Seal of Blood with a warrior tanking weapon is comparable single target threat if I'm remembering correctly; that was when I was comparing The Sun Eater with the Continuum Blade. (Which does mean the warrior tanking weapon I used was slightly superior, though not too much so being 20 item levels lower than the spell damage weapon)

Putting up Judgement of Light more than compensates the self-inflicted damage, and the weaker Consecrate/Holy Shield/Exorcism gets compensated by the higher base damage of Judgement of Blood.

It's only comparable for a single target though, Consecrate improves very noticably through spell damage so on multiple targets you're better off with a spell damage weapon. It also reduces the viability of downranking some of your spells; especially Consecrate, but since that's mostly an issue in 5-mans, and in 5-mans you want to tank multiple mobs so you'll want a spell damage weapon anyway.

I still prefer the Continuum Blade outside of very specific circumstances due to the extra stamina though.

IS there any math somewhere to credits this towards seal of blood? Because i have been thinking about picking up a big dps one hander to try it out and was interested by the math behind it.

SoB has some very interesting, but also substantially flawed, mechanics going into it. It adds damage equal to 40% of your normal weapon swing on every successful attack, but in the same manner as SoCom, rather then SoR. The distinction being that the SoB proc is like a second swing; it can be dodged, parried, etc, but it can also crit, and it also can proc judgments.

This means that you see a very substantial increase in the amount of mana/health regained through JoW/JoL procs (at the cost of some health), as well as a substantial increase in Vengeance uptime.

The downside is that SoB has no co-efficient from spell damage; only benefiting from melee stats (AP/Crit), whereas SoCom benefits from both melee and spell damage.

If you want to wear pure warrior style melee gear, SoB is the best means of converting melee stats into holy damage: with a 4 speed weapon SoCom averages out to adding ~33% of average swing damage to each swing and only gets worse at faster swing times (and there are no 4 speed weapons in BC to my knowledge), SoJ of course is 40% for all weapons.

One way to think about it is that SoB is essentially dual wield in a single spell, the problem being that, unlike fury warriors, rogues and enhancement shamans, paladins lack the one essential ability of a melee DPS class; a self haste.

Edit: apologies, I misread one-hander for two there for some reason. For tanking, as opposed to DPS purposes, the problem remains fundamentally similar: going only off melee stats, SoB allows you to wear purely warrior style tanking gear. The problem, of course, is that you've now linked your agro to the weakest stat of your gear; mitigation gear with little offense (Str/AP/Crit, although a fair bit of agi for the last part, perhaps), and really gimped your AoE threat generation.

I didnt ask how seal of blood works, i know... I asked about the math behind single target threat generation to compare to a caster weapon.

Off topic - Resolved

Seal of blood is actually 35% but it works out to about 50% since it ignores armour. I wouldn't call it flawed, it just isn't powerful enough to warrant much use.

I consider that its greatest strength actually. Most ret gear is suboptimal anyway ^_^ luckily there is all that warrior gear out there for you. White DPS + 50% just doesn't get there unfortunately.

Checked it out properly now, ignore my previous comment about the two being comparable.

Seal/Judgement of Blood with The Sun Eater.
SoB: 35 (Counting blocked blows and partial resists over about 200 hits; fairly low sample but good enough average, if that weren't an issue with Seal of Blood the two would be closer)
HS: 156
Consecrate: 67
Judgement: 366
Melee: 90
430 TPS

Seal/Judgement of Righteousness with the Continuum Blade.
SoR: 72
HS: 165
Consecrate: 85
Judgement: 368
Melee: 72
490.3 TPS

The numbers after each ability were the average 'hit'. Both tests were done without Judgement of the Crusader (They were actually done with Judgement of Light; Seal of Blood did have a slight advantage when it came to proccing that), which would probably give a larger advantage to Seal of Righteousness if it was used. My feeling that Judgement of Blood's higher base damage would come in handy was also incorrect, the Continuum Blade (With spell damage enchant) already puts Judgement of Righteousness at the same damage.
I was also wrong in regard to the Seal proccing even if you miss, or get dodged or parried. You do need to actually hit your opponent for Seal of Blood to do anything.

One thing that might be interesting to test out still is how Seal of Blood interacts with Windfury or Flametongue totem.

JoB can proc JoL too. And also Did you take into account that SoB and JoB can crit for 2x?

Did you calculated the threat from imp RF and JoL? each point healed would give 0.475 threat no? (twice the procs with SoB)

Did you count with 1h spec, and the effect on the crits?

Did you calculate the white dmg threat, even if its low its still there.



I just cant wrap my head around factoring the crit from JoB and SoB to model the crits.. and the TPS from using my 1.5 speed high dps sword vs my 1.9 continuum blade.

Though it *feels* that i have equal threat if not a bit more with SoB + JoL vs SoR and JotC.. But i do mitigate a bit more using SoB + JoL over SoR + JotC.

JoB can proc JoL too. And also Did you take into account that SoB and JoB can crit for 2x?
I forgot to take that into account Judgement of Light; I wasn't too sure about how it's aggro works. I did take into account the crits, but the crit rate in tanking gear is pretty abysmal.

Did you calculated the threat from imp RF and JoL? each point healed would give 0.475 threat no? (twice the procs with SoB)
Again, forgot to account JoL as I'm not entirely sure if it gives threat. Improved Righteous Fury was included for both. I'd guesstimate if it does count it'd be worth about 60 TPS extra though.

