Wrl

There seems to be a lot of confusion and a general lack of knowledge about how Seal of Blood (for the sake of this test, I'm sure Seal of Command works the same way) generates its damage from a Paladin's base damage.

The tooltip says that it should be 35% of your normal weapon damage. This damage crits for 2x, uses melee crit % and is effected by armor. However it counts as Holy Damage.

These were my average test values using a low damage range 2h Axe against a warlock in a duel, values under the effect of Vengeance are seperated.

w/o Vengeance:
White Hit: ~360
SoB Hit: ~138

w/ Vengeance
White Hit: ~395
SoB Hit: ~151

Originally many sources claimed that Vengeance (which increases physical and holy damage by 10%) had a two-fold effect on Seal of Blood(Command and Crusader Strike) because it increased the base damage that the Seal is based off of AND the damage the Seal produces as well.

First of all, before considering Vengeance, it occured to me that Blood was hitting substantially harder than it suggested it should be. An average white hit of 360 should be producing an average Blood value of 126, however I ended up with 138. I considered a few different options, and it occured to me that the effects of Two-Handed Specialization and Crusade might be applying their effects to this damage as well, even after having been applied to the white damage.

White Hit x .35 x Crusade x 2hSpec = ?
360 x .35 x 1.03 x 1.06 = 137.6

Obviously these multipliers are effectively being applied twice to Seal of Blood.

Now on to Vengeance. A post was made on the Paladin forums about how the 2.1 increase in the Vengeance multiplier to 15% would be a huge increase to Paladin DPS due to the doubled effect on Vengeance. I think that I can quickly disprove this in two ways. I will use the current value of 10% on Vengeance.

Base SoB * 1.1 = ?
138 * 1.1 = 151.8

Vengeance White Hit * .35 * Crusade * 2hSpec = ?
395 * .35 * 1.03 * 1.06 = 150.9

Given that I did not have a very large sample size, I think these values are effectively the same. If Vengeance was being applied twice, the damage would be significantly higher.

Conclusion: Seal of Blood, Seal of Command, and Crusader Strike will use the base white damage complete with any passive multipliers, and then apply those multipliers again for the final damage. Any buff-based multipliers such as Vengeance, Avenging Wrath, and the new Improved Sanctity Aura will only apply to the final resulting damage as opposed to applying twice as some have suggested.

I would love to hear what people think, I doubt there is very much Retribution theorycrafting going on overall. Also this is my first post, I hope it was a useful one.

 

Fiola

Are those post armor white hits, or based on the character sheet damage range?



2h Weapon Spec and Crusade affect holy damage done by SoR, SoC, JoC, so it wouldn't be surprising if they affected SoB/JoB.


SoB getting double the effect of Crusade & 2h Spec. would be interesting if true.

 

Wrl

These hits are all recorded after armor. They are based off of 10+ average hits on the target, which given the small damage range of the weapon used, is fairly accurate.

Anyway, what I am effectively proving is that SoB IS infact effectively getting twice the bonus of 2hSpec/Crusade and so does Command. SoR would not because it is not based off of weapon damage.

I already knew that SoB was being effected by Crusade/2hSpec, the point is that it is using White Damage that is ALREADY effected by those two talents as the basis, and then applying the talents again.

This raises a few questions though, are other skills effected in similar ways.

Take for instance Multi Shot, is it taking the base white damage that is effected by RWS and then adding on the MS damage, and then applying the RWS multiplier again? Or is this phenomenon only particular to Paladin Seals?

 

kysta

Are you sure that armor isn't the reason for the varying damage?

Maybe there is no doubled 2hander spec or crusade bonus to SoB, and it's just the fact that the holy damage isn't mitigated by armor while your white hit is that makes it look like it's more than 35%.

 

Zraknul

Seal of blood and command are calculated before armor is taken into account and don't go through armor mitigation because they're holy damage not physical.

A warlock has ~10% damage reduction.

w/o Vengeance
So 360/0.9 = 400 pre armor damage.

400*.35 = 140, which is pretty close to 138. The warlock you tested with likely has just under 10% DR.

w/ Vengeance
395/.9 = 438.88

438.88 * .35 = 153.6

I'm calculating his DR at ~8.7% from your given values. <= [360 / (138/.35)]

(395/.913) * .35 = 151.4
Using the calculated DR of the warlock pretty much gives the identical answer from your averaged results. Pretty cleanly shows no double applicant of vengeance.

 

Shallistra

There is a simple way to verify that SoB is not affected by armor.

Average SoB Crit = Average SoC Hit.

 

Fjord

As i recall Seal of Blood became a higher % of my white damage as the armour of my target increased.

Just tested against an obliging guild shaman. Removing and equipping his shield seemed to have no effect on the seal of blood damage.

Also tested if avenging wrath would double count, it does not.

For future reference I recommend testing SoB while unarmed as it has no damage range. You may need to put on some AP gear to get large enough numbers for precise results though.

 

Fiola

Right. SoB and SoC are treated as extra swings of your weapon, dealing 35/70% of your weapon damage, and with an extra +dmg modifier for SoC procs. They are not based off of the damage your actual swing does.