Warrior" gear setup (11k armor, 395 def, 11% dodge, 11% parry 8% block) 300ish str buffed i had 1k AP and about 9% crit. Not stellar... But My SoB only was hitting for 70-100 and i was getting damaged for 7-10 from it.

Getting a 7-10 dmg each 1.5 sec (double that with Reckoning) but getting twice the +59 healing procs from JoL alone made it worth it mitigation wise...

I didn't do the math but the threat from JoL more than made up for the little loss in "added holy dmg" difference between SoB and SoR (when pairing SoR + JotC). I needed to judge SoB a lot less than SoR to hold aggro.

I was using SoR with the sword with +53 dmg from Slave Pens and about 150 +dmg (not including JotC) and the sword with 53 dps 1.5 speed from mana tombs's 2nd boss with +100 dmg for SoB and JoL combo.

Edit: Fiola, i can confirm that the holy damage portion of SoB uses the white swing's dmg before mob's mitigation. I very often got 80 holy dmg from SoB for a 120ish Hit.

Just on top of my head playing with numbers:

Also 56 points of healing done through JoL, is equal to 56*0.5 = 28 threat then add in Imp RF, 28*1.9 = 53.2

so a JoL proc for 56 healing translates into 53.2 threat.

Let's say i get a 120 white hit, a 80 SoB and a single JoL proc.

120 (threat from white dmg) + 80*1.9 + 53.2 = 325.2 threat (JoB + SoL)

Now with another sword i have with 41 dps and + 50 dmg Using JotC.

80 (threat from white hit) + 135*1.9 = 336.5 threat. (JoR + SotC)

Its close no?

Then consider SoB can crit for double dmg and i can get doulble procs from JoL and then consider JoB scales with + dmg too.

*Numbers taken from what i remember them being when i was using and comaring both during my tanking run last night. May not be super accurate but pretty close.

I see that the main discussion is of SoV but was wondering if someone wouldn't mind checking my math on SoC vs SoB.
According to wow wiki the formula for SoC dps is (weapon dps + AP/14) * weapon speed * .70 * 7/60 correct? And the spell damage portion is Spell damage * .20 * 7 /60. Adding the two together will give SoC dps.

Now I believe SoB is very similar, except PPM is based on weapon speed and it does 35 percent of the weapon damage. So SoB should be (weapon dps + AP/14) * weapon speed * .35 * (60/weapon speed) /60

So if you have a 93.3 dps weapon 3.5 speed along with 1400 ap then
SoC dps = (93.3 + 1400/14) * 3.5 * .70 * 7/60 = 55.25 before spell damage.
SoB dps = (93.3 + 1400/14) * 3.5 * .35 * 17 /60 = 67.09
A difference of 11.84 dps. So the spell damage needed to make up the difference would be 11.84 = x * .20 * 7 / 60 or 508 +spell damage.
Is this accurate? I am currently leveling as ret and recently got SoB but basically wrote it off after hearing that it received no bonus from spell damage, however now I am not so sure because I am currently no where near 508 spell damage.

Yea, I am asking based purely on the seal side of things. Also, enjoyed your post on the official paladin forums about SoB. Found it rather informative.

If someone could crosspost this I would be quite interested in reading it.

Look at the top of this page. If you really *must* visit the paladin forums. . .
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1



Well, it's not quite intuition. I played with it a bit using Nightfall on Ebonroc, and the Hakkari Manslayer when tanking, using ProcWatch.

Granted, I don't have any numbers handy, and I never got around to controlled experiments. . . but it did not look good for SotC's use as a weapon proc seal. Keep in mind that SoC/SoR/JoC/JoR (and probably JoV/JoB) can trigger weapon procs too.

SoR triggering a weapon proc:
http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sorprochl6.png


For that libram, I think the SotC +AP thing was just bundled in with JotC's +Holy. There just isn't much you can do to make "Seal of Auto-attack" interesting.