Did you count with 1h spec, and the effect on the crits?
Without 1h spec; I don't have the talent. I did calculate in Improved Judgement though, I don't have that myself either, but it's effect isn't that hard to calculate.

Did you calculate the white dmg threat, even if its low its still there.
I did.

Well i can't say 100% sure how SoB crits, but it seems for me to crit a lot more often than my white hits.. i know SoB is supposed to be melee crit chance but i know its not tied to the white hit crit. I'm still puzzled around that.

Oh dug a bit more JoL is not 1 : 0.475 ratio for threat. It's 1 point healed = 0,95 threat (with Imp RF)

Since JoL and SoL aren't under the .25 threat mod paladin's have on their heals. It is the standard 1:0.5 ratio times 1.9 (imp RF) for a 1 : 0.95 ratio.

Side note: With my tank gear, Revenger as a sword. My hits are about 130 and my SoB hits for about 69-75.

From what I remember, the extra AP from a windfury attack increases the damage done on that hit and subsequently increases the damage done by Seal of Blood (but only for that windfury attack). I don't recall anything different happening when a shaman dropped a flametongue totem.

Hmm, might a possible explanation be that your white hits are being reduced due to the difference in your weapon skill versus the mob's level/defense, while the SoB proc, being a "special attack" is not subject to this limitation?

While the additional procs of JoL/JoW might add more threat (I dunno if they do or not), they won't scale in any meaningful way; SoB will give you twice as many procs as SoR, but that amount will remain a constant regardless of your gear (except for scaling with weapon speed, of course, but there isn't much you can really do with that).

SoB in tanking, it occurs to me, puts the paladin in exactly the same spot as a warrior, in a sense: threat becomes basically a flat amount (since pure mitigation gear increases DPS at a glacial rate).

Edit:
Really? I was under the impression that SoR didn't count as a second swing for purposes of triggering judgments. Hmm, well, if that's so, then that pretty much undercuts the major benefit of using SoB to tank over SoR, at least as I see it.

That leaves SoB unique only in that it can crit, which is seems really only relevant if you have vengeance.

Nope. I effectively get twice as much procs with SoB than with SoR. Tested, re-tested, re-re-tested, parsed. SoR can proc weapon procs but not Judgements as Light and /or wisdom.

All of my experience says that it doesn't count as a second swing.

It appears I have to go retest, sorry for the confusion, I was sure that it was double procing weapon enchants and Judgements, but it could have just been weapon procs.

I tested my SoB damage with 200 swings, while the actual hits were for about 80, there were a bunch of partial resists and blocks which reduced the damage, I might've gotten unlucky however. (Testing was done on level 71/72 ogres in some of Blade's Edge's flying only areas)

Think I'm going to give it a shot in practice to see how it feels and appears on KTM, I have a feeling it'll be less good than Righteousness, but who knows, stranger things have happened.

In reference to the earlier discussion about arena gear, after playing more of the higher rated teams in our bracket this weekend (along with several two warrior teams), I decided to pick up some of the armor after all. I tossed in Sta sockets in everything and actually used the karazhan legs for 3 more blues just for pvp. A lot of arena points gone, to be sure, but we just passed 1900 rating and I'm much more comfortable with the added survivability when it's needed.

But alas, no gladiator's sword for a long time now. =|

Hey guys, I've been going over raid healing and I was wondering what was your ty pical use of holy shock? As I see it, its only strong suit is that its instacast, but the healing done is so pitiful that I believe a FoL would probably be more suited.

So im wondering in your experience if you used holy shock when the tank was very low hp (talking 500-2000 hp) or just queue up a quick FoL.

I use holy shock if I'm moving for some reason and not having mana issues, most raid encounters don't require the healing to move but off the top of my head aran and prince require movement from me and require me to still heal so when I start running I just throw out the shock. Overall it's around 0,1% of my total raid healing, not a great spell to use but I heal with safety in mind more than efficiency.

Other than that I use it quite a lot in arena play simply because of the amount of interrupts and constant moving I have to do in 3v3 arena, 5v5 I've found less troublesome in that regard but still being able to pop a quick FoL off on someone then shock myself while I have a rogue trying to lock me down is good stuff.

yeah ive found nice uses of it in pvp indeed...but for pve, aside from aran (like you just mentionned), I find myself practicaly never using it and was wondering if I was missing out on something or not. Alot of guildies (mind you im horde...) keep saying how good and useful it is to have a 1k instant cast even for 500 mana...

Holy Shock has a few situational uses in raid healing that people have a tendency to overlook. Gruul's high stack Cave-In's are a good example of where a pally on the move benefits from having an instant heal. I've found myself using Holy Shock as a instant self heal that I can top myself off with while continuing the HL/FoL spam on the Main Tank or raid (depending on my healing assignment that night). As far as using Holy Shock as one of my staple heals on another target? I'd say MAYBE as an "o shit" button, but only if combined with Divine Favor. Otherwise the heal output from the Shock is so low its not worth using the GCD in that "o shit" situation. The shorter range on Holy Shock is another restricting factor too as a lot of fights you are going to want to space yourself at max aura range to whatever you are healing. (e.g. Prince, Nightbane, Gruul)

In PvP its uses are obvious, and for tanking it is simply amazing, though.

The only time I use holy shock is tanking, otherwise on movement fights I just cast-move.